Principles of Relating to the Shaykh: Adab al-suhbat and Tawhid al-matlab

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1 Principles of Relating to the Shaykh: Adab al-suhbat and Tawhid al-matlab Dinner blessing: O Allah, the time is coming for school to begin. We ask You to bless all the children with intense yearning for knowledge, and good adab, gratitude for their teachers, their professors, for the opportunity and gift for knowledge, to open their hearts to service, and make us all proud of their accomplishments, because we know that what they accomplish will be of benefit to other human beings and other life. We ask You to bless the teachers that they may be open-minded and openhearted, that they are well-planned and orderly in their approach, and sensitive to the needs of their children; and that the parents be engaged and filled with the gratitude of all that we offer, and give their support and guidance. We thank You for all the other blessings You give us. Amin. Suhbat: Bismi-Llāhi-r-Rahmāni-r-Rahīm. It s a good opportunity to talk about part of this and then move to something else. Shaykh Kashani mentioned in a series of adab al-suhbat, which are principles in the tariqah about how people should relate to one another and to the shaykh. He said, Do not seek for miracles or any mystical station of this order, nor inquire into exoteric or esoteric matters, dhahir or batin. The master will teach you these. Be patient. Then he said: Do not sit or rise or move without being concentrated (mutawajjuh) on the master. Do not ask him questions for any reason at all unless he asks you to ask them. If you experience difficulty, it is your responsibility; so asking questions is biadabi (bad or unruly adab). Do not bow your head or look down during the suhbat. This is unruly, because the aim is to 1

2 contemplate / mushahadah the truth; yet the disciple is not able to perceive this at the beginning. Consequently, he has to contemplate the beauty of his master. Kashani adds: To be unruly (bad adab) has bad results, not only on you, but on others who are present. In this respect, the communal element of initiation is essential. Do not raise your voice when the master asks a question. Do not quit the assembly, the majlis, the suhbat even if you need to relieve yourself. It is actually a diabolical trick to distract you. Be attentive to your master by focusing on the point between the two eyebrows of the master, since it is the place of Divine Power. Do not fall asleep during the suhbat. It is unruly, for the suhbat is the place of attention. This master wishes that this community attain felicity. If someone is careless, everyone will be deprived of this felicity. Once again, Kashani underlines the necessity of the collective dimension. He says: Whoever shows up at community meetings, he will be given a seat. Moreover, every fellow has to sit one beside the other, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee as in prayer. (Of course, this is only historical information, nothing to be followed.) Throughout this short description of correct adab, and despite the spiral composition of this treatise and his teachings, the Naqshbandi shaykh goes over the concepts of perseverance and attributes. He urges that the disciple is to be continuously in suhbat; nevertheless, he acknowledges that this is impossible. So, Sufis have to remain conscious of every moment of the suhbat, and always keep present to the effects of the suhbat. Because these effects are the perception of the beauty of the Pir, which is the Beauty and Majesty of Allah, inside as well as outside, until the suhbat becomes a natural attribute of your 2

3 heart. (In other words, you are always present.) Beyond this stage, you will see in your heart only the beauty. And then if you can, you should endeavor to remove the image from your heart. After that, you will only see the beauty of Allah. This is the next step, seeing the beauty of Allah. I thought that was appropriate to start with, given the behavior at the beginning, and I see it s had a profound effect on everyone Tawhid al-matlab is to have total faith and a strong belief in one s shaykh so that one can reach the matlab, the destination, and come to the realization as in the practice of rābita (as if you are in the grave, and you realize you are in the grave, and you say, But for the blessing of my shaykh I will not be freed from this constraint. As far as reaching one s goal, no one can reach my goal apart from my shaykh. I don t know how one learns that other than the suhbat and the teaching, even though there might be other shaykhs present, as there are in the world, who have qualities that are similar. So the tawhid al-matlab is a major milestone or pillar in the suluk of Tasawwuf, the sayr ul suluk of the seeker. It s said that the person who cannot even acquire the nisbat and jedhb, the attachment to a single shaykh, will always be distressed as if he is wandering his whole life in a forest. And that Allah Swt doesn t care for the person who makes no effort. On the other hand, to consider that every shaykh can satisfy one s desires and help one reach one s goals is very harmful to one s journey / suluk. Just as there is one Haqq and one qibla, there is also one spiritual guide. Recently, I went through this very situation, and the person wound up with nothing. The recovery from that state will take a long time, if it s possible at all. Because you d have to be really focused, really changed, and then prove yourself. Then you d have to be accepted 3

