Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid August 29, Wednesday Suhbat

Transcription

1 Commentary on Tafsir of the Poem What is Tasawwuf? Verses 11-12: Finding the Divine; Tasawwuf and Shar īah Interwoven and the Repeated Verse And Nothing More Dinner blessing: Ya Allah, what a challenge You have given us this week light and love, loss and grief and happiness and sadness. And we ask You, Allah, to bless us with more opportunities to remember You. And we are grateful Allah, even though heartbroken, for what You have given us. These are times when we need to focus and remember, though life goes on and we cannot stop. We must not just dive totally into our day to day life. We must remember who we are, and why we are, and where we are, and what we are; and take time, and postpone certain things and add extra spiritual thing to our life, now. We had such a great example before us, and we ask for Your blessings upon our dear, departed Iman, upon Naren, and upon all of us who love her so much, who continue to use her example before us. Safety for those who are traveling, health for those who are ill, these are our continuous requests of You. Amin. Suhbat: I think we are at the point in the poem, I heard the ecstasy of the wearers of wool comes from the finding of the taste of religion, and nothing more. 1

2 This word wajd means finding, but the Sufis have always talked about it as waqt, in terms of seizing a moment of finding. Finding what? A moment where things are clear, where they are unveiled, where there is nothing else to see no distractions. Because you are in this moment, which they call ecstasy, there is this unveiling that takes place. That s how you get to the idea of finding something - wajd. What do you find? You find some element of the Reality of Allah Swt. How do you know what it is? Alhamduli-Llāh, since she is still with us, we will use Iman (alahai ramo) as the example. She had all the reasons to be distracted her body was sick and dying but she was articulating and thinking about love. Is love not an aspect of Allah Swt? She transcended the pain of the body, at least we saw that moment after moment. She was in this moment, this ecstasy of wajd, and she found love. She said to my girls, I love you. I love you. So in moments, whatever the distraction is, even the pain of dying, you might be blessed. You might be blessed with this moment of some attribute of Allah. Wajd is defined as the hearts perceiving the sweetness of contact with the light of eternality before time, the purity of witnessing, and the delight of the Divine address. Wajd is often portrayed as the intermediary stage of a three-stage-process consisting of tawajjud, wajd, and wujūd. Kushari talks about tawajjud as intentionally seeking to have wajd. We might say it is paying attention with the intention of finding the Divine. A person who is in this state doesn t actually possess true wajd. Kushari says, Wajd is that which encounters your heart, entering it, and coming over you without will or effort on your part. We know that a person goes into ecstasy and it comes upon them. Al Nuri said, 2

3 For twenty years I ve gone between wajd (ecstatic finding), and faq (loss). Namely, when I find my Lord, I lose my heart; and when I find my heart, I lose my Lord. Kushari defined the third stage, wujūd, as being that which occurs after one progresses beyond wajd, after you find the state of ecstasy that comes upon you without you seeking it, after the ending of human qualities, because human qualities cannot sustain in the presence, or the manifestation of the Sultan of Haqiqah. Kushari s shaykh and father-inlaw, Abu Ali Daqaq (ra), said, Tawajjud necessitates the rebuking of the servant. Wajd necessitates the drowning of the servant, and wujūd necessitates the annihilation of the servant. As we move from paying attention to wajd and then to wujūd, one sees a progression of dissolution of one s ego and one s surrendering oneself and one s total identity to Allah Swt. Wearers of wool. Suf pushon. The literal meaning of the word Sufi, if you take the Persian meaning of suf push (wearer of wool), that s where you get the idea that the Sufi is one who wears wool. But it s generally agreed upon that the first Sufis were more ascetic Muslims, because they wore the coarse wool clothes (not refined clothing), just like the hair shirts the Christian monks wore. Some Sufi scholars made that analogy between the Christian monks and the Sufis. Really, what these early Sufis were doing was following the example of Rasūlu-Llāh (sal) who was known to wear woolen garments, but was also a person of great piety and distance from the world. There are a number of reports about the virtues of wearing wool. In one report, the Prophet (sal) said, You should wear clothes of wool. In so doing, you will find the sweetness of faith in your hearts. It was more than just copying the Prophet (sal). It was the idea that the Sufi was someone who chose to follow the Sunnah of Rasūlu-Llāh (sal). It was someone who saw the example of the Prophet (sal) and wanted to follow it. 3

