In this world most countries that have a functioning government have developed laws and these laws are codified, they’re put into books, and they’re available to everyone to look at, and they’re used to keep order. Places where there are dictators they try to have less rules because they want to make them up as they go along to fit the situation as it comes about.
But let’s use the democratic society as an example: you have most of your laws are about interrelationships between people, and when that relationship becomes totally out of sorts it’s called criminal. Criminal means that there’s been some kind of major violation; theft, burglary, assault, murder, things of that nature. Most of these laws don’t say anything about personal conduct, and they certainly don’t say anything about thought and what’s going on inside your head.
Now, in the Sufi world there’s a different standard than in the regular world, or at least there’s supposed to be a different standard. That standard, essentially, has to do with a certain amount of chivalry and a certain amount of etiquette. You will not find laws on chivalry in the codified laws of this country. You will not find laws on etiquette in the codified laws of this country, or state, the reason being that they don’t come to the degree that they disrupt society, or at least that’s the belief system.
In reality, the state of a country’s leadership, and the state of a country’s being, has to do with what goes on in the minds of the people in it. It has to do with the state of the chivalry of the people in it. It has to do with the state of the etiquette in the people in it. You can have a chaotic situation that doesn’t rise to a criminal situation, but if that chaotic situation continues to go on it can rise to the collapse of a society.
Now, we as individuals who have chosen to take on the Sufi path have also chosen, whether we realize it or not, to take on certain obligations of etiquette, and certain obligations of chivalry. Yet for most people in this modern day, especially if they have no one to correct it, think that there are reasons to leave chivalry and leave etiquette; in other words, they’re not absolutes. Like: do not murder is an absolute. Do not gossip, for most people, is not an absolute. At least that’s what people think. Why? Because the repercussions are not visible; they’re not noticeable.
But there are repercussions; it’s just that you can’t see them at this moment. On the path of truth do not gossip is as powerful as do not murder, but people can’t make the equation, they can’t put the two together.
When our teacher describes gossip he describes it as a “thousand-mile-high mountain” that you have to get over or it will crush you…
