Foundations of Islam Series- The Concept of Ihsan

Foundations of Islam Series: The Concept of Ihsan

Introduction to the Hadith of Jibreel

Just to continue on a little bit with where we were, because I didn't really finish the second part. If we look at the hadith, in the forty hadiths, which is really what I've been dealing with all along, the hadith talks about, there's actually four subjects. The first subject is Islam, which we covered, and the second one is Iman, which we covered at a very basic level, and the third one is called Ihsan.

The Four Dimensions of Faith

Now, if we look at it in terms of dimensionality, the first dimension is Islam. That's the first dimension, which would relate to like a vertical dimension, or horizontal rather. The second dimension is Iman, which would be the dimension of height, so you have breadth and height. And the third dimension is Ihsan, which would be related to depth. So here's our three dimensionality there, in the tradition. Now the last question in the hadith is about the end of time.

So here we bring in the fourth dimension, which is time. So in this hadith, we're looking at four dimensions within the tradition. Modern Islam has focused on Islam, and I'm using Islam as a rubric for Islam being the outward, Iman being the inward, and Ihsan being the transcendent or the universal aspect.

And then finally, the idea of time, and how it translates into the world. So the reason there's been an incredible focus on Islam in the modern world has a lot to do with the post-colonial condition.

Historical Success and Defeats in Islamic Civilization

Now if you look, the Muslims, unlike other traditions, were very successful. If you look at the first 13 years, there was tribulation, there was hardship, but after the first 13 years, you really have a religion that had an extraordinary amount of worldly success. Within 100 some odd years, they had literally reached most of the known world. And although the Battle of Tours, which marks the stop of Islam's Western movement by Charles Martel, the fact is that that really was not, according to the Muslim historians, was not a significant defeat.

The Muslims weren't particularly interested at that time in moving any more north, and they actually went back into Spain, and really kind of, Spain was an extraordinary place. Northern Europe was dark, there was a lot of clouds. These were mostly people that were coming from the middle part of the world.

And so they went back into Spain and spent several hundred years there developing extraordinary civilization. Then there's two major events, one, the fall of Cordoba, which really sent repercussions throughout the Muslim world, because Cordoba became an extraordinary center of learning in the Muslim world. And within 100 years, you've got the fall of Baghdad at the hands of the Mughals.

Massive impact. This is the heartland that is defeated. And this is the first time that the Muslims really felt defeat in a very, very powerful and traumatic way.

The Resilience and Loss of Al-Andalus

Nonetheless, energies are regrouped. The Mughals will become Muslims, actually reinvigorating the tradition. Spain becomes a thorn in the side, lamenting poets.

To this day, there are Arab poets that write about Spain and the loss of Spain. To this day, Spain is very much in the Muslim consciousness. To this day, it's I mean, it's odd for us to think about this, right? But really, the Muslims do feel a sense of grief and loss when Andalus is mentioned.

Colonial Encounters and the Crisis of Modernity

Now, what you see happen when Napoleon reaches Egypt and literally, it's interesting enough, he sends a letter to the Egyptians off the shore telling him he hasn't come to destroy the Quran or the Islamic teachings, but to honor them. And it's kind of odd. But then he comes in, he invades Egypt, and the Mamluks put up an extraordinary fight, but they were grossly outnumbered in terms of technology.

The weaponry was much more sophisticated. You're dealing with people that were still fighting with swords and things, and they were coming up against very serious technological advancement. That, when Egypt feels that, right, Napoleon is eventually defeated in Palestine and moves back.

But there is a very traumatic experience within the Muslim world, the idea of Egypt being attacked and actually for a period, a short period of time, succumbs to the colonial power. And you just start seeing the colonial incursion increasing, increasing. North Africa begins to become defeated, different places.

Prophetic Hadith on Colonial Domination

Now, the Muslims were looking for a reason to try to understand this, because for centuries in their psyche, this is God's religion, we're the defenders of God's one true religion, right? And now we're actually being defeated. Different responses. Some of them said, clearly a sign of the end of time.

There's a hadith, which is a verifiable sound hadith from the Prophet Muhammad. There will come a time in which the great nations of the West will attack my ummah and eat from them. In other words, devour their riches like people eat from a plate of food.

Sound hadith, many Muslims started using this to say, well, this is fulfillment of prophecy. Other Muslims said this is too defeatist and began to explain it in terms of technological superiority. What we did is we abandoned our tradition, right, of research, of trying to investigate the world for the first three, four centuries of Islam.

The Debate Between Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd

There was a lot of scientific development and achievement. In the 6th century, a theologian named Abu Hamad Al-Ghazali wrote a book which was an attack on the philosophers, Tahafut al-Falasifah, the incoherence of the philosophers, has a very strong impact in the Muslim world. And the philosophers were not simply just how we view them now, but philosophers of those times were also scientists.

There was natural philosophy. The book was a very strong attack on this tradition, saying that in a sense that people were investigating things that they really had no purpose investigating, that there was too much speculation and that there were also elements involved in philosophy and the study of philosophy that led to a type of what could lead to disbelief potentially. So there is a refutation within 100 years by another great philosopher, theologian and jurist like Al-Ghazali, who himself was very well versed in the philosophy of his time, Ibn Rushd, who's called Averroes, and he wrote a book, Tahafut al-Tahafut, the incoherence of the incoherence, which was his attack on Imam Al-Ghazali.

This book is rejected in the Muslim world. He's a very interesting character. And the Europeans become there was a there's a very strong school in the Middle Ages, the Averroes school of which Thomas Aquinas, whose teacher, Albertus Magnus, is heavily influenced by Ibn Rushd, Averroes, and he actually the commentaries of Ibn Rushd wrote three commentaries on Aristotle, the small, the middle and or the lesser, the middle and the greatest, for three levels of understanding.

And these are translated into Latin and spread quite rapidly in Europe. So the Europeans began to take the rational model at the same time that the Muslims are rejecting it. It's very interesting phenomenon.

Islamic Reform and Modernism in 19th Century Egypt

So basically, there's there was a group of Muslims, particularly 19th century Egypt, who begin to say this is our problem. We abandoned the rationalist model and took this super rationalist or spiritual model and we've forgotten the world. Whereas the Christians, who for centuries abandoned the world, took this rational model and begin to explore the world to discover the secrets of the world and ultimately gain power and ascendancy in a way that now even the heartland of Islam is threatened and being defeated.

And so they created a type of neo-rationalist school. Right. And within that school, the probably the greatest proponent is an Egyptian reformist named Mohammed Abdu, who becomes Sheikh al-Azhar in 1900.

