#104 Turning Toward the Heart: Pir Zia Inayat Khan
===
Maurizio Benazzo: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world. My name is Maurizio Benazzo.
Zaya Benazzo: My name is Zaya Benazzo.
Maurizio Benazzo: We are speaking to you from the unceded territory of the coastal Milwaukee and South Palmo, indigenous populations, also known as Sebastopol, California. So here we are.
Zaya Benazzo: Welcome, everyone.
And thank you so much for being here today for this conversation. We're really honored to have with us Pir Zia
Maurizio Benazzo: Inayat
Zaya Benazzo: Khan. And
Maurizio Benazzo: we're going to read a brief
Introduction
Zaya Benazzo: before our conversation. Yeah.
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah. Yeah. So Pir Zia Inayat Khan, PhD, is a scholar of religion and teacher of Sufism in the internationalist Sufi lineage of his grandfather, Hazrat Inayat Khan.
Pir Zia is the president of the Inayat Khan Foundation. organization and founder of Suduk Academy, a school of Sufi contemplative study and practice, is an author of many books, and is the editor of Caravan of Souls, an introduction to the Sufi path of Hazrat Inayat Khan. Pir Zia, divides this time between Richmond, Virginia, and Suresnes in France.
Thank you. It's such a joy and an honor to have you with us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The first thing we want to ask you, if you can give us a, an entry into your lineage, give us If you can tell us something about your lineage, your grandfather, your work, etc.
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: Yes, greetings. Thank you so much for the kind invitation.
I'm delighted to be here with you and to see you once again. We had a nice conversation a few months ago and I'm glad to reconnect. And let me say, first of all, that I admire so greatly the film that you made together, Zaya, Maurizio, the film where the "Where Olive Trees Weep". Which is a very powerful piece of testimony to the plight of the people of Palestine at this time.
And it's very important for the world to understand what is occurring and the level of suffering. Because only then we can work toward solutions that will include everyone. We can't have a solution that excludes any. The solution has to be one that absolutely respects the rights of every people of this planet.
And your film goes a long way in letting the world know what is the condition of people who have been displaced are, and are in a great hardship. And since then, Of course, the situation has only worsened and it's important for us to have conversations like the one that we're having today, conversations that have to do with acknowledging the suffering in this world and envisioning a world in which we can overcome the alienation between groups of people and overcome the systems of.
oppression that divide us when in our heart of hearts, we know that we belong to one family. Now you asked about my lineage, and that's a lineage that is entirely concerned with the one family that is humanity. My grandfather, Hazrat Pir Moshe Inyat Khan, traveled to the Western world from India where he was born and where he grew up and lived as a professor of music for a number of years before receiving the blessing of his Sufi teacher, Hazrat Khan's teacher was Syed Abu Hashim Madani.
And it was he that blessed him to go forth and to travel across the sea and He traveled in America and he traveled in Europe and he married an American lady and raised a family and he was asked by those that he encountered along the way, not only to communicate the music of India, the classical spiritual music of India,
But also to bring forth the mystical philosophy of India.
that underlies it. And he had been blessed and trained in this way. And so he responded by offering the methods and the teachings of this lineage. And in this way, the first order of Sufism in the Western world, west of the Balkans, north of Andalusia, was founded by him In the 19 teens, 1917, and. So I'm continuing in his tradition.
I've been asked by my father to continue this work. And so I've tried to devote myself to that message, which is a message of healing for humanity, of a reminder of the oneness that unites us and a call to awaken to the qualities of the living heart.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you. And we all often here, we associate Sufism with the Middle East, with Persia, little less with India.
Can you tell us more about the journey? Sufism and the origins. Do you trace the origins to the prophets, to the Abrahamic to prophets, or even prior to that? I know in India sometimes it's traced to the scenes with the blankets. I've heard stories that how do you understand the more deeper history of the lineage?
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: Yes. Yes. Since the dawn of humankind, there have been human beings who became vessels for the guidance that's constantly pouring through the universe, from the source of the universe, and these beings have been known as prophets, and as saints, and as sages, and every human being has the capacity to open to the guidance that is coming through, and there's some who have Whether because of destiny or because of some choice that they have made, have become channels that whose legacy continues to resound down the ages, and who are remembered.
There are many more who aren't remembered. Because many have been forgotten and many of those who stood forward into such a role found themselves opposed and vilified and and mocked and and martyred. And so it hasn't been an easy path down the ages for those who spoke on behalf of the deeper truths of humanity.
