Choosing the Spiritual Life: A Journey of Acquiring Light/Ihsan Sufism: A System Affirmed by Those Who Came Before

Transcription

1 Choosing the Spiritual Life: A Journey of Acquiring Light/Ihsan Sufism: A System Affirmed by Those Who Came Before Bismi-Llāhi-r-Rahmāni-r-Rahīm. My dears, perhaps what we have to understand about this brief life we have is, we can speak in many different metaphors. I was speaking on something my friend, Yannis (Shaykh Yaseen), had written. There is this blog that keeps going, based on his book. I find it very difficult to engage with it, because there are all these intellectuals with their theories about spirituality, engaging in linguistics. I read some of it but it s difficult to engage with them. It takes me back maybe 40 years ago when I was a young man, and there were these arrogant people (not all those people on the blog are arrogant) who thought they knew everything, and so they were just intimidating to be around. It s not that I feel intimidated by these blog people, but I feel sort of nauseous at their arrogant attitude toward understanding. Life is difficult, but they come up with statements like, I had a discussion and finally figured out that the core of Islam is obedience. Well, okay. It s also compassion and mercy, and love, and patience, and, and, and. Why this reductionist kind of thinking? Why do people have to make everything easy in the intellectual realm, and not understand that when Allah (swt) says, With hardship goeth ease, He means you can t understand ease without hardship? [Without it,] you cannot understand the prayer of Junayd who prayed to Allah to remove some kind of difficulty. The inner response in the heart from Allah was, I created the difficulty so you can learn patience. If I remove it from you, then how will you learn patience? But understand that I am merciful. This whole concept of making things easy and reducing everything to ease is really problematic for the seeker. Of course, none of us like difficulty or these kinds of challenges that are painful. Why should we? If we liked them, then we wouldn t learn 1

2 anything. I know that seems to be circular thinking. I don t mind people who say, Islam is about submission, or compassion, or such and such. I mind these people saying it, because they are not practitioners, most of them. They are intellectuals. At least, that s the vibration. But to me, one of the aspects of a spiritually based life and I ask you to please listen to or watch the Where? talk is that for all Muslims, whether they know it or not (and really it s all believers) they are on a journey of acquiring light, however you define that light: the light of compassion, or mercy, or love, the light of faith. It is an inner feeling of what we know in Tasawwuf as ihsan, one of those words you can t really define. Some would say ihsan is the core of Sufism. We quote the Hadith Jibreel. But the requirement of ihsan is obviously the requirement of attentiveness, remembrance, or watchfulness. The sahabah realized this state through their love for and compassion toward Rasulallah (sal). I talked on the Mawlid about how do you love someone you have not met personally. They acquired it through their uns / intimacy with him, and through the dedication of their lives (or their selves) to a life of his advice, guidance and direction, to the virtues of that life, and to making personal decisions that might in some cases be sacrifices for them, the sahabah. After the Prophet (sal), people gained by sitting at the feet of the sahabah, individually and collectively, those who succeeded him and who represented him in the line as we know it, as long as they remained in that special state of ihsan. People gained by being with the sahabah, and with the taba ain, and with the taba-taba ain. And, as I ve told you before, that s our line. That s our cultural and spiritual Islamic line. When these companions were gone, the moral and ethical and spiritual entropy began to happen. It manifest in the life of the Muslim society in Medina and in Mecca. Over time, a stage came about when the people of the ummah, who still kept in their hearts the reality of that ihsan, who had the elevated positions as mujahideen in the fiqh, became active. Seeing that the inspiration of the Prophet (sal) and the Companions wasn t available anymore, 2

