A Thankful Heart
9. A THANKFUL HEART
Can we call a heart golden if it has none of the shine and joy of gold in it? Can a heart be of real gold if it is not as soft as gold, capable of being formed into most intricate forms, from thinnest films to finest threads, so fine that one may need a microscope to see them?
A person with a wise golden heart has a fundamental level of existential joy, a joy simply because he exists, a joy which is inseparably linked to a sense of thankfulness. He is an ‘incurable’ optimist despite being liable to all ups and downs of moods all men and women are subject to and are inevitable if we are to have sense of responsibility, ideals to pursue and social roles to play. In an optimist these waves of mood changes are more at the surface than coming from the very bottom of an unhealthy personality. It is one thing to have waves caused by a sea’s natural pressure and temperature differentials as well as any passing winds and quite another for the sea to have volcanoes at its bottom which keep erupting and exploding. A sea is a great body of water in which physical properties like density, pressure and temperature can show significant variations and therefore some flow and levelling off processes among these differentials must occur at all times. The very term ‘qalb’ in Arabic which means ‘heart’ comes from the root ‘qlb’ which signifies changing and turning from state to state- another example of the genius of Arabic language which befitted it to be reserved for the verbalisation of Allah’s Last and Final Message to mankind, the Qur’an.
No doubt every sane person is after happiness and not unhappiness. Yet few people are aware that happiness is not so much the result of gaining possession of certain objective goods like a beautiful house or a luxurious car or a handsome spouse although these normally do give us pleasure; happiness is much more a state of mind, a state of apparently causeless contentment and cheer which then must try to find objective reasons for itself. We all know that there are some people who almost always smile and even when they do not they still look composed in themselves and patiently graceful towards others. They habitually put the best possible interpretation on situations others find rather sad or at least uninspiring and are not crushed by events which could devastate others, although they may be momentarily shaken. They recollect themselves faster than others and put on their habitual optimism. Lastly, these exceptional persons do not complain too much about anything.
There may be many causes for such an exceptional, stable character but one thing is obvious to us Sufis. From training and experience we know that believing in Allah Who represents all that is the very best in human heart and thanking Him is happiness itself. Others may see many tragedies in the life of such a person and he himself may be aware that his means are meagre and many conditions unpopular, like poverty or being a victim of injustice for example, yet that belief in and love of Allah and that ability and inclination to see the positive and cheerful side of things rather than the negative and depressing and as a result feeling sweetly thankful to Allah. It is this that ensures his fundamental optimism.
Why belief in Allah is so central to personal happiness, I mean happiness which is not at the mercy of the shifts in worldly affairs?
Well, you will remember from our last article “Sense of Perspective and Proportion” that we react to things in ways which depend on our sense of perspective and proportion. Let us take my yesterday’s experience. To move towards more central parts of London from where I live there is a road which is sometimes very congested. At these times the traffic flows at snail pace. One part is particularly a bottleneck: Up to there the road can accommodate three cars side by side but there it begins to narrow down to a two lane and then one lane road. It is like a bottleneck then, throttled and throttling. You may arrive there at 40 miles (70 km) per hour but within a mere 100 metres you find yourself slowed down to 5 miles per hour. Thankfully this narrowing section of the road is no more than half a mile long. As soon as you exit it at the last traffic lights and join the other road perpendicular to it the congestion pleasantly eases.
Now let’s go back to yesterday. While fretting about the snail pace travel an insight hit me and made me smile and forgive the snail pace. My engineer’s instincts came to my rescue. I thought to myself: why the bus drivers, the train drivers or ship captains suffer similar situations day in day out and seem not to mind so much but keep moving as best as they can while also chatting their way on? Why? Because their perspective is quite different than their passengers’. For them driving a vehicle or sailing a ship is a life profession which pays them the same salary per unit time no matter how much they move in their vehicle or boat. One of them will captain his transport for a month and be paid his fixed salary. Even when their transport is out of order and not moving they still get their salary. They also have more sense of proportion: it may be tedious to move at snail’s pace but so what? That is part of their job they were told about and learned to accept. In my case I analysed the situation as follows. One rule of flow through a conduit is that the moving mass cannot move faster than the speed at the narrowest section (the bottleneck). I realised that the bottleneck was not that part of the road where three lanes merged into one but the traffic lights half a mile down. Accordingly even if the road had been left wide at three lanes the terminal traffic should have to be timed in such a way that only an amount of traffic at a time could join the other road so that the traffic on that other road did not suffer too much congestion. So the design, looked from a bird’s eye view was right. I suddenly relaxed and as if I was the engineer who had designed those roads I lost all my frustration.
