Disclaimer
As stated in last year’s post, I am not a Muslim, and none of my family members or close friends are Muslims.
I observed Ramadan because I needed to:
- adjust my sleeping schedule, which Ramadan helped because I had to sleep early and get up early.
- find some time to fast, wait, and think.
- find dedicated time to read. This year I picked Sufism: A Short Introduction by William C. Chittick.
Unanswered questions from last Ramadan and a note to future me:
- last Ramadan I got swollen calves and ankles. I thought it was because I didn’t drink enough water. However, this year I didn’t get the problem while drinking about the same amount of water, so water is probably unrelated.
- last Ramadan’s toothache was 99% due to the dates I ate to break fast before Iftar. This year I got Mazafati dates which were wonderful and didn’t give me a toothache.
- just give up any Suhoor ideas already! Stick to your normal food.
Back to the book about Sufism — the following notes were taken by me from the book. The block quotes are actually my thoughts and can be treated as marginalia. I used block quotes because I couldn’t find a better format for my personal notes :(
The Sufi path
Three dimensions of Islam
- Islam (submission): “to bear witness that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is His messenger, to perform the daily prayers, to pay the alms tax, to fast during Ramadan, and to go on the pilgrimage to Mecca if you can find the means to do so.”
- Iman (faith): “to have faith in God, His angels, His scriptures, His messengers, and the Last Day, and to have faith in the measuring out, both the good of it and the evil of it.
- Ihsan (doing the beautiful): “worship God as if you see Him, for even if you do not see Him, He sees you.”
Islam: 伊斯兰，五功，念、礼、斋、课、朝。
Iman: 伊玛尼，六信，信真主、信天使、信使者、信经典、信末日、信前定。 (slightly different)
Ihsan: 伊赫桑。
Three domains of faith (iman)
heart or inmost awareness, tongue or articulation of understanding, and limbs or bodily parts.
- Limbs: put faith into practice (obey the commands)
- Tongue: express faith through articulated self-awareness, or rational speech
- Heart: recognize the truth and reality of faith’s objects in the deepest realm of human awareness
The Shahadah
Acknowledges the reality of God and the prophetic role of Muhammad.
Islam has a special affinity for diversity of expression.
Part of this has to do with the fact that there is no centralized authority comparable to a priesthood or the Catholic church.
Mercy and wrath
The two divine attributes – beauty and majesty, or mercy and wrath, or gentleness and severity.
There is no pure mercy or pure wrath in the created domain. Wherever mercy displays its signs and traces within creation, there will also be manifestations of wrath, and vice versa.
For indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. Indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. — Quran 94:5-6
In general, things pertaining to the external and material realms tend to manifest wrath, whereas the closer we move to the spiritual world, the closer we approach pure mercy.
Limb/body is wrath, while heart is mercy?
Sharia concerns itself with the outermost human domain, that of bodily activity. However, the wrath that shows its face in the Sharia derives from God’s mercy and leads back to it.
The rather stern and forbidding face of the Sharia displays God’s majesty and severity, but lurking beneath its surface is the promise of the precedent mercy.
Mercy flows in one direction, from God to the world, but love moves in both directions. People can love God, but they cannot have mercy upon Him, only upon other creatures.
It follows that the world and everything within it can be viewed from two points of view. In one respect, all things are “other than God” and hence unreal. In another respect, all things are “signs” of God and therefore real in some degree.
Islamic anthropology pictures human beings as the only creatures who have freely chosen God over the world, the Real over the unreal, the East over the West. In the Koran, this free choosing of God is called the “Trust.” “We offered the Trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused to carry it and were afraid of it; and human beings carried it.” But, the verse concludes, they are “very ignorant, great wrongdoers” (33:72). This suggests that they have failed to live up to their freely chosen responsibilities.
To be human is to possess a degree of freedom, and to make choices is to put oneself in the position of having to answer for the choices.