They had a great struggle. And we only know the names of a few of them. But these are the holy messengers and the sages, and so in all lands of the world, we can find the histories of such path breakers, trailblazers, and yes, now very often what happens afterward is that. Their legacy is taken up by institutions, or fought over by followers, and hardened into rigid dogmas that become sources of ideological contention.
And then something is very much lost in that. Because what was the essence of it all was a fresh transmission of pure spirit, something that comes from the living. reality that is the source of this world and which revives and heals this world. But when that current becomes reduced to something purely formal, purely ideological, then instead of being a healing source in this world, it can actually become a source of division.
Zaya Benazzo: And that's what differentiates religion and mystical path, which Sufi is a mystical path. Would you say that?
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: I believe at the heart of all religion, there is a mystical experience. And there are many ways in which Religion can make that religion, that mystical experience more available to a community through certain communal forms that bring people together that connect them with divine names, which raise their consciousness and orient them to beautiful ideals.
So religion can serve that function. which is to say, to disseminate the mystical experience of the prophets and the sages who are at the root of the dispensation. However, religion does all too often succumb to the influences that, become intertwined with it, political influences, or all kinds of pressures that involve some kind of assertion of an identity which is over and against another identity, and which is looking for self aggrandizement, rather than what is the essence of mysticism, which is actually the dissolution of this hardened oppositional self image, and instead an experience of presence that is pervasive.
Zaya Benazzo: And what would you say is the quest for Sufism in the it's often known as the path of love. So the the heart is described as the center of consciousness as the as the divine connection. How do we how those on the spiritual path can cultivate a heart purified heart so it can be receptive to divine guidance.
And especially when we are faced with injustice, violence, brutality, This is a big question. I went, but how do we purify the heart when we are facing injustice? How do we still respond and open the heart instead of close the heart and protect ourselves from that?
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the heart because the heart is really the core of our human condition and it exists in tandem with the head or the mind, the intellect, and the two have a rapport that is not an equivalency.
There's a relationship between the two, but not an identity. My grandfather used to say that the heart is the depth of the mind. Of the mind and the mind is the surface of the heart. And of course, we need to have the outward facing executive function. You might say that the mindful fills that function that enables us to process information methodically, rationally, and and to in this way, navigate.
The world. But if that mental function isn't rooted in a wakeful living heart, then it's a kind of a trance condition. It's a kind of autopilot with without the core having a, an influence that matters. And then you've got a mind that's essentially subject to the. dynamics of an interpersonal world that is so often determined by power imbalances and all of the fears that come with those disparities, which means that the mind moves into a mode, a kind of survival mode that even Is exacerbated and exaggerated to become more than a survival mode, a mode of aggrandizement and self assertion and the attempt to control and manipulate its environment that is the character.
of a mind that has become unrooted, no longer grounded in the heart quality. So the whole endeavor in Sufism is to reroute the mind in a heart that can provide the larger context, the larger frame of guidance for the executive function of the mind. And that would be a context that's based on a symbiotic understanding of life, an understanding of life that isn't driven merely by the mind.
competitive instincts, but instead recognizes the current of oneness that unites all beings and which looks for synergies. It looks for opportunities to be part of an organicity, to be part of a larger organism. It sees the systemic levels. It doesn't just see the dualistic. opposition between this eye that's seeking its own aggrandizement and a countervailing eye that functions as a rival.
Instead, the heart sees all of humanity as one body, and then all of the organic, the biomass, all of the species of the earth as a still greater body and the earth as a body that's within the body of the solar system. And so the heart makes those connections. It has an empathetic understanding that sees things holistically in a way that the mind doesn't necessarily do.
Zaya Benazzo: How can how can we be present to the suffering of the world witness and make a stand for justice or against the injustice we see? And at the same time, trust that everything that is happening is part of a divine order. How can one? Yeah.
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a wonderful question. I think that's the question we have to keep asking ourselves and working with is the key question.
And of course, every true question, every profound question carries in itself its own solution. If you live with that question, you're going to be guided, you're going to be shown the answer. You have to live with that conundrum. So one response to the question would be to point to a story, and it's the story of three sheikhs, three teachers.
And the teachers were asked a question. The question was, what do you do when you see someone do something wrong?