He takes the Azhari school, which is really the you know, this is the Harvard of the Muslim world. He takes that school and begins to introduce modernist ideas that Islam needs to be reformed. So you get reformers and there becomes a secularization of Islam.

The Loss of Spiritual Tradition

The Muslims become embarrassed of their spiritual tradition. In the spiritual tradition, there was a lot of belief

in the miracles of the saints, in the idea of sainthood, what's called wilaya in the Arabic language, of a very strong tradition of not becoming too engaged in the world, taking only from the world what you need and really not being extravagant and things like that.

And really seeing this as this as something related to the very core of Islam and using the Prophet as the example, as the model of somebody who was not deeply engaged in the world, although he was a worldly prophet in the sense that he was very concerned with society, with justice in society, with establishing a strong social basis for his teaching.

The Prophet's Simple Lifestyle

Despite that, his own personal life was one of, in a sense, a deep abandonment of the luxuries of the world. There's a famous tradition. He slept on a mat on the floor and they said that the palm fibers used to be shown, the traces of it on his face.

And once Omar was sitting with him and he began to weep and he asked Omar, why are you weeping? And he said, because I've been to Syria and seen how the Roman rulers live in the opulence. And then I look at you, the Prophet of God, living like this, it makes me sad. And the Prophet smiled at him and said, aren't you pleased that this is for them? They have this world and for us is the next world.

This type of within the Islamic tradition was very, very much the norm until the late 19th century. And so you get a change. And so now what you will find, there's a book I really would recommend.

The Responsibility of Knowledge

I mean, given that in a sense you're becoming now within certainly in the American framework, experts on Islam, right? I mean, after you finish this two weeks, you will be considered within your schools and within your environments to have a type of expertise about Islam that other people don't have, which is that's one, a very important responsibility and two, a type of absurdity, as we all know, right? Because none of us, I mean, I had, you know, I did my degree at the university in comparative religions and, you know, that you can't, any one religion, I mean, I haven't even explored Islam to its fullest anywhere near it. You know, Buddhism is just an incredible tradition, massive intellectual tradition, massive spiritual tradition, you know, and if I spent my entire life just studying Buddhism, I would not exhaust even probably one of the schools of Buddhism, you know. So this is true of any religion that has any substance to it.

You know, and certainly Islam is, you know, it is one of the greatest of the of the religions of man, if not, but certainly the Muslims would consider it. But even I think many secularist historians would consider it certainly either the first or the second. Christianity will be in there, depending on which historian you're looking at.

Michael Hart definitely considered it of all the Prophet Muhammad as being the most successful religious teacher in the history of human societies, the impact that he's had on cultures and civilizations.

Recommended Reading on Political Islam

So the the, you know, the point of all this is that the book that I was going to recommend, yes, is called The Failure of Political Islam by Roy Olivier. I think it's a brilliant book. He's not a Muslim. He's a French intellectual who originally did studies in Afghanistan. But he really studied very seriously the modern political scene in the Muslim world.

And I think he gives a brilliant analysis of what's called fundamentalism. It's called The Failure of Political Islam by Roy Olivier, Roy Olivier. It's French. If you're used to reading French intellectuals, you know, it's kind of it's got a little bit of that in there. They tend to be abstruse, almost purpose, purposely. But the basic gist of his argument is that what happened within the Muslim world is that there was a radical secularization within the elite, the intellectual elites of the Muslim world.

Marxism and Socialism in the Muslim World

Many of them adopted socialism and communism as ways of dealing with colonialism. You will see Algeria is a good example of this. Right. Ahmed Ben Bella, Boumediene, these are the revolutionaries that free their countries from the yoke of colonialism. Another example is Libya. Right. The Jamahiriya, he's a socialist in his views. Jamal Abdel Nasser, who's kind of switching back and forth, but basically a socialist worldview. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, a communist organization from inception.

The idea was definitely the oppressed versus the oppressed within a dialectical, this Marxist dialectic. Well, with also Iraq, the Baathist Party, socialist, Syria, socialist. We forget this, you know, that how deeply this Marxist idea moves into the Muslim world. Yemen, communist, the communists take over Yemen. Communism traditionally has seen religion as an enemy, the opiate of the masses. This in the Muslim world was a little more difficult because of the, you know, the depth of the sacred tradition still within those.

And so the type of communism, the socialism, there's almost a, well, let's reinterpret our tradition. The prophet was a communist. Right. And there's some of the Western, you know, people said this about Jesus, the original communitarian, the disciples are giving up all their possessions for the poor.

Liberation Theology and Islamic Socialism

So you get and now you have within the Catholic Church a very strong Marxist tradition, liberation theology, Sandinistas, many of the people within the Sandinista were very devout. Ernesto Cardenal was a Jesuit priest. He becomes the minister of culture in Nicaragua. So within the Catholic Church, particularly in the so-called oppressed lands like Brazil and these places, you find within Christianity a Marxist redaction of the of the Christian teaching. And it's very appealing.

The Quranic Perspective on Prosperity and Hardship

This is divine grace. I mean, we wouldn't have all this stuff if God wasn't pleased with us, which is alien to the Quranic worldview, by the way. The Quran says if God gives man a lot, then man says, oh, God's pleased with me. And if he gives him a hard time, man says he's angry at me, he's upset with me. Whereas from the Quranic worldview, the testing is good and evil. You're tested with want and abundance, that they're both tests from God.

“[Then as for man, when his Lord tries him and [thus] is generous to him and favors him, he says, "My Lord has honored me." But when He tries him and restricts his provision, he says, "My Lord has humiliated me."]”

One-Dimensional Islam and Social Justice Movements

So what happens within the Muslim world is, is that suddenly all these people that were Marxists in the 1970s are becoming radical Islamists of the 1980s. And quite literally, you know, and you change the vocabulary because it's very similar. Political slogans aren't that different. And you could start shouting about freedom in Islam or you can shout about freedom as a communist and not a whole lot of difference. And so what happens is you get a lot of young people coming into these movements, these political movements that are basically emphasizing social justice. Very little emphasis on the traditional teaching of Islam, which deals with three dimensions.

There is a focus on one dimension, which is Islam. And this is why you have a great deal of one dimensional Islam in the Muslim world. The problem with focusing on one dimension and particularly the outward dimension is religious people are very often unpleasant people to be around.

The Danger of Religiosity

Right. That has been my experience. I'm you know, my life on this planet, some of the worst people that I've ever been around are religious people and feeling much more comfortable with a secular humanist, although I've been around some very rabid fundamentalist secular humanists as well.

