“Detachment is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.” Ali ibn Abi Talib (AS)
“Everything which is more than necessary to man is
hostile to him”
Sextus the Pythagorean
Contrary to how secular modernity sees and understands a human being, traditional religions, including traditional Islam, have always maintained that the human is not just a material being, not just an evolved psycho-physical phenomenon or a body-soul duality at best and a mere collection of organs, of atoms and molecules, at worst, for example, the mechanical contraption or "machine" of Rene Descartes or the "lumbering robot" of the militant neo-atheist Richard Dawkins, that noisy evangelist for Neo-Darwinism. Like all authentic religions, traditional Islam also sees man and woman as a specially created being, as a creature that is half-human-half-angel, so to speak. The special creature that we call al-insan, implies a Creator. This creature has been placed as Allah’s representative on this earth. As the servant (abd) and vicegerent or deputy of God on earth (Khalifa Allah fil Arz in Arabic) with immense responsibilities towards the Creator and towards all His creation, including the non-human world of nature, Islam sees him or her as a special and elevated entity (Ashraf al Makhluqat). In the Holy Qur'an, we learn that when God created Adam from clay, He breathed into him and thus he became alive: “And when He had made him upright and breathed into him of His spirit” (Qur'an 38:72).
It is this “breath” that makes man and woman (al-insan) special. In the Islamic intellectual tradition, especially in its Irfani and Sufi manifestations, this “breath” also means that the human beings have a primordial nature (called fitra in Arabic) which they carry within themselves and which they often forget or neglect in the world of facades and constant flux in which they live. Over the ages, Muslim sages, the hakims (or hukuma), have defined this fitra as that original, pure and uncorrupted state of human nature where one is attracted to or leans naturally to tawḥīd and sees all reality authentically, "as they actually are in themselves." It is the forgetting (nisyan), or the neglect (ghafla), of this fitra that is the main cause of a Muslim going astray in this world. The core message of Islam, repeated in all its rituals is, therefore, a constant reminder to the believers of this special nature within them. This kind of understanding of the very nature of the human being is central to everything that mindful Muslims think about and do. The Muslim fasting in the holy month of Ramadan, just like all other Muslim rites, for example, the canonical daily prayer, zakat (alms giving), Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, has its essential meaning---its raison d’être---in this particular understanding of the nature of the human being.
We are, then, body, soul and Spirit. Briefly, what this means is that we are both material and non-material, or spiritual, in our “construction”. In major Islamic languages like Arabic, Persian and Urdu, this means that we are jism (body), nafs (soul) and Ruh (Spirit or Intellect). The capital “S” and “I” in the last item are intentional and they signify the sacred quality of this particular faculty that human beings carry within them according to the Islamic religious tradition, meaning that he/she is not only a profane, terrestrial being but also has the sacred within. There is a hierarchy here, from the lower (body and psyche) to the higher (Spirit), or from the lower (carnal or passional) self (nafs) to the higher self. It is this hierarchy within us that Islamic praying and fasting are concerned with.
Sextus the Pythagorean
Contrary to how secular modernity sees and understands a human being, traditional religions, including traditional Islam, have always maintained that the human is not just a material being, not just an evolved psycho-physical phenomenon or a body-soul duality at best and a mere collection of organs, of atoms and molecules, at worst, for example, the mechanical contraption or "machine" of Rene Descartes or the "lumbering robot" of the militant neo-atheist Richard Dawkins, that noisy evangelist for Neo-Darwinism. Like all authentic religions, traditional Islam also sees man and woman as a specially created being, as a creature that is half-human-half-angel, so to speak. The special creature that we call al-insan, implies a Creator. This creature has been placed as Allah’s representative on this earth. As the servant (abd) and vicegerent or deputy of God on earth (Khalifa Allah fil Arz in Arabic) with immense responsibilities towards the Creator and towards all His creation, including the non-human world of nature, Islam sees him or her as a special and elevated entity (Ashraf al Makhluqat). In the Holy Qur'an, we learn that when God created Adam from clay, He breathed into him and thus he became alive: “And when He had made him upright and breathed into him of His spirit” (Qur'an 38:72).