And the first sheikh answered, If I see someone do something wrong, I correct them. I call attention to the problem, and I show them that it needs to be fixed. That's the first answer. The second sheikh gave a different answer. The second sheikh said, Correct. If I see something wrong, I look past it and look to what's beautiful and draw the attention there and build on what's beautiful and don't focus on what's wrong.
And then the third Sheikh answered, wrong, what wrong?
So three very different answers, and yet each one has its It has meaning, it has its truth, and in fact, in Sufism, these answers correspond to different stages on the path, and there's a fourth stage, too. So the first stage, and everyone has to go through the stage, and still, even having gone through it, it remains valid even still.
And that is It's called the stage of Sharia, and that means working to establish fairness in the world. It's the level of ethics and ensuring fair play and not taking more than is your due and ensuring reciprocity in all human dealings. very much. So that's the stage in which the pursuit of justice and insisting on justice and fighting for justice is absolutely necessary.
Then there's a second stage, which is called Tariqa, and Tariqa means that You, you're not simply concerned with an even score, but you're making an effort to go beyond reciprocity and to be generous, to be forgiving, to be more kind than legally you need to be. So the level of Tariqa has to do with focusing on beauty and cultivating beauty and trying to embody it and trying to build it in this world.
And that's another way. Then the third sheikh answers from the perspective of hakikat. And hakikat means absolute truth, all encompassing oneness. And from that perspective, there is no duality. Everything is divine. Everything is an expression of the eternal. In time, and everything expresses and reveals the nature of the one life that is forever.
And if one is in that state, one is beyond judgment, one is beyond saying this is right and this is wrong. One is just witnessing God in this moment, in everything. And that's a true experience. The fourth stage is to weave them together because all three are needed. We do need to, we need to fight for justice and make sure that those who are disadvantaged are given the chance to receive what is their due.
We also need to be careful not to get stuck in a mode in which in fighting for justice, we fall into a polarity where we can't see the humanity anymore of ones whose tyranny we're challenging. And all too often, a freedom fighter runs the risk of becoming a tyrant himself or herself. If one isn't careful, you see how, a resistance rises up to overturn a regime.
And then those who come into power just replicate the same dynamics of power all over again. So yes the cause of justice is important, but there are other aspects to be integrated. And the second aspect of Tariqah again has to do with Working toward the beautiful, being guided by beauty. Allahu jameel wa yuhibbul jamal is the Sufi saying.
God is beautiful and loves beauty. And so in every effort that we undertake for the cause of justice, or for any cause, let it be beautiful, not only outwardly beautiful, Aesthetically beautiful, but beautiful in manner, beautiful in intention, beautiful in that it's working toward and is waking up to that that grace, that fineness that musicality, that we, that, that makes us swoon when we see it in someone or see it in a community or see it in nature, that it reminds us of why we're here in the first place.
It reminds us why this universe exists. It exists to reveal this beauty. And then we've got to have this ability also to say that ultimately there's a fuller beauty. Sufis speak of two different kinds of beauty. And one is called Jamal, and the other is called Husn. And Jamal is that beauty that you could say it has an opposite.
The opposite of Jamal is ugliness. And we want to, avoid ugliness in our manner, in how we speak, in what we do. We want to avoid ugliness. So it's aspirational to avoid ugliness. work toward a fineness, a thoughtfulness, a graciousness, a beauty that is evident. But that, even that kind of beauty still is part and parcel of a limited view of the world, a view in which there's always something better and something worse.
Whereas there's a higher beauty and that is the ultimate beauty, which is called husn, And that has no opposite. And that's the beauty that you, where you see in the long durée, in the ultimate scheme of things, or even in the essence of this here and now, everything is included, everything is encompassed by and contained within that perfection that can never be marred, that can never be broken, that is already perfect and all pervading.
So that is the beauty that rejects nothing, accepts everything and goes to the essence.
Zaya Benazzo: I was seeing a video, somebody, a friend sent from a child in Gaza that his parents were killed just this week. And he was between life and death. He was severely wounded and I, yeah I, my heart was shattered. I couldn't see beauty in that. I couldn't see the divine in that. I just felt like how can this be?
How can this happen? Why? I don't,
yeah. And. And many and I could have turned away and not watch it because it was too hard to see it. But something in, in me said, no, I have to see it because if we really feel we are one, what's happening to this child is happening to all of us.