3 they saw that a steady movement toward degradation was coming about from the ideal of the righteous community. Corruption began to enter in, and certain ones of them evolved ways of keeping the faith alive in the tradition of Rasūlullāh (sal). The Companions weren t available anymore, nor the Prophet (sal). The generations that followed felt less and less people understood what the awareness of this ihsan was. They used methods that were quite automatic at the time of Rasūlullāh (sal) and the sahabah: the constant or often remembrance of Allah, dhikr and muraqabah, and certain kinds of control and discipline of desires. It became evident and I think clearly proven, because we exist today 1433 years later. We may be the poorest examples, but it s still alive. This was a very effective and efficacious way of keeping the teaching alive, consciously and intentionally. The bulk of the ummah has over time consistently put its trust in these methods and in the integrity of the people who worked them out. Because of the people who kept Islam alive, you could have the deviants come about. You have deviation from goodness, kindness, tolerance, love or compassion just like, as I said earlier, without sin, you can t have repentance. Even those people play a role, if the people who aren t those people are not lazy in modern parlance it is: Get out to vote if they make themselves known. Just like we see in the political sphere today, 48% of registered voters don t vote or whatever it is. That means other people are making decisions for them, and defining their lives for them. The same thing happens in Islam. Unless there are a group of people who really understand and practice, the degradation will continue and other people will be defining Islam. That s what is happening, unfortunately. The bulk of the ummah have constantly and consistently put its trust on these methods and on the integrity of the spiritual guides, mostly, who worked these methods out and gave them to us. They have received a certain blessing in time because of it meaning, in waqt. 3

4 There has been a certain kind of a blessing where a human being becomes independent of the past and the future, meaning the influence of Allah (swt) descends upon them, into their soul, and makes their heart collected. In that moment, those moments, you have no consciousness of the past, the future, or the now. In those moments, you are so much in the eternal now that you become a possessor of time. Time doesn t possess you any more. We say our knowledge cannot apprehend the future or the past, and we are happy with Allah in the present moment (an dar waqt). If we occupy ourselves with tomorrow or we let any thought of it enter into our minds, then the veil comes. Those hujub / veils are a distraction. Abu Sayed Kharaz said, Don t occupy precious time except with the most precious of things. The most precious of human things is the state of being occupied between the past and the future (meaning now). And Rasūlullāh (sal) said, I have a time (waqt) with Allah in which none of the cherubim nor any prophet rivals me, in which the 18,000 worlds do not occur to my mind, and have no worth in my eyes. So on the day of the Isra Miraj, when the kingdom of earth and the heavens were arrayed before Rasūlullāh (sal), he didn t look at anything. Because as Mustafa, he was Aziz. He was noble. The noble are not engaged in anything except that which is noble. He was totally engaged in waqt / time, in the moment. In that sense, he was engaged only in one thing: Tawhid, the One. He was in the state of loss and gain; he was in union and not in separation. What does it mean when a human being s power cord is cut, and they can t choose anything? Whatever he does or experiences is only the result of the moment: nothing of the past, and nothing of the future. Think about today in your life. How much of today, if you were to analyze it, had to do with something that was going to happen in 4

5 the future or something that you were dealing with in the past? How much? A lot. How much today were you just in the moment? Not much. Junayd said, I saw a dervish in the desert sitting under mimosa tree in a very hard, rough and uncomfortable spot. I asked him, What made you sit here so still? He said, I had waqt, a moment, and I lost it. Now I am sitting here mourning. I inquired how long he had been there, and he said it had been 12 years. Will not the Shaykh, he said to me, offer up a prayer on my behalf that I might find my time again? I left him and performed the pilgrimage, and I prayed for him. My prayer was granted. On my return, I found him sitting in the same place. Why, I said, do you not go from here since you have obtained your wish? He replied, O Shaykh, I settled myself in this place of desolation where I lost my capitol. Is it right that I should leave the place where I found my capitol once more, and where I enjoy the society of Allah? Let the Shaykh go in peace, for I will mix my dust with the dust of this spot, that I may rise on the Day of Resurrection from this dust, which is the abode of my delight. No human being can get that waqt / moment of time by exerting just choice. It is a thing that doesn t come within the scope of our acquisition. It should be gained by our effort, but it is not something you can get in the market place. Anyone should give his life in exchange for it, for the will has no power to either attract or repel it. Our shuyukh have said, Time is a cutting sword because of its characteristic (of cutting). Time cuts at the root of the future and the past. It obliterates yesterday, and can cut away tomorrow from the heart in that moment. This sword is a dangerous companion. The enemy is all that happens not in that moment; yet, all that happens in that moment may bring you to the moment. Even if you carry, he says, the sword on your shoulder for a thousand years, in the moment of cutting, it doesn t discriminate between the master s neck and the neck of another. The characteristic of the sword is to be violent, and violence will not depart from it even at the wish of the master. 5

