Wednesday, July 28, 2010

What to Do with your Diamond - an Indian tale

The sannyasi (wise man) had reached the outskirts of the village and had settled down under a tree for the night when a villager came running up to him and said, "The stone! The stone! Give me the precious stone!"

"What stone?" asked the sannyasi.

Last night the Lord Shiva appeared to me in a dream ," said the villager, "and told me that if I went to the outskirts of the village at dusk, I should find a sannyasi who would give me a precious stone that would make me rich forever."

The sannyasi rummaged in his bag and pulled out a stone. "He probably meant this one," he said, as he handed the stone over to the villager. "I found it on the forest path some days ago. You can certainly have it."

The man gazed at the stone in wonder. It was a diamond, probably the largest diamond in the whole world, for it was a large as a person's head.

He took the diamond and walked away. All night he tossed about in bed, unable to sleep.

Next day, at the crack of dawn he woke the sannyasi and said, "Give me the wealth that makes it possible for you to give this diamond away so easily."

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Love in Friendship and with One's Mate

The Healing Order has released its latest publication, The Secrets of the Heart. Included is the excerpt below which has to be one of the most beautiful and succinct expressions of the role of Love in our friendships as well as with our beloveds that I have encountered. May we all approach the throne of love in our lives.

"There is the love of a friend for his friend, the only reason for which is the admiration that one has for the other. But when there is real friendship between two people it gives them the experience of divine perfection, as in the Persian saying, 'When two hearts become one they can remove mountains.' To feel that there is someone to whom we can place our confidence, that there is someone who understands us, whom we can trust, upon whom we can lean and rely, to whom we can open our heart, to know that someone will sorrow in our pain more than he will sorrow in his own troubles, to know that there is someone in the world who shares all that is good and beautiful with us, imagine what a feeling it is! If we put this friend on one side of the scale and the other side the whole world, the side where the friend is will weigh more than the other.

Then there is the love of one's beloved mate, a beloved in whom one can see the beauty of God and hear the voice of God. One can long for that beloved, one can yearn all the time to attain to the presence of that beloved. When there is someone to long for, to think about, then one begins to realize the truth in the saying that pain is preferable to pleasure. When one begins to feel the thought of one's beloved, to feel the feelings of one's beloved, to overlook all wrong that the beloved may have done, when one begins to see that all is right and beautiful and good in one's beloved, then one is raised to experience the paradise of which the legends speak.

Rumi says, 'Whether you have loved man or whether you have loved God, if you have really loved you are brought in the end before the throne of love.' All the different aspects of love and devotion in their beginning may appear wrong or right, but if there is real love and devotion one arrives in the end at the stage which sages and masters have experienced. Love is purifying, love is strengthening, love is uplifting, and love gives life."

Hazrat Inayat Khan