Right. Because you get both sides. But I think definitely within, you know, the religious tradition there, the great danger of religion is religiosity. Right. With self-righteousness, with being judgmental, with suddenly I'm right, you're all wrong. God's on my side. He's not on your side. This is a real trap for any practitioner of a religious teaching. And it is certainly a trap within the Islamic tradition, just as it is in every other tradition.

The Spirit of the Law vs. The Letter of the Law

I don't sense in any way that it was the spirit of the Prophet Muhammad's teaching. I'll give you an example of one of the second generation to ask one of the Sahaba. He said, we had a woman who died amongst us, who died without a mahram. And should we, in other words, she didn't have a relative. She was living alone. And he said, so should we wash her and bury her? And the man just said to her, you know, we didn't make things that difficult during the time of the prophets.

In other words, bury the poor woman, you know, and give me a break. Right. In other words, what happens is the spirit of the law gets lost with the letter of the law. And Islam is a tradition that really is trying to unify the idea of the spirit of the law and the letter of the law, that you cannot have one without the other. If there's too much justice, you end up with wrath. If there's too much mercy, you end up with a type of social chaos.

So the Islamic teaching is trying to join these two. The problem with a modern Islam is there is a massive focus on wrath, on anger. And this is what would be termed in the Nietzschean worldview as the slave mentality of resentment, that the oppressed suddenly becomes has a special status within human society because of the experience of suffering.

The Trap of Victimhood Mentality

I am suffering and you are not. Therefore, I am ipso facto better than you. Right, this is a real trap in the human psyche, you see, because you're not suffering the way I am, I'm better than you. And no moral superiority, no superiority of action simply by the one fundamental issue of suffering. And this is a trap. And this is what Roy Olivier says is the real crisis of the Muslim world, as as long as they stay in this framework, as long as they have this mentality, they can't pull themselves up. It's a completely disempowering condition to be in.

You see, this is what what is what is within Mohammed W.D. Mohammed once said, talking about within this culture for the African-American to be demanding reparations, to be demanding, you know, you have you know, I've got 400 years of injustice and I'm not going to do anything until you rectify the wrongs that have been done to me. What W.D. Mohammed said about that, he said, this is like a man who's literally been mugged. He's left

there dying on the ground. A man comes and offers him his hand to pick him up and he says, no, I'm not getting up until the guy that did this comes back and apologizes to me.

That is a disempowering situation because the guy that did that is most likely not going to come back and apologize to you. And you will wallow in your self-pity because people are not going to help you up. Right. And this is really in many ways, I think, the condition of the Muslim world.

Introduction to Ihsan and Tasawwuf

So I've just kind of put this in a context in order to go into the next realm of Islam, which is called Ihsan, because it is probably of all the teachings of Islam, the most forgotten. And traditionally, it won under the category of what is called in the West Sufism or in the Muslim world, Tasawwuf. The Arabic term literally means to wear wool.

The idea was that some of the early peoples wore wool as a type of declaration of their position in the world. Wool is not a very comfortable garment. It's kind of a rough. And so the idea is that there was kind of a I'm going to deal with the world, you know, in a sense of just dealing by really giving it up in a sense. And there is an idea of Zuhd or doing without or giving up. But the fundamental, I think, aspect of Tasawwuf is related to this idea of Ihsan.

The Definition of Ihsan

Now, in the Hadith, the Prophet, peace be upon him, is asked by Gabriel, tell me about Ihsan. And he says Ihsan is to worship God as if you see God. And if you do not see God, you know God sees you.

(Sahih al-Bukhari 50, Sahih Muslim 8)

This is seen within the Islamic framework as the highest level. Of human possibility. You now are an individual who is in the divine presence because of that, your actions are no longer checked by outward social mechanisms. There is an internal mechanism that is working within the human psyche that is going to prevent you from doing that, which will take you to your destruction.

External Authority and Internal Accountability

If you want to look at it in materialistic terms, you could see it as always really interesting. There's a guy here in New Mexico. He was driving with everybody else about 80 miles per hour. They saw one of the New Mexican police and everybody slowed down except this guy. He just kept zooming along at 80 miles per hour.

Cop turns on his light, pulls him down. He said, why didn't you slow down like everybody else? He said, I don't want to be a hypocrite. Right. The idea is that why is it that in the presence of authority, suddenly our actions are checked? You know, why is that? What's going on in the human psyche? Well, punishment. I don't want a 300 dollar speeding ticket. There's one motivation.

Reminder. Oh, God, I'm speeding. And there's the authority. He reminds me. I mean, that's probably a lesser per smaller percentage of individuals, but I'm certain there are some people that, you know, wow, I'm really going fast. You know, they see the police officer and it reminds them of their actions.

Shame Cultures vs. Guilt Cultures

So there are many things going on. Right. This idea of being checked from the outside is related to what anthropologists term shame cultures. Right. Anthropologists divide cultures into shame and guilt cultures, and they have an idea that guilt cultures are higher, like the Western culture would be seen as a guilt culture. Many African cultures would be considered shame cultures.

A guilt culture is a culture where there's an internal mechanism going on. I feel bad if I'm doing wrong. A shame culture is a culture where, oh, my God, so-and-so is seeing me. He's going to tell so-and-so. In other words, there's an external mechanism that's checking my actions. From the Islamic viewpoint, Islam is a shame religion, but it is not the society that you want to check your action.

Islamic Concept of Shame Before God

It is the fact that you are being watched by God. And this is why Ihsan is related to seeing. In other words, you feel the presence of God and you feel ashamed before God to be doing an action that would be displeasing to God. This is the idea of shame. And the Prophet said, every tradition has a characteristic, and the characteristic of my tradition is shame. But it is not shame before the society. It is shame before God.

(Muwatta Malik 1662)

And one of the things is that the Prophet said, feel shame before the angels, that there are angels. There's an angelic presence that when we do things and many people, it's interesting, but many people are ashamed. You know, they do things. I had a friend who who worked in a video store and he was telling me how people that came in for pornographic film would always use these euphemisms when they would ask where the section, if they couldn't find it or do you have these things? Right. And he said that he could see that a lot of times they would walk around and they wouldn't, they'd be embarrassed to come up and just say to them, because there is a sense of shame.

There's still within our culture, certain mechanisms in the culture that people feel shame about certain things. And one of them would be that. I mean, there are many examples of that. And we're a culture also that in many ways is throwing off the, you know, the garments of shame. I mean, we're losing that sense, too, as the Christian influence in this culture, the Judaic Christian influence in this culture diminishes.