It is this “breath” that makes man and woman (al-insan) special. In the Islamic intellectual tradition, especially in its Irfani and Sufi manifestations, this “breath” also means that the human beings have a primordial nature (called fitra in Arabic) which they carry within themselves and which they often forget or neglect in the world of facades and constant flux in which they live. Over the ages, Muslim sages, the hakims (or hukuma), have defined this fitra as that original, pure and uncorrupted state of human nature where one is attracted to or leans naturally to tawḥīd and sees all reality authentically, "as they actually are in themselves." It is the forgetting (nisyan), or the neglect (ghafla), of this fitra that is the main cause of a Muslim going astray in this world. The core message of Islam, repeated in all its rituals is, therefore, a constant reminder to the believers of this special nature within them. This kind of understanding of the very nature of the human being is central to everything that mindful Muslims think about and do. The Muslim fasting in the holy month of Ramadan, just like all other Muslim rites, for example, the canonical daily prayer, zakat (alms giving), Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, has its essential meaning---its raison d’être---in this particular understanding of the nature of the human being.
We are, then, body, soul and Spirit. Briefly, what this means is that we are both material and non-material, or spiritual, in our “construction”. In major Islamic languages like Arabic, Persian and Urdu, this means that we are jism (body), nafs (soul) and Ruh (Spirit or Intellect). The capital “S” and “I” in the last item are intentional and they signify the sacred quality of this particular faculty that human beings carry within them according to the Islamic religious tradition, meaning that he/she is not only a profane, terrestrial being but also has the sacred within. There is a hierarchy here, from the lower (body and psyche) to the higher (Spirit), or from the lower (carnal or passional) self (nafs) to the higher self. It is this hierarchy within us that Islamic praying and fasting are concerned with.
There is a famous proverb of medieval origins
according to which, “There is no culture without asceticism.” Any good
dictionary will tell us that asceticism means “self-denial”, “renunciation of
the worldly or the mundane” or some other similar definition. For ages religious
traditions have strived to inculcate in man and woman virtues like patience,
contentment, self-denial or self-restraint, moderation and so on. Fasting has been a quintessential ascetic
practice in these old religions, so much so that in some religions there is
even a fasting of the tongue, of speech. Muslim fasting in the month of Ramadan (sawm in
Arabic) which is obligatory for all adult and healthy Muslims also has the same
goal of realizing these virtues.
Fasting as a spiritual practice means two things: to abstain from or to restrain our bodily desires, and then to go beyond, or to transcend our lower self and re-connect with our higher self on that inner hierarchy mentioned above. Austerity and asceticism viz-a-viz these desires are the tools or techniques for the disciplining of the lower self or for truly “culturing” the self, in other words. Fasting is an act of interruption into our increasingly routinized, monotonous and forgetful lives. As an act of self-denial, it disturbs us, but in doing so it actually awakens us and reminds us of what we have forgotten or have been neglecting: our primordial nature, the fitra, that we carry within us. In fact, authentic Islamic education, always called taleem o tarbiat, has its aim exactly this same awakening of the inner self, the remembering and recollection of the forgotten fitra that was placed in us at the time of our creation. This has a parallel in other old, authentic religious traditions. For example, in Platonic terms, this is what has been called anamnesis which literary translates as “recollection” or generally as remembrance.
We lose our true sense of being, we
become disoriented and scattered as a result of the forgetfulness of that
primordial nature, the continual remembrance and recollection of which makes us
what we are meant to be: that special creation of the creator God. Modern life
is often neglectful, if not outright contemptuous, of the virtues of restraint,
self-denial and contentment (ridha)
mentioned above. Modernity, which entails modern lifestyles, is often about the
elevation and celebration of all forms of the lower passions of the human soul.
Most of what makes up its ethos border on the extreme: extreme forms of
materialism, extreme consumerism, even hedonism and real and virtual narcissism, often in the name of individuality, expressiveness and originality. All
this heedlessness is very disorienting and which sully the psyche, or the inner
life of the individual, and through extension affects society of which the
individual is always a part. In such contexts, fasting becomes an orienting and
a deeply cleansing practice. We nourish and replenish our inner life by temporarily
denying material nourishment to our outer life. By being intentionally blind to
our lower self, we begin to see our true, higher self. By “starving” the animal
or the animal-like in us, we feed and nourish the truly human in us, to use a
strong and explicit imagery. And that is perhaps what the above proverb means
when it says what it says about asceticism and true culture.
