Nifsu Shaban and Preparing for Ramadan as Sufis Turning away from World and Toward Gratitude Dinner blessing: Bismi-Llāhi-r-Rahmāni-r-Rahīm. O Allah, bless the hands that made the food. We ask You for Your continued blessings upon our community, our families. And give us the blessings for good work and ease in that work. We pray that all the young people who are coming will receive something good and take home something that will last them for goodness in their life. For those who are traveling, we pray that they have safety in their travel, in their going and their coming. For those who are ill among us, Your Shifat, Allah. The miracle of Your Love can transform all things. We ask You, Allah, for blessings upon our families. Give us strength during these times. Give us more good work to do and the means to do it. Amin. Suhbat: Bismi-Llāhi-r-Rahmāni-r-Rahīm. I remind you that according to the calendar, Nifsu Shaban is now when the moon is full. Some reminders about Nifsu Shaban, and then I ll speak about something else. Sayiddina Aisha reported that one night at mid-shaban she awoke during the night and found the Prophet (sal) wasn t with her. She said, I got up and searched for him in the darkness of the apartment. My hand made contact with his feet. He was prostrate in worship. Of his prayer, I remember these words: I prostrate before You. My form, my spirit, and my heart are in your safekeeping. I acknowledge Your favors, and unto You I confess my sin. I have wronged myself, so forgive me. Surely none forgive sins but You. I seek refuge with Your pardon from Your punishment, and with Your 1
mercy from Your vengeance, and with Your approval from Your displeasure. I seek refuge in You from You. I do not tell Your praises, but You are as You have extolled Yourself. She continued, He did not cease worship, now standing, now sitting, until morning came. And then his feet were put up and I massaged them, and I said, My father be your ransom and my mother too, surely Allah has forgiven your former and later sins. Surely Allah has dealt with you. Is it not so? And he (sal) replied, O Aisha, shall I not therefore be a grateful servant? Do you not know what happens during this night? She said, What happens? He said, This is when all the births are recorded for the year, and every death is registered. This is when provisions are allotted to mankind, and their deeds and actions are gathered up. O Messenger of Allah, said I. Will no one enter paradise except by Allah s mercy? No one will enter paradise except by Allah s mercy, he told me. Not even you? I asked. No, not even I, he said, unless Allah indulges me with His Rahmat. And then he rubbed his hand over his head and his face. As I wrote in the Nifsu Shaban text, this hadith tells us everything about what our attitude needs to be during this month of Shaban humility, and gratitude, and sincerity, and striving, qualities that inshā a-llāh we all aspire to have in abundance, along with compassion, and submission, love, and patience, and justice. The reflection of these attributes of Allah Swt [we find] as we recite the Names, and we hear them in the Asma al Husna. These are qualities we might all have, but we might not have to the degree and depth that we know we have the capacity to have. So we have to ask, Why do we have them? The answer is we are born with them; we are born with that goodness and fitrah. But we have to continually strive, because we are continually contaminated by the environment we are in, by circumstances, by tendencies we have. They all take up space, and crowd out our aqida and our akhlaq, our good character. 2
When we look around us, we see the gafla, the different distractions and the conditioning that has taken hold of our minds. If we take the time to look at ourselves, we will see the conditioning that has taken hold of us and our bodies and our hearts, and consumes our thoughts and influences our decisions. We know we have to counter act this. What s needed to counteract it is a process of continuous, periodic purification. We shower every day, and make our wudu. We brush our teeth. We don t want to get cavities in our mouths, because we can t afford to pay the dentist. It should not be a surprise to us that we have to reverse the process of contamination that we go through every day. Replace our questionable habits with better ones, with the opposite. The process is called at-tazkiyat, spiritual purification. To undertake at-tazkiyat, we have to engage in charity to ourself. At-tazkiyat is the core root out of which zakat comes. That s why I call it charity toward our self. When we purify ourselves, we are giving charity to our own self. We do that every day, through prayer, through muraqabah / meditation, through