The Linguistic Root of Ihsan: Making Beauty

So if you look at the root of this word here, Ihsan, it is literally to make beautiful. To make something beautiful. And it's interesting about the three words of Islam, Iman and Ihsan, they're all on the same form in the Arabic

language. I told you there were 15 verbal forms. They're on the fourth form, which is a doing, making something happen. So Islam is making submission happen. You are making it happen. Iman is making faith happen. You are making it happen. Ihsan is making beauty happen.

Ethics as Aesthetics

Now, here's an idea. There's a there's an ethicist, an American ethicist, Chisholm, who had his his ethical theory was that ethics is nothing other than aesthetics, that ethics is really a branch of aesthetics. In other words, that an ethical act is a beautiful act. And this is why people recognize it. You know, what a wonderful thing that person did. That was a beautiful thing to do, right? There's an idea, there's a recognition in the human being when they see an act of an ethical act done that it impresses them, there's something congruous about it, right? The person that brings the money back, there was too much money given in the chain.

That's something that, you know, it surprises people nowadays. Hey, thank you. You know, like it's a shock. Well, there's an idea there that there's a harmony, that something's incongruous. There's an in there's there's something that is not harmonious that occurs in an unethical act and that that what an ethical act does is it is it returns that harmony to the to the to the act itself.

Arabic Terms for Beauty

Now, the word is Ihsan comes from Husn. Now, the interesting thing, there are many ways to say beautiful in Arabic, and one of them is Jamal, and we talked about that Jamal and Jalal, the Jamal. Jamal, now, does anybody know the Arabic word for camel? Camel, camel, camel is from jamal because the Egyptians say jamal, they pronounce the jeem jamal, so when the Europeans first heard it, they heard camel, camel, right? So camel is from Jamal. Jamal in the Arabic language, when you say, she's beautiful, what you're saying is her nose is beautiful because the Arabs, if you look at a camel, it's got a very beautiful nose, right? So for the Arabs, the beauty of the camel is the nose, right?

Hassan relates to the eye. When you call somebody Hassan or they have beauty, it relates to the eye. Husna is beauty in the eye, you see, the Arabs have many, many words, they're very specific language, right? There's a word for a table that has food on it called Ma'ida, if it doesn't have food, it's called Khawan, so you get very specific. So Hassan relates to the eye.

Recognizing and Producing Beauty

Now, it's interesting that the idea of Ihsan is seeing. There is an idea that the human being recognizes beauty, that we are beauty recognizers, that there's something within our neurological or spiritual or psychosocial character that recognizes beauty. But it is not enough, according to the Islamic tradition, to recognize beauty. You must also be a beauty producer. You must be contributing yourself. This can only occur with spiritual development.

Pure Hearts and the Hedonistic Principle

Now, the Muslims would say some people are born with pure hearts. The traditional Muslim scholars say there are some people that are born with good hearts. They don't need a lot of work on their hearts. They have a type of selfless nature. They will prefer, they will give, they will do these things. Now, a materialist might look at these things very cynically, right? In fact, there's a principle in philosophy called the hedonistic principle, which is that people really only do good things because it makes them feel good.

So there's a type of pleasure that one derives out of doing good things. And this is the way many people will interpret a good act, that they're really doing it for themselves. Right. From the Muslim point of view, that's not really, you know, it's almost irrelevant that, in other words, that the idea of doing good, that if you do feel good, that that is something that God, that is another divine mechanism that would encourage one to do this.

Becoming a Muhsin

And the Muslims would say that really, in a sense, that a person will not be fulfilled in life until they become somebody who is a *muhsin*. If you look throughout the Quran again and again, you will come to this idea of Allah loves the beauty makers. Allah loves the *muhsin*, Allah is with the *muhsin*. Many, many verses that deal with this idea of *ihsan*.

"Indeed, Allah loves the doers of good."

"Indeed, Allah is with those who fear Him and those who are doers of good."

If you look at the Muslim world traditionally, and I think also many aspects of the Christian world, of the of the Chinese world, you will see a desire to embellish, a desire to make something beautiful. From the Muslim point of view, that is a spiritual organ in the human being, which is manifesting in the world.

Aesthetic Experience in Sacred Spaces

And so the idea of building a mosque that is not simply a place of worship, but also there is something aesthetic. When the individual enters into the sacred space, they recognize something beautiful about that. And it can be in simplicity. It doesn't have to be this massive ornamentation. No, it can be quite simple. One of the really interesting things about the modern Muslim world is that you will notice that there is almost an absence in much of the modern Muslim world of this type of beauty.

Beauty in Mauritanian Culture

It's quite sad. Plastic, you know, these plastic wall things to hang on your wall that have Quran on them. Where Sidi Abdullah comes from, this Mauritanian man, they drink out of wooden bowls, but they always carve designs on the wooden bowl. They're not simply a bowl. You don't just make it a bowl. It's a drinking bowl. So they put things that are pleasurable to the eye. They have pillows there. And these are very primitive in terms of

how they're living. They have these pillows that are made out of leather. But the women design these really incredibly beautiful patterns on the pillow. So the pillow is not just functional, the Bauhausian type of just functionality that has something essentially ugly in its nature. It's more than functional. It is also life enhancing. It embellishes one's life on earth.

The Loss of Aesthetic Experience in Modern Life

Now, what you will notice in the modern world is the absence of that often. Plastic, the idea of tea, traditionally Japanese tea ceremony. Part of the experience was the awesome aesthetic qualities to it. Right. The pot itself, the way the pot is turned, the way the cups are, the way they're offered to the person. These are all aesthetic aspects of the culture that when it's just, you know, you put in your quarter, push the button, you know, it comes out and then, you know, and then you got this paper sugar poured in there, swish it around.

You know, I've satisfied my caffeine crave for the moment. Right. There's a loss of aesthetic experience in that, right, completely. It becomes reduced to simply a bestial need being fulfilled. Right. In other words, the human content there, which is deeply related to an aesthetic experience of life. It's something that makes us human. It's something that transcends our bestial or our worldly qualities and places us in the otherworldly realm. We transcend. Right. And this is something we recognize.

Natural Beauty and Incongruity

I had my two boys. We were out by, I was with Hakeem. We were out. Incredible place in Yosemite Valley. It's just so beautiful. And they were playing in the creek and they both, you know, five and three years old, but they both had these Ninja Turtle underwear on. And I said, that underwear looks so incongruous. It just was aesthetically, it was ugly, wasn't it? You were there with me, Hakeem. So I went and I took their underpants off and I let them play around naked. And it was beautiful.

Right. In other words, it was very interesting. You know, why is that? What is it in ourselves that we recognize that when we see it? You know, you're walking along. It's a beautiful view. And suddenly you see a Coke can and it kind of crushes the heart. You know, it's ugly. Not only the can, but the act that put it there. There's something incongruous there. There's something that really stirs us up.

