Complexity is Interesting

When seeking the truth, it is very often the case that it is a maze that is discovered instead. Then follows an exploration of the maze until exhaustion finally breaks the obsession.

The greatest truths present themselves as great mysteries and some will immediately understand but most will be “interested”.

Each person decides themselves, whether or not to embrace the truth or the maze. Those who choose truth do so by drawing on the soul within.

Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:

Truth is simple. But for the very reason that it is simple, people will not take it; because our life on earth is such that for everything we value, we have to pay a great price and one wonders, if truth is the most precious of all things, then how can truth be attained simply?

It is this illusion that makes everyone deny simple truth and seek for complexity. Tell people about something that makes their heads whirl round and round and round. Even if they do not understand it, they are most pleased to think, ‘It is something substantial. It is something solid. For, it is an idea we cannot understand, it must be something lofty.’ But something which every soul knows, proving what is divine in every soul, and which it cannot help but know, that appears to be too cheap, for the soul already knows it.

There are two things: knowing and being. It is easy to know truth, but most difficult to be truth. It is not in knowing truth that life’s purpose is accomplished; life’s purpose is accomplished in being truth.

Bowl of Saki, October 6, by Hazrat Inayat Khan

In a Word, There is Light

How important it is to think more than to speak; to treat the content of communication with others as a craft, to wait for the feeling of the “rightness” of words while asking; love? harmony? beauty?

Among all the valuable things of this world, the word is the most precious. For in the word, one can find a light which gems and jewels do not possess; a word may contain so much life that it can heal the wounds of the heart. Therefore, poetry in which the soul is expressed is as living as a human being. The greatest reward that God bestows on man is eloquence and poetry. … There is a Hindu idea that explains this very well: that the vehicle of the goddess of learning is eloquence. Many live, but few think; and among the few who think there are fewer still who can express themselves. Then their soul’s impulse is repressed, for in the expression of the soul the divine purpose is fulfilled.

Bowl of Saki, August 8, by Hazrat Inayat Khan

micro sama:

The Mystic Needs No Approval

Of the many conflicts we face in life, both inner and outer, our regard for what others think is often at odds with our hope for a real inner security; for a real personal peace.

The average person cannot understand the mystic; and therefore people are always at a loss when dealing with one. ‘Yes’ is not the same ‘yes’ that everybody says; ‘no’ has not the same meaning as that which everybody understands. In almost every phrase uttered there is some symbolical meaning. Every outward action has an inner significance. One who does not understand this symbolical meaning may be bewildered by hearing a phrase, which is nothing but confusion.

Bowl of Saki, August 8, by Hazrat Inayat Khan (gender neutral text)

micro sama:

The Message Proves the Messenger

Nothing disturbs the peace like the certainty of obsessive spirituality. A friend to many was Rinpoche “Lama” Kladan who told us: “Lord Buddha, he never push”.

There was a time when the world was not capable of seeing. Humanity did not have enough realization to recognize the message, that is why the claim of prophecy had to be made.

But now the world can recognize, sooner or later, what is right and what is wrong. The warner, the master, the messenger of today will not claim. There is only the work which is left to prove for itself whether it is true or false.

Bowl of Saki, July 2, by Hazrat Inayat Khan, (gender neutral text)

micro sama

First We Create Peace in Ourselves

We live in troubled times; our ancestors lived in troubled times. What lives within directly affects the outer.

We must first create peace in ourselves if we desire to see peace in the world; for lacking peace within, no effort of ours can bring any result.

                        Bowl of Saki, July 2, by Hazrat Inayat Khan, (gender neutral text)

The Mind World 02

In this continuation of the writing from Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan regarding the mind world, he explains the relationship of the mind and the heart.

Part 02

Does the heart reflect the mind or the mind the heart?

In the first place, it should be known that the mind is the surface of the heart, and the heart is the depth of the mind. Therefore, mind and heart are one and the same thing. If you call it a mirror then the mind is the surface of the mirror and the heart its depth. In the same mirror, all is reflected. ‘Mirror’ is a very good word, because it applies to both the mind and the heart.

If the reflection comes from the surface of the heart, it touches the surface. If it comes from the depth of the heart, it reaches the depth. The voice of the insincere person comes from the surface and it reaches the ears. The voice of the sincere person comes from the depth and goes to the depth. What comes from the depth enters the depth, and what comes from the surface, remains on the surface.

