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1 the Khwaja Khwajagan and Naqshbandi Teachings the Inner Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid July 25, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Thursday Suhbat The Khwaja Khwajagan and Naqshbandi Teachings The Inner Jihad against the Nafs Hawani I’ve been talking about nafs hawani and nafs insani, the animal nature and the human nature. I think I ended after speaking about Hazrat Adam (as) and the Sifat / Attributes of Allah; and the growth of the nafs hawani that pushes human beings away from the right way toward infidelity. The English play on the words infidel and infidelity are two interesting concepts. To understand about our own ego / nafs, we have to begin with the question, “What is it? What is the nafs?” The answer is, as we said, and I gave the example, “Know that your nafs is your truth.” If one wants to know their self, one has to see their nafs. Allah gives us the counterpoint to that when Allah says, “Know yourself and you will know your Lord.” There are two ways of looking at it, in English and implied in Arabic. Know yourself and know your Lord, meaning Allah; and know yourself and you will know what is ruling you. If it’s your nafs hawani, that’s your Lord. If your animal nature is ruling you, that’s your Lord. And if Allah Swt is ruling you, that’s your Lord. There is a kind of double entendre. It works both in the Arabic and English. Most people think it means, if you really know yourself, you will know Allah; but the key is, which self? If you know your higher self, the nafs insan, then you will know [Allah]. The ego is put by Allah Swt in the heart, the “dhil al haqqi.” It has a lot of different attributes to it. We don’t normally think about it, but if you do think about it, you will understand that your heart does do these things. Your heart talks (ri’ye). It hears (shinwa or samah). It smells. It has life / hayat, and it has ‘ilm / knowledge. It has hikma/wisdom, and it has qudrat / power. These sifat /attributes are 1 Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid July 25, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Thursday Suhbat characterized in Hazrat Adam (as). They become, after Adam, the characteristics of the nafs insan of all human beings. Just like genetic coding is passed down, this is passed on, generation after generation: the capacity of the nafs. To say it in another way, human beings are not reducible only to their animal nature. We are also given a very humane and human identity. Kushani in his writings calls the beginner on the path “my brother.” The true heart, he says, is “thought.” What that means is the truth of a human being’s existence lies in how they think as human beings. You could say it another way: you are what you think you are. We know that from a psychological point of view or a spiritual point of view. If thought, in a reductionist sense, is reduced to nothing other than drinking, eating, caring for your worldly possessions, rejecting the truth or rejecting Islam, then we incline toward our animal nature, if that’s all we do with life. We eat, drink, sleep, indulge ourselves in the physical world only, or mostly. But if what we do is orient our thoughts toward Haqq, toward the Truth, toward Allah, toward the attributes of Allah Swt, then we draw closer to Allah Swt and to saf / purity. These two realities or existences are the wujud haqqani and the wujud hawani. In the competition that happens between these two aspects of existence, when the side of truth gets the upper hand, the truth wins; but when the animal side takes over, then the animal nature wins. We are told by our predecessors the more you abstain, the more knowledge you have, the more taqwa / piety you have, the more you will become a knower. In those days, the horse analogy I gave you applies: you become the one who puts the saddle on the horse. You make it serve you. They also gave the example in the old days of becoming a farmer. Why a farmer? The farmer provides food. The farmer knows how to turn the land into nourishment: how to plant seeds and make them grow, how to prune the trees and make the fruit come. The more you eat, the more you sleep, the more you become dependent on the lower nature, 2 Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid July 25, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Thursday Suhbat then the more you veil the truth, or put a hijab over the truth, and you miss the true existence. As long as we are ruled by the nafs hawani and the nafs ammāra, you will not know your true existence. Consequently, the lord over you will be your lower nature. You will not be able to train that horse. The heart has become stone. The prophets gave us the teachings, but the people of “shihast,” the people who are the stonebreakers, are the Khwajagan, the Masters of Wisdom. Kushani at this point in his writings introduced for the first time his own Sufic Order, never mentioning it before this. He’s talked about the principles, but never mentioned the Order. He talked about what tariqah really is, but never mentioned a specific one. At this point of understanding, the struggle between these two realities or tendencies within our own self, knowing we have the upper hand if we want it because we are born in goodness/fitrah, we just need to be shown the way. The rules are not the way. The rules form the foundation. The shar’īah forms the foundation, but we have to be shown the tariqah, turūq. This journey is the journey the Prophet (sal) called the jihad al akbar. I understand this is a very basic teaching, but if you listen carefully, there are some new things in it. As the Prophet (sal) taught the Sahaba, the Jihad al Akbar, the greater jihad against the infidels, is against the INFIDELITIES. The lower jihad, of war, is against the “infidels.” The greater jihad is against infidelity, disloyalty to truth, disloyalty to Allah. It’s the struggle between good and evil, between the Zoroastrian Ahriman and Ahura Mazda, the wrestling of Isaac in the river with the devil, or the confrontations of Ibrahim. It’s always the same struggle. Though we understand that jihad is necessary, it’s the inner jihad against the nafs hawani. 3 Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid July 25, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Thursday Suhbat What we are told by the Khwaja Khwajagan: (quotes a Farsi passage): “You will not be able to do this on your own.” It’s an absolute statement. We need a guide who will be able to lead us in the right direction, to show us what is isharat / signs and what is not; what is pointing to or hinting at reality and what isn’t. It’s all so subtle (Ya Latifu). What’s obvious is obvious, but what is subtle is not always seen. So we need a guide, someone perfect, insani kamil, in the sense that the person has taken the right way, just like a guide on a journey is someone who has been there before (unless we have GPS… and someone has been there before). The Prophet (sal) was the earliest teacher of Tasawwuf. [And then] the Khwajagan were the earliest teachers in turūq, who were called the doctors of Allah Swt, those who cure the disease of existence. So we wind up back at the horse analogy. There is a process available to us that can free us from our confusions and our sufferings. That is not to say there is no pain or difficulty; but suffering, like everything else, can be looked at in two ways. There is a kind of circular process, dayra, that takes place in the world of the seeker as they live their life. We are told in Tasawwuf to be in the world, not of the world. As one lives their life, we find ourselves in a kind of spiraling circle; but if you look at it from above and below, it is a spiral. In that spiral, what we do is advance; consequently, the rūh of the human being begins to become recognizable, and that spirit is strong and the ego is weak. The horse ego that we talked about yesterday carries the spirit, because it has been trained, past just the eating and drinking and interfacing with the world, to a world where, shall I say, you are on a restricted caloric diet—you are fasting in a sense— Ramadan—to a time of fasting. It is physical fasting in the month of Ramadan and spiritual fasting in every month. The more the ego ate, the more it drank, the more it got involved in the world, the more power it had. The more power the ego had, the less power and influence the 4 Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid July 25, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Thursday Suhbat rūh had. So it has to change. It has to turn around. Some of us have dieted and restricted our diets for our physical health and well being. We know how habitual our eating habits are, how trained we have become to our tastes as opposed to our wellness. Because everything is analogical in life—the way we eat, or the way we don’t, whether it’s compulsively and obsessively, and in a way that is detrimental to our physical well being and health, or in a way that is beneficial to us, nutritious, healthy, that allows us to be stronger, not weaker.
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