6 The state that descends upon us, the waqt, has need of that hal / gift. The waqt is made beautiful by the gift of Allah (swt). When we come in possession of that hal, we are very, very grateful. I will go on and speak later more about waqt, but let me get back to where I was. How do you fill the moment? We do have the choice in life to fill some moments with excessive remembrance of Allah, with muraqabah, with meditation, with fikr. As I ve said often, if you create your outer life around your spiritual life, you are going to be much happier, much more fulfilled human being than if you try to shove your spiritual life and practices in your day to day life. Your day to day life is always going to distract you and always have these surprises. It is going to be filled with excuses. Excuses for what? Excuses for finding out that you are not where you thought you were. You are not yet who you thought you were, and it s an open secret. Anybody who can see, sees it. You have to become humble, because you know: Beware of the person who sees with the eye of firasa. The shuyukh will always see, and you won t like it when they tell you what they see. Why don t you do this or that? You could have done this or that. You could have been here or there. Why didn t you? The reason is because you were not organizing your day to day life around your spiritual life. It doesn t mean you are not going to do exactly the same thing; it s what it is organized around. What happens when this degradation keeps happening, because degradation outside of that moment keeps happening? From the time of Rasūlullāh (sal) leaving this world, it starts, and it is happening. Wheresoever you look is not only the Face of Allah (swt). Allah s Face also reflects what is not good. Just like the teacher says, I m sorry, but you didn t do well on the exam. Or the Shaykh says, I m sorry, but this is what is really happening and you don t see it. Or the mother says to the child, You don t believe me, but believe me. This is what I m telling you. For over 1400 years, the finest elements in the community, from the point of view of iman, have affirmed that the system used among most sincere and real and qualified Sufis 6

7 for spiritual growth and for the creation of awareness of the Divine Presence is fundamentally efficacious and correct in its process, and consistent. It s very difficult to deny that hundreds and thousands of men and women have derived incredible benefit as the result of their spiritual association with Sufism, with great saints. I think I ve mentioned to you recently to think of these people. Who were they? Bayazid Bistami, Shafiq and Junayd, Abu Bakr Shibli and Shaykh Abd al-qādir Jīlānī (ra) (may peace be on him), Suh rawardi and Shaykh Rafa i, Shāh Bahā uddīn Naqshband (ra) and Shaykh Ahmad Farūqī Sirhindī (ra), Adam Banūri (ra). Go through the list. Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, Nizammudin Auhlia, Baqi Billāh, Shāh Waliyullah; then people like Shaykh Osman Sirajuddīn Naqshband, Suleyman Lorus Dede (may Allah bless all of them). There are countless people like them who love Allah, who were adorned with the beautiful jeweled necklace of ihsan, and who have functioned as our guides and our leaders. Anyone who has had even the briefest acquaintance with some of these people has taken their light into themselves. They will agree, as you know from reading the texts or from my experiences that I have related to you, that whatever they have attained had come to them strictly because of those channels. That s just the truth. The truth is not the truth just because I say, It s the truth in a very rhetorically correct and convincing way. It s the truth because of the way they lived and how the teachings followed them, and how this is the only place and the only way Islam is really alive in the world today. I m sorry, but that s what I believe. It is alive in the sense of whatever can be left alive of the DNA of Rasūlullāh (sal). Maybe we are all dead, and what s left is a little DNA that is still alive. But that s where it is found. It s not found in the petrified forest or in huge clots in Mecca. It s found in the hearts of the people making tawaf in Mecca, especially the ones who have been doing it for thousands of years. It s very, very difficult, if you take any time at all, and if you are really sincere and you really understand the story. It s very hard to doubt the efficacy of a system that produced such beautiful people of faith and conviction who really are the 7

