Just finished an inspiring weekend teaching with Patrick Gaffney, Sogyal Rinpoche’s senior-most student, entitled “The Wisdom of Compassion.” Patrick shared this poem, which is engraved on the entrance gate of the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan.
Sa’di in a rose garden, from a Mughal manuscript of the Gulistan, ca. 1645. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
“The sons of Adam are limbs of each other,
Having been created of one essence.
When the calamity of time affects one limb
The other limbs cannot remain at rest.
If you have no sympathy for the troubles of others,
You are unworthy to be called by the name of a Human.”
Bani Adam, or The Children of Adam, by 13th-century Sufi poet Sa’di Shirazi