The Desire for Ihsan

What is that? From the Muslim perspective, it is our desire for *Ihsan*. We desire to make beautiful. The highest act of making beautiful is to be in the divine presence. That is the highest act. That when you enter into the sacred space, when you are aware of the divine in the world, it becomes difficult to rape and pillage the world you live in. It becomes difficult to turn a creek into a polluted, foul smelling entity. It becomes difficult to mass produce things that will end up in a few weeks in the garbage can or a few years.

You see, and the ancients really had a sense of this. And this is why the things they made last to this day. We have them in our museums. Right. And we go and we look at that. What is that in them that that wanted to to create that? That is this desire to make beautiful.

God is Beautiful and Loves Beauty

And the hadith says God is beautiful and he loves beauty. And this is why God loves the beauty makers.

(Sahih Muslim 91)

Because they are being Godlike. They are taking on divine qualities. So how does one do this? Because we're stuck with the self. Right. Wherever you go, there you are. And where are you? And this is the human predicament.

The Path to Ihsan: A Classical Text

I want to quickly go through the most basic text on this science that was taught in North Africa and particularly in West Africa. And it was the text that I taught, was taught by my teacher. And it is a text on *Ihsan*. How do we get to that stage?

First Step: Repentance (Tawba)

He begins by repentance. The idea of recognizing that I'm doing something wrong. You see, because the word for a bad act in Arabic, a sin, if you want to use a Christian terminology, is an ugly act. And the word for a good act is a beautiful act. Hasanat and Sayyiat. The private parts in Arabic, the anus and the genitals, either male or female, are called al-saw'atani, the two ugly things. And the word for a wrong action is related to the same word, Sayyi'a. It's ugly. An act is ugly. It's not something you want to look at. When you see a wrong act, you get, you should if you're healthy. I mean, there's people out there now that are so distorted that, you know, they enjoy making ugly things, right? A lot of modern artists make a lot of money out of it. But that's a personal opinion there. Sorry, I had to throw that in there.

The idea of repentance from every deed is done, is necessary immediately and absolutely. In other words, one must do it immediately. If you do a wrong action, you have to turn away from it immediately. And absolutely meaning you don't have the intention to return to it.

The Components of True Repentance

The repentance in Islam is based on first remorse, a sense of remorse. One has to feel a sense of remorse. And its soundness is contingent upon abandoning it, even at the time. So if somebody's drinking for a Muslim who's drinking a glass of alcohol, they can't just say, you know, Astaghfirullah, may God forgive me and keep drinking it. There has to be a move away from it at the time and then a desire never to continue it, never to return to it. And rectifying what one is able if others are involved in the deed.

So if your wrong action was somebody else was the victim of it, then part of making a true repentance to God in the Muslim worldview is that you rectify the wrong done to that person. If you were backbiting, then you go and ask for their apology. If you stole money, you have to return what you stole. There is a rectification. And within limits, because they say if by doing that, it will lead to a greater problem than you don't. For instance, if somebody did commit adultery, that they should not go and tell a person that I committed adultery with your husband or with your wife, you're actually not supposed to do that. You should just ask forgiveness.

Understanding Taqwa (God-Consciousness)

The gist of *taqwa*, which is God weariness, God consciousness, is fulfillment of the commandments and the avoidance of the prohibitions, both inwardly and outwardly. In other words, that fulfilling injunctions has to be an inward experience as well. I'm not just doing it because of Islam. I'm now doing it also because of *Iman* and what happens in many religious cultures. And there's certainly one that most people are very familiar with in the Middle East, where outwardly things look like they're running according to Islam, but inwardly there's a very different story.

And this happens when you impose an exoteric Islam without concerns for people's internal states. And so you have a religious police that make people pray. Right. And this is very alien to the Islamic tradition. But unfortunately, part of the modern Islamic tradition. And then he says, thus its aspects are four in number, inward and outward, obeying and avoiding.

The Path of the Salik (Spiritual Traveler)

And then he says, and this for the *Salik*. Now, the *Salik* traditionally in the Sufi terminology was somebody who set up, set out on the path of self purification. And then he says, now, how do you really do this?

Practical Steps for Purification

Lower the gaze from what is forbidden. The eye. The Quran says in this. The eye, the ears and the heart. The human being is responsible for them, that we've been given these gifts and we're responsible to guard them and protect them from things that are one things that they should not be involved in and two things that will harm the heart.

"Indeed, the hearing, the sight, and the heart - about all those [the human] will be questioned."

The eyes and the ears are considered the inroads to the heart. And the heart, according to the Muslims, is like a city. And it's protected by the boundaries of the seven limbs, the feet, the hands, the mouth, the ears, the eyes, the stomach, the genitals. That these are the inroads to the corruption of the city. And the city in its essence is pure.

The Black Spot on the Heart

And that if we do wrong actions, we begin to corrupt the heart. And the prophet said that there is a black spot on

the heart. And some would say this is similar to the religious, the Christian religious idea of original sin. There is an idea in the Islamic tradition that there is within the human being potential for darkness, that there is a black spot on the heart. If one does wrong actions, it begins to grow metaphorically until the entire spiritual heart becomes black.

(Sahih Muslim 144)

So there is an idea that the heart does can grow black. And this is what you call it now in our tradition of black hearted, hard hearted person, somebody who's just done so much wrong that there's no the heart has become opaque, that light does not penetrate that type of heart. Many, many people like that in this world, unfortunately.

Guarding the Ears from Harmful Speech

And then prevents his ears from hearing offensive speech, such as backbiting, malicious slander, false testimony and lying that you the prophet Mohammed said, if you listen to backbiting, then you're partaking in it because you've become the vesicle for the you've become the vesicle for the actual poison. You you take in that poison. And so if somebody backbites, the Muslim is encouraged to say, I don't want to hear this, you know, I can't I don't want to hear this. Or should we really be talking about this?

And the prophet was asked what was backbiting? He said backbiting is to mention your brother or sister in a way that had they been in your presence, they would have detested it. And some one of his companions said, what if it was true? And he said, no, that's only if it was true. If it was false, that's calumny.

(Sahih Muslim 2589)

So backbiting is saying true things about people that are unpleasant. And we know the insidious effects that it has within our workspaces and within our. Right. And one of the Muslim Sufis once said, whenever you hear somebody backbiting to you about somebody else, be sure that he's going to be backbiting about you to somebody else. Right. Because it's it's nature, right, there's a nature there that's emerging, that's showing up.