Exactly the same applies to all people who are part of a designed operational system whose limitations they know well and accept. Do you see for example, surgeons operating in a hospital operation theatre cry, wail and beat themselves when one of the patients die? Only the patient’s family members cry and wail and lament? Why, are the surgeons inhuman? No. It is that they have a far vaster perspective and sense of proportion than the family members for whom their relation is almost the whole world. For the surgeons not only occasional deaths are a routine matter, a boringly repetitive phenomenon; on top of that is their knowledge of how the body works and when it becomes irreparable and ready for discharge. They also have the vast statistics of life and death which makes every death a relatively miniscule event in the context of deaths occurring by millions each and every day. Let us give another, this time happier example of the effect of knowledge, perspective and sense of proportion to a person’s thinking. While most people like dry and sunny weather and if it was to be left to their liking the world’s climate should always by dry and sunny those who are in the farming desperately love an adequate proportion of rainfall throughout the year. Why? Their perspective is both vaster and more realistic. While the main concern of the ‘good-weatherers’ is their chances for more sports and games the farmer’s is enough rain for his success as a farmer. That of the wiser section of the people is the general welfare of all concerned farmer or not. Now we may hit the nail on the head and also generalise: the vastest and most realistic concern is that of a truly godly man whose perspective is the welfare of the whole world and whose sense of proportion rules out small-minded petty benefits of the few at the expense of loss of great benefits to many. And that is exactly the perspective of God, multiplied by infinity of course. That is why we call god men ‘godly’.
The wise golden hearted man or woman happily shares with God as much gracefulness as they can, seeing that he or she is no god and can only have a very limited access to God’s Gracefulness and Wisdom. But what they are given is enough at any point in time and more may be on the way to them. Read if you wish:
“Allah increases in guidance those who are after guidance” (19: 76).
In fact, the only prayer Allah will never turn back is begging for more guidance. All other prayers are less certain in their results. Why? Because our whole salvation is based on Allah’s Guidance; if He guides us there is no happiness we cannot attain and no disaster we cannot beat.
Basically such a true believer in and lover of Allah is an inalienable admirer of Allah Whose all decrees and decisions he or she can only approve of. He or she thinks or feels on these lines: Allah is only too Good, He is only too Wise and what is more He is All-powerful. So, whatever happens under His Rule has something ultimately good in it for His servants and let us wait and see. We surely will not be disappointed. In fact we will be only too thankful when we realise what stunning pleasant surprises our Lord has kept in store for us. You see, a loving believer has the universal perspective and proportions in whose context he or she sees and values everything under the sun. This is a great achievement and in fact the ultimate spiritual maturity if experienced with conviction and gratitude.
What all above leads to is the whole secret of true happiness which is happiness about and for all and not only the self. The fruit of this happiness is a constant desire to praise Allah for all things and thanking Him for all blessings big and small, for us and for others. Why do you think the Qur’an begins with praising Allah before anything else and then repeating the praises in their multifarious forms to the end? Read if you wish in the Opening Chapter:
“Alhamdu lillahi Rabbil Alameen, Ar-Rahman, Ar-Rahim”: Praise be to Allah Lord of All Existence, the Universally Caring and Mercifully Forgiving”.
What can have a more legitimate place in one’s heart in his or her relationship to Allah if not thanks, ample thanks, many thanks to Him? The sign that you are becoming a close and dear servant to Him is the enlargement of your perspective until it takes in the whole creation as a result of which your heart is filled and remains full of and overflowing with the love of Allah, exculpation (not thinking him guilty of anything) of Allah, approbation of Allah, praises to Allah and thanks to Allah and loving mercy towards all. Amen.
10. GOOD CONDUCT
“The proof of the pie is in the eating” says the famous English proverb. English has another saying about pie: “pie in the sky”. It means an unrealistic, impossible promise or expectation. A claim to Islamic faith without personal good conduct represents only pie in the sky even when the rituals of Islam like salat prayers and Ramadan fasting are performed. Almost everybody can report to you his angry and disappointed experience with one or very many ‘practicing’ Muslims who are anything but good characters and are interested in conducting themselves well. “By conducting oneself well” I mean such behaviour that whatever the faith or philosophy of an observer the observer can only admire and approve of the person concerned. For how many Muslims can we say this to be true?
Where the fault lies then? Is Islam itself to blame or any somehow unlovable Muslims?
Before we answer this question we must observe that this strange phenomenon is not peculiar to Islam by any means. Ugly practicing Chrisrians, ugly practicing Jews, ugly Hindus, ugly Buddhists… are no less uncommon. Again the phenomenon is not confined to religious groups. Outside religions there are a thousand philosophies, ideologies and movements which claim to represent noble aims and ideas at least as they see it but ugliness is may be even more prevalent among them. What is equally true, admirable persons are also present in every non-religious group. I have seen very decent and kind atheists, that special form of them the communists and even faschists.