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: Yes. But that's why I appreciate so much your film and your readiness to not to turn away and to invite.
others not to turn away, but to be with what's happening and to be with it, with an open heart, as hard as that is. And it's extremely hard. What, what is going on now what children are going through, what families are going through as they're just torn apart whole multi generational families are destroyed.
What is happening is something that those of us who have been fortunate enough to live in relatively peaceful times have a hard time fathoming. And yet all of us have some measure of pain in our life. We've gone through something. And, in fact, having gone through something painful, as much as one might, at the time, one certainly didn't welcome that pain into one's life.
One wished it could have been otherwise. One wished that one didn't have to suffer that ordeal. That being it's precisely because we have some degree of experience of pain that we can actually empathize with others who are in pain and in distress. in many cases in much worse conditions than we've ever known, but it's because we've had some struggle in our life.
So there's a sense in which our own life struggle opens up our heart. It can open up the heart if we allow it to do that. And the other alternative is because is in the struggle, in the hardship. To close down to numb the heart, to clench it like a fist. And then that's what leads on to yeah, the inability to witness the suffering in others and a kind of obliviousness that.
enables structures of oppression to be perpetuated. So in order to get past those systems, we'll all need to be able to tap into our own experience of suffering and let it open us up to the even much greater degree of suffering that is around us in this world. And to Take it to heart.
Yeah. One. Thank you. Thank
Zaya Benazzo: you. This is, yeah, that's
the,
Zaya Benazzo: that's the path we have to, yeah, there is something and what we call and I don't know if you have a practice or a pointer to brokenheartedness, that when, and the heart doesn't break, but we, there is the experience of being shattered from the suffering. But I wonder in the Sufi tradition, do you have a understanding of that?
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: Yeah. There is a we, we have practices that take us into the world by turning within, and so when we're aware of someone or a group of people who are in hardship and in need, there's a practice of turning toward them. And there are degrees of this, and all of us to some extent, do this all of the time.
When we say to a friend, let's say you heard from a friend that they're not feeling well, and you say, I'll keep you in my heart. I just saying that communicating that intention already has a healing effect on that person. They're glad to feel the connection with you and to feel that you're keeping them in your heart.
But when we say this, it's good, first of all to say it and at some level to, to feel it. But how Consciously, do we feel it? It can actually be a practice. We can actually take time and go into the heart and find the person there, meet the person inside your kalp, your spiritual heart. And sometimes we do this to celebrate the happiness of other people, just to feel our connection with other people and wish them well.
And sometimes if something really terrible is going on, we do it in the way of a, an ardent prayer, calling on protection and praying for the well being of these souls who we know are going through such, such an unthinkable tragedy. And we want to Lift up our experience of their suffering into the divine compassion, because we know that we can't hold that suffering just in our individual self.
It's too much, there's no way. But we also know that the heart is a remarkable thing, in that it opens out to vastness. And there's a Sufi saying, which is that, The divine voice speaks and says, I am contained in no thing, but I am contained in the heart of the sincere servant who loves me. So the heart can open up, the heart can become vast, and it can become the channel in which we take our experience, our awareness of the great suffering of someone or of a group of people, and we lift it up to the divine compassion.
We say that we know that our little self can't hold this, but we know that there's a mercy, there's a grace, there's a love that is so enormous that only in that love can this terrible suffering find its way back home.
Zaya Benazzo: Yes. Yes. For many of us in the Western world, we're so conditioned by the individual by the belief of the individual.
The pain of the world alone. That's what I'm hearing you saying, we, not an individual cannot hold that or
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And, my grandfather once said, the, he said, the things that the world is aware of, the angels hardly notice them, but the things that go unnoticed in the world, the angels notice that.
And just think of someone who is in their darkest hour. I think of my aunt Noor in the prison in Forsheim, chained to a wall for almost a year. I think of a child underneath rubble whose Family home has just been bombed. Think of those who the world has forgotten. The structures of power have forgotten that being who in that moment seems all alone.
There are spiritual beings. We're there. The angels are there. And the divine presence is there. And this consolation shouldn't motivate us to inaction. It shouldn't be a reason to say all is taken care of. We can let the worst happen in this world and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
A serious responsibility as embodied incarnate human beings that have the right to vote, that have the ability to transfer funds to relief organizations that have the ability to call up your representative that have the ability to make a difference in this world in many ways. This isn't a reason not to do however, It can assuage the sense of hopelessness that sometimes comes over us when we only see, we see the corpses, but there, there's more to that soul than the corpse. There's a being that isn't destroyed when the body is destroyed. That soul lives on, and there are other beings who are actually there, too.