4 and then prove yourself again. So the easiest thing is to just keep looking and wandering in the forest. So a person is wandering in the forest, and they stop at one campfire, and then move to another campfire, and to another, and to another, and then they move to my campfire. At the end of which I have to say, I m sorry; you have been to too many campfires. I can t help you. My loyalty is to my brother shaykhs, not to a wanderer. A wanderer is different than a sojourner. It s too bad but unfortunately, this is what happens at times. It s possible to change it, but then you have to follow exactly what you are told to do. If you are told to do one thing, and then told nothing for a week, a month, a year or five years, you have to do what you are told until the next instruction comes. Does that seem harsh? It s a standard that we have in other professions. How would you like to have a brain surgeon who didn t listen to what his mentor told him to do? How would you like to have a general leading the army who didn t listen to the commander in charge, or something like that? How would you like to have a lawyer who didn t work from evidence, or an engineer who didn t pay attention to the rules of calculating construction? So why do people say this is very harsh? Nothing will be gained, and the destruction is such that many people have actually perished in the state of loss and distress and wandering. If a person has even the slightest thought that anyone in the world apart from their own shaykh can help them reach the matlub (Anta maqsudi wa ridaka matlubi. O Allah! You are my goal and pleasing You is my aim). Matlub to please Allah is the aim. This is also something that can be recited during rābita, if one does rābita. We don t tend to do rābita in our line, but it can be tasawwur of the shaykh. If a person doesn t believe that, Shaytan will misguide him. And it happens often. Who are the misguided? People left in a state of forgetfulness. Forgetfulness of what?... 4

5 forgetfulness of Allah of course but forgetfulness of your goal. You will forget your goal. When you forget your goal, guess what? It s replaced by something else. That s why we say, if you don t have a shaykh, Shaytan is your shaykh. If you don t have a goal, then Shaytan gives you the goal. If you don t believe it, open your eyes and look around. See what happens when you or someone else is distracted. The first thing they lose is their spiritual goal. The first thing they lose is their meditation; they give up their practice in some way step by step, losing your spiritual goal. And, it s not like it s an empty world. Nature abhors a vacuum, so it s filled with something. So you don t feel like you are hungry necessarily, but you have lost your goal. You were wandering in the forest. By the way, you are not the only one wandering in the forest. That person has the company of others wandering in the forest. Everything seems fine, except they have lost their goal. Allah says that He will give you things of this world, but you will be bankrupt in the Hereafter. It happens often that Shaytan comes in the appearance of another wali. If the conviction of the murīd is weak, he or she will be inclined toward that Shaytan who appears in the form of a Pir. Once Shaytan has made an impression on that individual s mind or heart, he has to have total control over that person, and that person will not escape the clutches of Shaytan. What s the traditional saying? You make a deal with the devil. You shake hands with the devil. So you are giving ba īat to Shaytan; you can t escape it. How many movies have been made on that subject? Once Shaytan has done that, and has that control, you are destroyed, in effect. In order to strengthen someone s iman / faith, the Shaytan also does things like gives the person supernatural powers, for example. Metaphorically, you can say that the Shaytan is never happy when someone has the tawhid al-matlab. Shaytan 5

6 can never appear in the form of one s shaykh, because a shaykh to his followers is what a prophet is to the nation. This is a hadith. The Prophet (sal) also said, The scholars of this ummah are like the prophets of the Bani Israel (meaning the awliya-llāh are like the prophets). Shaytan cannot appear in the form of one s shaykh, just like he cannot appear in the form of the Messenger (sal). One Shaykh said, If in one gathering, all the awliya-llāh have gathered, including Hazrat Junayd Baghdadi, and our own Hazrati also happens to be there, then we shall not turn our attention to Junayd Baghdadi or anyone else. We will go to Hazrat Hajj, my own Hazrati. Yes, Hazrati should turn his attention to them. Our concern is only with Hazrat. So if you are in a spiritual gathering and some of the great awliya-llāh appear to your kashf in that gathering, our attention should be on our shaykh. Our shaykh attention should be on them. In Qur an, Allah says, And who believe in what has been sent down to you, O Mohammed, and that which was sent down before you. From this verse, one can interpret that one should have faith in all the shaykhs as one has belief in their own shaykh, but that s not what it means. It means quite the opposite. Imam Ashraf Ali Thanbi said in his book, While honoring and accepting all the shuyukh, do not accept for practical adoption their talim. Adopting the talim of another shaykh while one s shaykh is living is detrimental. Objecting to one s shaykh s talim will deprive you of your own spiritual progress. Having said all this, look at the world we are living in, and look at what s happening all around us. That brings up very interesting questions and responsibilities. Like, 6