muhasabah, through reflecting, as we did tonight before the dhikr. There are specific times and specific means assigned by Allah Swt to practice. And they were practiced exemplary by the Prophet (sal), and by the shuyukh. They sustain us and support us with their love, and their maiyyat, their accompaniment with love (maiyyat al hubb). One of the times for the superior housecleaning, the spring cleaning (only in this case, a summer cleaning) is Nifsu Shaban. It is an opportunity for purification. It s only when we purify ourselves, and we take the time to refine ourselves that we make any progress on this path, step by step. It s our means to a higher station / maqam. We need to approach the night of Nifsu Shaban and the entire month with this attitude of purification and submission, and effort and restrain; with namaz, 3
with perseverance, and patience, and dhikru-llāh. Abdun Nasr relates that the Messenger of Allah once said to Aisha: O Aisha, what night is this? And she replied, Allah and His Messenger know best. Then he said, The night of the middle of Shaban, during which worldly actions and the deeds of mankind are carried aloft. So will you excuse me tonight? And she said, Yes, and related that he performed his prayers as I told you, held each position only briefly, and stayed for a long time in prostration/sajdah. These are all wonderful stories, and indications to us. We should read the whole text; its in book form. Take time tonight. Make muhasabat. Sit in muraqabah. Breathe. Take some moments. Remember the story of Aisha. It s not the literalness of the story; it s the character of the personality, the light of Rasūlu-Llāh that lightens our hearts. This is not just a religious formality; it is much more than that. It is to remember where all of these attributes come from and how they are manifest in our life. And there is this time: you have the month of Rajab, and then Sha ban, and then Ramadan. We are prepared step by step by step. If you enter Ramadan unprepared, you lose it, not the fasting, as much as the meaning. There are many people who can t fast, but they benefit from Ramadan. Hazrat Shaykh al Hujwiri (ra) gave us this story about the kind of character and attitude one should have on the path of Tasawwuf, how a person who has the ability to withstand all kinds of difficulties can benefit from the humility that it brings. He told a very strong story about ridicule and insight, and how ridicule and insight were not tasty dishes swallowed by the friends of Allah. Of course, the Prophet (sal) suffered a great deal of ridicule. He said, Ridicule and hatred, which is often directed especially in today s world toward the awliya-llāh where in Libya, they 4
are digging up the tombs of the Sufis and throwing the bones in the sand; and in Saudi Arabia, where they are building bathrooms over holy places is actually a refreshing garden for them. He then cited the following example of Hazrat Ibrahim Adam, one of the great Sufi luminaries: Once a person inquired of Hazrat Adham whether he had ever been successful in meeting his heart s best wishes during his long life practicing Tasawwuf. The wali replied, Only twice in my life. Once was when I was traveling incognito in a boat. I was wearing torn and dirty clothes, and disheveled hair. Seeing me in this condition, the fellow travelers not only pulled my hair, but they also ridiculed me and made a laughing stock of me during my whole journey. It was at this time that my heart s dearest wish was fulfilled, and my cup of happiness swelled for the first time in my life for the love of my beloved God. This happiness was short lived, because the next day, a fellow came up and actually urinated on my clothes, and I was obliged to change them because it was nargis. So with my changed dress, I had to put on my good clothes and bathe myself. So I wasn t anonymous anymore. They saw me and recognized me, and they stopped the fun they were having with me. When they did that, I lost my happiness. He went on. The second occasion of the fulfillment of my heart s dearest wish occurred on a rainy day during very, very severe weather. I was on a journey and was soaked to the bone. I was in search of some shelter for some refuge from the rain. When I reached a village, my juba was soaking wet, and I sought shelter in a masjid, but they wouldn t let me in. In fact, they drove me away very rudely. Due to the severe cold, I entered into the furnace area of the hamam to cover myself. I sat there, preserving my clothes carefully from the fire, and with the soot and 5