Guarding the Tongue

And then he says it is more obvious that the tongue should abandon what was mentioned. In other words, if it's prohibited to listen to these things, how much greater is it to be the one who's perpetrating or speaking about it? Now, obviously, there are circumstances in the Islamic tradition where you can say things about people like bearing witness against them in a court of law, asking a position. If somebody asks you if you had business transactions, somebody who has cheated you and somebody says, listen, I'm thinking about going into business with so and so, how was your experience with them? You're obligated to tell them I had a bad experience with them with the condition that you don't embellish it. And by the way, he drinks, too.

Guarding the Stomach from Haram

So he must protect his stomach from the haram. In other words, one has to guard one's stomach from what was prohibited for the Muslim. This is part of and it's interesting the idea of you are what you eat is actually quite classic in the book on the medicine of the prophet by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya, which is a medieval text on prophetic medicine. He said one of the reasons why vicious animals, their meat was prohibited is because you don't want to take on the qualities of that animal, right, like a lion or a tiger. And so the idea of guarding one's stomach.

Now, obviously, pig and alcohol are absolutely prohibited for the Muslim. But this also involves food that was acquired through prohibited means. And really strong in the Islamic tradition to avoid buying food with money that was not because that would make the food prohibited as well. And and there is a tradition that, you know, that you that the Prophet Muhammad said, whoever eats the haram, then his body that grows from that, the fire is more worthy of it. In other words, that what you eat is very important.

In the early Muslims, Imam al-Qushayri said they were more concerned about what they put into their stomach than about any other single practice that they were doing, other than the obligatory prayer and things like that, that they were very, very wary about just guarding what they ate.

The Impact of Food on Consciousness

There's a wonderful book for people who like books called A Diet for a New America by John Robbins. And one of the things that he says in there that I think is really interesting is he says the fact that the animals in this country have just they are literally terrorized. He called it animal Auschwitz, right, where they live in terror constantly. And he said that there's a reality to that. You know, this animal has a psyche. It has feelings. Animals do have emotions.

And there's a reality to putting that out into the meat, you know, that you're consuming an animal who has lived in terror all its life. Like veal, you know, their short, terrified lives. And he felt that there is something that that does affect us. And he thought a lot of the anxiety of the American people and a lot of the fears within our culture are related to the fact that we're eating this stuff. It's really interesting book. It's not it's not a crazy book, I don't think at all. It's very thoughtful and interesting book for people. A Diet for a New America by John Robbins. He was the Baskin and Robbins. He was one of the heirs to that empire, and he kind of gave it up. He went on a real tirade against the meat and dairy industry.

The Power of Food Lobbies

And it's interesting how powerful that industry is right in this country, because a lot of you probably know, being teachers, that, you know, we were indoctrinated as children. You had the four food groups, totally unscientific. Everybody knew it was, but that's what we were told, four food groups. Well, the National Academy for Health decided to, you know, upgrade it, make it more scientific. Well, they did their food

pyramid, which had meat and dairy, this tiny little thing up there, and the meat and dairy lobby got infuriated by this, lobbied heavily and actually changed the pyramid. So now we're looking at a pyramid that has a bigger chunk of meat and dairy, not based on any scientific ground, but purely based on the power of one group to lobby in Washington. Very interesting.

Ascertaining the Sacred Law

He stops all matters until he ascertains the judgment Allah has decreed concerning them. This is the idea of taqwa, of wariness, to find out what is the hukum, what is the judgment in this thing. If I'm going to buy and sell, because in Islam, there's things that you can't sell or buy, like things that don't benefit people. Right. So there goes two thirds of American industry, right? Walmart's down the drain, right?

Purifying the Heart from Showing Off (Riya)

He purifies his heart from showing off. Big problem. What's called the riya, which is doing something to be seen by others, and it's only related to religious matters, spiritual matters. In other words, if somebody's showing off of their athletic ability, that in Islam, it's unencouraged, but it's not prohibited. It's just seen as kind of a, but it's not prohibited. What is prohibited is doing it when it relates to worship. That is absolutely prohibited. And according to the Islamic tradition, God will have nothing to do with that action if it's done for the sake of others.

The Disease of Envy (Hasad)

And then envy, hasad. The Prophet Muhammad said, envy eats good actions like fire eats firewood. Envy.

(Sunan Abi Dawud 4903)

There's a really interesting book called Envy Towards a Social Theory, which German philosopher, he's saying that envy is the single most destructive element in human societies. And one of the interesting things he points out is that primitive cultures are envy based cultures, which he feels is one of the reasons because they've been unable to sublimate envy, that they're left in a primitive condition. That civilization, according to this man, is based on individuals sublimating envy, that you cannot create anything.

Sublimating Envy in the Workplace

And one of the interesting, if you look at Steve Covey, who, you know, I've read his book. I don't know if people, probably a lot of people have read them. Seven Habits and Principle-Centered Leadership. One of the things very clearly is what he's doing is he's taking religious principles and he's secularizing them and he's introducing them into the workspace because Japanese work together. Big egos in American corporations have a very hard time working together. So what he's trying to create is what he calls the win-win situation.

In other words, you can maintain your big egos, but you have to sublimate a little bit for the greater good, which is the quarterly profits, right? And this is the type of idea of really recognizing that you can't always be

competing. There are times when you kind of have to just say, no, we got to work together. So envy is a very serious problem in human societies.

And I know teachers are affected by this. AP teachers, somebody was telling me the other day, right? Also teachers that get awards for being good teachers because there's other teachers that are suddenly saying, what's he doing that I'm not doing, right? Teachers that students want, electives, that's a really good teacher. There's real problems with that.

Gifts from God

You know, I mean, I know a lot of you felt the brunt of that because I, you know, I have in my own life, I've seen that people just people get really envious of something that from the Muslim point of view is just, it's a gift, you know, you're sharing a gift, right? It's not something, you know, oh, look at me, how wonderful. No, if somebody has a talent, it's a gift from God. And what you do is you share it with others. And if you can see it that way, this is something God has given that person, you know, it's a gift.

And once you see that, that God is the giver of gifts, right? Then you recognize, well, I'm happy for that person. And you have your own gifts because each person has their own areas of possibility. And envy really destroys, you can't ever become, you can't overcome that. You can't become, because what happens with the envier is they're unable to achieve what that person who is the victim of their envy has achieved. They're unable to, it literally will prevent them from doing it.

So learning first that we all have envy and we suffer from it, and one, how to rid ourselves, purify, and then vanity.