4 The wearing of wool is also symbolic of that. I hear the ecstasy of the wearers of wool comes from finding the taste of religion. Dhawq is taste. It is normal to say, even in English, Is this to your taste? meaning your preference. Another way of saying that is, for instance, your family has a proclivity towards turquoise. Someone s taste in clothing means their tendency is in that direction. Dhawq is not just tasting, like with the mouth or drinking, or being quenched. It means a kind of tajalli / irradiation or theophany takes place where there is again this unveiling, and the waradat: the force of the understanding that rushes in when this space is created. It is what comprises the Sufi s experience, and the Sufi has the taste or proclivity for that experience. That is what is fulfilling to the Sufi: to create the space, and have the Divine tajalliyat-e-bāri ta la (the Divine irradiation, lucent manifestation) rush into the heart. In sema, if you make yourself open, there are moments when this incursion comes, and you get a taste for that. So you come back to the sema, because you like the taste for that. But the taste is not enough; the Sufi then wants to drink of it and then to be quenched in it: to move from the dhawq, to the shurb, to the ri iy. The person who is characterized by the tasting seeks that kind of mutasakir, that kind of intoxication. The person who is characterized by the drinking is a person who is already intoxicated. The one who is characterized by being fulfilled, or their thirst being quenched, is sober. You go through the state of wanting to being inebriated, to being inebriated, to being sober. Not from sober to inebriation, Sufically. You come to this state where you develop, not a taste for the moment to moment ecstasy, and not for the drunkenness that you find in the poetry, but for the sobriety that comes Tasawwuf. In this sense, the word taste in this poem What is Tasawwuf seems to have both a specific and more general meaning. The general meaning is conveyed by the expression taste for religion, or the taste for Sufism, the taste for Islam, the taste for piety. But for the Sufis, it s more. It is not just a taste, but an appreciation of the path. The more you appreciate the path you are on, the more deep your ecstasy will be. The more 4

5 specific meaning, which Kushari speaks about, is to the poet s linking together these two states of taste and ecstasy. The poet says that ecstasy is derived from taste, implying that to the Sufi, ecstasy only comes about after a very firm foundation or commitment to following some path, mainly Islam. The poem goes on to say, The ecstasy of the wearers of wool comes from finding the taste for religion. Tasawwuf is nothing but Shar īah, and nothing more. If you don t have the taste for Islam, for Sufism, how are you going to find the ecstasy that comes with it? How are you going to find those moments? It s not that you have the taste for form. I m not trying to give you an excuse, because form is a means of understanding the dīn. You have to have form. It s not that you have the taste for the externals of the religion, but for the knowledge the religion/dīn brings. In this case, we see that Tasawwuf is nothing but Shar īah, in that sense, the Dīn of Islam. The problem comes in the final couplet: Tasawwuf is nothing but Shar īah. It is just this clear road and nothing more. That is equating Tasawwuf and Shar īah. What this anonymous poet draws our attention to and then resolves is this apparent tension between Tasawwuf and Shar īah. Islamists say it; the goofy Soofis say it. There has always been this idea of a difference between Tasawwuf and Shar īah, but it only exists to the degree that one defines these terms as being mutually exclusive, and they are not. Quite the contrary, they are inclusive. Because the extremists want to exclude one from the other, doesn t mean it s true. What is Tasawwuf? Tasawwuf and Shar īah are interwoven. He says, Tasawwuf is nothing but Shar īah. It is just this clear road and nothing more. Kushari defines Shar īah as assiduous observance of servanthood. It s an interesting definition. Abul Hasan ash-shadhuli (ra) said, Tasawwuf is training the nafs / self through servanthood, and subjecting it to the commands of Lordship. We know Tasawwuf is the training or raising of the self / nafs. But how? Through servanthood. 5

6 And how? By subjecting it to the commands of Allah Swt. And again, Abu Yazid al Bistami, another one of our shaykhs, says, Observing of Shar īah is a touchstone for a judging a person s spiritual degree. Were you to see a man who performs miracles such as he ascends into the air, do not be deceived by him. Instead, observe how well he is following the Divine commands, abstaining from what is prohibited, keeping within the limits set by Allah, and observing Shar īah. Abu Hussein al-waraq said, The futility of trying to reach Allah without conforming one s acts to the Shar īah and Sunnah a servant will only reach Allah through Allah, and by being in harmony with his loved one, the Prophet (sal) through his laws / Shar īah. Whoever believes he can follow the path without imitating the Prophet (sal) will become lost on account of imagining that he s being guided. Except for a small number of Sufis in the history of humanity and Islam, it has always been said that observing the Shar īah is crucial. It is a necessary component of spiritual practice. People get lost in that, you know. They become obsessive either about form or they get the idea, I can be a Sufi; but I don t like religion. Don t forget that assiduous observance of servanthood, and Tasawwuf is training the self by subjecting it to the commands of Lordship. One way of understanding this interrelationship of Tasawwuf and Shar īah was expressed by a Sufi of the Kubrawiyya Order, Najim al Razi. He used the term tariqah to denote Tasawwuf. The Shar īah has an outer / dhahiri, and an inner / batini aspect. Its outer aspect consists of bodily deeds. The inner aspect consists of deeds of the heart, qalbi; of the inner mystery, siri; and of the spirit, ruhi. And it is called tariqah. 6

