as-Sadiq

Below is the second part of notes from Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s lecture series entitled “The Poor Man’s Book of Assistance.” The lecture series is named after a book written by  ninth century Moroccan scholar Sidi Ahmed Zarruq. Shaykh Hamza translates and gives commentary on this book in this series of 16 CDs.

Sidi Ahmad Zarruq says that the heart is the foundation of every good and evil, and its life and its death are the keys to either benefit or harm, so that which has no life has no way of protecting itself from evil and facilitating for itself good, and every heart that life enters into, by necessity, will call itself to good when reminded.

He said that there are 3 types of hearts:

1. qalbun fi hayatihi saheehun, a heart whose life is sound and its expression is clear, eloquent, and its companion when he speaks, speaks with wisdom, and he rises to every necessary occasion, and when difficulty arrives, he responds appropriately. “A man’s heart lies hidden under his toungue”-saying of Ali RA, when someone loves something you’ll hear him mentioning it a lot, so if he has Allah in his heart, that’s what he’s going to talk about. If his heart is filled with wealth, anger, rage, that’s what he’s going to talk about. So a person whose heart is sound, you’ll find that his expression is sound too. = QALBUN SALEEM
2. qalbun la hayata fihi, a heart in which there is no life, it neither accepts admonition or a reminder nor does it accept anyone caling it to attention and far from it to follow the truth, or that it should have any courtesy or consideration for Allah’s creation
3. a heart that is afflicted with sicknesses, and in its various states and circumstances, its accompanied with objections and symptoms, so the symptoms that follow follow. And this type of heart is the type of heart that actually experiences pain when it hears of its sicknesses. So when you hear of someone speaking of kibr, hasad, `ujb, riyaa, etc., you actually feel pain, which is a sign of life. And this is a heart, when we speak about treating or process of getting better with a struggle or a cure, this is the heart we’re talking about, hoping that it will come back to life and its life will be renewed or at least the disease will cease so that it doesn’t lead to its death. If the heart remains untreated, it’ll lead to its death.

1. there’s more life than illness; the primary state is the soundness and the disease is secondary. For example, someone with asthma tends to be more healthy than sick, as opposed to someone with cancer where they’re still alive but with terminal illness. This is much easier to treat.
2. the sickness is preponderant and the life is very weak and diminished. This is a terminal case, and it should be given serious concern.
3. the sickness and the health are about the same, but it’s possible to strengthen one over the other. It’s like the second one, though, and is still very serious because it’s possible the sickness may overtake the soundness. This is a chronic case which is seriously interfering with the life. For example, someone with weak kidneys may easily go into kidney failure if they’re not careful. This is still very dangerous.

The Sickness and Its Diagnoses

The sickness manifests in one of 3 ways so we’ll know whether it’s hidden or manifest

1. a symptom that manifests, is clear, we can see it, and in order to measure it, to do some diagnostic tests, is the actions of one’s limbs. For example, when someone is backbiting, there’s a symptom right there of a diseased heart. That person is revealing a symptom to you of the fact that he has a diseased heart. Or for example, they’re stealing. Where does that come from? Tama`a (covetousness). The trunks of humiliation come from covetousness. Fornication is a symptom.
2. the ideology, and its diagnostic measurements is the movements of the hearts. This diagnosis takes someone of more knowledge and intellect. The ideology is the original cause. For example, Iblis was commanded to make sajdah of honoring Adam, and the reason he refused is because he felt Adam was unworthy of his sajdah because he said he was higher than Adam because he was created from air and fire (light elements that rise up) rather than earth and water (heavier elements). That’s what he said, but what’s really going on, what’s moving in the heart? Hasad. That’s the movement of the heart. The ideology was hasad. Some say kibr precedes hasad, and others say hasad precedes kibr, but it’s a khilaaf between `ulamaa’ al-quloob. “People will admit to fallonious crimes before they will admit to envy.” -Melville
3. the matters that move someone to do something, and the diagnostic measure for that is what it inclines to by choice. For example, if someone has the decision to gamble or do something useful, which will it incline to? So you’re looking at the inclinations of the self, whether you’d rather go to the cinema than to the masjid, whether you’d rather backbite or go study something useful.

Shaykh/Rabbani Sidi Abu Hassan ash-Shaadhiri:

Blinding the inner sights occurs from three things. You have basar and you have baseera. Basar is the outward sight. Baseera is the inward sight. This is my way, I call to it with baseera (proof, inner sight). So the baseera is to the heart what the basar is to the body. It’s the inward sight, and just like the outward sight can be blinded or can get cataracts where you can’t see but can be removed, so can the inward sight.

You should enable/allow your limbs to enter into a state of disobedience with Allah swt, to pretend/to be artificial in displays of obedience to Allah swt = NIFAQ. “Hypocrisy is the hommage that vice pays to virtue.” -French moralist, and this is why the Muslims actually prefer a state of hypocrisy to a state of outward disillusion (when the soul has no shame because this is a worse state than a soul that pretends to be obedient when people are around and is disobedient when others are around). Some people will say I don’t want to be a munafiq because I don’t drink openly, but the person who drinks openly is more shameless than the one who drinks privately; the one who drinks privately has more potential than the one who is shameless. Even though it’s a blameworthy and wretched state to be in, it’s a better state than the one who lacks all shame. In a virtuous society, even the scoundrels will pretend to be virtuous in front of others, but in a shameless society, people lose their shame, and that’s a worse sign.

Having any desire for what the creation has = TAMA`A. This means to yearn for what others have, and all the letters in the word tama`a are mujawwaf, have hollow centers because that’s the nature of tama`a, it’s insatiable, you just want more and more. So anyone who claims to have inner sight and they have one of these three, he’s either a liar or his knowledge is lacking, he doesn’t have the correct understanding. And this is the essence of reality.

