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PDF versionThe Gift of a Mystic Mirror
by Ed Hays on Jan. 15, 2010
Human beings are all members of one body.
They are created by the same essence.
When one is in pain, the others cannot rest.
If you do not care about the pain of others,
You do not deserve to be called a human being.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, may I look with love on all.” That was written many years ago. Today I have the rare opportunity to amend what I’ve previously written. The person you see daily in your mirror is you, the most important person in the world.
Yet that mirror image of an independent individual is an illusion! Over the entrance of the United Nations building in New York is carved a quotation from the Persian Muslim poet-mystic Saadi Shirazi:
They are created by the same essence.
When one is in pain, the others cannot rest.
If you do not care about the pain of others,
You do not deserve to be called a human being.
So when you look in the mirror, look beyond the illusion and see the other who is in pain. It is a spiritual evolution to rise above concern for your own needs and truly care for others who are in great pain or suffering.
Give me the insight to see my face
in the faces of all the human family,
to care for others as I care for myself,
so I can call myself a human being.
From A Book of Wonders by Ed Hays
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That saying of the muslim
That saying of the muslim poet sure sounds different than all the language we hear these days from radicals whether they are muslim jihadists or Christian fundamentalists or ultra-conservative Americans. All religions have words that heal and help and words that destroy and divide. Let's listen to the words that unite us in love for one another as that is the Way of Jesus.
Human beings are all members
Human beings are all members of one body.
They are created by the same essence.
When one is in pain, the others cannot rest.
If you do not care about the pain of others,
You do not deserve to be called a human being.
Reminds me of a poem, written by an unknown Japanese man who is homeless:
Used to living without keys,
I see through the New Year.
Of what else must I rid myself?
May we all help make sure that the answer is "Nothing, and take what we have."
Let me quote a saying from a
Let me quote a saying from a Buddhist scripture:
"Listen, because all you beings of the three realms
were made by me, the creativity of the universe.
You are my children, equal to me.
Because you and I are not separate,
I manifest in you."
In a metaphor of the mirror, the same Buddhists say
the mirror is the infinite creativity of the universe
and we are the reflection.
Which seems to me to be saying that without the mirror
there is no reflection; and we are all one in being the
reflection.
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