马注《清真指南》卷二：“前定如大海，自由如舟楫，事因若风涛。无大海自无舟楫，是前定不离自由；无舟楫不显大海，是自由不出前定。”
Zhu Ma’s “Halal Guide”, Volume 2: “Predestination is like an ocean, while freedom is like a boat, and the causes of events are like the wind and waves. If there is no ocean then there will not be any boats, as freedom will not exist without predestination. If there are no boats then one wouldn’t see how massive the ocean is, as freedom cannot exceed predestination.”
The Sufis do not consider it sufficient for people to have faith and to submit themselves to the Sharia if they also have the capacity of deepening their understandings purifying their hearts, and doing what is beautiful. In order to reach human perfection, it is not enough to imitate others and follow religion blindly (taqlid). Rather, one must achieve a total awareness of the principles and the spirit that animate the religion, or, as the Sufis express it, one must realize the Real Itself (tahaqquq).
Sufi theory
Each existent thing can be said to have two faces. These two faces are the “eastern face” and the “western face”.
- If we look at the western face of things, we find no trace of the sun, since it has set.
- If we look at the eastern face of the same things, we see the sun shining in its full glory.
- Everything displays both faces at the same time, but the vast majority of people see only the western face. They have no awareness that everything is a sign of God in which He is disclosing His own reality.
Sufi practice
As Rumi puts it,
When Hallaj’s love for God reached its utmost limit, he became his own enemy and he naughted himself. He said, “I am the Real,” that is, “I have been annihilated; the Real remains, nothing else.” This is extreme humility and the utmost limit of servanthood. It means, “He alone is.” To make a false claim and to be proud is to say, “You are God and I am the servant.” In this way you are affirming your own existence, and duality is the necessary result. If you say, “He is the Real,” that too is duality, for there cannot be a “He” without an “I.” Hence the Real said, “I am the Real.” Other than He, nothing else existed. Hallaj had been annihilated, so those were the words of the Real.
使我与那独一合为一体的，
乃是那为独一的你。
我已见证了此，
只有一个真主，
他乃是道，
但没有路可通往他！
我是真实，
是真理使我如此，
让我成为真理：
就让我们不再分离
让真理成为独一，
你在我中，
我也有分于你的形式，
就像暴风雨中闪电划过
使一切清晰可见。
据传，哈拉智戴着脚镣，边跳着舞，边诵念着关于神秘陶醉的诗歌奔赴刑场。然后，向他的朋友希伯利借用拜毡作了礼拜，此时他再次触及不可言说的人主合一和分离的奥秘。当民众向他投扔石块时，希伯利向他投了一枝玫瑰，哈拉智因此叹息一声。有人问他为什么叹息时，他回答:“他们不明白他们在做什么，而他应该是知道的。”
挚友扔过来的玫瑰，比任何石块都重。——阿拉伯谚语
[I can’t find an English translation of the poem above, but I assume it would be Anal-Haq]
(When Hallaj’s execution took place) “When people began to throw stones at him, Shibli—so the legend has it—threw a rose, and Hallaj sighed. Asked the reason for his sigh, he answered: “They do not know what they do, but he should have known it.”
And the saying that “the rose, thrown by the friend, hurts more than any stone” has become a Turkish proverb.”
The Sufi tradition
The Sufis stress inwardness over outwardness, contemplation over action, spiritual development over legalism, and cultivation of the soul over social interaction.
On the theological level, Sufis speak of God’s mercy, gentleness, and beauty far more than they discuss His wrath, severity, and majesty.
==Being a Sufi certainly has nothing to do with the Sunni/Shi’ite split==
Only those who spoke for the branch of ihsan maintained that islam and iman must be subordinated to the highest goal, which is “to worship God as if you see him.”
By and large, such people were associated with what has come to be known as “Sufism.”
In contrast, those who asserted the primacy of islam focused their energies on Sharia and jurisprudence.
Those who felt that iman and understanding were the foundation of Islam tunneled their efforts into Kalam and other schools of thought that dealt with understanding and expressing the objects of faith.
