I must share this jewel...so here's an attempt to summarize these words of wisdom. Book is written by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and it's a translation and commentary of Imam Al Mawlud's Arabic poem: Matharat ak-Qulub. My minore notes will be in blue:) Thank you Zeina for recommending and lending me this book. Let's enjoy this challending and life-changing journey! Pls feel free to share
Surely in the breast of humanity is a lump of flesh, if sound then the wholee body is sound, and if corrupt then the whole body is corrupt. Is it not the heart? (Prophet Muhammad PBUH)
Almost universally, religious traditions have stressed the importance of the condition of the heart. in the Muslim scripture, the Day of Judgement is described as a day in which neither wealth nor children shall be of any benefit (to anyone), except one who comes to God with a sound heart (Quran 26:88-89) The Sound heart is understood to be free of character defects and spiritual blemishes. Prophet Muhammad PBUH said, " The difference between the one who remembers God and one who does not is like the difference between the living and the dead." In essence, the believer is someone whose heart is alive, while the disbeliever is someone whose heart is spiritually dead. The Quran speaks of certain people with diseased hearts (self-inflicted, we understand) and, as a result, they were increased in their disease (Quran: 2:10).
The heart is centered slightly to the left of our bodies. Two sacred languages of Arabic and Hebrew are written from rigth to left, toward the heart, which, as some have noted, mirrors the purporse of writing, namely to affect the heart. One should also consider the ritual of circling around the Ancient House (or Kaba) in Makkah during Pilgrimage. It is performed in a counterclockwise fasion, with the left side of the worshipper facing the House - with the heart inclined towards it to remind us of God and His presence in the life of humanity.
The physical heart, which houses the spiritual heart, beats about 100,000 times a day, pumping two gallons of blood per minute and over 100 gallons per hour. If one were to attempt to carry 100 gallons of water (whose density is lighter than blood) from one place to another, it would be an exhausting tast. Yet the human heart does this every hour of every day for an entire lifetime without respite. The vascular system transporting life-giving blood is over 60,000 miles long - more than 2 times the circumference of the earth. So when we conceive of our blood being pumped through out our bodies, know that this means that it travels through 60,000 miles of a closed vascular system that connects all the parts of the body - all the vital organs and living tissues - to this incredible heart.
We now know that the heart starts beating before the brain is fully fashioned, that is, without the benefit of a fully formed central nervous system. The dominant theory states that the central nervous system is what controls the entire human being, with the brain as its center. Yet we also know that the nervous system does not initiate the beat of the heart, but that it is actually self-initiated, or, as we would say, initiated by God. We also know that the heart, should all of its connections to the brain be severed (as they are during a heart transplant), continues to beat. Many in the West have long proffered that the brain is the center of consciousness. But in traditional Islamic thought - as in other traditions - the heart is viewed as the center of our being. The Quran, for example, speaks of wayward people who have hearts with which they do not understand (7:179). Their inability to understand is a deviation from the spiritual function of a sound heart, just as their ears have been afflicted with a spiritual deafness. So we understand from this that the center of the intellect, the center of human consciousness is actually the heart and not the brain. Only recently have we discovered that there are over 40,000 neurons in the heart. In other words, there are cells in the heart that are communicating with the brain. While the brain sends messages to the heart, the heart also sends messages to the brain. Although this communication is something that is not fully understood from a physiological point of view, we do know that the heart is an extremely sophisticated organ with secrets still veiled from us. The prophet of Islami PBUH spoke of the heart as a repository of knowledge and a vessel sensitive to teh deeds of the body. He said, for example, the wrongdoing irritates the heart. So the heart actually perceives wrong action. in fact, when people do terrible things, the core of their humanity is injured. Fyodor Dostoyevsky expresses brilliantly in Crime and Punishment that the crime itself is the punishment because human beings ultimately have to live with the painful consequences of their deeds. When someone commits a crime, he does so first against his own heart, which then affects the whole human being. The person enters a state of spiritual agitation and often tries to suppress it. The root meaning of the word kufr (disbelief) is to cover something up. As it relates to this discussion, the problems we see in our society come down to covering up or suppressing the symptoms of its troubles. The agenst used to do this include alcohol, drugs, sexual experimentation, power grabs, wealth, arrogance, pursuit of fame, and etc. These enable people to submerge themselves into a state of heelessness concerning their essential nature. People work very hard to cut themselves off from their hearts and the natural feelings found there. The pressures to do this are very strong in our modern culture.
