0:00:00.000,0:00:05.000
I'm speaking about compassion from an Islamic point of view,

0:00:05.000,0:00:08.000
and perhaps my faith is not very well thought of

0:00:08.000,0:00:12.000
as being one that is grounded in compassion.

0:00:12.000,0:00:14.000
The truth of the matter is otherwise.

0:00:14.000,0:00:20.000
Our holy book, the Koran, consists of 114 chapters,

0:00:20.000,0:00:24.000
and each chapter begins with what we call the basmala,

0:00:24.000,0:00:30.000
the saying of "In the name of God, the all compassionate, the all merciful,"

0:00:30.000,0:00:32.000
or, as Sir Richard Burton --

0:00:32.000,0:00:35.000
not the Richard Burton who was married to Elizabeth Taylor,

0:00:35.000,0:00:38.000
but the Sir Richard Burton who lived a century before that

0:00:38.000,0:00:40.000
and who was a worldwide traveler

0:00:40.000,0:00:44.000
and translator of many works of literature --

0:00:44.000,0:00:51.000
translates it. "In the name of God, the compassionating, the compassionate."

0:00:51.000,0:00:58.000
And in a saying of the Koran, which to Muslims is God speaking to humanity,

0:00:58.000,0:01:01.000
God says to his prophet Muhammad --

0:01:01.000,0:01:04.000
whom we believe to be the last of a series of prophets,

0:01:04.000,0:01:10.000
beginning with Adam, including Noah, including Moses, including Abraham,

0:01:10.000,0:01:14.000
including Jesus Christ, and ending with Muhammad --

0:01:14.000,0:01:17.000
that, "We have not sent you, O Muhammad,

0:01:17.000,0:01:23.000
except as a 'rahmah,' except as a source of compassion to humanity."

0:01:23.000,0:01:27.000
For us human beings, and certainly for us as Muslims,

0:01:27.000,0:01:32.000
whose mission, and whose purpose in following the path of the prophet

0:01:32.000,0:01:36.000
is to make ourselves as much like the prophet.

0:01:36.000,0:01:38.000
And the prophet, in one of his sayings, said,

0:01:38.000,0:01:43.000
"Adorn yourselves with the attributes of God."

0:01:43.000,0:01:49.000
And because God Himself said that the primary attribute of his is compassion --

0:01:49.000,0:01:54.000
in fact, the Koran says that "God decreed upon himself compassion,"

0:01:54.000,0:01:58.000
or, "reigned himself in by compassion" --

0:01:58.000,0:02:05.000
therefore, our objective and our mission must be to be sources of compassion,

0:02:05.000,0:02:09.000
activators of compassion, actors of compassion

0:02:09.000,0:02:13.000
and speakers of compassion and doers of compassion.

0:02:13.000,0:02:16.000
That is all well and good,

0:02:16.000,0:02:19.000
but where do we go wrong,

0:02:19.000,0:02:24.000
and what is the source of the lack of compassion in the world?

0:02:24.000,0:02:29.000
For the answer to this, we turn to our spiritual path.

0:02:29.000,0:02:36.000
In every religious tradition, there is the outer path and the inner path,

0:02:36.000,0:02:41.000
or the exoteric path and the esoteric path.

0:02:41.000,0:02:49.000
The esoteric path of Islam is more popularly known as Sufism, or "tasawwuf" in Arabic.

0:02:49.000,0:02:52.000
And these doctors or these masters,

0:02:52.000,0:02:56.000
these spiritual masters of the Sufi tradition,

0:02:56.000,0:03:00.000
refer to teachings and examples of our prophet

0:03:00.000,0:03:04.000
that teach us where the source of our problems lies.

0:03:04.000,0:03:08.000
In one of the battles that the prophet waged,

0:03:08.000,0:03:13.000
he told his followers, "We are returning from the lesser war

0:03:13.000,0:03:17.000
to the greater war, to the greater battle."

0:03:17.000,0:03:22.000
And they said, "Messenger of God, we are battle-weary.

0:03:22.000,0:03:25.000
How can we go to a greater battle?"

0:03:25.000,0:03:33.000
He said, "That is the battle of the self, the battle of the ego."

0:03:33.000,0:03:42.000
The sources of human problems have to do with egotism, "I."

