(continued from the previous issue)

God’s Lordship and the lights of His Existence and Lordship which shine on things and events are stressed in many verses of the Qur’an such as: God, there is no deity but He; the All-Living, the Self-Subsisting (by Whom all subsist.), Slumber seizes Him not, nor sleep. (2:255); Alif-Lam-Mim. God, there is no deity but He; the All-Living, the Self-Subsisting (by Whom all subsist.) (3:1-2); Say (O Messenger): “O God, Master of all dominion! You give dominion to whom You will, and take away dominion from whom You will…” (3:26); (He) the All-Merciful, established Himself on the Throne (20:5); And say: “All praise be to God, Who has neither taken to Him a son, nor has He any partner in His dominion (of the whole creation); nor does He need, out of weakness, anyone to own and protect Him; and exalt Him with all His limitless greatness.” (17:111), and Say: “He is God, the One; God is the Eternally Besought-of-All. He has not begotten, nor been begotten. There is nothing equal to Him.” (112:1–5). A conscience which discerns this majesty of the Divine Lordship, feels deeply and eagerly the necessity to worship Him in the face of this all-encompassing scene or in these concentric scenes of Lordship, and responds with: All praise and gratitude is for God, the Lord of the worlds. The All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate. The Master of the Day of Judgment. You alone do We worship and from You alone do we seek help (1:1–4). It demonstrates its readiness to serve Him in response to the Divine proclamation, O humankind, worship your Lord (2:21); receives from the warning, Worship your Lord until certainty (death) comes to you (15:99), the message that His eternal Lordship requires perpetual servanthood; and understands from the declaration, Worship God, devoted to Him alone in all your religious practices (39:2), that we must fix our eyes on Him exclusively.

The banner of the declaration, “O unbelievers! I do not worship what you worship” (109:1–2) undulates over our head, and determines the nature of our position with all else save Him. We demonstrate the purpose for our creation by proclaiming, You alone do we worship (1:5), and we acknowledge with utter modesty and a feeling of insignificance that We rely on Him alone in order to realize this purpose, declaring, And You alone do we ask for help (1:5). In order to fulfill the task that is required by near- ness to Him and the rank of addressing Him directly which the two declarations above indicate, we reinforce our acknowledgment of His being the sole Deity to be worshipped and applied to for help, with the prayer: Guide us to the Straight Way, the way of those whom You have favored! (1:6–7). Following this, we exhibit our care and sincerity in this petition, continuing: Not (the way) of those who have incurred (Your) wrath (punishment and condemnation), nor of those who are astray (1:7). Thus, traveling at least forty times a day from our acknowledgment of God’s Unity in Lordship to His Unity in Divinity, and thence to His Unity in being the Sole Object of Worship, we try to fulfill what is required by our having been created as the best pattern of creation.

In short, the Qur’an is clear and precise concerning the matter of unity. It orders that we should admit that God is both the sole Lord of creation, the One Who creates, maintains, protects and provides—and the sole Deity. In all its chapters, from the longest (Suratu’l-Baqara, 2) to the shortest (Suratu’l-Ikhlas, 112), the Qur’an declares, teaches and reiterates unity explicitly or implicitly. In Suratu’l-Ikhlas, in addition to emphatically teaching that God is the sole Lord of creation, it is also emphasized that He has Attributes of Perfection and is above having any imperfections. Suratu’l-Kafirun (109) warns us that only God is to be worshipped, and calls on us to turn only to Him in our beliefs, lives, and expectations. A careful study of the Qur’an will show that it turns on the axis of unity. All the verses mentioning God and His Names, Attributes and Acts are proclamations of His being the sole Deity, while the declarations referring to worshipping the Absolute Object of Worship, Who has no equals, opposites or rivals, and which forbid the worship of anything or being other than Him, are indications of His being the One and Only Lord.

From another perspective, believing in God’s being the sole Lord of creation, which is also called “unity with respect to knowledge,” means confirming all the truths pronounced by the master of creation, upon him be peace and blessings. As for believing in God’s being the one and only Deity, which is also known as “unity with respect to practice,” this denotes doing the religious commandments as they should be done, avoiding those things that have been prohibited. Unity with respect to knowledge is perfected by knowing the All-Holy One as One Who has Attributes of Perfection and in believing that He is above all imperfections. Unity with respect to practice can be realized by worshipping and loving the All-Majestic, All-Exalted One, by being sincere toward Him, and by preserving the balance between fear of and expectations from Him.

