Bismillah Ar Rahman Ar Raheem.
(In the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most
Merciful)
Alhamdulillah
(All praise is due to Allah alone)
Allahumma Solli a'la Sayyidina Muhammad al Fatihi lima
Ughligh, wal khotimi lima sabaq, Nasril haq bil haq wal Haadi
elaserotiqalmustaqim wa ala. Alihi haqqadrihi wa miqdarihil azeem.
(O God bless our Master Muhammad (pbuh) who opened what had
been closed, and who is the Seal of what had gone before, he who makes the
Truth Victorious by the Truth, the guide to thy straight path, and bless his household
as is the due of his immense position and grandeur.)
"The Endless Journey of Self-Discovery"
It is very easy to be in a state of forgetfulness and
heedlessness as opposed to being in a state of gratitude.. Human beings by
their very nature, as established in the term "Insaan" in the Arabic
language, are creatures bound to be in a state of forgetfulness. Imam al-Junayd
al-Baghdadi (835-910), the Persian Islamic scholar and spiritual master, argues
that heedlessness is the one pathogen that breeds all the other diseases of the
heart. So it is the duty of a sound human being to engage in the constant
remembrance of God and sending honorific salutations to our Master Sayyidina
Muhammad (peace be upon him) in order to oppose the debased state of heedlessness.
If frivolity and dishonor in the human being is a state of heedlessness, then
to remember God, or the source of one's being is a means towards becoming
ennobled creatures doing what we were created to do.
This remembrance, is akin to the sound the Turkish Ney
makes, it is a nostalgic call to return to its origins, a yearning to return to
the Divine. The work that is before the human being is not an easy task. This
is a returning of the person's self to God alone in words, state and deeds. So
in reality, our purpose is to discover the Divine and to know the Divine. This
search has both an outward and an inward dimension - the outward being the
establishing of the Divine Law (Sharia) and the inward being the establishing
of the Divine Reality (Haqiqa) through the Divine Path (Tariqa) of the
effacement of the ego-self. This is why the spiritual masters used water as
similitude to describe how purification matters to the human heart. Water is
used for ablution to rid oneself of physical impurities before entering the
court of God in prayer. Similarly, the remembrance of God is the purification
of oneself from everything other than God for the sake of God. Water is also a
good similitude to describe the connection of oneself to everything else. The
Water cycle, is observed as rain from the clouds, to the water run off into the
streams and finally back to the heavens as evaporation takes place. It is no
wonder that the ancients used water and other natural entities to reflect on
it's profound meaning to the human being's return to the Divine.
In our daily commute to work, our mind gets bombarded with
so much information that it overwhelms us. At times, we find ourselves driving
over to work when we were actually planning to go elsewhere. This forgetfulness
speaks to us as a reminder that it is not the mind that is in control of the
human being but it is the human being's heart. We often recall a melodious song
that we can sing to from start till the end even after years of hearing it.
Again, perhaps it is the truth that we have reconnected with in the song that
brings our hearts to life each time it is repeated. We often hear the idiom
that to 'let the heart sing it's song is what it means to be alive'. Other
times we hear of the human being's capacity to either follow one's heart or
one's mind. These faculties inside the human being are not separate entities
but a wholesome system. It is a system put in place by the Divine so that we
could read the signs in ourselves. The Qur'an says in Surah Fussilat, "We shall
show them Our signs, in the horizons and in themselves, until it is clear to
them that He is the Truth...". How profound is it that through the
Divine's creation and through our own selves we can come to know the primordial
truth of ourselves. Imagine the remarkable discovery of concluding a criminal
investigation, or the ecstasy of rekindling ties with lost family members, how
much more fulfilled can the soul be when it has come to know it's Lord?
In the Islamic tradition it is common knowledge that the
acquisition of knowledge is established from the "cradle to the
grave". The seeking of knowledge is not merely the gathering of facts and
information but to know what, how and why things happen at a deeper level of
understanding. Classically speaking, the ancients knew that logic, grammar and
rhetoric, described as the trivium, was a primary component of the sound
acquisition of knowledge. The trivium was traditionally taught in schools as
mental tools of understanding, argumentation and discovery. In the modern
education system, very few institutions make it compulsory for the student to
engage in these mental tools and it has led to our crippled intellectual state
today. What's interesting is that despite being scholars of a particular field,
the traditional scholars were never specialists in just one or two fields. They
gained a breadth and depth of understanding in a multitude of fields and some
even mastered them all. This was a testament to the conviction that there are
only 2 groups of people who are never satisfied : the lovers of the world and
the lovers of knowledge.