One of the major drawbacks of being severed from the heart is that the more one is severed, the sicker the heart becomes, for the heart needs nourishment. Heedlessness starves the heart, robs it of its spiritual manna. One enters into a state of unawareness - a develitating lack of awareness of God and an acute neglect of humanity's ultimate destination: the infinate world of the Hereafter. When one peers into the limitless world through erememberance of God and increases in beneficial knowledge, one's concerns become more focused on the infinite world, not the finite one that is disappearing and ephemeral. When people are completely immersed in the material world, believing that this world is all that matters and all that exists and that they are not accoutnable for their actions, they effect a spiritual death of their hearts. Before the heart dies, hoewever, it shows symptoms of affliction. These afflictions are the spiritual diseases of the heart (the center of our being) - the topic of this book.
In Islamic tradition, these diseases fall under two categories. The first is known as shubuhat or obfuscations, diseases that relate to impaired understanding. For instance, if somebody is fearful that God will not provide for him or her, this is considered a disease of the heart because a sound heart has knowledge and trust, not doubt and anxiety. Shubuhat alludes to aspects closely connected to the heart, the soul, the ego, Satan's whisperings and instigations, caprice and the ardent love of this ephemeral love. The heart is an organ designed to be in a state of calm, which is achieved with the rememberence of God: Most surely, in the rememberance of God do hearts find calm (Quran, 13:28). This calm is what the heart seeks out and gravitates to. It yearns always to remember God the Exalted. But when God is not remembered, when human beings forget God, then the heart falls into a state of agitation and turmoil. In this state it becomes vulnerable to diseases because it is undernourished and cut off.
We enter the world in a state the Quran calls fitra, our original state and inherent nature that is disposed to accept faith and prefer morality. But we soon learn anxiety mainly from oru parents and then our societies. The heart is created vulnerable to anxiety and agitation (Quran, 70:19). Those who are protected from this state are people of prayer, people who establish prayer and guard its performance with a humble and open heart connected with God, the Lord of all creation. The highest ranks amont people are thos who d not allow anything to divert them from the remembrance of God. They are the ones who remember God as they are standing, sitting and reclinning on their sides (Quran, 3:191).
The second category of disease concerns the base desires of the self and is called shahawat. This relates to our desires exceeding their natural state, as when people live merely to satisfy these urges and are led by them. Islam provides the method by which our hearts can become sound and safe again. This method has been the subject or brilliant and insightful scholarship for centuries in the Islamic tradition. One can say that Islam in essence is a program to restore purity and calm to the heart throught the remembrance of God.
If we examine the trials and tribulations, wars, and other conflicts, every act of injustice all over earth, we'll find they are rooted in human hearts. Covetousness, the desire to aggress and exploit, the longing to pilfer natural resources, the inordinate love of wealth and position, and other maladies are manifestations of diseases found nowhere but in the heart. Every criminal, miser, abuser and hateful person does what he or she does because of a diseased heart. So if we want to change our world, we do not begin by rectifyig the outward. Instead, we must change the condiditon of our inward. Everything we see happening outside of us in in reality coming from the unseen world within.
The two following paragraphs are what WE NEED to hear for what's happening in Syria, Lebanon and our whole Ummah. The well-known civil rights activist Martin Luther King said that in order for people to condemn injustice, they must go throught four stages. The first stage is that people must ascertain that indeed injustices are being perpetrated. The second stage is to neotiate, that is, approach the oppressor and demand justice. If the oppressor refuses, King said that the third stage is self-purification, which starts with the question: "Are we ourselves wrong doers? Are we ourselves oppressors?" The fourth stage, then, is to take action after true self-examination, after removing one's own wrongs before demanding justice from others.
