All individuals compose the music of their own life; if they injure another they break the harmony and there is discord in the melody of their life.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
All the trouble in the world, and all the disastrous results arising out of it, all come from lack of harmony. And this shows that the world needs harmony today more than ever before. … The true use of music is to become musical in one’s thoughts, words, and actions. We must be able to give the harmony for which the soul yearns and longs every moment. All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of harmony. And harmony is best given by producing harmony in one’s own life.
( from the Supplementary Papers: Art and Music II [ unpublished ] )
The whole of Life is as music and in order to study Life we must study it as music. It is not only study, it is also practice which makes humanity perfect. If someone tells me that a certain person is miserable or wretched or distressed, my answer will be, that one is out of tune.
The Sufis harmonize with everybody whether good or bad, wise or foolish, by becoming like the key-note. All races, nations, classes and people are like a strain of music based upon one chord, where the key-note, the common interest, holds so many personalities in a single bond of harmony. By a study of Life the Sufis learn and practice the nature of its harmony. They establish harmony with the self, with others, with the universe and with the infinite. They identify themselves with another, they see themselves, so to speak, in every other being. They care for neither blame nor praise, considering both as coming from themselves. … They overlook the faults of others, considering that they know no better. They hide the faults of others, and suppress any facts that would cause disharmony.
Their constant fight is with the Nafs (self-interest), the root of all disharmony and the only enemy of humanity. By crushing this enemy we gain mastery over ourselves; this wins for us mastery over the whole universe, because the wall standing between the self and the Almighty has been broken down. Gentleness, mildness, respect, humility, modesty, self-denial, conscientiousness, tolerance and forgiveness are considered by the Sufis as the attributes which produce harmony within one’s own soul as well as within that of another.
All individuals compose the music of their own life. If they injure another, they bring disharmony. When their sphere is disturbed, they are disturbed themselves, and there is a discord in the melody of their life. If they can quicken the feeling of another to joy or to gratitude, by that much they add to their own life; they become themselves by that much more alive. Whether conscious of it or not, their thought is affected for the better by the joy or gratitude of another, and their power and vitality increase thereby, and the music of their life grows more in harmony.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
The music of our being consists not only in the sounds or thoughts or feelings we have that are pleasant to us, but in the sounds or thoughts or feelings we have that do not cause pain to others. We have in L0ife two relations — our relations to ourselves and to others. When we are ill or suffer in any manner this can be due to the injury we have done to ourselves, or the injury we have heedlessly permitted another to do to us. For the spiritual student the first is ignorance, the second heedlessness — so in either case no one else is to blame.
That is to say, once the heart is awakened we do wrong in allowing others to injure us and we do still greater wrong in injuring others. When the heart is pure, the thoughts will be pure, and the melodies of voice — whether sung or spoken — will be pure, the breath will be pure, the atmosphere will be pure, and God’s Radiance flowing through the personality will bring peace.