8 eternal spring of Islam. Every day they blossom. Spring isn t a season. Of course, there has been error. Of course, there have been wrong actions among the ummah during this period of time, and even some in the field of Tasawwuf, just like in any other field. But, just as the process of being cautious in order to be correct has kept a steady course, even for the ulema, so too [you and I must have] caution and sincerity, taking the time, and being courageous enough to use the blessings that Allah (swt) has given you and me to make the spiritual decisions that have to be made. We trust that they will be the right decisions, against the odds of all the strange things that go on within the world of Islam, and even Sufism. Trusting in that, you can understand that deep learning, deep penetrating basīra /insight comes time after time, and time to time, from Allah (swt) to straighten out the deviation, to put this ship back on course, to remove the impurities that naturally come just from time and life. But it doesn t ever reject the whole structure. It doesn t ever tear down that structure. It doesn t ever reject the belief, because of the practices that allows the course to be re-calculated and re-adjusted. The path by which this is reached we call suluk or tariqah. It is really an accepted fact that, if you undertake that journey (as you all have), you have to place yourself in the hands of a guide who can show the way. You can self-medicate (as many people do), and you can give other people advice on how to take care of their physical ailments (because this pill helped you or that pill helped you). The truth is if you want to have the proper spiritual treatment, you have to go to the spiritual physician; otherwise, you are just self-medicating. You have to go to people who have attained the goal by traveling that way themselves, going through the challenges and following directions faithfully. The first question a sojourner or wayfarer should ask themselves is whether or not they are really serious in their spiritual yearning. Then you have to find someone who is suited to your disposition and you are suited to theirs, and commit yourself to that path and that individual and that guidance. That s called irāda. 8

9 There are plenty of people who have tread the path who are not destined to be murshids or shaykhs. Within that specialty, a person has to have that sort of calling. Abu Bakr and I were talking about the gemstones a while back. It s very hard for even an expert to distinguish between a real and fake one. It has become such a science, unless you see it sitting in the matrix, you might not be able to tell the difference. That has happened with teachers, also. We cannot say that all teachers who are not true teachers are intentional imposters, either. They are just victims of their own egos just like anybody else is, and theirs is telling them they are a teacher. Sometimes it s difficult to distinguish between what is true and what is false, so ways were set up for that, one of which is called ijāzah. If you follow the trail, and you look at the history of the people, you can see that ijāzah was given down the line. You see what these people did and who they were. Just the fact we can say their names after a thousand or seven hundred years later means something. Most of us can t go back more than 2-3 generations in our family line. If we can, they are just names and we don t know anything about them. What does it mean if your name lasts for 500 or 600 years? That s who you are associated with, very legitimate people (up until me). They are people who really understood shar īah, tariqah, marifah, and haqiqah. Shah Waliyullah (ra), Ahmad Farūqī Sirhindī (ra), Shāh Bahā uddīn Naqshband (ra), Abd al-qādir Jīlānī (ra), Mohammed Sayid Arif (ra), Adam Banūrī (ra), Nizammudīn Auwlia (ra), Abul Hasan as-shadhili (ra), Ibn At ala Iskandari (ra), etc. etc. etc. That s your family. For some of you, as I know your personal stories, some of these people who have been dead for 500 years are closer to you than your families, unfortunately. I say unfortunately because it s a shame when that happens. Who do you look up to spiritually that will give you the tools for you to discover waqt? When you are no more, and nothing is, and there is only Allah (swt) and you are aware of that. There are some tests, besides piety and strict observance of the Shar īah. One of the tests is that in their company, you are reminded of Allah. In their company, a person who can see, sees 9

10 things other people don t see. Today at the party for Grandma s birthday, Arifa asked Grandma to speak. She spoke as if you were sitting with the sahabah so sweet, so kind. She was so happy that people had asked her to speak. Do you remember what she said? Arifa: I asked her to tell a story from her childhood. She said she would speak about herself as a young adult, because the years of growing from childhood into teenage years were when she was still formulating who she was. She spoke about being married at a very young age, and of the role of the matchmaker having wisdom in the community about who was who, and who would be a good match. She talked of how we have lost that, and now the Internet is used for meeting people, but doesn t provide any wisdom. She realized as a young woman that truth and justice were very important to her, and that it was extremely important for her to tell the truth even if it was to her own detriment. Also, one could choose to think positive thoughts and pursue the positive direction in life, or to look at and choose the negative. She chose to live life with a positive perspective. She also spoke about realizing that she wanted to choose to be a good person. She talked about coming to the US and how she didn t like it at all; she didn t understand it. Now she has adjusted. She spoke about some of the good qualities of American people. The prime one was the openness and sincerity, being open and plain about what they are thinking and doing. You, Sayyid, pointed out that it was only some Americans, and she laughed. Then she began to speak about us in the community and what a special place it was; it was like Paradise and we should be grateful to the Shaykh for his tremendous effort on himself and to refine us, and how this is something he is constantly engaged in all day, every day. And he never rests. He comes home and it s always on his mind. She spoke about we should be grateful to Allah and grateful to him for what we have received. SHAYKH: At dinner last night I asked her, had she always been as pious as she is now. She also said this afternoon that she sleeps for an hour or so and then gets up. I m up, so I 10

