If you have ever been around a holy community, a community that has a shaikh, a sufi dargah, or if you have had the opportunity to be a disciple of a shaikh, one of the things that you would have noticed and noticed almost immediately about yourself, is that one of the reasons that you were there was because of the relationship that you had with the shaikh, the relationship that he was somehow able to put into place between you and him. But if you really looked you would also notice that this relationship wasn’t only with you. If you were wise enough to have let go of jealousy by that time, you would have seen that the intensity of the relationship that you had with him was the same with lots of other people. As a matter of fact, almost everybody who came to see him had the opportunity for this intense relationship. How is it that one man can have this incredibly intense relationship that begins almost as soon as people walk in the door? How could he maintain this relationship with so many people simultaneously?
It is said that Allah exists within all of us and that each of us, to truly understand each other and to truly respect each other, must respect Allah in each of us. When we communicate with each other, when we have relationships with each other, we should be treating each other with the respect of knowing the existence of God within each other. If we are so separate from others because of our egocentric needs, because of our egocentric way, because of our self-centeredness, because of our resentment for others, this becomes an impossibility.
In German there is a word “schadenfreude” which means “having happiness out of the difficulties of others.” It’s a strange word and it’s certainly a strange phenomenon, but it occurs. Some people, for themselves to be happy, need everybody around them to be in some sort of misfortune. It adds to their own sense of self.
This obviously is not what goes on with a sufi shaikh. He is truly involved in the happiness and the sadness of all the people who come before them. And he’s there to aid each of them to make as much progress as they can in their attempt to become like him. What is it about him that is so different?
Well there are lots of things, but one of them is this incredible empathy towards everyone, this incredible ability to feel everyone who comes in front of him, to be able to react with what’s going on in them internally, to be able to commiserate with them, to be able to be joyous with them, to be able to be able to be sad with them, but mostly to be with them.
The shaikh has this incredible capacity to be able to be with, in a very meaningful way, the people who come before him. In our lives, are we able to be with the people we come into contact with? Are we able to commiserate with them? Are we able to be in tune with them? Are we able to feel their joy, to feel their happiness and to be saddened by the things that sadden them? What is the extent of our empathy?