7 The outer aspect is the bodily aspect, but the inner aspect is qalb, rūh, sirr, and the other latā if. Razi is saying that tariqah is not separate from the Shar īah, but is the inner dimension of it. You couldn t say, my body, unless you had this life force in you that was making your body work. But the only thing we can see is the body. We can t see the life force. We can see the result of the life force; we can see the motility it gives, the thinking it gives, and the benefits of the life force. But we know very intimately, and recently, what happens when you just see the shell. It has to be clear that Shar īah s outer aspect is one thing, but the inner aspect is the deeds of the heart, the inner mystery and spirit of tariqah. Razi is also saying what we say, you can t separate the Tasawwuf from Shar īah, but rather understand that, in spite of extremist points of view, we can bridge this apparent dichotomy in the inner and outer in the way we serve, life, obey, and surrender in our outer life; and stop trying to control things or assume things. This poem provides a lot of answers, as you can see, about Tasawwuf. It talks about a lot of the key aspects of Tasawwuf. There are other things we can discuss in this: we can talk about iman / faith, and tawhid/unity, akhlaq / good character, and ihsan/awareness of Allah, and eshq/love, mahabbat/ affection. We can talk about many things, but this understanding of what it means to taste and have this munasabat with the shaykh and Allah Swt is the most important thing, he said. I guess that s it. I don t have anything more, and nothing less to say on this subject. Question: Could you comment on the repeated refrain that says, And nothing more? Shaykh: It starts with What is Tasawwuf? Then he says, That s all Tasawwuf is, and nothing more. He continues to ask, What is Tasawwuf? Then it switches and moves to, Tasawwuf is. Did you notice that in the poem? There are five: What is Tasawwufs, and then Tasawwuf is. Then he makes the statement about the ecstasy of the wearers of wool, and the returns to Tasawwuf is nothing but Shar īah. It is just this 7

8 clear road, and nothing more. There are 11 couplets here. Each one implies that Tasawwuf is nothing more than what is in that couplet. (Reads the poem). In English, when you describe someone, you may say, With that person you get what you see, and that s it. But there s a lot to the person. Obviously, there are many dimensions to Tasawwuf, but each one is complete. If you understood that Tasawwuf is a cure for vengeance and hatred, you would understand the whole ocean. If you understand that it is concentrating your mind, you would understand Tasawwuf totally and Islam totally. If you understood that it was contemplating the Divine throne and seeing off the horizon, a faq, you would know totally what Tasawwuf is. If you keep your distance from your fantasies and your suppositions, and you had certainty, that s all it is. Each person has a path to the Divine. Each path would be recognizeable by different people, but different people travel the path in different ways. If you can t remember this is what Tasawwuf is, that it s not a job you do so you can come home and meditate and practice your Tasawwuf everything reminds you. There are things that are transitioning and passing, like the cells in your body every seven years. Do you miss any of them? Oh, where s that little liver cell that I love so much. Where s Kenny the kidney cell? Where s Barbara the breast cell? You don t miss any of it, right? In just that way, there is this transformation taking place. We can be out of the world, in the dhahir, or we can be in the batin. Every teacher has told the same thing; don t take my word for it. Unless it has very clear, loving, Divine, humane, intentional purpose, if it doesn t have these qualities, forget about it. It s useless, meaningless. I don t care how interested you are in something, or how happy it makes you to do it crossword puzzles. I don t care. If you think that the veil will be lifted by some superficial activity, just because you like it, doesn t give it its purpose or value. But if it is linked to one of these qualities that are talked about here, then it has value. It is the smooth and illuminated path. It s the way to Paradise. It s the path of iman / faith and the affirmation of tawhid. That is the uncorruptible religion, not Islam. It means religion 8

9 practiced in that way, perception in that way nothing more. You don t need anything more; there is nothing more. Each one of these is complete in and of itself. That s what it means. Asalaamu aleikum. 9