Nothing can separate two minds which are focused on one another. No person with an affectionate heart, with tender feeling, will deny that two sympathetic souls communicate with one another. Distance is never a bar to this phenomenon.

Have we not seen in the recent war (World War I, 1914 – 1918) the womenfolk of the soldiers, their mothers, their wives, their children, linked with their dear ones fighting at the front and feeling their conditions and knowing when a soldier was wounded or killed? Many will say that it is the thought that reaches. But, at the same time, even the thought  vibrations in the profound depth become a picture, a design. One thought, one particular design, one particular picture becomes reflected, and because it is so mirrored upon them, another  person feels it in an instant.

Reflection is not like a conversation. In a conversation every word unfolds the idea more, and so the idea gradually becomes manifested. But, in the reflection, in one instant, the whole idea is reflected, because the whole idea is there in the form of a picture, and it is mirrored in the mind, which has received it.

THE MIND WORLD 01

Recently, our Sufi group has been focusing on the relationship of mind and heart. I think this writing from Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan has much that could be relevant to that inquiry. The language has been made gender neutral.

Part 01

The phenomenon of reflection differs in its nature and character, especially by reason of the nature of different personalities.

In the first place, the person whose thought becomes reflected in the heart of another, may have a concrete form in that thought, may be able to hold it as one design or a picture. In that case, the reflection falls in the heart of another person clearly.

But if the mind is so weak that it cannot hold a thought properly, then the thought is moving and it cannot reflect the mind of another properly. If the mind of the person is not in good condition, then the picture is not clear. If a person’s mind is not clear, if it is upset or too active, then that mind cannot convey the reflection fully.

The mind can be likened to a lake. If there is a wind blowing and the water is disturbed, then the reflection will not be clear. When the water is still, the reflection is clear. And so it is with the mind.

The mind which is still is capable of receiving reflection. The mind which is powerful, capable of making a thought, a picture, holding a thought, can project its thought beyond any boundaries that may be standing there to hinder it.

Performance of Murshid Hidayat’s Music in Novosibirsk, Russia

In a recent email Murshid Hidayat passed on interesting news of the performance of his music in Novosibirsk, Russia. I include some of his comments here:

“…my composition called La Monotonia was played in an arrangement for a large String Orchestra composed of an ensemble of Cellos, which must have been an extraordinary musical experience.

It was performed in the large hall of the State Conservatoire of Novosibirsk in memory of my Sister Noorunissa, on the celebration day (08 May) of the official Russian Liberation Day. It had a tremendous success.

A second performance of several of my compositions shall be given on the 11th of June, in a Concert at the large Philharmonic Hall of Novosibirsk. They wanted us to be there, but we just cannot think of making such a tiring and risky trip to the other end of the world, at our ages.

The Russians seem to really appreciate my music, and I feel so deeply grateful , specially since I recently read in the Biography, that at the occasion of a meeting of my Father in Moscow with the Great Russian Composer Scriabine, Scriabine and my Father jointly agreed that it would be wonderful if some day European Music and Indian Music could find a possible combination structure.

This happens to be the case with my music, where the western harmonic structure is combined with Indian Ragas. This is the secret, why Russians are so appreciative of my music, which reminds them of their own, in some way. (see Glazunov and Korsakow) Scriabine did use a melody of my Father in one of his piano compositions, just as Debussy also did.”

Hidayat and Aziza are now in Munich.

Inayat Khan’s “Bowl of Saki”

If you are attracted to the Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan, I would like to heartily recommend subscribing to the Bowl of Saki daily emails from the website of Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist.

Reading these short quotes each day is in itself a spiritual practice. The link is:

http://wahiduddin.net/saki/saki_date.php

From the site:

The title The Bowl of Saki was chosen around 1921 by students of Hazrat Inayat Khan who published a book containing some of the inspiring phrases that they had been given by their teacher. The first edition of The Bowl of Saki was published in England in late 1921 or early 1922.

The Bowl of Saki is a compendium of 366 brief quotations, one for each day of the year, selected from the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan. Many of the quotes came directly from his lectures, while others came from his personal notebooks. In the December 1921 edition of the quarterly publication “Sufism”, the new book was announced as:

“a collection of some of the most striking and arresting sayings of Pir-o-Murshid, arranged in the form of a daily textbook”

from Complete Works of Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan, Original Texts: Sayings, Part II