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I'm speaking about compassion from an Islamic point of view,

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and perhaps my faith is not very well thought of

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as being one that is grounded in compassion.

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The truth of the matter is otherwise.

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Our holy book, the Koran, consists of 114 chapters,

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and each chapter begins with what we call the basmala,

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the saying of "In the name of God, the all compassionate, the all merciful,"

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or, as Sir Richard Burton --

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not the Richard Burton who was married to Elizabeth Taylor,

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but the Sir Richard Burton who lived a century before that

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and who was a worldwide traveler

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and translator of many works of literature --

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translates it. "In the name of God, the compassionating, the compassionate."

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And in a saying of the Koran, which to Muslims is God speaking to humanity,

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God says to his prophet Muhammad --

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whom we believe to be the last of a series of prophets,

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beginning with Adam, including Noah, including Moses, including Abraham,

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including Jesus Christ, and ending with Muhammad --

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that, "We have not sent you, O Muhammad,

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except as a 'rahmah,' except as a source of compassion to humanity."

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For us human beings, and certainly for us as Muslims,

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whose mission, and whose purpose in following the path of the prophet

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is to make ourselves as much like the prophet.

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And the prophet, in one of his sayings, said,

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"Adorn yourselves with the attributes of God."

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And because God Himself said that the primary attribute of his is compassion --

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in fact, the Koran says that "God decreed upon himself compassion,"

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or, "reigned himself in by compassion" --

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therefore, our objective and our mission must be to be sources of compassion,

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activators of compassion, actors of compassion

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and speakers of compassion and doers of compassion.

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That is all well and good,

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but where do we go wrong,

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and what is the source of the lack of compassion in the world?

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For the answer to this, we turn to our spiritual path.

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In every religious tradition, there is the outer path and the inner path,

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or the exoteric path and the esoteric path.

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The esoteric path of Islam is more popularly known as Sufism, or "tasawwuf" in Arabic.

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And these doctors or these masters,

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these spiritual masters of the Sufi tradition,

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refer to teachings and examples of our prophet

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that teach us where the source of our problems lies.

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In one of the battles that the prophet waged,

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he told his followers, "We are returning from the lesser war

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to the greater war, to the greater battle."

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And they said, "Messenger of God, we are battle-weary.

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How can we go to a greater battle?"

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He said, "That is the battle of the self, the battle of the ego."

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The sources of human problems have to do with egotism, "I."

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The famous Sufi master Rumi, who is very well known to most of you,

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has a story in which he talks of a man who goes to the house of a friend,

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and he knocks on the door,

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and a voice answers, "Who's there?"

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"It's me," or, more grammatically correctly, "It is I,"

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as we might say in English.

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The voice says, "Go away."

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After many years of training, of disciplining, of search and struggle,

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he comes back.

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With much greater humility, he knocks again on the door.

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The voice asks, "Who is there?"

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He said, "It is you, O heartbreaker."

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The door swings open, and the voice says,

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"Come in, for there is no room in this house for two I's,"

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-- two capital I's, not these eyes -- "for two egos."

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And Rumi's stories are metaphors for the spiritual path.

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In the presence of God, there is no room for more than one "I,"

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and that is the "I" of divinity.

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In a teaching -- called a "hadith qudsi" in our tradition --

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God says that, "My servant," or "My creature, my human creature,

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does not approach me by anything that is dearer to me

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than what I have asked them to do."

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And those of you who are employers know exactly what I mean.

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You want your employees to do what you ask them to do,

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and if they've done that, then they can do extra.

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But don't ignore what you've asked them to do.

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"And," God says, "my servant continues to get nearer to me,

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by doing more of what I've asked them to do" --

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extra credit, we might call it --

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"until I love him or love her.

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And when I love my servant," God says,

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"I become the eyes by which he or she sees,

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the ears by which he or she listens,

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the hand by which he or she grasps,

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and the foot by which he or she walks,

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and the heart by which he or she understands."

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It is this merging of our self with divinity

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that is the lesson and purpose of our spiritual path and all of our faith traditions.

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Muslims regard Jesus as the master of Sufism,

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the greatest prophet and messenger who came to emphasize the spiritual path.

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When he says, "I am the spirit, and I am the way,"

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and when the prophet Muhammad said, "Whoever has seen me has seen God,"

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it is because they became so much an instrument of God,

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they became part of God's team --

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so that God's will was manifest through them,

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and they were not acting from their own selves and their own egos.

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Compassion on earth is given, it is in us.

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All we have to do is to get our egos out of the way,

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get our egotism out of the way.