Travelers to God who are at the beginning of the journey, a journey of which they are expected to reach the end, advance in the company of proofs, indications, and observations of their inner world and the world around them. These are the strongest groundings of unity. At every stage of their journey, travelers feel and sense the signs that come to them according to the rank and capacity of each, and review them. To the extent that they reach deeper perceptions and experiences, they can feel or see in the proofs and indications the One indicated by them. They reach through signs and witnesses to the One Witnessed. Then, in the broad atmosphere of spiritual discoveries, pleasures and feelings, they begin to feel, see and hear the messages brought by the Prophets beyond the normal scope of the senses and feelings. They experience delight in observing the truths that are demonstrated by proofs and indications, but without needing them any longer, for they have passed beyond all concepts of quality and recognition through examples, and beyond the normal scope of perception.

So, this concept of unity—unity which becomes visible as God’s special stamp on things and events by means of the proofs and indications that are observed and experienced in the inner world of people and in the outer world—is an objective concept, and an observatory from which everyone can attain certain knowledge of God. One who admits of it can, if possessed of the necessary capacity, advance as far as being able to perceive the true nature of apparent causes (in nature) and the means of knowing the Almighty. One sees that all those causes and means are lost before their Creator, Who is the real agent beyond them, and one witnesses that all proofs and indications end in an inner perception beyond the scope of the senses. The deeper the state one gets into and the greater the pleasure one feels, the more pro- found and vivid the degree of the concept of unity one can reach. Travelers to God who have reached this point live immersed in the special favors that come as a reward for their inner perception and the insight they have attained by starting from the proofs and indications. Because of the light which the Eternal Witness has placed in them, all their thoughts, speeches and acts become “light.” They walk intoxicated by the manifestations of the “Facial” Lights of Him Who has created the light. When proofs and indications have developed into the voice of their state, they no longer need them, nor do they seek an apparent cause to rely on the Creator of all causes, nor run after other means. Rather, they begin to see, know, and love by Him, and to transform what- ever they see and hear into knowledge and love of God, and into attraction and the feeling of being attracted by Him. They spend their life in the tides of absorption and distinguishing.

At this point, where the initiates feel as if they are seeing the Necessarily Existent Being in everything with their eyes, apparent, external causes fade away and lose the ability to be a means for happiness or salvation, although they continue to exist as mere causes. Whereas the internal causes of belief, confirmation, and the knowledge and love of God are felt more deeply. It is for this reason that, so long as the travelers to the Ultimate Truth advance on the spiritual journey, they feel an increasing passion for worship and other acts of obedience to God. As they grow in the knowledge and love of God, they feel that they are overflowing with prayers and invocations and they become like a nightingale singing ceaselessly in the court of God. They always mention Him with the voice of their heart. In addition, neither their being able to observe from here the worlds beyond, nor crossing distances by flying through the heavens, can harm the self-pos- session that they maintain in their humble servanthood to God.

As for the unity the Necessarily Existent Being has assigned to Himself—a unity based on His bearing witness to Himself—it is an attainment belonging, first, to the Prophets, and then to their true successors. It is not possible for us to perfectly perceive such a horizon of knowing and feeling God. It is an extremely great favor from Him by which He endows the perfectly pure hearts with the necessary capacity to feel that perfect conception of unity, which He expresses in verses such as:

God, there is no deity but He, the All-Living, the Self-Subsisting (by Whom all subsist) (2:255).
God bears witness that surely there is no deity but He (3:18). Surely, I am God, there is no deity but I, so worship Me (20:14). He is God: there is no deity but He (59:22).

It is a great favor of Him to enable those so favored to voice this perfect conception of unity with their hearts, and cause them to understand and express their poverty and helplessness before Him and the fact that whatever they have is from Him, with confessions such as follows:

We have not been able to know You as knowing You requires, O the One Known!
We have not been able to worship You as worshipping You requires, O the One Worshipped!
We have not been able to mention You as mentioning You requires, O the One Mentioned!
We have not been able to thank You as thanking You requires, O the One Thanked!