In the modern world, we are reluctant to ask ourselves - when we look at the terrible things that are happening - "Why do they occur?" And if we ask that with all sincerity, the answer will come resoundingly: "All of this is from your own selves." In so many ways, we have brought this upon ourselves. This is the only empowering position we can take. The Quran implies that if a people oppress others, God will send another people to oppress them: We put some oppressors over other opressors because of what thier own hands have earned (6:129). According to Fagjruddin Al Razi (a 12th centure scholar of the Quran), the verse means that the exitence of oppression on earth may be cause by previous oppression. By implication, often the vistims of aggression were once aggressors themselves. This, however, is not the case with tribulations, for there are time in which people are indeed tried, but if they respond with patience and perseverance, God will always give them relief and victory. If we examine the life of the Prophet PBUH in Makkah, it's clear that he and the community of believers were being harmed and oppressed, but they were patient and God gave them victory. Withing 23 years, the Prophet PBUH was not only free of oppression, but became leader of the entire Arabian Peninsula. Those people who once oppressed him now sought mercy from him, and he was most gracious and kind in his response. Despite their former brutality toward him, he forgave them and admitted them into the brotherhood of faith.
This is the difference between someone whose heart is purified and sound and one whose heart is impure and corrupt. In order to purify ourselves, we must begin to recognize this truth. This is what this book is all about - abood of self-purification and a manua of liberation. If we workd on our hearts, we'll begin to see changes in our lives, our condition, our society, and even withing our family dynamics. It is a blessing that we have this science of purification, a blessing that this teaching exists in the world today. What remains is for us to take these teachings seriously. So let's learn about the diseases of the heart, examine their etiology (their causes), signs and symptoms, and finally how to treat them. There are two types of treatments: theoretical treatment, which is understanding the disease itself, and the practical treatment, which focuses on the prescriptions we must take in order to restore the heart's natural purity. The teachings are available, clear and they work. It is then up to us to learn and apply them to ourselves and share them with others.
In order to purify ourselves, we must begin to recognize this truth.
Translator's Introduction
On the Day of Judgment no one is safe save the one who returns to God with a pure heart. (Quran)Surely in the breast of humanity is a lump of flesh, if sound then the wholee body is sound, and if corrupt then the whole body is corrupt. Is it not the heart? (Prophet Muhammad PBUH)
Almost universally, religious traditions have stressed the importance of the condition of the heart. in the Muslim scripture, the Day of Judgement is described as a day in which neither wealth nor children shall be of any benefit (to anyone), except one who comes to God with a sound heart (Quran 26:88-89) The Sound heart is understood to be free of character defects and spiritual blemishes. Prophet Muhammad PBUH said, " The difference between the one who remembers God and one who does not is like the difference between the living and the dead." In essence, the believer is someone whose heart is alive, while the disbeliever is someone whose heart is spiritually dead. The Quran speaks of certain people with diseased hearts (self-inflicted, we understand) and, as a result, they were increased in their disease (Quran: 2:10).
The heart is centered slightly to the left of our bodies. Two sacred languages of Arabic and Hebrew are written from rigth to left, toward the heart, which, as some have noted, mirrors the purporse of writing, namely to affect the heart. One should also consider the ritual of circling around the Ancient House (or Kaba) in Makkah during Pilgrimage. It is performed in a counterclockwise fasion, with the left side of the worshipper facing the House - with the heart inclined towards it to remind us of God and His presence in the life of humanity.
The physical heart, which houses the spiritual heart, beats about 100,000 times a day, pumping two gallons of blood per minute and over 100 gallons per hour. If one were to attempt to carry 100 gallons of water (whose density is lighter than blood) from one place to another, it would be an exhausting tast. Yet the human heart does this every hour of every day for an entire lifetime without respite. The vascular system transporting life-giving blood is over 60,000 miles long - more than 2 times the circumference of the earth. So when we conceive of our blood being pumped through out our bodies, know that this means that it travels through 60,000 miles of a closed vascular system that connects all the parts of the body - all the vital organs and living tissues - to this incredible heart.