7 when someone comes to me, and it s happened recently with a few people where they say they want to study with me. Or they say to one of my murīds, How can I study with Shaykh Rashid, and also with so and so? The answer is you can t. You can sit. You can benefit from the baraka. A person can benefit from the dars, the knowledge. But you can t do other than that. What about your adab? The adab has to be the same. Because when you are sitting with the shaykh, you are sitting in the presence of Rasūlu-Llāh (sal). That s why I gave you that video. You will get the baraka of Shaykh Osman Sirajuddin s mawlid [of the Prophet]. Everybody should see that. How many of you have actually seen the video of that mawlid? You ought to see it. Some people take this to extremes. Taking it to extremes, they politicize this process, like you see in Egypt now. You get these distortions. Is there any question that people, in the name of the Muslim Brotherhood, have burned down 12 Coptic churches? This is totally antithetical to the Qur an and anything the Prophet (sal) said. No question! You have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to know that. And these are people who are hafez of Qur an, some of them. How could they possibly do it? They are misled by Shaytan. Who s the Shaytan? Shaytan has taken the form of their shaykh. Why? Because they don t have a real shaykh. Shaytan tells them that they are kafirs, so burn down their churches. Umar (ra) would not even pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for fear of that, fear that it would be turned into a masjid. You have to be deaf, dumb, and blind; or you have to have made a pact with the devil. Who could kill their own people with sarin gas? This crazy person Bashar Assad! You have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to not know this is against Islam or Hadith and Qur an. Don t you? I think Jelal, at 9 years of age, knows better than that. Probably knew better at 7. 7

8 You see how true this is? Could you ever hear me saying to you to go burn down a church or something, or go beat up a Jew or Christian? Could you say it? No. Why? First of all, you could never say it in your whole life, before you were a Sufi or after, which tells you something about your destiny. You ask, Isn t everybody like that? Obviously not. What about those two boys who shot that Australian athlete in Oklahoma? When asked why they did it, they said, Well, we just wanted to kill someone and see what it felt like. Who made a deal with the devil? Were they poor black kids not given any opportunity in life? Forget about the color. It has nothing to do with color. It has to do with the corrupt society we live in. And one of them was white or Hispanic. These arguments are so fallacious and so racist. If we understand, even though we don t make tasawwur of the shaykh, we still go through a period of time when we have to concentrate on the shaykh to the extent that you experience the presence of the shaykh at all times. I know that I can access Hazrat any time I want, and I do it many times a day. I don t say, Oh, Hazrat! Hello! Knock, knock. Are you there? He s present inside me. And we don t practice tasawwur of the shaykh. It s not an instruction you get in the Mujaddidi line, although it can be done in the Qadriyya and Shadhiliyya lines. Tawajjuh we do. It is a similar concept to tasawwur of the shaykh. In tawajjuh, the shaykh transfers his knowledge to the murīd, by just concentrating upon the murīd, specifically, the latā if of the murīd. In tasawwur of the shaykh, the murīd receives knowledge from the shaykh by performing concentration on the shaykh all the time. When we make the transmission, we are making tasawwur in that moment. Then you don t have to concentrate anymore, the knowledge is transferred. It s like access to the knowledge is transferred, where you get the book, but it s up to you to read it. Or like when you are given an assignment in school, but it s up to you to understand it. That s what s happening in the transmission. Tasawwur or concentration techniques and 8