He makes them express this favor in consideration of the requirement to know Him as He must be known, and with a consciousness of servanthood, and an attitude of helplessness and poverty, and with a yearning for thankfulness and praise. It is not possible for others to perceive this. How can it be possible, seeing that this is a special gift from the All-Bestowing, no matter how it was prompted or if prompted at all? Only those who can bear the weight of His gifts are loaded with them.

Only the Prophets and their true, pure successors can feel this degree of unity in the perfect form, and they can reveal to others only the part of it that they are allowed to reveal. The pure, perfected scholars, who are the true successors of the Prophets, run in the spacious field of this unity and try to breathe it out with certain ambiguous symbols according to their capacity. Saints who follow them whisper it to themselves when they deem it necessary, but none of them reveal the state they are in nor the pleasures they feel. They consider its revelation to be a grave error committed against the honor of Divinity, and tremble with fear at giving away the secrets with which they have been entrusted.

What should be done here, in this respect, is to regard the messages of the Prophets as sufficient, and by admitting that acknowledging one’s incapacity to perceive Him is perception itself, attribute to God the knowledge of truth and the concept of unity that belong to the most distinguished among the elect.

It is essential that while thinking of unity as viewed by the elect, either with respect to creed or as an expression of the spiritual state and pleasures, one should strictly follow the guidance of the master of creation, upon him be peace and blessings. For it is always probable that even the lights brightest in appearance, and the deepest pleasures and any knowledge of God not found within the Prophet’s guidance are no more than carnal pleasures and ostentation.

It would be appropriate to end our article on unity with a verse from Çelebizade Abdulaziz Efendi[i] found in Gulshan-i Niyaz, which resembles the poem of Ibrahim Haqqi of Erzurum concerning the Islamic creed, which begins “My Deity, my Lord! My Prophet is surely God’s Messenger:”

I have a conviction that the Divine Being is one,
and I confirm that He has Attributes.
Knowledge, Power, Life, Hearing, and Seeing,
are concealed in His All-Holy Being.
Though the Attributes eternally exist in the Being,
they are neither the Being Himself nor separate from Him.
Those who attempt to qualify You
are unable to understand Your Attributes.
We have not been able to know You as knowing You requires.
He has no equals nor likes in His Oneness,
and He needs no assistants in His sovereignty.
You are not a substance or a body;
nor are You composed nor shaped.
You are the All-Holy Being from nowhere.
Your Attributes are not of the kind of those of the created;
You have no eyes, nor ears, nor any other organs;
You are One without number; and You have no limits;
You are not composed, or separable or dissolvable.
Neither time nor space, O the All-Exalted,
has any meaning in relation to You.
It is also inconceivable that You have any relation with
eating, drinking, getting dressed, or sleeping.
He is All-Majestic and absolutely pure in His Majesty;
He is absolutely above all desires and lusts.
The verses, “He has not begotten nor been begotten,”
have put an insurmountable barrier
before His having parents and children.
You have undoubtedly no beginning or end.
He is the First without a beginning, and the Last without an end.
He is the Eternal Being Who brought the universe into existence,
and each of His creatures is a ray from His all-comprehensive Grace.
His work is the universe and Adam—humankind.
Existence and non-existence are according to His command.
All creation, including the heavens
with all the celestial bodies, and the earth,
have come into existence by His command, “Be!”
If He had not given existence to the universe,
we could not have known Him or known how to bear witness to Him.
He it is Who creates both good and evil; He it is Who is the origin of all deeds.
He has established what is right and what is wrong.
And it is He Who will reward or punish.

O God! Show us the truth as being true and enable us to follow it, and show us falsehood as being false and enable us to refrain from it. And bestow blessings and peace on our master Muhammad, the means for attaining unity, and on his brothers among the Prophets and Messengers, who had strong self-possession.

[i] Karaçelebizade Abdulaziz Efendi (1591–1658) was one of the Shaykhu’l- Islams (the highest religious authority) in the Ottoman State. His Gulshan-i Niyaz (“Rose-Garden of Invocations”) and Rawdatu’l-Abrar (“The Garden of the Godly”) are famous.

Tawhid, derived from wahda (oneness), means unifying, regarding as one, believing in God’s Oneness or Unity, and sincerely accepting the reality that there is no deity but God. The Sufis add to these meanings the ideas of seeing only He Who is the One, and knowing, mentioning, desiring, and calling Him alone, and conducting relations with others than Him only because of Him.