In addition to the spiritual, there is also an equally important social aspect to fasting. Religious rituals like fasting remind the Muslim believer of the plight of the needy and the destitute in society and sensitize him and her to the importance of charity and alms giving, all of which are the duties of a Muslim believer but which have been forgotten. Ramadan is, therefore, a month of solidarity with the less fortunate in this world and an attempt to re-awaken compassion, re-establish social harmony and equilibrium in communities. Muslims, forgetful as everybody else in their daily lives, begin to see anew the utter importance of life’s essentialities like food, drink and other material things of this world, things that we take for granted most of the time; with their renewed awareness they begin to see them as blessings, as gifts of God. It is for these reasons that Muslims welcome this holy month of fasting that provides them with a special opportunity for spiritual renewal and social rejuvenation.
Just as Ramadan starts with the sighting of the new moon, it comes to an end with the sighting of the new moon of the next month in the Islamic lunar calendar. This sighting, much awaited by all but especially by children heralds the start of the great feast of Eid al-Fitr celebrated for three continuous days and which is one of the two great festivities in the Islamic world. The Muslim faithful, after one full month of self-denial and abstention from food and drink, re-experiences all the blessings of life with a reinvigorated mindfulness. In this way, both the faithful and his and her faith are revivified every year in this holy month of fasting.
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Note: In this blogpost and elsewhere I use the word “man” (and all the subsequent gendered pronouns) in its old, conventional sense, meaning man as the generic/gender-less/gender-inclusive homo, or as insan, which is inclusive of both the sexes of the species. No “sexism” or gender bias is intended.
Fasting as a spiritual practice means two things: to abstain from or to restrain our bodily desires, and then to go beyond, or to transcend our lower self and re-connect with our higher self on that inner hierarchy mentioned above. Austerity and asceticism viz-a-viz these desires are the tools or techniques for the disciplining of the lower self or for truly “culturing” the self, in other words. Fasting is an act of interruption into our increasingly routinized, monotonous and forgetful lives. As an act of self-denial, it disturbs us, but in doing so it actually awakens us and reminds us of what we have forgotten or have been neglecting: our primordial nature, the fitra, that we carry within us. In fact, authentic Islamic education, always called taleem o tarbiat, has its aim exactly this same awakening of the inner self, the remembering and recollection of the forgotten fitra that was placed in us at the time of our creation. This has a parallel in other old, authentic religious traditions. For example, in Platonic terms, this is what has been called anamnesis which literary translates as “recollection” or generally as remembrance.
In addition to the spiritual, there is also an equally important social aspect to fasting. Religious rituals like fasting remind the Muslim believer of the plight of the needy and the destitute in society and sensitize him and her to the importance of charity and alms giving, all of which are the duties of a Muslim believer but which have been forgotten. Ramadan is, therefore, a month of solidarity with the less fortunate in this world and an attempt to re-awaken compassion, re-establish social harmony and equilibrium in communities. Muslims, forgetful as everybody else in their daily lives, begin to see anew the utter importance of life’s essentialities like food, drink and other material things of this world, things that we take for granted most of the time; with their renewed awareness they begin to see them as blessings, as gifts of God. It is for these reasons that Muslims welcome this holy month of fasting that provides them with a special opportunity for spiritual renewal and social rejuvenation.
Just as Ramadan starts with the sighting of the new moon, it comes to an end with the sighting of the new moon of the next month in the Islamic lunar calendar. This sighting, much awaited by all but especially by children heralds the start of the great feast of Eid al-Fitr celebrated for three continuous days and which is one of the two great festivities in the Islamic world. The Muslim faithful, after one full month of self-denial and abstention from food and drink, re-experiences all the blessings of life with a reinvigorated mindfulness. In this way, both the faithful and his and her faith are revivified every year in this holy month of fasting.
-----------------
Note: In this blogpost and elsewhere I use the word “man” (and all the subsequent gendered pronouns) in its old, conventional sense, meaning man as the generic/gender-less/gender-inclusive homo, or as insan, which is inclusive of both the sexes of the species. No “sexism” or gender bias is intended.
By being intentionally blind to our lower self, we begin to see our true, higher self.
ReplyDeleteWe try.