0:03:42.000,0:03:48.000
The famous Sufi master Rumi, who is very well known to most of you,

0:03:48.000,0:03:54.000
has a story in which he talks of a man who goes to the house of a friend,

0:03:54.000,0:03:57.000
and he knocks on the door,

0:03:57.000,0:04:00.000
and a voice answers, "Who's there?"

0:04:00.000,0:04:05.000
"It's me," or, more grammatically correctly, "It is I,"

0:04:05.000,0:04:07.000
as we might say in English.

0:04:07.000,0:04:10.000
The voice says, "Go away."

0:04:10.000,0:04:18.000
After many years of training, of disciplining, of search and struggle,

0:04:18.000,0:04:20.000
he comes back.

0:04:20.000,0:04:24.000
With much greater humility, he knocks again on the door.

0:04:24.000,0:04:27.000
The voice asks, "Who is there?"

0:04:27.000,0:04:31.000
He said, "It is you, O heartbreaker."

0:04:31.000,0:04:35.000
The door swings open, and the voice says,

0:04:35.000,0:04:42.000
"Come in, for there is no room in this house for two I's,"

0:04:42.000,0:04:46.000
-- two capital I's, not these eyes -- "for two egos."

0:04:46.000,0:04:55.000
And Rumi's stories are metaphors for the spiritual path.

0:04:55.000,0:05:01.000
In the presence of God, there is no room for more than one "I,"

0:05:01.000,0:05:06.000
and that is the "I" of divinity.

0:05:06.000,0:05:10.000
In a teaching -- called a "hadith qudsi" in our tradition --

0:05:10.000,0:05:16.000
God says that, "My servant," or "My creature, my human creature,

0:05:16.000,0:05:22.000
does not approach me by anything that is dearer to me

0:05:22.000,0:05:25.000
than what I have asked them to do."

0:05:25.000,0:05:29.000
And those of you who are employers know exactly what I mean.

0:05:29.000,0:05:33.000
You want your employees to do what you ask them to do,

0:05:33.000,0:05:35.000
and if they've done that, then they can do extra.

0:05:35.000,0:05:38.000
But don't ignore what you've asked them to do.

0:05:38.000,0:05:44.000
"And," God says, "my servant continues to get nearer to me,

0:05:44.000,0:05:47.000
by doing more of what I've asked them to do" --

0:05:47.000,0:05:49.000
extra credit, we might call it --

0:05:49.000,0:05:53.000
"until I love him or love her.

0:05:53.000,0:05:56.000
And when I love my servant," God says,

0:05:56.000,0:06:02.000
"I become the eyes by which he or she sees,

0:06:02.000,0:06:08.000
the ears by which he or she listens,

0:06:08.000,0:06:13.000
the hand by which he or she grasps,

0:06:13.000,0:06:17.000
and the foot by which he or she walks,

0:06:17.000,0:06:22.000
and the heart by which he or she understands."

0:06:22.000,0:06:27.000
It is this merging of our self with divinity

0:06:27.000,0:06:35.000
that is the lesson and purpose of our spiritual path and all of our faith traditions.

0:06:35.000,0:06:41.000
Muslims regard Jesus as the master of Sufism,

0:06:41.000,0:06:48.000
the greatest prophet and messenger who came to emphasize the spiritual path.

0:06:48.000,0:06:52.000
When he says, "I am the spirit, and I am the way,"

0:06:52.000,0:06:57.000
and when the prophet Muhammad said, "Whoever has seen me has seen God,"

0:06:57.000,0:07:02.000
it is because they became so much an instrument of God,

0:07:02.000,0:07:04.000
they became part of God's team --

0:07:04.000,0:07:08.000
so that God's will was manifest through them,

0:07:08.000,0:07:12.000
and they were not acting from their own selves and their own egos.

0:07:12.000,0:07:19.000
Compassion on earth is given, it is in us.

0:07:19.000,0:07:24.000
All we have to do is to get our egos out of the way,

0:07:24.000,0:07:27.000
get our egotism out of the way.

0:07:27.000,0:07:35.000
I'm sure, probably all of you here, or certainly the very vast majority of you,

0:07:35.000,0:07:39.000
have had what you might call a spiritual experience,

0:07:39.000,0:07:46.000
a moment in your lives when, for a few seconds, a minute perhaps,

0:07:46.000,0:07:52.000
the boundaries of your ego dissolved.