The beginning of unity is admitting that the Divine Being is beyond and above all concepts that occur to the mind concerning Him, the result of this being that there is no room for anything else save Him in one’s heart, according to the depth of the spiritual state and pleasures, and fixing one’s eyes on Him alone. In this meaning, unity is both the foundation of Islam and its fruit. Sufism has considered unity with respect to both its beginning and end. Those who are not included in the fold of Sufism have regarded it slightly differently.

According to such people, unity means recognizing the Almighty as the Lord of all creation, and responding to His Divinity with servanthood or worshipping, and acting with a feeling of responsibility. In other words, unity is the belief we must acknowledge with both our words and our actions that God has absolute authority over the whole of creation and disposes as He wills, and He is absolutely above having a like, a rival or an equal. In addition, since He is the One Who absolutely deserves to be worshipped and to be desired, we must serve Him perfectly in a way that contains the meanings of glorifying, exalting and praising Him, and by declaring that He is the All-Holy. To sum up these definitions, we can say that unity has three types or degrees: unity based on knowledge and belief, unity based on spiritual discovery and pleasures, and unity based on the Divine Being’s bearing witness to Himself. Being aware of the last one is a special gift granted by the Almighty to His chosen servants.

• “Unity based on belief and knowledge” is the kind or degree of unity which is acquired through observation, inference or Those who have acquired this degree of unity are free from associating any kind of partners to God and spend their lives thinking about God’s Oneness, mentioning Him and feeling Him in the depths of their hearts.
• “Unity based on spiritual discovery and pleasures” means feeling the knowledge of God which has been acquired through observation and reasoning in one’s conscious nature, sipping the pleasures originating in this knowledge, and experiencing it in the heart and daily life.
• “Unity based on the Divine Being’s bearing witness to Himself” is so profound that only those whom God has favored with it can feel it, and those who can feel it either become dumbfounded or can express it to those around them only to the extent to which He allows In the sight of the initiates who can feel such a degree of unity, all proofs and indications of the Almighty fade away, things turn into a mirage, all existence is reduced to relativity, and the attitude of modesty which initiates must adopt before God tells them to keep silent. For this station is that where an initiate must keep silent and this degree or kind of unity is the unity that brings about silence.

Jalalu’d-Din Rumi says concerning the unity of this degree:

O brother, keep aloof from those
who are busy with discussion about the Divine Being,
so that the Almighty may cause knowledge
from His Presence to rise in your heart.
When speech comes to this point,
lips are no longer able to move or close;
and the pen breaks when it reaches the same point.
This is not the station where eloquent words will be uttered;
So, come and give up talking; God knows best the truth.

This station, where knowledge from God’s Presence has turned into knowledge of God from His Presence, where the consciousness has been awarded special favors, and where travelers to God feel that they are being attracted toward Him by Himself, is the station of being a mirror to God where a drop has become like an ocean, an atom like the whole universe, and non- existence is honored with existence. In his introduction to Harabat, Ziya Pasha [1], with his poetic ability and pleasure, describes the state of an initiate in this station as follows:

O You Who exist,
and Who have brought existence into existence,
there is nothing which does not exist;
how can it be possible to claim Your non-existence!

Those who are the foremost in unity, which has opened for a drop the way to become an ocean and an atom to become a sun, and which has caused that which does not exist to gain existence, and has encompassed both the beginning and the end of the journey, and which it is possible for everybody to attain according to the capacity of each, are the Prophets. They begin their speeches with unity, and stop where they must stop because unity requires them to do so. The first platform for the travelers to God on their way to God is also this objective consideration of unity, where the beginning and end of the journey are united. All the Messengers and Prophets of God, from the first to the last, who carried out their responsibilities on the way of wakefulness, preached this greatest pillar of belief first, declaring: Worship God alone: you have no deity other than Him (7:59, 65, 73, 85 …). Then they went on to communicate other principles and commandments to explain its meaning and content and to establish these in this world.