The Disease of Vanity ('Ujb)

Vanity, according to the people of the science, is when you see the gift, but you don't see the giver of gifts, right? In other words, you can see that you're beautiful, right? For a woman or a man who's been given physical beauty, they see the beauty, but they forget who gave you that. It's always interesting, you know, somebody said, oh, you're so beautiful, thank you, as if you had anything to do with it, you know? Unless, right, they paid a plastic surgeon a lot of money, and then they might, which I've never seen somebody look good like that.

You know, he's always got these stretched back. It's very sad that we've done that to women particularly, but even now men are becoming, falling into that. But women, just very sad, just the inability to age what was traditionally called aging gracefully, right? That there's a beauty in age, you know, that it's not ugly.

And what I've noticed is that people that accept their age, that it is beautiful, and people that don't, you know, you can see there's something, you know, you can see a type of darkness there just as a result of their fears and their own insecurities. And then we live in a country who's, according to Oscar Wilde, their oldest tradition is youth. You know, we're in a country that really worships, you know, youth.

It goes back to our Greek roots as well, but there's certainly, but I also think it's part of the, you know, the movement, because our Christian tradition was very down on the body. As we've kind of now uprooting our Christian roots, there's a celebration of the body, and the body is certainly much more attractive in youth than it is in later age, right? But it's very sad. There's a, what's the book about Ophelia? Reviving Ophelia.

Tragic. Tragic. You know, these young girls, it's tragic, you know, having to have as models, role models, these anorexic models that suffer, right, to maintain those physiques and to maintain that. And this is what's being put out as this is what you have to look like if you're going to be attractive and accepted in this community. Now, very interesting. And other diseases of the heart.

The Thirty-Three Diseases of the Heart

The Muslims have identified about 33 diseases of the heart. One of the fascinating things about the spiritual diseases of the heart is like the physical diseases, we oftentimes are unaware of them. Ask any cardiologist. That's what I worked in as a cardiac unit. People are amazed when they suddenly have a heart attack. They weren't even aware they had heart disease.

And the spiritual heart is very much like that. There are many people that don't know that they're arrogant. And this is why there is a tradition that says arrogance in the presence of an arrogant person is worship. In other words, let them know what it feels like, you know, that there's a type of blessing in that to an arrogant person to let them know, let them feel the brunt of arrogance. Right. Because many arrogant people are completely unaware of their arrogance.

I didn't get that. Explain that again. About what? What you just said about. An arrogant person. In other words, if somebody is being arrogant with you, that you one up them. One of the Arab poets said. If anybody is going to be arrogant with me, I'm going to show him an arrogance he'll never forget. Right. And the idea is it's like a medicine. You know, you're just giving them a little taste. You know, how did you like it? You know, because a lot of people are very unaware of that state. And it's a it's a very unfortunate ailment of the heart. And it can be cured. All these diseases, according to the Muslims, are curable.

The Root Causes of All Spiritual Diseases

The fountainhead. And then he says, I know that the source of all these affirm infirmities. Now he's going to instead of going into the 33, he's going to tell you what is the root cause. So if you can work on the root, you don't have to worry about the branches. You can uproot it all. You get the weed by the roots. The weed dies.

The fountainhead of all misdeeds here. The know that the source of all these affirmities, love of leadership and procrastination. The idea is love of leadership is me. I want to be in charge. I want to be the one ahead. I want to be one. And this is more subtle than wanting to be the president or wanting to be, you know, it's it's it's about wanting a position. In the eyes of others, it's about wanting to have a position. Yeah.

The prophet said love of wealth and love of position amongst people is more dangerous to the religion of an individual than two hungry wolves in the midst of sheep.

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi 2376)

Confronting Death and Procrastination

And procrastination is related to, according to the Islamic tradition, the ultimate procrastination, which is the next world with death, putting off the idea of death. I'm not going to think about it. Let's not talk about it. Yeah, there is a very important spiritual practice in the Islamic tradition and in other traditions of contemplating death, reflecting about death every day, taking some time and thinking about going into non-existence. Right.

And the idea is that it's a waking up, it's a pattern break, because life, you know, we get this idea that we're going on forever. Right. And even as the body begins to wane, we still, you know, it's just hard to keep that in focus that we do die. And the idea is that if you can become aware of your death, then experiences with people become more important, that the moments that we live, the moments that we share with our family are more important. The idea that death is something that can take us at any time, that can seize us at any time.

It's not a morbid type of, you know, you start wearing black and no, the idea is literally of becoming really aware of one's mortality in a way that enables one to live in the world and be free. And really, this is the idea that through acceptance of death is the ultimate freedom. As long as you're afraid of death, everything will cause fear, fear of provision, fear of insecurity, all these things that if you can accept one's death, then you can accept anything.

Working for This World and the Next

So the idea of really becoming aware and then what when you begin to think about death, there's a tradition that says work for this world as if you would live forever, but work for the next world as if you would die tomorrow.

So the idea is that you begin to prepare for that, that this is a type of, it is a, Rumi has a wonderful poem where he says that on the day of resurrection, God says, you know, tell me what you did. And he says that the man just falls down to his knees, nothing. And he looks over to the prophets and the prophets say, don't look at us. You left the plow in the middle of the field. And now is the day of harvest.

In other words, the idea that this world is a world for literally plowing, for preparing for the next world and that you reap the fruits of the next world. So that that is part of it.

Love of This World as the Root of All Misdeeds

And then he says, the fountainhead of all misdeeds is love of this world, right? In Buddhism, you have the four noble truths. The first truth, the world is suffering. The second truth, suffering is a result of attachment. The

Smiling as Charity

The Prophet Muhammad said smiling in the face of another person is charity, right? Just to give a person a smile is charity, right?

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi 1956)

And that idea of becoming aware that that is something that you will be rewarded for in the next world. So making beauty.

The Cure: Turning to God

And then he says, the fountainhead of all misdeeds is love of this world. There is no cure but to turn to God out of absolute necessity. So this is in the Buddhist tradition that there is a way out of suffering, which is the noble path. Well, the Muslims would say the same thing. The way out of suffering would be the sacred law. And the sacred law in Arabic means the path to water, right? That's literally what it means. The sacred law is the path to water, to being nourished spiritually, having one's thirst truly quenched, not the mirages in the desert, the false water.

The Importance of a Spiritual Mentor

And then he says he accompanies a mentor who knows intimately the courses of action. So part of becoming purified is being in the company of people that have already done this. And this is the big problem because most of the books say they don't exist anymore. So we're all in trouble. But the idea of being with somebody who has worked on themselves and keeping good company, protecting that person from the destructive places on the path, that is the person who reminds one of God whenever he sees him and he takes the servant to his master.