We now know that the heart starts beating before the brain is fully fashioned, that is, without the benefit of a fully formed central nervous system. The dominant theory states that the central nervous system is what controls the entire human being, with the brain as its center. Yet we also know that the nervous system does not initiate the beat of the heart, but that it is actually self-initiated, or, as we would say, initiated by God. We also know that the heart, should all of its connections to the brain be severed (as they are during a heart transplant), continues to beat. Many in the West have long proffered that the brain is the center of consciousness. But in traditional Islamic thought - as in other traditions - the heart is viewed as the center of our being. The Quran, for example, speaks of wayward people who have hearts with which they do not understand (7:179). Their inability to understand is a deviation from the spiritual function of a sound heart, just as their ears have been afflicted with a spiritual deafness. So we understand from this that the center of the intellect, the center of human consciousness is actually the heart and not the brain. Only recently have we discovered that there are over 40,000 neurons in the heart. In other words, there are cells in the heart that are communicating with the brain. While the brain sends messages to the heart, the heart also sends messages to the brain. Although this communication is something that is not fully understood from a physiological point of view, we do know that the heart is an extremely sophisticated organ with secrets still veiled from us. The prophet of Islami PBUH spoke of the heart as a repository of knowledge and a vessel sensitive to teh deeds of the body. He said, for example, the wrongdoing irritates the heart. So the heart actually perceives wrong action. in fact, when people do terrible things, the core of their humanity is injured. Fyodor Dostoyevsky expresses brilliantly in Crime and Punishment that the crime itself is the punishment because human beings ultimately have to live with the painful consequences of their deeds. When someone commits a crime, he does so first against his own heart, which then affects the whole human being. The person enters a state of spiritual agitation and often tries to suppress it. The root meaning of the word kufr (disbelief) is to cover something up. As it relates to this discussion, the problems we see in our society come down to covering up or suppressing the symptoms of its troubles. The agenst used to do this include alcohol, drugs, sexual experimentation, power grabs, wealth, arrogance, pursuit of fame, and etc. These enable people to submerge themselves into a state of heelessness concerning their essential nature. People work very hard to cut themselves off from their hearts and the natural feelings found there. The pressures to do this are very strong in our modern culture.
One of the major drawbacks of being severed from the heart is that the more one is severed, the sicker the heart becomes, for the heart needs nourishment. Heedlessness starves the heart, robs it of its spiritual manna. One enters into a state of unawareness - a develitating lack of awareness of God and an acute neglect of humanity's ultimate destination: the infinate world of the Hereafter. When one peers into the limitless world through erememberance of God and increases in beneficial knowledge, one's concerns become more focused on the infinite world, not the finite one that is disappearing and ephemeral. When people are completely immersed in the material world, believing that this world is all that matters and all that exists and that they are not accoutnable for their actions, they effect a spiritual death of their hearts. Before the heart dies, hoewever, it shows symptoms of affliction. These afflictions are the spiritual diseases of the heart (the center of our being) - the topic of this book.
In Islamic tradition, these diseases fall under two categories. The first is known as shubuhat or obfuscations, diseases that relate to impaired understanding. For instance, if somebody is fearful that God will not provide for him or her, this is considered a disease of the heart because a sound heart has knowledge and trust, not doubt and anxiety. Shubuhat alludes to aspects closely connected to the heart, the soul, the ego, Satan's whisperings and instigations, caprice and the ardent love of this ephemeral love. The heart is an organ designed to be in a state of calm, which is achieved with the rememberence of God: Most surely, in the rememberance of God do hearts find calm (Quran, 13:28). This calm is what the heart seeks out and gravitates to. It yearns always to remember God the Exalted. But when God is not remembered, when human beings forget God, then the heart falls into a state of agitation and turmoil. In this state it becomes vulnerable to diseases because it is undernourished and cut off.
