This short teaching by Hazrat Inayat Khan may be appropriate as we approach the changing of the year, and reflect upon our life.

When we look around us we cannot but notice how everyone has something to complain about: lack of wealth, lack of comfort, lack of kindness from those around him, from his relatives. Everywhere there are heartbreaks, disappointments of one kind or another. In the Quran this is expressed by the saying: ‘God alone is rich; everyone else is poor’. People may live in palaces or in cottages, they may enjoy wealth and fame, money or good positions; no matter what they possess, they are still poor for all that.

The more we study life, the more we see how poverty is everywhere, how everyone is poverty-stricken no matter how much he may possess. How is this? What is the meaning of it? Only one thing can explain this situation, and that is limitation.

This one word explains the reason for the gradations from king to pauper, from the very great to the most insignificant. There is the limitation of poor physical health and of mental power, the limitation of wealth, and so forth. Nothing but limitation explains the real cause of all these grievous things.

A seer or thinker may well find it amusing to watch how the whole world is busily active from morning till night, in body as well as in mind. Everyone is trying to get relief from this poverty, trying to overcome all the things he has to complain about, trying to gain the means of conquering all those conditions of poverty. So he who watches all this sees the people always striving, striving for this, striving for that; yet in spite of all their striving they only find still more poverty. The objects they desire are limited, but their desire is unlimited; in any case limited objects can never satisfy limitless desire.

There is a Hindustani poem which says, ‘When you have ten lakh* or twenty, or fifty, or a hundred, you will still want a thousand; if you obtained them you would still want more.’ In fact you would want the whole world, and even if you had that your desire would not come to an end. The reason for this is that whatever man desires is always limited, whereas his desire itself knows no limits. When one desire is satisfied there is another and then another, and so on and on. Man’s desire remains much greater and vaster and wider than every object that can be desired, and since the one who desires does not know his own value, nor the value of the objects sought by him, he remains in a state of poverty. This poverty degrades his life; the degradation of all human life proceeds from this one thing.

*=100,000

To be continued…