smoke of the furnace all my face and clothes were blackened. When I wore it, I wore it with honor. These are very strange stories, aren t they? What kind of a person is like that? It fits the stereotype of the Malamati Sufi who is blameworthy and wants to live away from the crowd. He said, When I came out, I was unrecognizable. This was the second time my heart s desire was fulfilled, and I felt so happy with this test of my beloved God. Such examples of forbearance are for us great examples of the people who came before us, but our task is different. Our task is far from being anonymous. Nor is it to be in the public eye. Our task is that we should cut ourselves off, not from the world, or from worldly matters, but we should concentrate our attention on Allah Swt by developing our ability to see Allah everywhere. It is not to think we can see Him only in a hamam where our clothes are blackened, or under some disguise where we are left alone by people. But to find the solitude amidst the crowd is the greatest challenge. If we act upon the Words of Allah Swt, upon the Ten Commandments, or the teachings of Jesus, or the teachings of Prophet Mohammed (sal), whether you follow the Qur an or the Torah, there are those who act upon the commandments in the letter and those who act upon them in spirit. Certainly, if you pray, you want to pray correctly, because you get a benefit. Not a reward. You benefit because it is structured in a certain way. If you sit in muraqabah, you want to sit in a correct way I don t mean posture but with a correct attitude. Just like you don t want to go to a surgeon who is drunk and ask him to operate on you. You want him to have the right demeanor as a surgeon and the right self control. It s not to cut ourselves off from the world like many of our predecessors did. We cut ourselves off from attachment to the world, and we trust that what we are doing 6
has meaning, if we bring it meaning. And if we bring our love, our heart, our concern, our compassion, our mercy, our care to the moment, then it will have meaning and we have trust in that. Allah Swt says in a hadith qudsi, coming out of the mouth of the Prophet (sal), When a devotee seeks Me devoutly, I also reciprocate his love and become his ear by which he hears, and his eye by which he sees, and his hand by which he works, and his feet by which he walks. How do you seek Allah devoutly? You don t renounce the world. You renounce attachments to the world. You don t renounce the love of your family, or children, or beauty of nature, the appreciation for the kindness a stranger offers to you, the joy of seeing the birth of a baby fox, like we have up the road two baby foxes. You don t renounce any of that. You renounce the attachment to it. How do you do that? You accept the beauty of it. You don t say, Oh, I don t want to be attached to this! This is delicious tea, but I don t want to be attached to it. I m going to drink it, pretending I don t taste it; otherwise, I might be attached to it. Uh-oh, I tasted the sweet! No, you appreciate it. Appreciation is a gift, isn t it? Mahmoud gives me a gift; I say, Thank you Mahmoud. I appreciate it. By appreciating it, I renounce any desire for it. You send it back. When we sit in muraqabah, we offer the rewards of our muraqabah back to the founders of our Order, and to the Rasūl (sal). Why do we do that? Why do we offer the rewards of our sitting back through the whole line of our teachers? Do they need that? Does the spirit need that? Does Allah need our worship? Forget about it! We do that because that s the way of renouncing attachment to this world, being distracted, becoming transparent. Of course, there are the people who are ascetics, like the ashaba sufa. They were the companions of the Prophet who renounced the world, and dedicated their lives to prayer and recitation of the Qur an day and night. They lived in an annex next to the Prophet s masjid. They didn t marry; and those who were married had to leave 7
the group. For their livelihood, they depended entirely on the benevolence of Allah. Every tradition has these kinds of monastics in some way or another; either it s official or unofficial. It s by design or order, or it is by the nature of the individual. The Ansars used to bring dates and hang them on the ceiling of the masjid. When the ripened fruit fell to the ground, that s when they would take it, because it was a gift from Allah. It makes a wonderful story. They lived very austerely. They went to the forest and picked up firewood. Sometimes some of them sold it to make a living, so they could pay for everyone else. Hazrat Abu Hurayra was one of those people. They received many great tributes, but that is not the world of today. Renunciation of the world today means we have to renounce the injustices and the fears. We have to renounce the discord and the dissonances. We have to renounce the hatred and bigotry. How