0:07:52.000,0:07:59.000
And at that minute, you felt at one with the universe --

0:07:59.000,0:08:05.000
one with that jug of water, one with every human being,

0:08:05.000,0:08:09.000
one with the Creator --

0:08:09.000,0:08:14.000
and you felt you were in the presence of power, of awe,

0:08:14.000,0:08:18.000
of the deepest love, the deepest sense of compassion and mercy

0:08:18.000,0:08:22.000
that you have ever experienced in your lives.

0:08:22.000,0:08:28.000
That is a moment which is a gift of God to us --

0:08:28.000,0:08:32.000
a gift when, for a moment, he lifts that boundary

0:08:32.000,0:08:38.000
which makes us insist on "I, I, I, me, me, me,"

0:08:38.000,0:08:42.000
and instead, like the person in Rumi's story,

0:08:42.000,0:08:48.000
we say, "Oh, this is all you.

0:08:48.000,0:08:50.000
This is all you. And this is all us.

0:08:50.000,0:08:56.000
And us, and I, and us are all part of you.

0:08:56.000,0:09:02.000
O, Creator! O, the Objective! The source of our being

0:09:02.000,0:09:04.000
and the end of our journey,

0:09:04.000,0:09:09.000
you are also the breaker of our hearts.

0:09:09.000,0:09:15.000
You are the one whom we should all be towards, for whose purpose we live,

0:09:15.000,0:09:19.000
and for whose purpose we shall die,

0:09:19.000,0:09:23.000
and for whose purpose we shall be resurrected again

0:09:23.000,0:09:30.000
to account to God to what extent we have been compassionate beings."

0:09:30.000,0:09:34.000
Our message today, and our purpose today,

0:09:34.000,0:09:37.000
and those of you who are here today,

0:09:37.000,0:09:42.000
and the purpose of this charter of compassion, is to remind.

0:09:42.000,0:09:50.000
For the Koran always urges us to remember, to remind each other,

0:09:50.000,0:09:58.000
because the knowledge of truth is within every human being.

0:09:58.000,0:10:01.000
We know it all.

0:10:01.000,0:10:03.000
We have access to it all.

0:10:03.000,0:10:07.000
Jung may have called it "the subconscious."

0:10:07.000,0:10:11.000
Through our subconscious, in your dreams --

0:10:11.000,0:10:19.000
the Koran calls our state of sleep "the lesser death,"

0:10:19.000,0:10:23.000
"the temporary death" --

0:10:23.000,0:10:28.000
in our state of sleep we have dreams, we have visions,

0:10:28.000,0:10:34.000
we travel even outside of our bodies, for many of us,

0:10:34.000,0:10:37.000
and we see wonderful things.

0:10:37.000,0:10:42.000
We travel beyond the limitations of space as we know it,

0:10:42.000,0:10:46.000
and beyond the limitations of time as we know it.

0:10:46.000,0:10:56.000
But all this is for us to glorify the name of the creator

0:10:56.000,0:11:02.000
whose primary name is the compassionating, the compassionate.

0:11:02.000,0:11:09.000
God, Bokh, whatever name you want to call him with, Allah, Ram, Om,

0:11:09.000,0:11:12.000
whatever the name might be through which you name

0:11:12.000,0:11:16.000
or access the presence of divinity,

0:11:16.000,0:11:22.000
it is the locus of absolute being,

0:11:22.000,0:11:26.000
absolute love and mercy and compassion,

0:11:26.000,0:11:29.000
and absolute knowledge and wisdom,

0:11:29.000,0:11:32.000
what Hindus call "satchidananda."

0:11:32.000,0:11:35.000
The language differs,

0:11:35.000,0:11:39.000
but the objective is the same.

0:11:39.000,0:11:41.000
Rumi has another story

0:11:41.000,0:11:44.000
about three men, a Turk, an Arab and --

0:11:44.000,0:11:48.000
and I forget the third person, but for my sake, it could be a Malay.

0:11:48.000,0:11:51.000
One is asking for angur -- one is, say, an Englishman --

0:11:51.000,0:11:56.000
one is asking for eneb, and one is asking for grapes.

0:11:56.000,0:11:59.000
And they have a fight and an argument because

0:11:59.000,0:12:03.000
-- "I want grapes." "I want eneb. "I want angur." --

0:12:03.000,0:12:06.000
not knowing that the word that they're using

0:12:06.000,0:12:09.000
refers to the same reality in different languages.

