Imam Ghazali on Presence of Heart in Prayer
Posted by Hamza Karamali, SunniPath Academy Teacher on March 30th, 2007
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate
Last week, in my Essentials of Islam class, we covered the innerdimensions of prayer from Muhtar Holland's excellent book, The InnerDimensions of Islamic Worship. I prepared for my weekly live sessionwith the students by reading what Imam Ghazali had to say aboutpresence of heart in prayer in his famous work, Ihya' `Ulum al-Din.While preparing, I stumbled across the following thought-provokingpassage:
Besides being a beautiful and insightful account of why many ofus are unable to focus in prayer, this passage also teaches us a numberof seemingly unrelated lessons, one on how to measure one's sincerity,and another on the importance of treading the spiritual path. More onthat in future posts, Allah willing.
source: http://blog.sunnipath.com/?p=51
Posted by Hamza Karamali, SunniPath Academy Teacher on March 30th, 2007
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate
Last week, in my Essentials of Islam class, we covered the innerdimensions of prayer from Muhtar Holland's excellent book, The InnerDimensions of Islamic Worship. I prepared for my weekly live sessionwith the students by reading what Imam Ghazali had to say aboutpresence of heart in prayer in his famous work, Ihya' `Ulum al-Din.While preparing, I stumbled across the following thought-provokingpassage:
Quote:
| ... Powerful, overburdening desires, however, cannot be soothed intosilence. Instead, they will engage you in a tug-of-war that they willeventually win, and you will be busied throughout your prayer in thecontest. This state of affairs can be compared to a man under a tree whowants to concentrate his thoughts on a particular matter, but thechirping of sparrows keeps distracting him. He shoos them away with astick and returns to his thoughts, but the sparrows keep coming back,and he keeps having to get up and shoo them away. It would be said to this man, "This is like the movement ofwatering-camels: it will never come to an end. If you want to put anend to the matter, then chop down the tree." Such is the tree of desires [in the heart of the worshipper]:whenever its branches spread out, distracting thoughts are attracted toit just like sparrows are attracted to trees, and just like flies areattracted to garbage ... There are many such desires, and few a worshipper is entirely freeof them. They all spring from a single root, namely, the love of thisworld, which is the source of every misdeed, the foundation of everyloss, and the wellspring of every corruption. Whoever finds that hisheart contains love of this world, such that it inclines to any worldlymatter, not to use it as a provision or as an aid to the next life [butas a goal in itself], then he should never hope that the delight ofintimate conversation with the divine should open up for him in prayer... (Ihya `Ulum al-Din, 4 vols, Beirut: Dar Sader, 2000, 1.223-24) |
source: http://blog.sunnipath.com/?p=51