do we do that? We appreciate the blessings that are showered upon us. You can say showered by God or Truth, I don t care. Are they not showered upon us? How did we have this meal today? Mahmoud made a very nice analogy about the coffee in a cup. We were trying to explain what rizq was. Rizq is the provisions that are given to us. Something comes, we say, Thank you very much. It s not enough. It s good to take a moment and look at the color and taste of the tea, and think about who made it, and the love it was made with. As he pointed out, the coffee made a long trip to the coffee cup. It started as a green tree on some mountain in Nicaragua somewhere maybe. If it s the best coffee, when you open the pod, it s all white inside. If it s a lesser quality, it has some blue color in it. The best of the best is picked, and you can then pay $75 a pound for it at Starbucks. The farmer probably got the same minuscule amount for it, though. It s called unfair trade practices. That s how we understand the gifts to us. You appreciate them. That s how you learn to let go of the world not through austerity. Yes, there are always going to be 8
people who are austere. The greatest austerity is to refrain from those thoughts and actions and attitudes that make you not appreciate what s coming to you, that are gafla/distractions. It does take years of training. Even the best of the best people, like the Prophet (sal) feared that he had distractions. And he prayed to Allah Swt in repentance for those distractions, which no one saw. No one saw these in him; he was masūm, but he wasn t sure. And he wouldn t have the arrogance to be sure. When we get these moments, these breaks so to speak, we should take the time to reflect. People have their own limitations based on their own limited knowledge. So we should assume that we have some limitations, also, based on our limited knowledge. When we have a moment to stand in the mist / nuas, the fine mist of love and peace that can descend upon us last night I was walking late at night. I had my superduper flashlight with me, the one that goes one mile. It was sent from Turkey. It opens up to a wide beam and closes to a small beam. There was mist last night. I could barely feel it. But when I opened up the beam of light, all I saw was this fine mist, nuas, flowing in the sky. Nothing could escape it. We talk about running between the raindrops no way in the world! Everything had that little patina of mist on it: every rose, every leaf, every piece of fabric, every part of my exposed skin. It was like Allah s spa. I thought, What is it we don t see? When you shine the light of your knowledge, of your piety, of your sincerity, of humility, of gratitude, of hope, appreciation, patience, love: what are you going to see? Are you going to see that mist? Allah says, Wheresoever you turn, there is the countenance of Allah. There is no place where Allah is not. Then, where is it coming from? The sky? God lives up in the sky? Isn t it interesting: almost every religion thinks of Allah living in the sky, or points to the sky. It s a constant bliss, a constant blessing. What is tawhid? 9
Tawhid is one/ unity. If there is one, and there is only unity, there cannot be two or three. There is only one. Doesn t everything have to be in that one? And what is that one? It s hidden in the name, Allah. Etymologically, it s not correct. Linguistically, it s not correct. But, even in Arabic, there is a principle that says that something that doesn t come from the right root still may be related to the root. If it reminds you of the root because it seems to be the root, it has some meaning in it. It s a principle in really refined Arabic linguistics. Why do certain words sound the same but are different? How is it possible they have the same root but a different meaning? When we say Allah The Nothing it tells you. That s not correct Arabic, but it tells you something. There is nothing: no thing. Allah is not a thing never. This ocean of this fine mist of love and patience and perseverance and kindness we just have to shine the right light on it, and we see it, and then there is no escaping it. As long as I was outside, I was in the mist. If I wanted to escape it, I would have to go inside. To understand what Tasawwuf is, Hujwiri said (also the qualities of the Sufi): the courage and the magnanimity of the Prophet Ibrahim, the obedience of the Prophet Ismail, the patience and forbearance of the Prophet Ayyub, the signs of the Prophet Zakariya, the poverty of Yahya, the wandering / sojourning of Isa, the simplicity of Prophet Musa, the contentment and renunciation of the Prophet Mohammed (sal). These are the qualities of the Sufi. If you look at every one of those circumstances, each prophet arrived at those qualities because of some trial, some difficulty. What was the prophet Ibrahim asked to do? To sacrifice his son. What did the Prophet Ismail have to do? Obey, and give his life. And the patience of Ayyub / Job. Think about Zakariya. What did he have to bear? Every life has tests and trials. This is the time of year we should be reflecting on that. The month of Rajab has passed; we are 10