We enter the world in a state the Quran calls fitra, our original state and inherent nature that is disposed to accept faith and prefer morality. But we soon learn anxiety mainly from oru parents and then our societies. The heart is created vulnerable to anxiety and agitation (Quran, 70:19). Those who are protected from this state are people of prayer, people who establish prayer and guard its performance with a humble and open heart connected with God, the Lord of all creation. The highest ranks amont people are thos who d not allow anything to divert them from the remembrance of God. They are the ones who remember God as they are standing, sitting and reclinning on their sides (Quran, 3:191).
The second category of disease concerns the base desires of the self and is called shahawat. This relates to our desires exceeding their natural state, as when people live merely to satisfy these urges and are led by them. Islam provides the method by which our hearts can become sound and safe again. This method has been the subject or brilliant and insightful scholarship for centuries in the Islamic tradition. One can say that Islam in essence is a program to restore purity and calm to the heart throught the remembrance of God.
If we examine the trials and tribulations, wars, and other conflicts, every act of injustice all over earth, we'll find they are rooted in human hearts. Covetousness, the desire to aggress and exploit, the longing to pilfer natural resources, the inordinate love of wealth and position, and other maladies are manifestations of diseases found nowhere but in the heart. Every criminal, miser, abuser and hateful person does what he or she does because of a diseased heart. So if we want to change our world, we do not begin by rectifyig the outward. Instead, we must change the condiditon of our inward. Everything we see happening outside of us in in reality coming from the unseen world within.
The two following paragraphs are what WE NEED to hear for what's happening in Syria, Lebanon and our whole Ummah. The well-known civil rights activist Martin Luther King said that in order for people to condemn injustice, they must go throught four stages. The first stage is that people must ascertain that indeed injustices are being perpetrated. The second stage is to neotiate, that is, approach the oppressor and demand justice. If the oppressor refuses, King said that the third stage is self-purification, which starts with the question: "Are we ourselves wrong doers? Are we ourselves oppressors?" The fourth stage, then, is to take action after true self-examination, after removing one's own wrongs before demanding justice from others.
In the modern world, we are reluctant to ask ourselves - when we look at the terrible things that are happening - "Why do they occur?" And if we ask that with all sincerity, the answer will come resoundingly: "All of this is from your own selves." In so many ways, we have brought this upon ourselves. This is the only empowering position we can take. The Quran implies that if a people oppress others, God will send another people to oppress them: We put some oppressors over other opressors because of what thier own hands have earned (6:129). According to Fagjruddin Al Razi (a 12th centure scholar of the Quran), the verse means that the exitence of oppression on earth may be cause by previous oppression. By implication, often the vistims of aggression were once aggressors themselves. This, however, is not the case with tribulations, for there are time in which people are indeed tried, but if they respond with patience and perseverance, God will always give them relief and victory. If we examine the life of the Prophet PBUH in Makkah, it's clear that he and the community of believers were being harmed and oppressed, but they were patient and God gave them victory. Withing 23 years, the Prophet PBUH was not only free of oppression, but became leader of the entire Arabian Peninsula. Those people who once oppressed him now sought mercy from him, and he was most gracious and kind in his response. Despite their former brutality toward him, he forgave them and admitted them into the brotherhood of faith.
This is the difference between someone whose heart is purified and sound and one whose heart is impure and corrupt. In order to purify ourselves, we must begin to recognize this truth. This is what this book is all about - abood of self-purification and a manua of liberation. If we workd on our hearts, we'll begin to see changes in our lives, our condition, our society, and even withing our family dynamics. It is a blessing that we have this science of purification, a blessing that this teaching exists in the world today. What remains is for us to take these teachings seriously. So let's learn about the diseases of the heart, examine their etiology (their causes), signs and symptoms, and finally how to treat them. There are two types of treatments: theoretical treatment, which is understanding the disease itself, and the practical treatment, which focuses on the prescriptions we must take in order to restore the heart's natural purity. The teachings are available, clear and they work. It is then up to us to learn and apply them to ourselves and share them with others.
In order to purify ourselves, we must begin to recognize this truth.
