In Turkey as in other places, when holy men pass, they are put into sort of a tomb. They call them turbays, and they’re usually the same. They consist of a box over the grave, and cloth is put over the box. And then people come to pay reverence to the deceased holy man. There is, however, a famous Sufi saint in Turkey who is known for his irreverence. And his tomb is a little different than most of the tombs for holy men. His name was Nasrudeen, and his tomb consists of a door jamb, that which holds a door without a door. And there is a bolted lock on one side of the door jamb. In other words, the empty space and the door jamb has a lock on it, which means you’ve obviously got to do something to get through there.
Well, what is it that you need to do to get through this door that doesn’t exist? If the door doesn’t exist, then what’s stopping you from going through it? If the door doesn’t exist, then why can’t you go through it? What is the lock that stops you from going through it? The point of the empty door jamb is that there is no barrier to reality outside of yourself. But there are barriers to reality inside yourself. And it is those barriers that create the veils that make you believe that you can’t get through the doorway to reality.
And the question comes up with good reason: what are those things we do to ourselves that create barriers? What are those things we hold onto that create veils? One of the ways to approach this is to look at the way our mind functions and the state of our attachment to what the mind sets up in front of us.
For instance, if one has regret, one becomes attached to regret in a very powerful way. It’s the “if only,” and the “if only” begins to set into place an entire methodology of thinking that takes your position in existence and thinks about changing it. If only this would have happened or if only that would have happened, so you are caught in the midst of the torpor known as regret. And that torpor stops you from moving because now, instead of moving forward, you’re too busy trying to figure out the “if only.” And your consciousness, instead of moving, holds onto “what if I had changed certain things in my circumstances if only…”
