The Bowl of Saki Commentary
Commentary for:
We start our lives trying to be teachers; it is very hard to learn to be a pupil.
Commentary from Hazrat Murshid SAM (Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti, Samuel L. Lewis):
The Bowl of Saki Commentary, copyright © 1981, 2012 Sufi Ruhaniat International. All rights reserved.
Because being a pupil is not a kind of learning, it is a surrender. Until self is surrendered one cannot learn from another. So long as one holds on to self, the door is shut before all other selves, whether it is the nufs of a human, animal, plant, rock, thought of anything in the heavens above or in the earth below. All this is shut out beyond a certain point.
When this nufs is restrained, all vibrations convey to the heart all that the heart needs. This is the beginning of being a pupil, yet after years of meditation and prayer, one does not always attain to the heart condition or sustain it. At the same time, pain or love or sorrow can bring it all in an instant.