Husain Sattar – Gently breaking the nafs
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AI: Transcript ©
Over the last few weeks, I've been sharing
some of the
remembrances
of a
few days that I was able to spend
in the company of Sheikh Zulfikar.
And, in particular, as I've mentioned, I'm sorry
for not being present for the last 2
weeks. I had family engagements. But prior to
that, I had mentioned that we
I was able to join him on a
trip to Barbados, and I was sharing some
of the recollections of that trip.
When I first arrived
in Barbados,
I,
as I mentioned, met some of the Olama
in Barbados and I happened to be picked
up by one of the of Barbados. And,
they drove us or he drove us to
a house where Hazrat was staying.
And when we got to that house, there
was a meal prepared for us and we
had our meal.
And after we had our meal,
as I've already mentioned, we were waiting to
see if we would get an opportunity to
meet with Sheikh Zulfiqar.
We didn't get an opportunity opportunity that night,
but we did have the opportunity to meet
with
one of the people that was traveling with
Sheikh Zulfiqar who was Mufti Kamal.
And I've mentioned Mufti Kamal's name in many
gatherings in the past. He was fortunate enough
to be traveling with Sheikh Zulfiqar
during the entire trip through the Caribbean, and
in fact, he had accompanied him from England
all the way to the Caribbean and all
the way back. So he had a really
great opportunity to be able to observe what
what was happening throughout the trip to the
Caribbean.
One of
the things that we try to do when
we meet people who are traveling with Sheikh
Zulfiqar is I always or we in general,
but I always like to ask them, tell
me what did you get from all of
the days that I missed?
This is actually a sunnah of the companions
as well. Yani, it's originating from the sunnah
of the companions radiAllahu anhu anhu.
They when they would be present in company
of the Prophet
they would be focused on what they were
gaining from the Prophet
But when they would be away, they wouldn't
be oblivious.
Meaning, if they were away, it wasn't that
the gatherings didn't exist. They knew the gatherings
were occurring, and they would come back and
then they would ask if anybody had gained
anything or what people had gained, and then
they would gather the information in that way.
And we know that,
it's established.
It's established that the companions would do this.
So if a companion couldn't be present for
a particular time and there was a gathering
that they missed, they would come back and
they would ask, what did the prophet
say, etcetera, etcetera. And so they would benefit
in this way as well. And this is
something that we should learn from because we
can't be everywhere all the time.
So
there are and it's not that when we're
not there, the world stops. I know we
like to think that when the world's, you
know, if I'm not there, the world isn't
there. But I can guarantee you the day
you pass away, the newspaper will come out
the next day. It's not that the whole
world revolves around us.
So when we're not present somewhere, there is
still tremendous benefit that may be occurring. It's
just that we missed it.
So when people are present and we are
absent, we should also ask them what they
gained. And often, you can benefit tremendously from
that. So when I saw Mufti Kamal,
you know, we met and we greeted each
other. And then I said to him, I
said, look, tell me tell me what did
you get. So
open up your notebook because he also keeps
a notebook and he had taken notes. And
I said, tell me, what were the major
things that you learned?
So
he began to relay some of the major,
you know, points of the journey. And he
actually had been accompanying Shagazulfo Carr throughout the
UK as well, so he had a good
one month solid dose.
And in that period of time, there were
many things that are that he he he
must have observed and must have learned. But
it's interesting, we didn't get the opportunity to
interact and sit and talk the way we
would like to, and it often happens that
way. But there were a few things that
he shared with me, maybe 5 or 10,
that I actually got to write in the
downtime.
And
the first one or one of the very
first things that he shared with me and
the one that sort of stuck with me
all the way until now, and I don't
have my notebook in front of me, but
the one that sort of stuck in my
mind, and I keep repeating it to myself,
and I wanted to repeat it to everyone
here as well, is that he said one
of the major points that Sheikh Zulfikar had
made throughout the Caribbean trip was this,
notion that
we should never
rely on our nuffs.
We should
never rely
on our nafs.
Okay. So what does that mean? That requires
a little bit of ex explanation.