9 methods are commonly found in other religions, Buddhism and Hinduism, too. But the other way, tawajjuh, is not found easily. I read a story that once Hazrat Ahmed Ngohi was in a state of matlub, and the issue was tasawwur of the shaykh, and he said, Should I say? He was asked to speak, and he said, Should I say? He was asked again to speak, and for the third time he said, Should I say? And he was asked to speak, and he finally speaks. He said, For three complete years, Hazrat Malki s face remained in my heart, and I did not do anything without asking him first. Then he said, Should I say it? And he was asked to speak. He said, For some years, Hazrat Mohammed (sal) remained in my heart, and I did not do anything without asking him first. Saying that, he got further excited and said, Should I say it (meaning the next thing)? And he was asked to speak, but he remained silent. When people insisted that he speak further, he declined. So you can only imagine what he wanted to say next. Do you see? This is the result of tawwajuh / mutawwajuh. When people ask, What are you doing when you give a transmission, this is what we are doing. Certainly there have been reports of many of the awliya-llāh seeing Rasūlu-Llāh (sal). Shaykh Suyuti would hear someone in narration and know whether it was an authentic hadith or not. Someone else asked, How do you know? He said, After listening to the hadith, I look toward the Prophet s face. If he is happy, I understand it to be a hadith. If his face is not happy, then I know it is not. What does that presuppose? Even the sahabah who were with Rasūlu-Llāh (sal) didn t necessarily have those experiences. They had to be happy with the knowledge they received from him during his lifetime. Hazrat Umar (ra) was one of the closest companions to Rasūlu-Llāh (sal) to the extent that Ali (ra) would often hear the Prophet (sal) say, I, Abu Bakr, and 9

10 Umar went somewhere. I, Abu Bakr, and Umar entered somewhere. I, Abu Bakr, and Umar went out. However Umar s (ra) contact with Rasūlu-Llāh (sal) ended with his death. And Umar always regretted that he could not ask the Messenger about certain issues, like riba and things. Once he said in one of his khutbahs, while on the minbar, I wish Allah s Messenger had not left us before he had given us definite words concerning three matters: how much a grandfather may inherit, the inheritance of al kalala, the deceased person among whose heirs are no father and no son, and various types of riba. It s not the topic that is important. He was saying, even the sahaba didn t have some of the experiences that the awliya-llāh had after Rasūlu-Llāh s (sal) death. And perhaps it s simply because they were with him during his life and nothing could compare to that. Rasūlu-Llāh (sal) was asked, Who is the most beloved to you? And he said, Aisha! After the death of the Messenger, there was no transmission or guidance from him to Aisha. In the case, Ibn Abul Hasan narrated that when Aisha reached the place of Hawad and heard the barking dogs, she said, I think I should return back. Indeed, the Messenger of Allah (sal) had said, Who is it among you upon whom the dogs of Al Hawab will bark? So Zubar (ra) said, Will you return back? It is close that Allah may cause agreement between the people because of you. Yet, she remembered the hadith. These are the things that led up to that battle between her and Sidna Ali (ra). She always regretted that she had not returned. This is how the Companions referred to the sayings of Allah s Messenger for guidance after his death. They knew that in the barzakh, the Prophet Mohammed (sal) could not be communicated with, nor 10

11 could he be sought for guidance. So they had to depend on signs from before. On the other hand, I read to you about communication after death. We feel that communication is possible when one attains a certain state through suluk. This is just a general statement of mine, not to be taken as authentic. But it seems reasonable to say that because they were so close to him in his life, nothing could compare with that transmission that came to him directly. The idea of being in contact directly after death was very difficult. But as time goes on, the only way of contact is through suluk. They were not really on suluk; they were already trained. That s it. Any questions? QUESTION. Arifa: Did you say that Shaytan could appear in the form of a pir but not your own shaykh? In the form of a person who appears to be a pir? Shaykh: Yes, right. You mean a legitimate shaykh, no. There are people who pretend to be doctors, or pilots. Somebody came to the Prophet to assassinate him, who appeared to be a friend. Sidna Umar (ra) was suspect of him, because he had a sword. The Prophet (sal) knew that he had come to try to assassinate him. He said, Come close! and brought him close to him. He told him what he was about to do. The man became a Muslim. And remember when the Prophet (sal) was asked, Did you not have shaytans? And he said what? (Yes, I have shaytans; I made mine Muslims.) Things can change. I wouldn t go out looking for Shaytan, however, trying to make him a Muslim. That s why we say, if you don t touch each other in prayer, Shaytan is standing between you. Asalaam aleikum. 11