11 see this every night, 2:30 3:00 am, the light goes on. I say, Grandma, you are always praying Fajr too early. No, she s doing recitations. First thing is she prays for her parents. She makes long du ā. Then she goes to bed again and gets up for Fajr, and prays and then rests a little. She makes a breakfast, a piece of toast with a little piece of cheese. Then you see in the morning half a piece of toast with half a piece of cheese sitting there on the counter every morning. Then she goes on her walk in the dark, and then she comes back and rests for another hour or two. [After the first ½ of the night,] she never sleeps for more than a few hours at a time. I m up, and I see it. We don t talk in the morning. If we come near each other, we say, Asalāmu aleikum, but we don t talk. She does her thing; I do mine. Why am I talking about this? She has structured her life around her spirituality. I asked her, Have you always been as pious as this? She said no. She grew into it. When she came to the US, she began this regimen. She was a wife and mother, had a husband and her family around her. The personal life is not important in that sense, but you grow into it. Early in life, she decided she would be honest and sincere. She said, before, sometimes she prayed, sometimes she missed her prayers. Sometimes she fasted, and sometimes she didn t fast. But as she grew older, she decided she was going to do these things. It s about time that some of you who grew old already made that decision! Because you still think you are young. The point is not to chastise anyone, but to be in the company of people who remind you of Allah (swt) and you are. You grow strong as the result of associating with them. And the qualities of these people are manifest in their adherence and in their disciples not all of them; some of them. If you seek after this ihsan in Tasawsuf, you have to provide yourself with a guide. If you can t do that on your own, then you have to take the advice of those who are expected to help you in the making of that choice. You, yourself, can t make that choice. If, after listening to their advice you find yourself drawn to someone, and this feeling increases when you come to know that person, and you are fighting with yourself because your ego 11

12 or your tradition or your family is telling you no (which certainly was my case), you have to turn toward that path and that individual with faith and confidence. You have to seek the guidance and carry out the instructions, and be loyal as if you were a patient and the only hope you have is in your physician. Even in today s world, that is not much hope. Even if you do that, and even if that person isn t exactly the best person, then you won t be disappointed because Allah will reward you for your faith and trust and your choice. With that reward, you get the tajalli bari ta ala and the feeling of ihsan, and that spiritual state is brought more and more to perfection, and faith in the unseen becomes clear. Your faith becomes stronger, and the phenomena around you becomes obvious. You become rid of all those spiritual doubts and misgivings, and you become settled in the truth. But the path of Tasawwuf is where I began and where I ll end, and we ll go on from here. It s a difficult path. If you tread it, you have to pay dearly for it. Because you are going to suffer, and you are going to have to make sacrifices, until the suffering is no longer seen as suffering, and the sacrifice is seen as an offering that you gladly make. Only a person who is devoted, who makes it the object of their life and their mission in their life to be honest, to be spiritually awake, to study, to understand the meaning of life, to be a good person in other words, that s how you forgo your desires. You don t fight them to death. You ll lose. You make a different decision, where those desires are converted, like the Prophet (sal) said: I turned my shaytans into Muslims. You are willing to give your life for the sake of Allah, not because you don t value your life. It s not because you value your life; it s because you value Allah. It doesn t mean you give your life like these crazy people blowing themselves up. It means you dedicate your life. That s why the travelers on this path have been few. We may be sitting in a group, thinking there are a lot of us, but there aren t. There are just a few of us. There are lesser grades of ihsan, of Sufism, where people are loyal to the fundamental articles of faith and worship in remembrance of Allah, and do all the things they are supposed to 12

13 do in the fard and sunnah. Alhamduli-Llāh, they save you a good place, and you probably wind up doing some very good deeds in your life. The ends of that you find among religious individuals. But there is something much more, and that s what you have signed up for. That s what you have contracted for, and now if you just do your part, you will see the benefits of that are tremendous, inshā a-llāh. Asalāmu aleikum. 13