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Love teaches the lover, patience...


Forbearance, patience and tolerance are the only conditions which keep two individual hearts united.

Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:

Love teaches the lover patience, forbearance, gentleness, because he thinks, 'My beloved will be displeased; I will be as gentle as possible in my action and in my movements'. These thoughts are a correction to the lover. With every such thought that passes in the life of the lover he corrects himself. Hope is the only thing in life which keeps us alive, because it feeds on love. Patience is fed by love. We can never have patience with anybody without love. How valuable is patience! As it is said in the Quran, 'Allah loves the patient'.

Sacrifice is needed in love to give all there is -- wealth, possessions, body, heart, and soul. There remains no 'I', only 'you', until the 'you' becomes the 'I'. Where there is love there is patience, where there is no patience there is no love.

The idea of sacrifice has always existed in some form or other, in every religion. Sometimes it has been taught as giving up one's possessions for the love of a higher ideal, which means that when man claims to love his high ideal and yet is not willing to give up something he possesses for it, then there is doubt about his devotion. But sacrifice of a possession is the first step; the next one is self-sacrifice, which was the inner note of the religion of Jesus Christ. Charity, generosity, even tolerance and forbearance, are a kind of sacrifice, and every sacrifice in life, in whatever form, means a step towards the goal of every soul.

To be today friendly and tomorrow unfriendly cannot for one moment be called friendship; the value of friendship is in its constancy. Forbearance, patience, and tolerance are the only conditions which keep two individual hearts united. There is a saying in Hindustani, by Seman, on friendship, 'Stand by your friend in his time of need, like the reed on the bank of the river.' When a man is sinking in the water and catches hold of a reed, it will save him if it is strong; and if not, it will sink along with him.


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