Guiding Principles
The Chishti are perhaps best known for the welcome extended to seekers who belong to other religions. Chishti shrines in South Asia are open to all faiths and attract great crowds to their festivals.
The Chishti shaykhs have also stressed the importance of keeping a distance from worldly power. A ruler could be a patron or a disciple, but he or she was always to be treated as just another devotee. A Chishti teacher should not attend the court or be involved in matters of state, as this will corrupt the soul with worldly matters. In his last discourse to his disciples, Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti said:
| “ | Never seek any help, charity, or favors from anybody except God. Never go the court of kings, but never refuse to bless and help the needy and the poor, the widow, and the orphan, if they come to your door. | ” |
Chishti believe that this insistence on otherworldliness differentiates them from Sufi orders that maintained close ties to rulers and courts, and deferred to aristocratic patrons.
Chishti practice is also notable for sama: evoking the divine presence through song or listening to music. Some Muslims believe that music is haram; forbidden to Muslims. The Chishti, as well some other Sufi orders, believe that music can help devotees forget self in the love of Allah. However, the order also insists that followers observe the full range of Muslim obligations; it does not dismiss them as mere legalism, as some strands of Sufism have done. The music usually heard at Chisti shrines and festivals is qawwali.
Read more about this topic: Chishti Order
Famous quotes related to guiding principles:
“For the child whose impulsiveness is indulged, who retains his primitive-discharge mechanisms, is not only an ill-behaved child but a child whose intellectual development is slowed down. No matter how well he is endowed intellectually, if direct action and immediate gratification are the guiding principles of his behavior, there will be less incentive to develop the higher mental processes, to reason, to employ the imagination creatively. . . .”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)