It appears that in each of us there is a fundamental, perhaps largely genetically determined personal character which is immune to many negative influences of the religions or ideologies we may be inculcated with. I know of a communist barber who was a friend of my late father (may Allah bless his soul) who naively believed everything broadcast by the Moscow radio. It was the 1950’s then when the communist propaganda was the world’s most masterly. My father would come home with the ideas he learned from his barber and it was my duty to point out to him the lies as well as unrealistic claims and hopes of communism and defend Islam as the better formulary for human ills. Like most modestly educated proletarian fathers (he had studied to the third year of secondary education) he admired me his well-educated son more than anybody else including the good barber and taking my advice as the more justified thesis did not deviate from his Islam at all. But he used to point out and I had to admit that in the communist barber there was an unmistakeable if non-religious piety and kindness and that he was generous towards the poor and full of mercy towards the suffering. Now what to make of such realities? I begin by quoting a wise Turkish proverb “It is not certain who has real faith or big money”. Some seems very religious but may be rotten inside while another may look a free-thinker and sinner but deep down may have a mine of faith which may one day break out and surprise even himself. A hadith declares “The heart of man is between the two fingers of the All-Gracious (Allah); He turns it any direction He wants as if it is a feather. The rottenness of the other may come out later and only too suddenly and again may surprise even himself. We take refuge in All-Gracious Allah spare us any bad surprises.
What we Sufis understand from a deeper, more careful reading of Allah’s Book is this: All human beings are born with faith in its non-verbalised purely spiritual and intellectually unconscious form. There are many proofs, some subtle, some more unmistakeable in the Qur’an that this is so. For example, those archenemies of Allah, namely the Pharaoh and his cronies the Egyptian priests and ministers protested their unbelief in Allah but in actual fact all were well aware of Allah’s Truth. Their trouble was the love of this world where they ruled supreme thanks to their bullying and deceiving the masses. Read if you wish:
“Despite the fact that their hearts were convinced by them (the miracles shown by Moses in proof of Allah’s Existence and Unity) they fought against them wrongly and for pride’s sake (27: 14). The same problem had stopped the audience of prophet Abraham/Ibrahim (alaihissalam) from admitting the evidence of their hearts:
“After much argument one day and while there was nobody in temple the Abraham broke the idols to pieces leaving only the biggest one standing. When they had some evidence that Abraham could be the culprit they asked him: Is it you who did this to our gods o Abraham?”. He replied it may be that this big one among them who did it. Go on and ask them, if they can talk. They (the idolaters could not help but) looked into their hearts (which cannot lie) and said (to themselves) “It is you (i.e. ourselves) who are in the wrong”. Yet they still went back to their heads (minds which can supposedly prove and disprove anything) and said “You well know that these do not talk” (21: 62- 65)
In Surat al A’raf we find that gnosis of Allah as the only god is programmed into the system of each and every one of us and on that basis Allah will challenge us to explain our blasphemies against Him “Consider when thy Lord (o Muhammad) had taken the offspring from the backs of the sons of Adam and made them witness against themselves by asking
“Am I not your Lord?” They had replied “Thou indeed art so, we did witness”. That was in order that on the Day of Resurrection you would not turn around and say “We used to be unaware of this” (7: 172).
Having witnessed the Existence and Unity of God first hand before coming to this world and expressly admitted it to the Face of our Lord how can we say anybody can ever be devoid of a correct gnosis of Allah even when their rational minds and ordinary memories can fool them because of their lusting after this transitory world of trials and tests? Those who are wise enough not to be fooled by this world need only hear a true prophet or saint once or come across a verse of the Qur’an once and they will remember their pledge in the form of unverbalised, instinctive recognition and fall for Allah and His Islam either immediately or not after any long delay. It must then be that at least one form of instinctive, unverbalised recognistion of Allah’s Truth is a feeling that drives someone to choose nobler and more gracious behaviour or conduct under all circumstances while perhaps being unable to recognise and admit Islam simply because a long period of long brainwashing he or she underwent in the hands of people who were themselves ignorant as well as unwise.
But thanks to Allah we have been fortunate enough to immensely reinforce our God-given instinctive recognition of Him by some substantial knowledge of His Qur’an and our Islam based on it and as such we can only have the least excuse not to do our best to conduct ourselves most graciously and constructively at all times. That is the only conclusive proof of the truth of our faith and the sincerity of our disposition and the wisdom of our heart which can at last be called a wise golden heart.
Let us then join the people of the Paradise in their prayers:
“Our Lord, complete our Light and pardon us; Thou art indeed Capable of everything”(66: 8).
Amen.
SUFI LOVE
INTRODUCTION
What is to follow is a series of essays exploring and discussing the only too true and durable happiness any well-meaning person can hope to attain through the true Sufi way.