Help that being to heal and to journey onward into the innermost realms. And so we can be present in all of these different ways, outwardly through our human actions to challenge. All kinds of unfairness and belligerence and to call for and work for a peaceful and just world. And at the same time, we can be conscious of the inner planes and direct our prayers and our participation to those worlds and to make common cause with the great guiding spirits who are working in the inner worlds.
And that work is just as important as the outer work. You, yeah,
Maurizio Benazzo: you briefly mentioned your aunt, Noor Inayat Khan. You want to say more about who was she for people?
Zaya Benazzo: Not many of us know her story, what she stood out in her life.
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: I just came back recently from Germany and I was in Dachau, the concentration camp in Dachau.
Where my aunt Noor in 1944 was executed, along with three other SOE agents. These were agents who were working for the French resistance against the Nazi occupation. And it was the 80th anniversary of their martyrdom, the martyrdom of these three amazingly brave ladies. That knew exactly what they were doing.
They knew what Nazism was, they knew it had to be stopped and they volunteered for the most arduous and dangerous missions in the war. And they gave their whole heart to it and worked with tremendous energy and care. They did things like blowing up bridges. They did work in transmitting messages so that supplies could be airdropped to the resistance.
They were doing all that they could to liberate France and to keep at bay this machine, which was the Nazi military ideology that was founded on a vision of supremacy and, um, and domination. And Nure, who in the last years of her life served in this function as a, as an agent of the resistance.
Earlier in her life, she didn't live a long life, by the way, she was only 30 when she became a martyr. But just before the war, She had studied child psychology, and she was a writer of stories, children's stories, fairy tales. And she retold the Jataka tales, which are stories of the Buddha in the form of various heroic animals.
And in a number of these stories, the animal who is the Buddha gives his life in order to save those who are in danger or those who are starving. Thank you. So she spent her life studying Chivalry, studying heroism, studying ethics, and taking an interest in how these values could be inspired in children.
Because children come into this world fresh from heaven. And as soon as they get to this world, they are impressed with all of these influences and impressions that encourage competitiveness and a kind of path through life that's beautiful. based upon an egoic identity, rather than any real appreciation of the heart's life.
And so she wanted to help children to keep their heart alive, and to keep it growing in empathy, and in courage, and in all of the moral values. So her stories were written With this view in mind, and ultimately she became her own story. Her life became the story of the heroism that she had described through so many fables hitherto.
And
Zaya Benazzo: how do you think her Sufi's, Sufi background informed or prepared her for, to make that stand, that fierce stand for freedom and that cost her life?
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: Thank you for that question. And, she.
When I think about Noor, it's it's a very, it's a very touching subject for me. As soon as I mentioned her, of course, I feel her in the room. So it's not, I can't speak of her as someone in the distant past. I feel her spirit. She's here right now. She's in this conversation. And how is it, how did her calling reflect her Sufi training?
I would say that. Our lineage of Sufism, and I think that this is true of many lineages of Sufism, is one that wants to look past the contention that exists between religions and between various communities of people, and wants to find a way to unite the world in kinship. And so she, she used to give classes for Sufi children.
And in one class, she would speak about the Buddha. And in another class, she would speak about Moses and so forth. She was studying all of the scriptures of the world. And she was interesting, interested in the golden thread that moves through all of them that one current of oneness. And so when she saw that here is this ideology that's founded upon.
The exaltation of one race above others. The villainization of one religion Judaism. The, uh, extreme anti Semitism of Nazism and just an entire worldview founded upon separation and supremacy that was so contrary to everything that she had been raised to believe about oneness, about kindredness, about kindness, about the way in which, if there's any greatness in the world, it's not to be found in overpowering others, it's to be found in generously giving of your spirit in the service of the all.
Her father said, the service of God means that we each work for all. And so she wasn't fighting simply on behalf of France. or Great Britain. Actually, she was, as an SOE agent, she was deployed by Great Britain, but she, when she was recruited, they said, will you be loyal to the British government? And she answered, in this conflict, I'm going to, serve the allied cause against Nazism, but I reserve the right after the war to stand for India's independence.
So she wasn't a nationalist. She wasn't fighting for one nation against another nation. She was fighting for the freedom of all people.
Zaya Benazzo: And her final words. As she was killed was freedom, liberty.