A working description
Sufi vs Kalam (the study of Islamic doctrine)
When faced with verses that assert God’s immanence and presence, Kalam explained them away through forced interpretations (ta’wil). As Gibb has pointed out, “The more developed theological systems were largely negative and substituted for the vivid personal relation between God and man presented by the Koran an abstract and depersonalized discussion of logical concepts.”
Spectrums of theory and practice
The contrast between sober and drunk, or between the vision of differentiated multiplicity and the experience of all-embracing unity, reverberates throughout Sufi writing and is reflected in the hagiographical accounts of the Sufi masters.
| Drunken Sufis | Sober Sufis |
|---|---|
| follow upon being overcome by the presence of God | allow for a clear differentiation between God and the world |
| see God in all things and lose the ability to discriminate between Him and creation | a calm and careful discernment between right and wrong |
| de-emphasize the Sharia and declare union with God openly | observe the courtesy (adab) of a servant’s relationships with his Lord |
| fault the sober for forgetting the overriding reality of God’s mercy | fault the drunk for disregarding the Sunnah |
| predominate in poetry | predominate in prose |
| rarely demonstrate interest in juridical issues or theological debates | offer methodical discussions of all sorts of juridical and theological issues |
Name and reality
The expression of Sufi teachings
Three stages on the path of the relative virtues of sobriety and drunkenness:
- Before entering the path itself, most people appear to be sober but are actually drunk. (“blameworthy sobriety”, since they are essentially drunk)
- When people enter the Sufi path, they reach true sobriety by turning away from the follies of this world and coming to their senses. After long struggle on the path of discipline and self-purification, the seekers may be opened up to the effusions of divine love, mercy, and knowledge. This can be so overwhelming that they lose their powers of rational discernment and tend to express themselves in ecstatic and paradoxical language. (“true intoxication”. According to Rumi’s interpretation of Hallaj’s scandalous utterance, this is the stage at which he said, “I am the Real.”)
- Return to the world after the journey to God. (“sobriety after intoxication”)
Self-help
The subsistent face
Here we have the common Sufi triad nafs ammara (the self that commands [to evil]), nafs lawwama (the self that blames [itself for its own shortcomings]), and nafs mutma’inna (the self at peace [with God]). These are three basic stages that must be traversed if people are to achieve perfection.
Prophetic knowledge
From the standpoint of the Sufi tradition, there is nothing more damaging to the well-being of the self than the notion that we know who we are and that we do not need help, or only a little bit of help, or only the help of the imagined “experts,” to put our affairs in order. In the Sufi reading, this notion of not needing prophetic help is the fatal defect of the modern world. Modern science, technology, and all the other branches of learning – not to speak of politics – are nothing but ignorance of the self masquerading as knowledge. Attempts to rationalize the world and to use it for our own benefit are doomed to failure, because we cannot possibly know where our benefit lies.
The remembrance of God
Dhikr in the Sufi tradition
Dhikr: a form of devotion, associated chiefly with Sufism, in which the worshiper is absorbed in the rhythmic repetition of the name of God or his attributes.
Despite the many discussions of the benefits of specific names, the texts frequently state that those who remember God’s names should not be concerned with immediate or deferred benefits and goals. Rather, they should exemplify the attitude expressed in the prayer of Rabi’a: “O God, if I worship You for fear of hell, burn me in hell, and if I worship You in hope of paradise, forbid it to me. But if I worship You for You, do not hold back from me the Everlasting Beauty.”
Shaykh Habib Ali Al-Jifri | If I worship | Rabia al-Adawiyya
Someone who did not comprehend said to her, “Fear Allah! The Prophet (pbuh) would ask Allah for Paradise and seek refuge from the Fire. Are you belittling what Allah and His Messenger magnify?”
She replied, “God forbid! I also ask Allah for Paradise and I seek refuge with Him from the Fire. I fear entering Hell and I hope to enter Paradise. But it is not the reason for my worship. I worship Allah because Allah alone is worthy of worship.“
Our brother still didn’t understand this. So she said to him, “O you! Tell me, if He didn’t create Paradise and Hell, would He not be worthy of being worshipped?”
