The wise submit to conditions when they are helpless, bowing to the will of God. But the evil that is avoidable they root out without sparing one single moment or effort.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
By looking for happiness, what do people seek after? They are seeking after their self, though they do not know it. … The more one understands oneself, the more one finds that everything that one finds lacking in others is also lacking in oneself. Do people become less by finding faults in themselves? No, they become greater, for they not only find that the faults which are in others are also to be found in them, but that all merits of the others are also their own merits. With faults and merits they become more complete, they do not become less.
What a great treasure it is when we have realized that in us are to be found all the merits and all the faults which exist in the world, and that we can cultivate all that we wish to cultivate, and to cut away all that should be removed! It is like rooting out the weeds and sowing the seeds of flowers and fruits. One finds that all is in oneself, and that one can cultivate in oneself what one wishes. A world opens for those who begin to look within themselves, for it is not a little plot of ground that they have to cultivate, they have a world to make of themselves and to make a world is sufficient occupation to live for. What more does one want? Many think that life is not interesting because they make nothing, but they do not realize that they have to make a world, that they are making a world, either ignorantly or wisely. If they make a world ignorantly then that world is their captivity, if they make a world wisely then that world is their paradise.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Wise control of breath keeps the mind from lingering upon destructive thought. All destruction in the world is not evil, for sometimes it is necessary for the sake of all humankind or for the sake of earth itself. That is why there may be floods and droughts and even famine and pestilence. These universal conditions are the results of universal corruption.
But when the wise are called upon to oppose evil they do this immediately with all heart and mind, calling forth the power of God to work righteousness.