When sickness enters into a naïve heart, a heart of someone who is really not diseased, it’s easy to treat. A heart that has been healthy, once it gets sick, it’s much easier to treat than a heart which was sick then it got healthy, and then it has a relapse.

This is the problem of making tawbah and then returning back to the sin. The more wrong actions, the more the heart gets encrusted. Because he has become intimate, he has come to enjoy the disobedience, he feels comfortable with and that’s why he returns to it, then that’s why when he becomes well, the reality comes into it. But if it gets sick after that by a relapse because of that deficiency it’s experiencing in the heart, the opposite is true, the reality won’t really enter it, and it’ll be hard for that heart to be firm, even though it’s easy to go back.

If those things that are calling to good and evil, if there’s a strong impetus in the heart and the constitution supports that, and when someone does things, it feels pain, then that’s a good sign, and one should not despair. But never feel safe with yourself in any situation, and don’t become heedless about protecting what you have of goodness once you have it.

In other words, just because alhamdulilLah you’ve been doing your wyrd, don’t be comfortable with that, be vigilant because Shaytan is vigilant in trying to get you out of that. And always renew your returning to Allah and your tawbah in order to protect the soundness of that returning to Allah. And treat your diseases with those things that you see are beneficial for it, that have a curative effect, and do that with those things that will incur with the self what ornaments and benefits the self and what removes from the self the destructive tendencies.

Be concerned with those things that will bring zeenah to the heart. The more you do something, the more you start inclining toward it. For example, someone who exercises or showers every day, they don’t feel well when they don’t do those things. So guard those things that will benefit your soul and avoid those things that will bring your soul into destruction, and this tawfeeq is by Allah swt.

The treatment of a heart that has a preference for its desires, that heart that is turning away from its Lord. If your heart has life in it, and you actually feel the pain when you do something wrong because there are some people that do wrong things and they no longer feel the pain (some people punch hot sand until they kill all the nerves and tissue until they don’t feel the pain anymore), this is a good sign. In order to treat that heart that still is inclining to wrong actions and is turning away from its Lord, but it’s still alive and feels pain, and it still feels good when it does good actions, there are 3 ways that are keys to closing the doors of disobedience.

1. the first is that you have himyah, which is a regime. In other words, you have a diet for your body, and if you’re eating a lot, it strengthens the nafs. You should eat to the point that it’s not affecting neither your intellect nor your physical well-being, which is reflected in your sleep (either you’re always tired because you’re sleeping too much or you can’t sleep out of hunger because you’re not eating enough). So you need to find a balance, and you don’t go beyond that, you discipline your soul to not exceed those limits
2. the second is inhaling the fragrances of sincerity by keeping the company of the people of sincerity. Be with the people of sidq because when you’re in their presence, you’re breathing in their fragrances. There is a spiritual fragrance of purity, and you inhale that when you’re in their company, and that inhaling affects your soul. The fragrances of his remembrance diffuse.There’s a reality in the company of actions. There’s a phenomena in physics called entrainment. A man put a bunch of grandfather clocks into a room, and he set them at different times, but when he came back, they were swinging/ringing in sync. A man discovered that this is because the biggest clock, the biggest pendulum pulled the others with its force, so the others synchronized with that force because of the strength of that force.

   So one phenomena with humans is that when they enter a room together, their hearts entrain. This is a physical phenomena, they’ve done it with electrocardio things. Women’s periods, people walking together entrain naturally. People’s breathing entrains. You entrain with the most powerful heart, and there are two hearts that are powerful, the hearts of the awliyaa’ and the hearts of the shayateen, white hearts and black hearts metaphorically speaking. So these hearts pull others into their force.

   For example, with the Columbine shooters, one of the boys didn’t have much of a personality and the other had a very strong one, and the former was under the complete influence of the second. Look at Hitler, Fir`aun, Abu Jahl (when someone almost became Muslim, he pulled him back in) – these are the heads of kufr. Shaytan has awliyaa’. There are awliyaa’ ar-Rahman and awliyaa’ of Shaytan, but both heads are strong and they can pull people into their force. People get pulled between the two forces.

   The sick heart wavers, and the most important thing for a sick heart is good company. Shaykh Abdullah says, “The most corrupting influence on children is other children.” If you’re teaching children, and there’s one bad seed, but that child can pull people with him. The hearts will waver between one or the other.

   If you don’t have a living person to be in their company, then find out about the righteous people of your area and read their history. For example, if you live in Fez, read the stories of these people. If you read about them and visit the places they went, there’s a benefit in that.

   The other is to use a powerful medicine, and by being reminded of the places of destruction and the places that obstruct you in your path, that a servant should reflect on his nature, one of them is to know that he’s a stranger to this world, even from his own self, because the self does things that you know you shouldn’t do. So the fact that you do things that you know you shouldn’t be doing causes you to be alienated from yourself, you are alienated from your own ego. Your higher self is alienated from your lower self.

   The second is to remember the struggle of moment of death, sakkarat al-mawt, even the best of people experience the struggles of death, and you will be alone in your qabr. Think and reflect on that.

3. The third is to remember that you will one day be standing in front of the Ruler of the heavens and the earth, and you will be exposed to all of creation on the day that all of your actions are shown. Think and reflect on that. A human being’s life will be shown to him moment by moment on the Day of Judgement, and you will have to explain it. Cinema is a sign from Allah. You can watch people who are dead now, and you can watch a piece of their life because it’s been recorded on a magnetic strip. You think you can do that, and Allah can’t do that? Some people’s whole life is on the internet now.