The Copper Rules of Hazrat Inayat Khan
With Earthic Chivalry Themed Commentary by Pir Zia Inayat Khan
Consider your responsibility sacred.
An incarnate soul carries the Trust conferred by the Deity. There is nothing trivial about it; the stakes are enormous. To remember and honor the Trust is to fulfill the purpose of wearing clay. To fall into heedlessness is to lose the chance of a lifetime. The Deity is served by serving creation. The responsibility could not be a more sacred one.
Be polite to all.
Whatever has to be said, there are always two ways to say it: kindly or boorishly. One cannot control others’ styles of expressing themselves. But it is never necessary to respond in kind. We each have discretion when it comes to crafting our words and gestures, and the choices we make define us. An etiquette that extends to trees, stones, and clouds has become admirably Earthic.
Do nothing which will make your conscience feel guilty.
The true conscience, the heart’s intuitive knowledge, is mindful of the balance between the “ten thousand things” of the Tricosm. It has the prescience to vividly foresee the downstream impacts of every course of action. A contented conscience allows a person a good night’s sleep, which is a pearl beyond price.
Extend your help willingly to those in need.
Assistance is the very substance of symbiosis. We are aided every day by hands visible and invisible, human and otherwise. Having been helped so generously so many times, it is a strange circumstance when a person declines the chance to pass the favor forward. The Gospels counsel, “Remember to show hospitality. There are some who, by doing so, have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:2)
Do not look down upon the one who looks up to you.
More often than not, deference characterizes the way in which children view adults, students view teachers, and dogs and cats view their humans. The instinct of a spiritually wakeful heart is to return the respect shown to it. Children bring with them the freshness of inner worlds and students brim with realizable potentialities. And respect is not only appropriate to humans; the extra-humans among us also merit it. The Qur’an says, “No creature is there crawling on the earth, no bird flying with its wings, but they are nations like unto yourselves.” (6:38)
Judge not another by your own law.
A biased judge can hardly be expected to deliver a sound verdict. Human law has its purview, but the narrow boundaries of its concerns come into relief when a rainforest is on the line. To do justice to the rights of rivers, butterflies, and mangroves, an inter-species canon is required.
Bear no malice against your worst enemy.
Shaikh Abu Bakr al-Warraq said, “The chevalier has no enemies.”1 Does this mean that the chevalier glides through life opposed by no one? Certainly not. It means, however, that the chevalier opts not to take others’ hostility personally, or to be infected by it. Malice is an infection that damages the heart if it is not soon treated.
Influence no one to do wrong.
In our electronic age, keyboard strokes send chainsaws whirring in remote forests and missiles hurling into terrorized refugee camps. The hands that type out the instructions remain blissfully clean of splattered sap and blood. But there is another kind of stain. Votes, purchases, and authorizations are all influential decision points. Influence is flow, and what flows out ebbs back.
Be prejudiced against no one.
Collective survival and what is beyond survival on Earth will require not only the achievement of robust alliances between cultures, but also the forging of coalitions between inhabitants of multiple planes. Will angels and jinns be amenable to joining forces with humans who, even between themselves, cannot see fit to countenance each other’s full humanity? Overcoming parochialism within the human sphere is undoubtedly a prerequisite to establishing wider and deeper bonds of common purpose throughout the Earth and across the Tricosm.
Prove trustworthy in all your dealings.
The treaties with the spirits of nature established in the prophet Enoch’s time provided a strong basis for human flourishing. Certain groups still uphold them, or a portion of them, but on the whole the treaties have been long since broken or forgotten. The abandonment of the old understandings has given humankind a free hand to pursue its exclusive interests without reference to the larger commonwealth of beings. The shortsightedness of this strategy is becoming apparent. The reestablishment of the treaties is now imperative, and this time the bar to proving trustworthiness will be a higher one.
1 Qushayri