halfway through the month of Sha ban. There are things that are going to happen that we have no control over those who will be born, and those who will leave this world. But there are things we have much control over. Even though everything is written in the Lawhim Mahfūdh, we have control over certain decisions we can make. In the midst of all our business, it comes these years in the summer time, Ramadan. And we are at the busiest, most difficult time of year for us. These are blessings. If we can just appreciate what is given to us, then we don t have to go live in a cave somewhere and fear the world. Gratitude knows no religious name; it knows no gender; it knows no one culture, but it is at the core of Tasawwuf, of Islam. Allah says, Remember Me and I will remember you. It doesn t say, I will remember you and then you will remember Me. The onus of responsibility is on us: to pay attention. Mutawajjuh is to turn our attention, away from the world, toward Allah. Rejecting the world, leaving the temptations of the world, is not what they accused the fuqara of. There are people who don t like the Sufis because they don t do anything real. No, it (turning our attention away from the world) means appreciate. Show gratitude. The more you appreciate, the less a hold the world has on it. We, by the grace of Allah Swt, and inshā a-llāh by the good character of the people here, at least have survived 35 years. There are only maybe 3 or 4 communities in this country who have survived anywhere near that long. The rest went and there were many after the 60 s and 70 s. What do we need for Sha ban? We need to be Sufis. That means we need to have faith and cease any actions of hypocrisy. We need to honor those who came before us, and welcome the younger ones in our lives, and try to make their lives the best they can be with equanimity, with love, and with respect. We need to not desire the 11
rewards of any of the actions we perform, or appreciation from anyone or anything other than the appreciation we get from Allah Swt. Can that not be through a human being? It can be through a human being. That s why in the language of Arabic as in Farsi and other languages, we have words like subhāna-llāh, alhamduli-llāh, mā sha-llāh. They shouldn t be thrown off, Oh what a beautiful baby, mā sha- Llāh. No, we should understand that when you say those words, you are connecting to the Source of that beauty, that praise; and that s how it come directly from Allah Swt. We should, like Ishak, wrestle in the river with the shaytan. That is to say, let s be honest about our nafs. We should try to elevate ourselves to spend a little time with the nafs lawwama, being a little self critical; and enjoy and embrace moments of peace and happiness in the midst of our daily struggles. So, spend a portion of each day, a few minutes, with your head on the ground. You know I say, Go out into the woods where nobody can see you. Put your head on the ground. Be sure no one can see you, because you don t want to have any pride associated with it. Smell the dirt. Wrap yourself mentally in a white shroud, the ihram. And think that all this in the world is going to be left behind, and what am I going to take with me, other than my good deeds? Whatever makes you think about those good deeds, use it. Allah has provided for us Ramadan and Sha ban, but it can be every day. So, this is a little preparation, inshā a-llāh, a little basic talk, nothing too intellectually astounding. But I hope you take it with the loved that is offered to you. I think it is important that we remember who we are, who we try to be, every once in a while. And remember what it was like before we knew there was a path, before we were given the opportunities, before we thought we had all the choices we think we have. A lot of people think they have a lot of choices. If you ever really find out the truth, you realize you never had any choices. You just had to accept where Allah placed 12
