Ask Inayat!
This project is offered here with the intent of aiding Bowl of Saki readers and students of Inayat Khan's texts to easily gain additional insight into his teachings by asking questions about specific terms and/or ideas which they have encountered in his books and papers. This is a semantic search strategy designed to retrieve a variety of direct quotes from Inayat Khan's books and papers which are related to your particular topic, and present those quotes in a comprehensive report. Ask Inayat! can quickly help you gather a collection of direct quotes about the practice of meditation, or quotes about rising above attachments, or can help explain the meaning of a word such as "scope" all in a convenient report format. If you are simply searching for specific phrases, or specific words, in the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan, the Website Search Engine may provide better results.
• English Only: Please note that all requests must be in English. • Clearly indicate the goal of your request: In general, you will get the best possible results when you begin your request with words such as: How can I... Help me understand... Tell me about... What is... • Please note that Ask Inayat! processes your request in two sequential steps: Step 1.) Search the available texts for the occurrence of all of the significant words in your request, as well as similar words. Step 2.) Prepare a report based on the results of that search. • Avoid Salutations and Honorifics For example, do not use any salutations or honorifics such as "Dear Murshid", "Murshid", "Inayat Khan" because those terms do not appear in his texts! That is, Inayat Khan never spoke about the topic of "Dear Murshid", so there is no point telling this program to search for it. • Avoid Unrelated Topics: If your request involves a topic which Inayat Khan did not discuss in his books or papers, then the search engine will not be able to produce any useful results and your final report may not be very useful... so please strive to make relevant requests regarding topics which he did address. • Check Your Spelling and Avoid Rambling Requests: Please check your spelling. Improperly spelled words may greatly limit the quality of your results. Questions, or requests, which are brief and to-the-point, using around 10 to 15 words, will generally receive a higher quality reply than queries which are very short, or which are long, rambling or disorganized. The clarity and thoughtfulness of your question will have a great affect on the usefulness of the reply which you receive. If the reply does not seem to properly address your concerns, feel free to make some changes to the wording of your question, trying to express your issue more clearly, and submit a new request. • Query Limits: Please wait about 5 minutes between requests and make no more than 5 requests per day because my web server resources are quite limited.
• Additional Instructions: As with any computer program, you will get the best results if you take time to learn how to use this program. To learn more about forming effective requests, please see: Query
Examples and Troubleshooting
In what way is meditation helpful in our lives?
How can I be a better friend? What is the Music of the Spheres? What is the meaning of vairagya? What is the meaning of scope? What do you mean when you speak of accommodation? How can I best help a friend who is in deep despair? Tell me about the lives and works of the great Sufi poets. How can I remain kind when others confront me with anger or hatred? Tell me about love, harmony and beauty. How can we remain hopeful when democracy seems to be crumbling? Should I befriend a person who is unreliable and unkind? Help me learn how to control the ego. How is inner peace related to being of service to others? What are the benefits of a smile? How can I become a better person? Enter Your Question or Request:
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Ask Inayat!