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I'm sure, probably all of you here, or certainly the very vast majority of you,

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have had what you might call a spiritual experience,

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a moment in your lives when, for a few seconds, a minute perhaps,

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the boundaries of your ego dissolved.

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And at that minute, you felt at one with the universe --

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one with that jug of water, one with every human being,

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one with the Creator --

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and you felt you were in the presence of power, of awe,

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of the deepest love, the deepest sense of compassion and mercy

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that you have ever experienced in your lives.

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That is a moment which is a gift of God to us --

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a gift when, for a moment, he lifts that boundary

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which makes us insist on "I, I, I, me, me, me,"

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and instead, like the person in Rumi's story,

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we say, "Oh, this is all you.

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This is all you. And this is all us.

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And us, and I, and us are all part of you.

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O, Creator! O, the Objective! The source of our being

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and the end of our journey,

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you are also the breaker of our hearts.

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You are the one whom we should all be towards, for whose purpose we live,

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and for whose purpose we shall die,

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and for whose purpose we shall be resurrected again

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to account to God to what extent we have been compassionate beings."

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Our message today, and our purpose today,

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and those of you who are here today,

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and the purpose of this charter of compassion, is to remind.

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For the Koran always urges us to remember, to remind each other,

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because the knowledge of truth is within every human being.

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We know it all.

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We have access to it all.

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Jung may have called it "the subconscious."

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Through our subconscious, in your dreams --

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the Koran calls our state of sleep "the lesser death,"

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"the temporary death" --

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in our state of sleep we have dreams, we have visions,

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we travel even outside of our bodies, for many of us,

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and we see wonderful things.

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We travel beyond the limitations of space as we know it,

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and beyond the limitations of time as we know it.

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But all this is for us to glorify the name of the creator

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whose primary name is the compassionating, the compassionate.

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God, Bokh, whatever name you want to call him with, Allah, Ram, Om,

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whatever the name might be through which you name

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or access the presence of divinity,

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it is the locus of absolute being,

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absolute love and mercy and compassion,

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and absolute knowledge and wisdom,

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what Hindus call "satchidananda."

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The language differs,

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but the objective is the same.

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Rumi has another story

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about three men, a Turk, an Arab and --

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and I forget the third person, but for my sake, it could be a Malay.

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One is asking for angur -- one is, say, an Englishman --

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one is asking for eneb, and one is asking for grapes.

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And they have a fight and an argument because

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-- "I want grapes." "I want eneb. "I want angur." --

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not knowing that the word that they're using

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refers to the same reality in different languages.

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There's only one absolute reality by definition,

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one absolute being by definition,

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because absolute is, by definition, single,

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and absolute and singular.

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There's this absolute concentration of being,

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the absolute concentration of consciousness,

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awareness, an absolute locus of compassion and love

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that defines the primary attributes of divinity.

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And these should also be

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the primary attributes of what it means to be human.

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For what defines humanity, perhaps biologically,

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is our physiology,

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but God defines humanity by our spirituality, by our nature.

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And the Koran says, He speaks to the angels and says,

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"When I have finished the formation of Adam from clay,

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and breathed into him of my spirit,

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then, fall in prostration to him."

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The angels prostrate, not before the human body,

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but before the human soul.

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Why? Because the soul, the human soul,

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embodies a piece of the divine breath,

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a piece of the divine soul.

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This is also expressed in biblical vocabulary

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when we are taught that we were created in the divine image.

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What is the imagery of God?

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The imagery of God is absolute being,

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absolute awareness and knowledge and wisdom

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and absolute compassion and love.

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And therefore, for us to be human --

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in the greatest sense of what it means to be human,

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in the most joyful sense of what it means to be human --

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means that we too have to be proper stewards

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of the breath of divinity within us,

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and seek to perfect within ourselves the attribute of being,

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of being alive, of beingness;

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the attribute of wisdom, of consciousness, of awareness;

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and the attribute of being compassionate and loving beings.

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This is what I understand from my faith tradition,

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and this is what I understand from my studies of other faith traditions,

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and this is the common platform on which we must all stand,

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and when we stand on this platform as such,

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I am convinced that we can make a wonderful world.

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And I believe, personally, that we're on the verge

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and that, with the presence and help of people like you here,

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we can bring about the prophecy of Isaiah.

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For he foretold of a period

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when people shall transform their swords into plowshares

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and will not learn war or make war anymore.

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We have reached a stage in human history that we have no option:

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we must, we must lower our egos,

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control our egos -- whether it is individual ego, personal ego,

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family ego, national ego --

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and let all be for the glorification of the one.

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Thank you, and God bless you.

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(Applause)