Most Sufis would probably agree that group sessions are a secondary form of Sufi practice, since the seeker’s progress on the path, to the extent that it does not derive totally from God’s grace, depends upon individual efforts.
The way of love
The true beloved
Although the jewels of the Hidden Treasure have been thrown out into the open, most creatures do not recognize them for what they are, nor do they understand that their own loves and desires externalize God’s love. Their love is simply God’s own love reflected in the creatures. It follows that, as Ibn Arabi puts it, “None loves God but God,” and “There is no lover and no beloved but God.”
In his major prose work, Rumi makes the same point with these words:
All the hopes, desires, loves, and affections that people have for different things – father, mother, friends, heavens, earth, gardens, palaces, sciences, deeds, food, drink – all these are desires for God, and these things are veils. When people leave this world and see the Eternal King without these veils, then they will know that all these were veils and coverings and that the object of their desire was in reality that One Thing. All their difficulties will be solved, all the questions and perplexities that they had in their hearts will be answered, and they will see all things face to face.
The religion of love
Dwelling on one’s pain and imperfection can only call down the remedy. Rumi frequently urges his readers to seek out pain and suffering, to become thirsty and not to look for water:
Since the world’s Remedy is searching for pain and disease,
we have cut ourselves off from remedies and are the companions of pain.
Look at me – I see Him worth a hundred deaths like this.
I neither fear nor flee from the Heart-keeper’s slaying.
Like the Nile’s water, love’s torture has two faces –
water for its own folk, blood-drinking for others.
Reminds me of this poem:
Ich seh den Salamander
durch jedes Feuer gehen.
Kein Schauer jagt ihn,
und es schmerzt ihn nichts.
—— Ingeborg Bachmann Erklär mir, Liebe
The never-ending dance
Human perfection
Perfect human beings realize the human potential to be one of the three divine books. It is not enough for those who want to follow in their footsteps to hear God’s signs in the two outside books – the Koran and the universe. The human self is the greatest of all books, for it alone allows God to achieve His goal in creating the world. Both the universe and the Koran are means to achieve the goal, but neither has the potential to become a self-aware book. Both manifest the Hidden Treasure, but neither can know it with full awareness.
The ascent of the soul
If Sufism differs from non-Sufi Islam in its vision of the soul’s development, this is because the Sufi teachers have a better understanding of the goal and the seriousness of the quest. There are always people who feel drawn to God in the present life, who do not have the patience to remain separate from their beloved until death. They follow the command of the Prophet, “Die before you die!” By dying to their own individual limitations, they are born into the unlimited expanse of the divine beauty. They have no fear of death, since they have died many times, and each time they have been reborn as something better.
Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. — John 3:3
Dancing with God
They remain with God and all things in this world and the next, free of the limitations of time and space, enjoying the constant flux of the never-repeated disclosures of knowledge and bliss. When they reach the utmost limits of the path, they enter the oceans of divine knowledge, where all is bewilderment – not the bewilderment of being lost, but the bewilderment of having found all and everything in an endless outpouring.54 “Guidance,” says Ibn Arabi, “is to be led to bewilderment. Then you will know that the whole affair is bewilderment, that bewilderment is agitation and movement, and movement is life. There is no rest, no death, only existence, nothing of nonexistence.”
The fall of Adam
This chapter is my personal favorite of the entire book!
Book recommended: Rawh al-arwah ft sharh asma’ al-malik al-fattah (“The Refreshment of the Spirits: Explaining the Names of the All-Opening King”) by Sam’ani
Creation
In explaining why God created Adam, Sam’ani keeps in view the two basic categories of divine names – the gentle and merci- ful as opposed to the severe and wrathful. When Adam was in paradise, he still had not yet fully realized the meanings of all the names that God had taught him. He knew the names of beauty and mercy, but not those of majesty and wrath. In order to gain this understanding, he first had to come down to the earth, the house of God’s severity.