Accounting for Each Breath

He takes himself to account for each breath. In the Islamic tradition, there's a tradition that Moses asked God, what is the most hidden of all your blessings? And he said the breath. Breath, human breath. And this is why in

traditional Buddhism, the first practice that you learn is to become aware of your breath, right? Just the fact that you're actually breathing in and out.

Weighing Thoughts in the Scale of Sacred Law

And then he said he preserves well, that he weighs his suggestive thoughts in the scale of sacred law. This is the idea of learning to control thoughts, which is a very high position in Islam. The idea that we can have pure thoughts and that our impure thoughts can be mastered and that we can get beyond this thrust of negativity, that we can actually change the way we think and that we can become positive.

God's Opinion of His Servants

There's a beautiful tradition that says, the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said, that I am in, that God says, I am in the good opinion of my servants. If he thinks good of me, he finds good. And if he thinks bad of me, he finds bad.

(Musnad Ahmad 7491, Sahih Ibn Hibban 640)

Which means literally that we are creating our realities, that we are creating, that the paradigms that reside in our understanding are confirmed by our experience. And as we change those paradigms, then the experience of the world changes qualitatively.

Obligatory and Extra Acts of Worship

And then he says he preserves well the obligatory, which is his capital and extra acts are his profit. And it is through them that he enters into divine protection. The idea of doing extra acts, that you do what's obligatory, but then you do extra acts. So you pay your zakat, but you give also charity. You give above and beyond. And constantly remembering God with an unperturbed heart, a pure heart. And all of this, there is assistance from your Lord. In other words, if you set out on this path, there will be assistance for it.

Struggling Against the Self (Mujahada)

And then he struggles against the self for the sake of the Lord of sentient beings. And through this, he adorns himself with the stations of certainty. So this is called mujahidah, which is jihad. Struggling against the lower impulses of the self, that it is a conscious struggle that one has to do. So we do backbite, but we have to struggle against it. Ah, I'm doing it again. Entering into a state of remembrance. Entering into a state of mindfulness.

That we become mindful of our actions, right action, right thought. We begin to enter into a state where, yes, I can do it, I can change, I can do this. And each time one stops it, one becomes stronger in this struggle until it's finally conquered.

The Stations of Spiritual Development

And then he says, and these stations are fear, which is a fear, not like a fear of a tyrant, but it is a fear of being

displeasing. There's a fear of being displeasing, like the fear that one has of upsetting one's parents. I don't want to upset my father. I don't want to upset my mother. That's the fear that it's talking about. Hope, that there's a hope. Gratitude. Patience in perseverance, in struggle. Patience. Repentance, turning back, recognizing I will fall short.

The Story of the Persistent Student

Somebody asked me the other day about how somebody was doing, and I said, they hit the bottom of the mountain, but they've started back up again. Like I was saying, it was a good thing. And they said, sounds like the myth of Sisyphus, which is pessimistic, right? A lot of pessimistic people in the world. And I said to him, I was once told a story in Mauritania. When I was studying and I was finding something difficult, a man told me a story about one of the students there who had studied one book nine times and he couldn't get it.

And this book takes about at least a year to study. He couldn't get it. Foundational book in Islamic law. It's a very difficult book. And he decided to give it up. He was just forget it. I can't do this. He said he went to this place. He was sitting under a tree and there was an ant hill. And he watched an ant taking a crumb up the hill. And every time, right before it got to the top, the crumb would drop and roll back to the bottom of the hill. And this ant did it nine times. And on the 10th time, it made it over.

And so he said, the man said, I'm not going to have the aspiration of an ant be greater than mine. So he decided to do it one last time. And he had his opening. So the idea is that, no, it's not Sisyphus. That, yes, the rock does fall down and we do start up. But there is a possibility of getting to the top, of achieving what we want, our spiritual aspirations.

Abandoning Wants and Recognizing Needs

And then abandoning wants. Most of what we have in our lives, we don't need their wants. Learning how to conquer want. I mean, this is something we as a people particularly have to do because our wants are having such a massive impact on the rest of the world's needs. I was in a talk for the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. And one woman said, well, the problem is all the Muslims have too many babies. And I said, the problem is we're consuming 60% of the world's resource and we're only 5% of the population. So before we start pointing the finger at overpopulated countries, we better think about really how we're using our resources.

That there are gross imbalances. And we're not, the Muslims are not communists. There is an idea of property. There is an idea that there are wealthy people, there are poor people. The Quran says that there's reasons, there's a wisdom behind that. You know, if everybody was the same, who's going to take out the garbage? You know, really, who's going to, why am I going to do the low jobs and why? But the idea is to recognize that this hierarchy is part of the world, but then to recognize the responsibilities that go along with all of that.

The Final Station: Contentment and Love

And then he says, his actions are done, trust in God, contentment. And the final is contentment being content.

Really feeling content with what you have. That these are achievable. In other words, we have to struggle to get them, but they are things that can be achieved by the human being. And the final one is love, which is the highest station, is to love God with all one's heart, right? The Christian ideal exists in the Islamic tradition as well.

Acting Sincerely for God Alone

His actions are done sincerely for the one witnessing them. In other words, God alone, that we should do our actions, not for anybody else, but for God alone. And he is content with whatever the divine has apportioned for him. Through that, he becomes a knower of his Lord, truly free. And otherness has left his heart.

Two Types of Freedom

Now, in the Islamic tradition, there is an idea of two types of freedom. Freedom from and freedom to. So if you're free from want, then you're free to live. As long as you have all of these wants, right? You will never be satiated. When you become free of those wants, then you're free to really be alive. So this is very strong in the tradition of becoming free.

And the interesting thing, the word for a freed slave in Arabic is also the word for a master. And the idea there, maula, what's called a maula, is that if you become a master of your lower self, you are truly free, right? If you're a slave of yourself, you can never be free. So overcoming one's desires.

The Ultimate Goal: Divine Presence

Through that, he becomes a knower of his Lord. For this, he is loved by God. So all of this work, one enters into a divine love and is chosen for the divine presence, which is the maqam of ihsan, the station of ihsan, that that is the result of all this struggle, that you begin to experience the divine presence. And that's the end of it.

Conclusion and Transmission

So I gave you a very traditional approach to this science. Instead of just lecturing like a kind of academic lecture, I just really gave you a taste of what I was taught as a student in West Africa and taught by my teacher.

So there's a type of transmission. We say there's a blessing in transmission when you get something, because this goes all the way back to the prophet. So I think what we'll do is take a break, right? Does that sound good? And then we'll come back and I'll finish with the signs of the last days. OK, so thank you.