This consideration of unity is the first door to entering Islam and is the means to feeling and experiencing Islam with a certainty based on knowledge, and a certainty based on observation, and a certainty based on experience. This is also the first call of God to know Him—according to the individual’s capacity—as He makes Himself known. One enters the fold of Islam with such a concept of unity, and those who have the potential to advance, advance by means of it. Studies and mental endeavors gain profundity through this concept, and it is again through it that what lies beyond the relative truths appears. The difference between eternity and what is eternal and what is contained in time can be discerned within this concept. One perceives through this concept the nature of the relation between God as the Creator and the Sole Object of Worship with other beings as the created and those responsible for worshipping and servanthood. Again, it is through this concept that one understands that the Creator is not of the same kind as the created, and that His Attributes are perfect, universal and essential to Him, while the attributes of the created are imperfect, particular, relative and borrowed. This concept of unity causes one to base all one’s views on the principles taught by the Prophets. Starting from these principles, one is saved from falling into errors such as, while arguing (in the name of unity) that He is absolutely free of any imperfections that belong to the created, going to the extreme of denying God any Attributes; or (another extreme) assuming that God takes on bodily form (incarnation) or that a created being can be united with God and become God (union). One is also saved, while observing His manifestations, from likening God in any respect to the creation, or, while interpreting His Attributes, likening Him to the created or attributing to Him a body and being that are contained in time and space. Thus one displays the worthiness (and need) to be counted among the people of the Straight Way, when one prays at least forty times a day (in the daily Prayers) to God to guide one on this Way.

That conception of unity also serves to guide travelers to God so that they can perceive the sole source and nature of the Divine Destiny and Decree. Turning to Him, they do not waste their lives in the philosophical deviations of the Mu‘tazila (the Muslim theologians who maintain that human beings will and create their actions) and the Jabriya (who deny human free will). They serve God sincerely, and feel a deep respect for Him because of His every commandment. Without denying that they have been endowed with free will, they believe that God is the Creator and the eternal origin or cause of everything, and expect from Him the attainment of all their purposes. They always rely on Him, and implore Him for happiness in both this world and the next.

Philosophers such as Aristotle, Abu ‘Ali ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Nasiru’d-Din at-Tusi [2], who considered unity as the Existence alone with no identity or Attributes, opened the door to the deviation of monism, which would later evolve as a philosophical system, in turn giving rise to many other falsehoods. Those who have strayed into incarnation and union—which can be said to have been smeared onto the belief-system of Islam by Neo-platonism—have fallen into associating partners with God by seeing existence as the constant appearance or externalization of the Necessarily Existent One, and therefore as being (in some measure) identifiable with Him. Among other groups or movements, the Qadariya and Jahmiya, which deny God any Attributes, have attributed to God impotence and to human will absolute power. The attitude of the Jabriya in particular, who deny human free will and regard humans as if they were dried leaves blown about by winds, is totally contrary to the most rational realities and is a great slander against God. What is true for all such movements, even if there was a grain of truth in them, is that their early followers were not able to save themselves from going to extremes and they prepared many points from which those who followed them and the ideas they promoted might stray.

As for the overwhelming majority of Muslims, who have accepted the truth of the Messenger and his Companions, they have learned unity (as well as other aspects of Islam), from, once more, the explanations, attitudes, visions, and spiritual discoveries of the true successors of the Messenger and the Companions, experiencing it in their inner and outer worlds. According to them, unity is the bedrock of Islam, a fact which the Qur’an and the Sunna give the greatest importance to with respect to the Creator’s Lordship and recognition of our being His servants who must recognize and worship Him. The Qur’an and God’s Messenger frequently refer to the Divine Being and His Attributes, Names, and Acts, including the establishment of Himself on the Throne—the nature of which is unknown to us—His speaking to the Messengers and Prophets, and honoring ever He wills with speaking to Himself, and reminding us of His absolute, unconditioned Life, Knowledge, Hearing, Seeing, Power, Will, and Speech. They also teach us that God is the Creator and the One Who takes life and revives after death, and that He is the All-Providing. All these Attributes and Acts of God have a close connection with God’s being One and Unique.

Notes

1. Ziya Pasha (1825–1880) was one of the influential political and literary figures of the second half of the 19th-century Ottoman Turkey. He published Hurriya (Freedom) newspaper (Tr.)
2. Nasiru’d-Din at-Tusi (1201-1280) was one of the leading scientists, philosophers, and theologians of the time and was a prolific writer. He also wrote poetry in Persian. He built an observatory at Maragha in 1262. His influence on sciences was immense. (Tr.)