0:12:09.000,0:12:15.000
There's only one absolute reality by definition,

0:12:15.000,0:12:18.000
one absolute being by definition,

0:12:18.000,0:12:21.000
because absolute is, by definition, single,

0:12:21.000,0:12:24.000
and absolute and singular.

0:12:24.000,0:12:27.000
There's this absolute concentration of being,

0:12:27.000,0:12:30.000
the absolute concentration of consciousness,

0:12:30.000,0:12:40.000
awareness, an absolute locus of compassion and love

0:12:40.000,0:12:44.000
that defines the primary attributes of divinity.

0:12:44.000,0:12:47.000
And these should also be

0:12:47.000,0:12:52.000
the primary attributes of what it means to be human.

0:12:52.000,0:12:58.000
For what defines humanity, perhaps biologically,

0:12:58.000,0:13:01.000
is our physiology,

0:13:01.000,0:13:09.000
but God defines humanity by our spirituality, by our nature.

0:13:09.000,0:13:13.000
And the Koran says, He speaks to the angels and says,

0:13:13.000,0:13:17.000
"When I have finished the formation of Adam from clay,

0:13:17.000,0:13:21.000
and breathed into him of my spirit,

0:13:21.000,0:13:25.000
then, fall in prostration to him."

0:13:25.000,0:13:33.000
The angels prostrate, not before the human body,

0:13:33.000,0:13:36.000
but before the human soul.

0:13:36.000,0:13:40.000
Why? Because the soul, the human soul,

0:13:40.000,0:13:46.000
embodies a piece of the divine breath,

0:13:46.000,0:13:49.000
a piece of the divine soul.

0:13:49.000,0:13:54.000
This is also expressed in biblical vocabulary

0:13:54.000,0:14:00.000
when we are taught that we were created in the divine image.

0:14:00.000,0:14:02.000
What is the imagery of God?

0:14:02.000,0:14:06.000
The imagery of God is absolute being,

0:14:06.000,0:14:09.000
absolute awareness and knowledge and wisdom

0:14:09.000,0:14:12.000
and absolute compassion and love.

0:14:12.000,0:14:16.000
And therefore, for us to be human --

0:14:16.000,0:14:20.000
in the greatest sense of what it means to be human,

0:14:20.000,0:14:23.000
in the most joyful sense of what it means to be human --

0:14:23.000,0:14:29.000
means that we too have to be proper stewards

0:14:29.000,0:14:33.000
of the breath of divinity within us,

0:14:33.000,0:14:38.000
and seek to perfect within ourselves the attribute of being,

0:14:38.000,0:14:41.000
of being alive, of beingness;

0:14:41.000,0:14:46.000
the attribute of wisdom, of consciousness, of awareness;

0:14:46.000,0:14:51.000
and the attribute of being compassionate and loving beings.

0:14:51.000,0:14:57.000
This is what I understand from my faith tradition,

0:14:57.000,0:15:04.000
and this is what I understand from my studies of other faith traditions,

0:15:04.000,0:15:10.000
and this is the common platform on which we must all stand,

0:15:10.000,0:15:13.000
and when we stand on this platform as such,

0:15:13.000,0:15:19.000
I am convinced that we can make a wonderful world.

0:15:19.000,0:15:25.000
And I believe, personally, that we're on the verge

0:15:25.000,0:15:29.000
and that, with the presence and help of people like you here,

0:15:29.000,0:15:35.000
we can bring about the prophecy of Isaiah.

0:15:35.000,0:15:39.000
For he foretold of a period

0:15:39.000,0:15:46.000
when people shall transform their swords into plowshares

0:15:46.000,0:15:52.000
and will not learn war or make war anymore.

0:15:52.000,0:15:58.000
We have reached a stage in human history that we have no option:

0:15:58.000,0:16:07.000
we must, we must lower our egos,

0:16:07.000,0:16:12.000
control our egos -- whether it is individual ego, personal ego,

0:16:12.000,0:16:18.000
family ego, national ego --

0:16:18.000,0:16:23.000
and let all be for the glorification of the one.

0:16:23.000,0:16:25.000
Thank you, and God bless you.

0:16:25.000,0:16:26.000
(Applause)