Let's just take a step back. I'm gonna
add my own words here.
When something is going to be stressed
or when you're going to place a stress
on something,
you can do tests to determine how much
stress that thing can handle.
Alright. For example, if you look at biomedical
engineering,
they create artificial joints.
And when they create artificial joints, they know
that the purpose of those joints is to
place them in human beings, and human beings
are gonna generate a certain stress on that
joint. And so they'll test the joint, the
the artificial joint outside of the human. They'll
and and, you know, through engineering tests, they'll
test the joint to see how much load
it can bear, how many times it can
bend, how much it can,
how much it can take before it before
it gets distorted.
I'll give you another example. I happen to
be in the store
and just
maybe a week ago, and I was looking
at a cabinet.
And they were advertising that this cabinet can
be opened x number of times per day
over so many years, and nothing will go
wrong with the mechanism by which this cabinet
will be opened. And they have this little
robotic arm opening and closing the cabinet in
this in glass encasement,
and they keep showing that it's being opened,
closed, open, closed, open, closed. And it's been
running like that for how many years? Who
knows? I just happen to see it. But,
again, what are they what are they saying,
or what are they trying to prove? They're
trying to prove that this mechanism by which
the cabinet,
is put together is able to bear a
certain stress.
And
based on testing, it can bear this much
stress.
And this occurs in everything. You know, when
you want to build a home, one of
the very first things that occurs when a
person wants to build a home is that
they take a little bit of the soil
and they do something called a soil test.
And the purpose of the soil test, again,
is to determine
how much weight can that soil bear before
you put a structure on it because
every ground can only bear x amount of
weight. And so you certainly want to put
much less than what the maximum capacity is
on top of that particular piece of ground.
So everything has a certain stress that it
can handle.
And what we're being told in this piece
of advice given by Sheikh Zulfikar is that
don't rely on the nuffs at all.
Jenny,
don't even think that you can stress the
nuffs at all because if you stress the
nuffs, it'll it'll end up cracking.
So don't think that you can do any
reliance upon our nuffs.
Now,
just as an example,
human beings have weaknesses. And we are human
beings, and we all have weaknesses.
If we challenge our nafs,
we will rarely win.
So the better so the so the wisdom
in dealing with the nafs is not how
can I strengthen the nafs so that I
can challenge it? It's not designed to bear
stress.
The wisdom in the case of the nuffs
is, how can I avoid the stress completely?
You understand? Right? It's not a question of
what can I do to build up my
nuff so that I can so that I
can so that I can succeed in the
in the stress test?
It's actually looked at the other way, which
is don't stress enough at all because it's
not designed to carry any weight. It'll crack
if you try to stress it.
Just as an example. I'll give you a
couple quick exam one one quick example.
When
the
prohibition for alcohol
came upon the community,
the Sahaba gave up alcohol right away. There
was no question.
For them, whatever was revealed was immediately acted
upon whether it came
as Qur'an or whether it came as hadith.
But interestingly,
even though
the companions completely gave up alcohol,
even though the companions completely gave up alcohol,
the Prophet
commanded the companions to break the glasses from
which they used to drink alcohol.
Right? There were certain glasses that they used
as part of their tradition and culture,
and they used to drink alcohol from those
glasses.
And we know very clearly that the prophet
commanded them to break the glasses from which
they used to drink the alcohol.
Now you think why? It doesn't make any
sense. They've already given up the alcohol. They
weren't gonna go back to it, that Allah
had given them that the hikmah and that
tawfiq.
But why would the prophet
command them to break the glasses that they
used to drink the alcohol from?
And the answer is because
if those glasses are present, the possibility
of remembering
that they had drank the alcohol was was
was there. And the nafs cannot even bear
that much stress.
The nafs cannot even bear that much stress.
So the solution in when dealing with the
nafs is to completely, to the best of
our abilities,
eliminate the stress. And if we eliminate the
stress, then we then the nafs has a
good chance of surviving.