you. Those of you who are sitting here, you hear me say things like Allah said, and Allah places, and Allah this and Allah that. I will reiterate, just to be on the safe side, that Allah does not sit on a throne somewhere, micromanaging the universe. When I say Allah, it is all the Names and Attributes of Allah Swt and more. So this moment is dictated by compassion, and this moment is dictated by love. This moment is dictated by peace, and this moment is dictated by patience. This moment is dictated by opening, and this moment by closing. This moment turns your attention outward to the dhahir, and this moment turns your attention to the batin. If you get your boat floating on the current in the ocean, all you have to do every once in a while is put your sail up. To make a little more progress a little faster, then drop the sail and enjoy floating along. That s the beauty of it, the simplicity of it. It s amazing that I can spend 35 years or more talking about it. Let s pray everyone has a good rest of this month of Sha ban, and that we are all prepared for Ramadan. For those who cannot fast, fast inwardly my dears. Join us. You ll get the support. Everybody knows when you try to make up days you miss in Ramadan, it s a lot harder than fasting during Ramadan. Oh, I had to travel. I have 5 days to make up! Those 5 days are harder than a month of fasting in Ramadan. Why? You have all the support from all over the world. The other thing I want to say and I way this with some degree of trepidation, as I don t want it to be taken the wrong way is that it s not what you do, it s how you do it. Too many people in the world today in terms of religion, especially among Muslims, think that what you do is the most important thing. Once upon a time, there lived someone in this community who did the fast of Daoud for almost three years. Do you know what the fast of Daoud is? You fast one day, and eat the next. One day you fast, the next day you eat. It s an incredibly difficult fast. This person 13
took my permission to do it, and they did it for the sake of another member of the community who they saw was struggling. That person flourished spiritually when they did it. Then circumstances happened that they stopped doing it, which was fine. The other person became much more balanced, a productive member of the community, a very devoted student. But the person who stopped fasting came to a point in their life where they were totally content. And then, something happened and then, a distraction came. When those distractions come, you justify them with everything you have. Eventually, in order to embrace the distraction, you have to give up everything you knew before. If you don t reject everything, it gnaws at you. You have to give up the teaching, the teacher, the religion, the community, everything. You have to give it up. If you don t, then you have to deal with it. If the temptation is great enough and tasty enough, it s easy to justify any temptation. It s not a black and white story only. It s not a good and bad story only. There are a lot of gray areas to it. But you can just see it: as if you are going along at a hundred miles an hour, and put the brakes on. Let s put it a little differently. Let s say you are going along at 50 miles an hour, and you hit the brakes. You may get a bump on the head or something. Let s hope you had your seat belt on, because if you didn t you d get thrown through the windshield. My point is you don t do these things so you think you can end them. You embrace what you have, you trust in Allah, and you know where your temptations lie. Then you have to have somebody: Ya Mustafa, can you help me think this through? Ya Abdun Nasr, this is on my mind. You hear another perspective, another point of view. This is the blessing of suhbat. If you think you can do it on your own, you are on your own, and you can justify being on your own; and you will be sure you are right. And everything will look just fine for a 14
while. And one day, if you are really blessed, you might wake up and realize that you had better, lickety-split, get back on the siratal mustaqim, the straight path. Did the person walk away with no blessings? Oh, they got incredible blessings. Perhaps it s the thing that saves their life. But they have yet to come back on to the siratal mustaqim. When you read the Qur an and the Hadith, try to know what you are reading. Try to know what you are studying. There may be factual stories, and historical stories, and very interesting parables like you find in the Injil and Torah, but know there are very, very deep levels to it. There is a consistency, a thread, a line. It s like a fiber optic cable that carries information. Connect to that, just like the NSA does. Please don t assume you know. Please don t assume you understand. Please understand there is something so much deeper. Dig deeper. It s all inside of you. We all need guidance, and we need to have perseverance and irada. We need to have the will to persevere. And none of that is easy. But in the company of good people, it is easier. Asalaamu aleikum. 15