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
…For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
“The World is too Much with Us” by William Wordsworth

Rapidly changing technology and an endless stream of entertainment and information are the trappings of modern life. When I read Wordsworth’s poem, an old favorite of mine, I was surprised to discover that life wasn’t so different in 1807 than it is now. It made me realize that in some universal sense, I can also say that the world is “too much with me.”

I drink coffee, listen to the news, buy new shoes, go to lunch with my sister, watch football on TV, and move trancelike from one “thing” to another. Understanding that these attractions of the world have always been a timeless trap, I went in search of a way to be free from this trap and sustain happiness.

I first examined Eastern philosophy, which reaffirmed what every good disciple of Zen Buddhism knows: you have to run away from what attracts you in the world. I have always associated the practice of contemplation with the picture of the Buddha sitting peacefully under a tree, detached from the world, wearing an expression of serenity on his face. This expression is also depicted on Christ’s face as he is suspended above the world on a cross.

While these pictures triggered a longing inside me for a modicum of peace, they also reminded me of the discontentment I experience when the world is too much with me. It turns out that discontentment has been referred to in many ways throughout time. The Taoists call it imbalance, Buddhists call it ignorance. The Qur’an calls it “a sickness/disease of the heart” (2:10). And the famous Christian monk, St. Augustine, describes its opposite, “true contentment,” in the following way:

“… [true contentment is] felt only in the presence of God … Our whole business then, in life, is to restore the heart to health so that God can be seen or felt.”

While our modern Western philosophy seduces us with the possibility that we can be happy by consuming and dominating the world, the appeal of Eastern philosophy is the promise that we can be happy by transcending it. Enviably, Buddha had found a way to sustain happiness, without having to buy a new set of clothes. I wanted to know if sustained happiness was possible for me, too. Since Islam is my religion, I set out to discover something about the contemplative practices in Islam, so I could connect with God through my own tradition.

I had never read or come across anyone who described the traditional practices in Islam as “contemplative.” They are called the five pillars of Islam, and they seem so different from other practices, such as meditation in Zen Buddhism. But Islamic contemplative practices, I discovered, are a blend of the best of both worlds, East and West.

I began by examining the first pillar of Islam: Belief in the Oneness of God, or tawhid in Arabic. Tawhid is the central tenet upon which all other beliefs can rest. It demands an exclusive relationship with God, excluding anyone or anything in any similar relationship. This is a relationship that does not recognize any authority besides God—whether it is one’s parents, teacher, or friend. In other words, it is a relationship that presupposes that humankind is liberated from everything in the material and physical world, in order to experience what is known in Islam as taqwa, or piety—the conscious performance of good and avoidance of evil.

Tawhid (liberation) is manifest in the Buddha seated under the tree, and taqwa (piety) is seen in his facial expression. In Islamic terms, the predisposition of liberation (tawhid) is the foundation of Islamic contemplative practice. It is the same as saying that to sustain happiness, you have to let go of what attracts you in the world.

How is this done in Islam? The quintessential example of “stepping outside” of the world is the disciple sitting for 18 hours in the lotus blossom position. This helped me to describe the two essential characteristics of contemplative practice as being: 1) a physical “stepping outside” of the world; and 2) something painful or difficult, or both.

Islamic prayer bears both these characteristics. The time-out is brief, but it also happens five times a day. In other words, it requires me to step outside of my life and let go (detach), for short periods of time throughout the day, every day. It may not be as difficult as sitting in the lotus position for 18 hours, but believe me the hardest part of this practice is making yourself stop what you’re doing in order to pray.

Meditation and Islamic prayer also share the imperative of self-discipline. Fully conscious of the pain and sacrifice associated with contemplative practices, the Hindus say, tears and prayers go hand-in-hand. I think the biggest challenge for Muslims is finding the time to pray each day. Given the demands of life on one hand and the schedule of five daily prayers on the other, self-discipline is tested in the constancy of personal choices: Do I watch the rest of my favorite TV program or turn it off in time to pray? At which point do I end my phone conversation? When do I stop working on my computer? And, how do I excuse myself from a fun gathering of family or friends just to say my prayers on time?

These choices get to the crux of the spiritual matter. Do I continue participating in the world, or do I stop and step outside of it at punctuated times? I failed miserably at my first attempts to pray five prayers a day. It took me years to realize that trying to squeeze my prayers into my busy life was a futile and backwards approach.

