Posts Tagged → sufi

friendship among brothers and sisters

a buddha was born

 
Real friendship among brothers and sisters on the Sufi path includes the following eight responsibilities:

  1.  Material aid. Help your companions with food, or money, or other things they need for their own survival or development.
  2. Personal support. If they are sick, visit them; if they are busy, help them, if they have forgotten, remind them.
  3. Respect. Do not complain of their faults to them or to others. Do not give advice when you know it can not be acted upon.
  4. Praise and attention. Praise the good qualities of your companions, and let them know that you care for them.
  5. Forgiveness. Forgive your companions for their failings.
  6. Prayer. Pray for the well-being of your companions with the same fervor you pray for your own well-being.
  7. Loyalty. Be firm in your friendships so that you can be depended on by those who put their trust in you.
  8. Relief from discomfort. Do not create awkward or difficult situations that involve your companions. Do not be a burden to others.

 

al-Ghazali

stanford encyclopedia of philosophy

 

rises and falls serve a sacred purpose

ramana maharshi

 
Consider the Mahatma, the great soul. One Mahatma is busy struggling with himself and struggling with conditions before him and around him. This struggle is not for naught, for it is a conflict with the self, it is a conflict with others, it is a conflict with conditions – conflicts that come from all around, till every bit of that Mahatma is tested and tried, till every bit of his patience is exhausted and his ego is ground. A hard rock is turned into a soft paste – then appears the personality of a Mahatma. This process of effacement, the real meaning of crucifixion is to crucify the false self, that the true self may rise. As long as the false self is not crucified, the true self is not realized.
 
The path of attainment means embracing this struggle. The man who fails in the world will fail to attain spiritual bliss. Yet, difficulties rise over the head of him who looks at them with awe. But the same difficulties fall at the feet of him who takes no notice of them. Ultimately, verily, independence and indifference are the two wings which enable the soul to fly. This indifference is not a lack of feeling but a mastery, for man without feeling is without life. It is the strength to pour out floods of love, yet keeping your garment of detachment from being wet.
 
Thus, the rises and falls, the joys and sorrows, the struggles and surrenders, all serve a sacred purpose. Joy and sorrow are the light and shade of life; without light and shade no picture is clear. In the end, love develops into harmony, and of harmony is born beauty. For love is living and therefore growing, love is growing and therefore expanding, there is no limit to the expansion of love, for its source is divine and thus its expansion is perfect. This is the ultimate rise.
 

Hazrat Inayat Khan

 

love comes with a knife

this love is beyond

 

Love comes with a knife, not some shy question,

and not with fears for its reputation.

I say these things disinterestedly.

Accept them in kind.

Love is a madman,

 

working his wild schemes,

tearing off his clothes, running through the mountains,

drinking poison, and now quietly choosing annihilation.

 

A tiny spider tries to wrap an enormous wasp.

Think of the spiderweb

woven across the cave where Muhammad slept.

There are love stories,

and there is obliteration into love.

 

You have been walking the ocean’s edge,

holding up your robes to keep them dry.

 

You must dive naked under and deeper under,

a thousand times deeper. Love flows down.

The ground submits to the sky and suffers what comes.

Tell me, is the earth worse for giving in like that?

 

Do not put blankets over the drum.

Open completely.

Let your spirit listen

to the green dome’s passionate murmur.

 

Let the cords of your robe be untied.

Shiver in this new love beyond all above and below.

The sun rises, but which way does the night go?

I have no more words.

 

Let the soul speak with the silent articulation of a face.

 

…
 

Someone who does not run

toward the allure of love walks

a road where nothing lives.

 

But this dove here senses

the love hawk floating above,

and waits, and will not be driven

or scared to safety.

 

Jalal al-Din Rumi

the book of love

 

with an ever-living heart

jae c. hong

 

Many seek protection

from all hurting influences by building

some wall around themselves. But the canopy over

the earth is so high that a wall cannot be built high enough,

and the only thing one can do is to live in the midst of all

inharmonious influences, to strengthen his will power

and to bear all things, yet keeping the fineness

of character and a nobleness of manner

together with an ever-living

heart.

 

To become cold with the coldness

of the world is weakness, and to become broken

by the hardness of the world is feebleness, but to live in the world

and yet to keep above the world is like walking on the water. There are two

essential duties for the man of wisdom and love; that is to keep the love

in our nature ever increasing and expanding and to strengthen the

will so that the heart may not be easily broken. Balance is ideal

in life; man must be fine and yet strong, man must

be loving and yet powerful.

 

Hazrat Inayat Khan

the training of the ego