In the area of child-rearing, we come to realize the
elevated status of women in educating society. Truly the first school for any
child is the mother. The Arabic word for school is "Madrasah" and
this is a feminine word, alluding to the importance of women in nurturing
society. We have had many Imams of the past who were raised by women whose
names aren't even mentioned in our books but who's works are renowned for the men
and women that they have produced. Malik Ibn Anas (may God be please with his
soul) said that 'She used to tie the turban on my head and she would say to me
to take from his forbearance before you take from his knowledge'. Because the
woman knows the importance of forbearance. And the Murobiyaa of the Prophet
sallAllahu alayhi wasalaam is named 'Halimah' radiaAllahu anha, a woman of
'Hilm' (forebearance). You see, these are the successful people. Those were the
words of Shaykh Hamza Yusuf in his address on who were the successful people.
For the child, it is the mother's embodiment of piety and good character that
develops his or her well being.
What's interesting to note is that even in Confucian
thought, the element of good character was never severed from the idea of
becoming a perfect human being on the path of self-discovery. Confucius
professed to the human being's actualization of the "Gentlemen State"
or "Junzi". Aristotle had the philosophy of the Golden Mean and
argued that the perfect human being is neither in excess nor deficiency of
certain noble qualities. One example is that quality of being courageous is the
mean between cowardice and rashness. So the perfected man is one who has
embodied the balance between two extremes. These are but mental-constructs that
man has created to explain phenomena and it in no way can do justice to the
station of the Beloved of God, Sayyidina Muhammad (peace be upon him). But it does reveal a truth that the
acquisition of self-knowledge and the limitless of the human potential is
something too important to not ponder on or aspire towards.
On important element of the journey of the self-discovery is
the journeying itself. Traditionally the journeying of the self to God is
called a "Suluk", a path embarked on by spiritual wayfarers. Shaykh
Abdal Hakim Murad mentions that the journeying is like riding a bicycle, once
you stop pedaling you will fall off. So this is a constant engagement and
journeying that knows no limits. In the maqamat of the different stations of
Islam, Iman and Ihsan, Shaykh Muhammad Mahy Cisse explains that the first station
of Islam is taubah. To make taubah (repentance) and seeking forgiveness is the
first station of any serious spiritual wayfarer. Istighfar is something that
every person regardless of their spiritual station needs to engage in. The
commoners make istighfar (seeking forgiveness) from disobeying Allah, the
righteous folk make istighfar from not doing the best action at the time and
the Arifin billAh (knowers of Allah) make istighfar from everything other than
Allah. These are clearly distinctions in the spiritual states of people that is
a reminder of the endlessness of the journeying.
The term for discovery in the Arabic language is
"Wajada", which can also be described as ecstasy. This is why each
time we make a new discovery there are chemicals in our brain that are released
to elevate one's mood and mental state. It is shocking that learning is seen as
boring and we are not taught the purpose of learning itself. Learning should be
for none other than the sake of God. Learning is a discovery that should not
bore but something that is serious and fulfilling. It is a laborious task that
is done over a protracted period of time. The social sciences tells us that if
we were to commit to practice any field for a minimum of 10,000 hours we would
be called an expert in that particular field. The research done by the likes of
Erik Erikson show that the mind has plasticity that can be developed and
stretched. Numerous research has been done on developmental psychology with
regards to the neonate, child and adolescent stages to promote the best
strategies to nurture children. The child, by extension, has a capacity to be
'passionately curious' as described by Einstein to be the secret to his genius.
In the realm of Sociology, there has been research on the
lasting impressions of the herd mentality and cultural norms that are the
invisible forces behind a person's behavior. If it is a cultural norm that
promotes values of autonomy and self-discovery, then this mindset is ingrained
into the person that will become their compass to view the world, a Worldview,
if you will. Of course the psychological 'self-fulfilling prophecy' lays some
truth that if the person is led to believe in their best potential, then they
will only act in accordance to that expectation from others. This concoction of
psychological states and sociological impressions will determine to some extent
the person's drive and willingness to seek knowledge.
In the Senegal