What helped me most was re-reading the oft-repeated command in the Qur’an that says “establish prayer” in your life. I finally figured out that if I could establish my daily life around the commuter train schedule, as I did to get to work, then why couldn’t I establish my life around a prayer schedule?

When I took this approach, I was able to establish prayers in my life. First, it was just one prayer a day, then, two, until ultimately I was praying five times a day. In essence, I had “established” a sacred space and contemplative time in my busy life, creating a virtual sanctuary, with no trespassing. The result has been a virtuous circle of sustained happiness, nurtured by my sustained commitment.

In addition, to be successful in both prayer and meditation, a disciple has to have some effective way to keep the worries and demands of the world at bay. Otherwise, time-out quickly becomes time-wasted. I remember studying transcendental meditation in the early 1970s. The Yogi (practitioner of yoga) taught me to use my mantra (a sound, syllable or word considered capable of creating a spiritual transformation) as a way to focus (which cost me $450 at the time). He said “thought bubbles” of worldly concerns would rise to the surface but that I must release them in order to empty my mind repeatedly.

With Islamic prayer, it is no less challenging to keep focused. But the genius of prayer in Islam is that the prayers are in Arabic, the language of the Qur’an. Learning and memorizing the Arabic language is challenging to all Muslims, whether Arabic-speaking or not (and most are not). But concentration on the Arabic words (which I vaguely understand) and recitation of memorized prayers, coupled with the physical requirements of performing prayer, play a significant role in keeping focused on the task of communion with God.

Next, I tried to determine the times when I had ever felt God’s presence (a sense of taqwa) in my life. The answer was easy. It was during the holy month of Ramadan, a month of fasting from dawn to dusk, another pillar of Islamic practice. Christians, Muslims or Jews who have fasted know that fasting changes your routine life, at the most critical and basic level. I found that even though I was standing in the middle of my life, fasting separated me from everything going on around me.

Analyzing the results of this alternative state (tawhid), I realized that fasting had liberated me from the most basic enslavements of our modern, secular world, allowing my spirit to soar freely above the din. Taking one step further, whenever my personal covenant with God was tested by an aching hunger or profound thirst, I would ask myself: Why am I doing this? And in that moment, when I am most conscious of the extreme sacrifice I am making, I am also acutely aware that I have a choice: I can keep my promise to God to fast, or break it. Thus, when I consciously choose my relationship with God above all else, I experience the pure sweetness of taqwa in the depths of my soul. Taqwa is my constant companion during Ramadan, for every time I make a conscious choice to fast, my heart fills with it.

Prior to making the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj), I had experienced only fleeting moments of taqwa. But the journey to Mecca is like Alice going down the rabbit hole, leaving her life and traveling to another world for an extended period of time, which is sometimes very scary. Unlike Ramadan, when you resume the semblance of your normal life at the end of the day, nothing is normal during the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Every religion asks us to abandon comfort and familiar ways, or give something up. We get up early to pray, we fast, we hone our virtues, purify our inner self, and treat our neighbors well, with the hope of achieving that Divine communion. We have learned that diligence without assurance is otherwise known as faith.

I know of no other journey that has tested or strengthened my faith as much as the Hajj. Mysteriously, I still cannot fully articulate why this is so. The imams warned us before we left, “You will be out of your comfort zone.” But that was an understatement. This was a journey to a world more foreign and exhilarating than I have ever seen or been. The rituals we had to perform were far beyond my physical capacity. Furthermore, everything about the world that I was familiar with was fading into the past, further and further into obscurity and insignificance.

Ironically, the further I stepped out of my world, the closer I felt to God (a deeper sense of taqwa). At the same time, I became more intimately in touch with myself in a way I had never experienced before. It was a time of self-renewal, and through it all, I held the unwavering belief that God, my Creator, was guiding me. I just humbly submit, and I do not know how or why. All I know is that I had made a choice long ago to fulfill this pillar of Islam, even though at times, I feared I might never be able to afford it. Yet, when I finally had the opportunity to go on the pilgrimage and things got tough along the way, I would always ask myself: Why am I doing this? And the answer always came from my heart: it was my choice and my promise.

“Do not imagine that the journey is short; and one must have the heart of a lion to follow the unusual road, for it is very long…. One plods along in a state of amazement, sometimes smiling, sometimes weeping…” Rumi

Mary Lahaj is a Muslim Chaplain to the community at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland, MA.