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: Liberty, that's right, yeah. Yeah, and just think of the courage, she was, first of all she had been in a, chained to a wall in a prison cell in Pforzheim, and tortured.
She was treated terribly. And then she was tricked. She and the other SOE agents were told you're being taken now for agricultural work. And they, but they took her to Dachau. And then all that night she was brutalized. She was absolutely beaten to a pulp. And she lived through that. She had lived through nearly a year in isolation in the worst circumstances.
Now she was beaten to within an inch of her life. And then she was taken to kneel to be shot. And in that moment, imagine. Imagine being in the hands of Nazi torturers who are psychotic. They chose those prison guards actually because they were Psychopathic to being in the control of a a torturer of that kind, and to be so severely tortured.
And then in that very last moment, you have no power in the situation whatsoever. You're surrounded by barbed wire and guards, but the valor. The courage, the indomitable spirit to use your last breath and say, Liberte.
That's why she's the hero of so many of us. And she and the other agents who were executed on that day. And in fact, many people of goodwill. There were people in Germany who took in Jews and others who were going to be detained because they knew it wasn't right. And so they hid them away and they made themselves guilty.
They ran great risk. They could have been imprisoned or executed themselves for taking that risk, but they just saw. That here, look, we have this one life to live, and it's, this is the chance. Are we going to turn a blind eye to this kind of evil? Or are we going to take a stand, even at whatever cost?
Yeah. Yeah. And
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: the parallel is so
Maurizio Benazzo: appalling to what's happening now. The parallel is so appalling. Every word you said. It was just, it's so appalling. Yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: And How can we, as humanity, break those cycles? Because the people who were Jewish people, who were hurt and prosecuted, and for so long, and they are now the one that are inflicting that on other people.
That is the cycle of suffering, that
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: Yeah,
the cycle is a cycle. And and yet we do have, we human beings have the freedom to break out of the cycle. We can make that choice. We have to have the moral courage. And it means stepping out of the condition of the heart in which the heart is merely free. Reacting to its circumstances, that great moral courage requires going beyond reacting, it requires proactivity, it requires not just being a victim of history, but fashioning history in accordance with the widest conceivable vision of oneness, of empathy, of kindredness that one can conceive of.
Only that will break the cycle. So the immediate thing, of course, is to cease fire, stop the violence stop the carnage, stop the destruction. That's the first thing. Start there. Start with a suspension of all violence. Then there has to be a process, step by step of listening, understanding, really coming to terms with the whole.
history and seeing that we don't need to be locked into that history. There's another way we can learn from each other's experience. We can learn from each other's pain. We can build a different world and that's possible. It could start right now.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. And that's the vision we can hold those of us who are not in the, at the heart of the war of the genocide. So that's collectively, that's what we can hold. And the path might not be clear, it looks very dark and very grim, but like you said, only collectively we can break those cycles.
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: Yeah, and you've showcased some of the modern day heroes in your film, those who have experienced torture and great suffering, and who aren't calling for a backlash in kind, they're not calling for the destruction of enemies, they're calling for a completely revolutionary change. Idea of the human experience, one that is founded upon our relatedness and our mutuality and the fact that our own heart cannot be in any case ever secluded from the condition of the hearts and bodies of anyone across this world, how we're all woven together into one tapestry.
And that call is the call of our time.
Yeah. Yeah.
All
times.
Now more than ever. It's all times, definitely all times. It's almost like the world is shrinking because of patterns of immigration, the technology of communication. There's so many ways in which also population is expanding.
Wild areas are diminishing. We're coming very close to together in certain ways, while spiritually we're farther apart than ever before. And so we've got to catch up, the internet is connecting us on one level, and there's another level in which we're still so disconnected. Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Zaya Benazzo: And this is just the last question maybe it's a big question, but I wonder, so in Sufism, you have the stages or the practices, the Fana, the annihilation of the ego, and the Baka. The surrender to the divine. In religion, often the first step, the disillusion of the ego is not practiced.
This is maybe I'm trying to rationalize and explain why we are here today is like, how is it possible? Because that's what we are seeing in the war, the identity, the ego, the identity with one. religion or one ethnicity is what is at the root of this perpetual suffering. So when we skip that step of the disillusionment practicing the disillusioning of the ego and identity, perhaps Is it simplistic way to explain
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: it?
