As we approach the festivals of Passover and Easter, which both fall during the holy month of Ramadan this year, I’m reflecting on all the powerful and beautiful potential for peace and justice which could be our focus at this time, if we choose. Let us remember our similarities more than our differences.

The following prayer, authored by Christian, Jewish and Muslim clergy was used in many places in inter-religious worships around the time of the Gulf War in 1991:

Eternal God, Goddess, Source, Creator of the universe, there is no God but You.

Great and wonderful are Your works, wondrous are your ways.

Thank You for the many splendoured variety of Your creation.

Thank You for the many ways we affirm Your presence and purpose, and the freedom to do so.

Forgive our violation of Your creation.

Forgive our violence toward each other.

We stand in awe and gratitude for Your persistent love for each and all of Your children: Christian, Jew, Muslim, as well as those with other faiths.Grant to all and our leaders attributes of the strong; mutual respect in words and deed, restraint in the exercise of power, and the will for peace with justice, for all.

Eternal God, Goddess, Source, Creator of the universe, there is no God but You.

Amen.

Our soul is blessed with the impression of the glory of God whenever our lips praise God.– Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Commentary by Murshid Samuel L. Lewis (Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti):

This praise is the one thing which surely pierces the mind-mesh. In the first place, the praise we give to God is the one praise for which we cannot possibly expect return; this lack of expectancy of return shows unselfishness, and unselfishness is the one thing that blesses the soul.

Estaferallah

Ya Shakur Allah, Ya Hamid

Allahu Akbar Ya Salaam: Almighty Peace

Songs of One Breath meditation and chant session

Songs of One Breath meditation and chant session

Songs of One Breath meditation and chant session

Songs of One Breath meditation and chant session

Aad Guray Nameh

Jugaad Guray Nameh

Sat Guray Nameh

Siri Guru Devay Nameh

I bow to the Primal Guru

I bow to the Guru woven throughout time

I bow to the True Guru

I bow to the Great Guru hidden within

Meditation from 'A Book of Self Re-Education' by Raden Ayou Jodjana

Om Mani Peme Hung - To be the Jewel in the Lotus Flower unfolding in the Heart of All, To be the Jewel in the Lotus Flower unfolding is the highest call!

TEAR DOWN THIS HOUSE

Rumi as translated by Coleman Barks

A hundred thousand new houses can be built

from the transparent yellow carnelian* buried beneath

and the only way to get to that is to do the work of demolishing

and then digging under the foundation.

With that value in hand,

all the new construction will be done without effort.

And anyway, sooner or later this house will fall on its own.

The jewel treasure will be uncovered, but it won’t be yours then.

The buried wealth is your pay for doing the demolition,

the pick and the shovel work.

If you wait and just let it happen, you’ll bite your hand and say,

“I didn’t do as I knew I should have.”

This is a rented house. You don’t own the deed.

You have a lease, and you’ve set up a little shop,

where you barely make a living sewing patches on torn clothing.

Yet only a few feet underneath are two veins,

pure red and bright gold carnelian.

Take the pickaxe and pry the foundation.

You’ve got to quit this seamstress work.

What does the patch-sewing mean you ask?

Eating and drinking.

The heavy cloak of the body is always getting torn.

You patch it with food and other restless ego satisfactions.

Rip up one board from the shop floor

and look into the basement. You’ll see two glints in the dirt.

*carnelian- a pale to deep red or reddish brown variety of quartz with distinctive crystals arranged in slender fibers in parallel bands used in jewelry, a mystical stone.

Thought draws the line of fate.– Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Commentary by Murshid Samuel L. Lewis (Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti):

This is true not only in prayer but in all things. Every exhalation sends something out, and every inhalation draws something in. That which is expelled carries a message, as a flying dove going upward. As soon as another thought is received into the mind, it impedes the upward journey of that breath-message. When any act, thought, speech, or desire strikes the mind-mesh, it is propelled downward toward the earth plane and brings with it the results of a movement which is at the same time personal and individual, and also cosmic, in the sense that the whole sphere endeavors to keep its balance and sends back the compensatory vibrations to those sent out by us.

To overcome this action, Fikr is practiced in some form. In daily Fikr or Darood, when a thought is accompanied by a Divine Breath it can automatically arise through the meshes of the mental net and pass through Djabrut to the Arsh, the throne of God. That is to say, the automatic wish of the average person can rise no higher than the thought or will behind it, but for the spiritual person, the initiate, whose thought and desire are accompanied by Darood, these automatically rise above the mental world into the empyrean unless another thought deliberately interferes. Practice of concentration with Fikr perfects this process.

Shlama l'ki Mariam Shlama, melit taibuta maren amki, barikta b'nasha

Ave Maria Grazia Plena

O Madre de Dios

’Tis a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free,

’Tis a gift to come down where we want to be,

And when we have come down to the place just right,

We will be in the valley of Love and delight.

When the true simplicity is gained,

To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.

To turn, to turn, t’will be our delight

’til by turning and turning we come round right.

(Traditional Shaker Song)

From ‘The Book of Heart’ by Samuel Lewis (found in 'In the Garden with Murshid Sam')

Shadows come and go, enter and depart,

Substance remains eternally.

When Heart pulses to the radiations of the universe,

When atoms dance and wave sparkle in unison,

When the sense of Godness becomes a reality where we stand,

When the feeling of compassion is all embracing,

Where need we look for an answer to our dilemma?

(All the following extracts are also from ‘In The Garden’)

Then one should breathe concentrating on "Toward the One" with both inhalation and exhalation, the same phrase. This can be done best by leaning on the breath, but also one can take so many steps to each breath.

Zen Buddhism says that Zen is everyday life. It is not so when we make a doctrine of it. It is so when we practice it at all times. People everywhere find walking a part of their everyday life. (p.72)

On Breath (p.90-96)

1. Breath controls all aspects of life from the seen to the unseen. When breath is in the body life is in the body, and when breath is not in the body life is not in the body. Take a thought, inhale, hold the thought. Exhale and try to hold the thought; there will be a difference. Thus we can learn there is an association between breath and thought, breath and life.

8. Breathe identifying yourself with breath. Breathe holding Darood i.e., Toward the One, with each inhalation and exhalation. Identify yourself with the breath; identify with the Darood. This helps to free you from identification with the body.

9. Practice meditation by repeating the Darood (Towards the One) either a prescribed number of times or at least five minutes daily. Learn to feel the life force entering the body. Identify yourself with the breath; identify yourself with the life force. Do not identify yourself with the body. Thus you will learn to actualise: "This is not my body, this is the temple of God." This is used as a disciplinary practice for beginners; it is used as a method of identification (Fana or yoga) by the more advanced.

11. Every element in the breath attracts a similar element in another person’s breath. This is one of the reasons for harmony between people…

40. Breath is also light. It carries light, it carries colour. It invigorates the whole body or any portion of it to which it is directed.

44. Identifying oneself with breath is a form of self effacement which takes one from mortality to immortality. Material things are left behind; spiritual "things" are carried to the next world – carry one to and through the next world.

45. All the denseness of the Earth is left behind when one has this breath realisation.