The Bowl of Saki Commentary
Commentary for:
Joy and sorrow are the light and shade of life; without light and shade no picture is clear.
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.
Joy produces light and at the same time joy is the result of light. Nothing stands in front of joy except the false concept of self. One can therefore escape both joy and sorrow by escaping concept.
Pictures are caused by variations in light and darkness, also in color. In true love there are no such variations. Mind is created in order that the soul might see life on the surface, and it is mind which has capacity for all lights and shades and colors. Therefore joy and sorrow are essentially conditions of mind. Pure-essence of mind does not know sorrow, which is caused by thought of self. Neither does it know joy although its condition is not different from what we call joy.
The reason that one experiences joy as joy is because it is differentiated from the condition when one feels sorrow and pain and difficulty. The realized soul no longer feels sorrow and pain and difficulty; consequently when one enters the higher states of consciousness one is no longer intoxicated by them, but understands them to be more natural than the ordinary state of life.