So, again, the secret of the nafs is
not how can
I strengthen my nafs so that it survives
every stress? The secret of succeeding with the
nafs is let me how how can I
avoid the environment? Let me make the best
circumstance by which I can avoid the environment
so that I never stress the nuffs to
begin with.
If the nuffs has a problem with looking
at things that it shouldn't look at, alright,
let's say it has a problem with looking
at the opposite gender,
the solution isn't
to increase the to the extent that you
can then go and stand on the beach.
That's not the solution.
The solution is to avoid the environment completely
so that we don't stress the nuffs because
if we stress the nuffs, we'll slip.
Similarly, if a person's nuffs has a problem
in dealing with backbiting, just as an example,
then the solution isn't to sit in the
company of back sit in the environment of
backbiting, but bite the tongue. Sure. If it
happens to come up, you have to bite
the tongue. But the real solution lies in
avoiding the environment because the stress the the
nafs cannot bear that stress.
And anyone who puts themselves in that circumstance
will will will ultimately
succumb to that stress and will do things
that they shouldn't that they wouldn't be proud
of.
So when we see, especially with the month
of Ramadan coming up, when we see that
we are we have a problem.
Alright? Any problem. Whether it be lying,
misuse of the gaze, misuse of the tongue,
misuse of the hands, etcetera. When we see
that we have a problem,
the solution lies in identifying how to eliminate
that stress completely. How can we change our
environment so that we can eliminate that stress
completely? Now will every stress be will it
be possible to eliminate every stress? No. But
can we eliminate 95% of the issues? Yes.
The other 5%, you have to deal with.
It's part of being in the dunya. You
can't avoid it. And the sunnah and regular
dhikr and purification through the masjid and purification
through the company of good people, and all
of that will is a is a relatively
is a relatively good way of protecting the
nafs from those circumstances.
But we certainly shouldn't stress the nafs at
all.
So this one piece of advice Look, I
just got one sentence. You know, he just
shared one sentence and one example,
that Sheikh Zulfikar said, you know, don't stress
the nuffs. Don't rely on the nuffs at
all. But and this example of the breaking
of the glasses of,
from which the alcohol was consumed.
From those two things, I mean, there's so
much that we can learn. And this is
the wisdom of the masha'ib. Now, I didn't
hear it now. I'm sharing you what I
learned from the trip. Okay? But I didn't
hear this directly from the tongue of Sheikh
Zulfiqar. I heard this from the person who
heard it from the tongue of Sheikh Zulfiqar.
But even in that lies benefit.
So it takes basically two lessons. Number 1,
when when we come in the company of
people that spend time in the company of
the pious, we should sit with them. We
should ask them. We should take benefit from
them. We should specifically say, you were there
for this much time. Share with me 2,
3 points that you learned because maybe I
can take some benefit from it. And often,
it may even be more beneficial than directly
hearing it from from the person because of
the effort that was made and because it's
a sunnah as well. Companions Sahaba
used to do it, so we should do
it as well. Of course, there's always barakah
in the sunnah.
And the second point is that we should
be particularly
cognizant
of the fact that the nafs is not
designed to take heavy stress.
And if we please it in the circumstance
of heavy stress, it's not that not that
the nuffs will survive, we'll fail. You might
be able to get away on occasion with
a rare rare exception.
Some of it out of necessity due to
work or school or other things that we
have to do in our daily routine. But
for the most part, we should be particularly
fearful of stressing enough at all because it
cracks.
It's like an egg. You know, when you
grab an egg, you're so careful because you
know that it's going to break if you
just mishandle it in the slightest way. So
in the same way, the nuffs is easily
cracked.
Easily cracked, and then we end up falling
down
a very slippery slope. So we should be
we should be very particular. And when we
understand that this is a characteristic of the
nafs, then it allows us to make
important decisions that would be beneficial for us
in our avoiding sin and our progression towards
Allah
So that was those were the 2 things
that I wanted to share. May Allah
grant us tawfiq to be able to sit
in the company of the pious and to
also sit in the company of those people
that sit in the company of the pious.
And may Allah
grant us the wisdom to avoid stressing the
nafs even in the slightest way.