This month we hear from the Knighthood of Purity:
Sublime nature, my ears did not hear your music.
Your heart has heard it, your soul has danced to it.
– Nirtan, Tanas
Indigenous wisdom addresses nature as “all my relations.” What is our moral responsibility toward “all my relations?”
Murshid offers us a pathway for examining our morality in relation to another.
For those searching after truth, journeying through the spiritual path, this is the first thing to learn, to find out for themselves under all conditions in life what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, not from what they are taught or told, but from their own feeling, which can be perceived by a delicate sense of realizing through life what really gives comfort and what causes discomfort. – Gathas II, Everyday Life
What feels right and what feels wrong is determined by our conscience. The artificiality of our lives hides from us what truly gives comfort and ease of conscience. When we walk in nature, we can rise above artificiality by giving appreciative attention to what is around us. When we give “all my relations” our appreciative attention, we see its beauty and we feel a kinship. Our soul begins to dance. Then we can apply what Murshid next recommends for our journey on the moral path.
That which we seek in life we must give to another; if it is kindness, give it; if goodness, give it; if service, give it. The whole secret of happiness in life lies in this… as long as we look to another to make us happy, we keep expecting that which we ought ourselves to have given. Not till then do we know what justice is. – The Sufi Message, Vol VII, Mind, Human and Divine
Submitted by Suhrawardi Gebel, Chancellor, The Knighthood of Purity
