Meditation in Action

"We are used to thinking of meditation as an exercise conducted in seclusion. But is there such a thing as meditation in action? In most spiritually oriented people one may uncover both the ascetic and the knight. If life in the world is to be renounced, what was the purpose of creation?
In Hazrat Inayat Khan’s teachings to his pupils on this subject, part of which is herewith released to the public, the master shows how stimulating it would be to introduce the kind of mastery mustered by the recluse into the hustle-bustle of active life. The result: crystal-clear insight, better programming and motivation, and ultimately freedom. The master stresses achievement as being essential to the growth of individual potential, since situations and problems challenge one into consolidating latent attributes into tangible qualities in our personalities, for “the human personality is the end-product of the life process.”Hazrat Inayat Khan does not teach desirelessness, since he sees in every human striving a divine impulse that may have become deviated: “It is the interest of the Creator that has made this creation; every achievement increases one’s power to attain a still greater achievement.”Yet, curiously enough, renunciation which seems diametrically opposite to interest may at times prove beneficial to achievement. Giving up the fruits of action opens the door to a still greater achievement. “When a person has in view an object he wants to attain, he is smaller than the object; but when the person has attained the object, he is greater than the object; and as he holds the object which he has attained, so he diminishes his strength; but when he renounces the object he has attained, he rises above the object. …
Every gain that a person has in view limits him to a certain extent to that gain, directs his activities in a certain channel, and forms the line of his fate. At the same time it deprives him of a still better gain and of the freedom of activity which might perhaps accomplish something still better. …All the world that man has made has come from the power of interest, but at the same time the power of indifference is greater still, because, although motive has power, yet at the same time motive limits power. Yet it is mastery that gives man the power to accomplish things. Without a motive the power of the soul is like an ocean, but at the same time that ocean-like power cannot be used without a motive.”
The art of the Yogis and dervishes consists in harnessing all nascent impulses, even as the yacht’s master turns the power of the wind to his purpose, instead of drifting where it lists. For the master, the purpose of life is mastery. Here lies the secret of the foreboding power of the ascetic and his uncanny intuition. “In him is awakened that spirit by which the whole universe was created. …
Every impulse is a power in itself, and every time when the will withdraws an impulse, the will is charged with a new strength of life.”This seems particularly pertinent at a time when uninhibiting techniques in popular psychology are letting the “Jack out of the box”of the psyche, with little hope of ever recovering the upper hand. “Master is he who controls things, and he becomes a slave who is controlled by circumstances. If your horse does not obey you, it is because your fingers do not obey you.” Once you have mastery over yourself, everything will go right."
--Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan was a teacher of meditation and of the traditions of the East Indian Chishti Order of Sufism. His teaching derived from the tradition of his father, Hazrat, founder of The Sufi Order in the West, combined with western culture.