Sufism is, in our definition at least, an active realisation of Islam’s spiritual potential or promise which amounts to nothing less than a happiest spiritual meeting (liqa) with Allah the All-Gracious, All-Powerful Creator, Sustainer and Inheritor of all creation. He All-Gracious says:
“Indeed We, yea, We give life and We give death and We are the Inheritors” (15: 23)
Yet, some servants of His are also and kindly promised to inherit the glories of all creation:
“The believers are definitely saved… it is they who who will be the inheritors; they shall inherit the Paradise to remain therein forever” (23: 10- 11)
In the Qur’an’s never ceasing metaphor language Paradise means ultimate, ever-enduring happiness and the following articles will, with Allah’s permission and hopefully with His kind help explore and help those with a mind to faith and an ambition of love of Allah above all other loves to attain that happiness- for good! Amen.
1. WHAT IS LOVE
Love is the noblest and most delicious of all emotions man is capable of feeling. Noblest, because a true lover loves his beloved for beloved’s sake and nothing else. Closest to true love is a good mother’s love for her child; her love is selfless and unconditional although it may admix itself with resentment, criticism and reproof- all for the beloved child’s sake, for the good of the beloved child. In other words these collateral emotions are necessitated by the caring goodwill of the mother; without them her beloved child can starve of proper moral and spiritual education and degenerate into a spoilt brute. A mother’s heart cannot countenance such a dereliction of duty on her part.
But don’t we know of apparently very loving mothers who, being unwise and immature themselves, apply their instinctive love to their children without caution and discrimination thereby causing a lot of harm to them without meaning it. Some spoil their children so badly that in the end they prove their children’s worst enemy despite being full of genuine love for them. You see, as we had pointed out in our previous series of articles lack of wisdom always causes evil while intending to cause good.
Assuming nevertheless that a mother’s love is also wise it is a love granted by Allah Who is the Greatest of lovers, one of His Most Beautiful Names in the Qur’an being ‘al Wadood’- it means ‘passionately and completely loving’, we can see that a mother’s love descends directly from none other than Allah’s Essence; as such it applies to all animal species; all female animals love their offspring passionately and can lay their lives down for them if necessary! Remember: ‘Al Wadood’ means passionately and completely loving!
You may ask: “But what is in for the lover in the love he or she or it suffers from or enjoys?”, say it as you wish. For love is not all joy but also suffering. For example love is subject to occasional heartbreaks. It is subject to the almost unbearable pain of the loss of the beloved. Last but not least love can be totally misdirected when the object of love is not another person but a thing, like money or position or drink etc. In the non-personal case love often demonises the lover- he may end up a greedy money-grabber, a too ambitious and unscrupulous political player or an abject bloody-eyed, foul-mouthed drunkard. Such people are anything but rare! In fact almost all of us have such unhealthy loves. In other words, we must be aware that love is not a blessed emotion under all circumstances towards all objects and objectives. It is blessed only when it blesses others. This is the first secret of Sufi love, the love exercisable by Godly persons. Our subject is only this blessed love and no other. Please remember this at all times.
A Sufi’s spiritual rank is then is a measure of his capacity and level for such true, blessed love. It is always directed towards other servants of Allah and that according to those servants’ worth or need, as the case may be.
Worth, because the Messenger of Allah sws is nearest to Allah in worth and merit among Allah’s servants and a believer can only love Muhammad sws more than he could love any other person. Says the Holy Prophet:
“None of you can be a complete believer until and unless he loves me more than his parents, his children and all other people and also love me more than loving himself”
Why? Because the Prophet sws leads to the Worthiest of all loves- love of the All-Gracious Lord of All Existence!
How is that? It is because Allah is our only future, only hope, only helper, only blesser and only fulfilment. Because He loves us so intensely our increasing nearness to Him fills us more with His intense love and the more love we have in us towards others in Allah the happier we become for, as we said at the beginning, love is the noblest and most delicious of emotions and what is the use of living without that noblest and most delicious of all emotions accompanying each and every throb of our heart? Read if you wish:
“Those who believe are at their most intense in their love for Allah” (2: 165)
What do you think happens to us when we love Allah more intensely than any other thing?
Something you cannot imagine: You begin to share His Vision towards the creation. Like Him you fill with loving compassion and wise benevolence and beneficence towards all people, animals, plants and what have you. I can assure you that no experience in life can be more ennobling, satisfying, delightful and rightly praiseworthy than regarding all beings under the sun with compassion and understanding and sharing in the Wisdom of Allah which is inseparable from His Loving Mercy (rahmat) towards His creatures even our publishing of any of them becomes an act of mercy and not vengeance let alone sadistic satisfaction.
The more true happy Sufis we have around the better all things get for everybody. Amen.