Adam was not brought from paradise into this world because of his slip. Even if we suppose that he had not slipped, he still would have been brought into this world. The reason for this is that the hand of vicegerency and the carpet of kingship were waiting for the coming of his foot. Ibn Abbas said, “God had taken him out of the Garden before putting him into it.”
One of the several virtues of Adam’s fall is that it paved the way for his descendants to enter paradise. Sam’ani tells us that God sent Adam out of paradise with the promise that He would bring him back with all his children.
“O Adam, come out of paradise and go into this world. Lose your crown, belt, and cap in the way of love! Put up with pain and affliction. Then tomorrow, We will bring you back to this precious homeland and this domicile of subsistence, with a hundred thousand robes of gentleness and every sort of honor, as the leader of the witnesses and in the presence of the one- hundred-twenty and some thousand prophets, the possessors of purity and the sources of chosenness. Then the creatures will come to know that, just as We can bring Adam’s form out of paradise through the attribute of severity, so also We can bring him back through the attribute of gentleness.”
Love
Love for God answers to all His names. The angels are cut off from love because they cannot taste wrath, severity, and distance, and the beasts are far from love because they cannot experience beauty, gentleness, and nearness. Human beings are woven from both nearness and distance, both gentleness and severity. All the contradictory divine attributes are brought together within them. Only they can truly love God, within whom all opposites coincide. “In the eighteen thousand worlds, no one drank down the cup that holds the covenant of They love Him except human beings.”
Aspiration and discernment
Love, then, means to be free of everything in the created world and to choose God. It is to serve God, nothing else. Human beings alone were created such that they can love God in His infinite, all-comprehensive reality, embracing the attributes of both beauty and majesty, gentleness and severity.
Humility
Adam’s need implies that he recognizes his own incapacity and worthlessness. Need is based on humility, which is the recognition of weakness and nothingness in face of the divine Reality. Humility sees all good as coming from God, all evil as coming from self.
Agreed, but:
- I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. — Isaiah 45:7
- In Hermann Hesse’s Demian, Abraxas which has both the light side and the dark side seems more convincing to me.
More on this for sure… I need to read this.
Forgiveness
O angels of the celestial dominion! Although you are obedi- ent, you have no appetite in your selves, nor do you have any darkness in your makeup. If human beings disobey, they have appetite in their selves and darkness in their makeup. Your obedience along with all your force is not worth a dustmote before My majesty and tremendousness. And their disobedience along with all their brokenness and dejection does not diminish the perfection of My realm. You hold fast to your own sinlessness, but they hold fast to My mercy. Through your obedience, you make evident your own sinlessness and greatness, but through their disobedience, they make apparent My bounty and mercy.
The cleverness, skill, and mastery of the glassmaker appears in broken glass. Your heart is like glass. The stone of disobedience has struck against it and broken it. The Lord of Exaltation, through the fire of repentance, brings it back to wholeness. Verily I am All-forgiving to him who repents [20:82]. Even though He said to Moses in the majesty of his state, Verily I am God [20:14]. He said to us, Verily I am All-forgiving.
Moses said, “O God, why do you provide for the stupid and deprive the clever?” He replied, “So that the clever may know that provision depends upon apportioning, not upon clever- ness.” On the Day of Resurrection, He will forgive the disobe- dient so that the creatures may know that mercy is a gift, not an earning. It comes through God’s solicitude, not through the servant’s worship.
The paradox of the veil
This verse alone is enough to suggest why the quest for voluntary death is one of the basic themes of Sufi literature. The Sufis support this quest not only with Koranic interpretations that pay careful attention to nuances and allusions, but also with the purported hadith, “Die before you die,” and the Gospel saying that appears in its Arabic version as “No one will enter the sovereignty of the heavens until he is born twice” (John 3:3).
Exactly what I was reminded of in a previous chapter. TwT