The principal thing necessary for attaining happiness is to purify one’s mind from all things that disturb it and create inharmony. There are not only bad impressions which disturb the tranquility of the mind, but many feelings of resentment and resistance against things which do not agree with one’s own idea that disturb one’s mind. For the person who has some business to carry on or some profession requires a tranquil mind, but the one who journeys on the spiritual path most needs tranquility of mind. Prayers, concentrations, meditations have no effect if the mind is not purified from all disturbances. Therefore for an adept no cost and no sacrifice is too great for keeping harmony within herself.
A Sufi tries to keep harmony in her surroundings, the harmony which demands many sacrifices. It makes one endure what one is not willing to endure, it makes one overlook what one is not inclined to overlook, it makes one tolerate what one is not accustomed to tolerate, and it makes one forgive what one would never have forgotten if it had not been for the sake of harmony. But at whatever cost harmony is attained it is a good bargain, for harmony is the secret of happiness, and in the absence of this a person living in palaces and rolling in gold can be most unhappy.
Harmony is brought about by attuning oneself to all beings, to all things, to all conditions, to all situations; and she who cannot tune herself tries to tune others, and in setting about tuning others she breaks the string. It is as if a person with a violin in her hands tried to tune the cello. If she wishes to be in tune with the cellist she must tune her violin to the cellist’s pitch. Every soul, as is its nature, constantly seeks harmony, but rarely is there to be found a soul who really knows how to create it. If someone says, “This noise which goes on always close to my ears drives me mad,” she cannot stop the noise. She must know how to close herself to that noise—to accustom herself to that noise so as to be able to bear it and eventually rise above it, that it may no longer create inharmony.
It is very difficult to evolve onself and at the same time to keep in tune with the unevolved one through life. It is like being drawn from above and at the same time being pulled from below. And if there is anything that can save one from being torn to pieces in life there is only one way, and that is to resound, to respond to all that is asked of man. It is this principle that is taught by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount may seem to teach willing surrender to all, but that is not the way to look at it. The real lesson that one can learn from it is to try and harmonize with all instead of one note. Every note is fixed in its place, so is every person fixed in her ideas and ways. But the one who treads the spiritual path, she is all notes and she is no note in particular. Therefore she may rightly be called the keynote, the note which makes a consonant chord with every note that is played with it.
There is no beauty where there is no harmony. Harmony is the fruit of love; therefore by attaining harmony in life one reaches the perfection of all three: love, harmony, and beauty.
|