Yeah. No, I think that's very well said. And the ways in which the collective identities error, the kind, the symptoms that we find in ourself when it comes to it, egoic nature, that's Disconnected from the deeper soul and heart levels and an egoic nature, which is polarized, which is competitive, which is very much concerned with itself image, which wants to be liked and not disliked and wants to, be popular and wants to have all of the good things and so forth that egoic attitude, which is part of the life of all of us, is writ large at the level of international relations.
And those, so those national polities become surrogates of these tendencies within ourselves to want to advance our interest over other interests. So each nation is jockeying to have the elevated position. And that's going to continue so long as. let's say from the ground up, those egoic tendencies are operating in all of us.
And so countervailing healing factor is the ability to blur this boundary. This we look in the mirror we see that it looks like the body just ends right here. And that's the end of the story. But if you'd close your eyes, You don't feel that you just end suddenly somewhere in space.
If you close your eyes and watch your breath, you feel breath is coming in, breath is going out, light's coming in, light's radiating from inside. You feel this con, con, connection that the ego isn't so familiar with. But as soon as you start to practice like that, these heart qualities open up and that can change the whole culture.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. Yes. Yes. We are porous. We are into, yeah.
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: Porous is a good word. Yeah.
Maurizio Benazzo: And if nothing else, we are made of 90 percent of water. So how can you not identify with the ocean and the river and the rain? It's incredible. We are, yeah, we are made of matter that is not us.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah, we
Maurizio Benazzo: have bacteria and viruses, we have 97 percent of that, of other creature of different size that live inside in coordination.
How can we define that this is the border of our existence? We are. everything else around us, without the air we breathe, we are dead in two minutes. So if this is your bar, the shuttle that break a big wall in two minutes, you're dead. That's the,
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: Yeah. You mentioned the microorganisms.
I think that's a very interesting and relevant consideration as well, because even if we consider ourself as one person, that person is made up of an ecology of life forms working within us, micro mitochondria and the various organisms in the microbiome that collaborate. So the idea, the kind of nationalistic idea or supremacist idea.
That everyone has to, follow a certain identical regimen of thought and of appearance and to conform to some kind of collective identity is completely contrary to the logic of nature that our body depends upon. And so how, what can peace look like? What can justice look like?
It's going to look something like what's going on. In the human gut, it's going to be these different organisms working together to make the whole body flourish.
Maurizio Benazzo: Exactly. And accept a new nutrient, transform them, find a solution.
Zaya Benazzo: And that's what healing is, right? When we heal, when we're out of balance, there is illness.
And when we heal we find that peace within.
Thank you so much, Pirziya, for this. deep rich conversation and gifts you've given us that I feel they're going to continue. live in my heart and grow and
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah, it's just another, this conversation is another notch in my, I feel this tingling desire to convert to Islam so profoundly.
Since the movie, every, I feel that every little thing is coming towards me. So I'm more and more, I'm
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: so Satisfied. Every day is a conversion. Every day is a turning, turning toward the one, toward that beauty, toward that compassion, toward that endlessness that we all have come from and are returning to and are sustained by every day.
And Zaya and Maurizio, I'd like to thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity for bringing these friends together here. And I just really commend your work and wish you well always.
Zaya Benazzo: for your generosity. The beauty, you reminded us that we are held by a greater mystery. We are not alone in
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: that.
Amen.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you Pia. And sorry, one question. A few people ask how they can find the books of No, we put it in the show. Did we put that okay? We put in the shop?
Maurizio Benazzo: No, put it again, let's put it again. Yeah. Yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: And anything else you would like for those of us who would like to continue following your work or deepen.
Pir Zia Inayat Khan: I would just bring your attention back to your Dharma, your task. You've got something in this world to embody and no one else can embody it for you. That's your task and you're going to live it. And so it's just a question of coming back to your breath, coming back to every footstep.
And when you've been inspired, let that inspiration, waken something in yourself. It's the inspiration is arousing something what's going on inside yourself. That's where you need to turn next. What's growing, let it grow, let it come out, let it reveal itself.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you. Thank you so much. Gratitude. Thank you everyone for being here for bringing your beautiful hearts and these journeys every day, every moment, and we're in this together. We will continue our conversations. So we'll meet here again. And again,
Maurizio Benazzo: please come back, stay with us together. We can, yeah, we can, hopefully.
Make a change.
Zaya Benazzo: Nice things.
Maurizio Benazzo: Inshallah. Amin. Amin.
Zaya Benazzo: Inshallah.
