The Purpose of Life

Ramadasa Hani in his book,

The path to virtue or however you want to translate it, yeah identifies three separate purposes to human life that can be derived from the Koran.

One of them is called a medicine, which is basically like settling upon Earth. And that covers all of your material needs, right? Finding a spouse, starting a family, getting a source of income, right, all these sorts of things. And that is your absolute base level, animal level sort of existence, a everybody, absolutely everybody needs that.

And then the second level, he said, that,

that fewer people will realize is it by the Top Ramen, right, which is worshiping the Most Merciful worshipping your Sustainer. So everybody has to engage in their livelihood and taking care of their material needs, but only some people will realize that they have an obligation to be grateful

that all this stuff, I like to compare it to like a Thanksgiving dinner, like imagine that somebody walked in off the street, into a house, the door was wide open. And they came and they found a huge big table setup with turkey and stuffing. And you know, the napkins are folded and the drinks are caught up. And everything's there that the chairs are pulled out waiting for you. There's two types of people. There's one type of person that's going to sit down and just start eating, not going to think twice about it. And then the other type of person is gonna say, Wait a second, Who's is this?

How much am I am I allowed to take it? How much am I allowed to take? What do I have to do to show that I'm grateful, right. And that comes back to normal everyday life, there are some people who if they get something, they think, Oh, this is I got this coming to me. I'm just going to enjoy it. This is just for me.

And then there's the other type of person who I have to be grateful for this. All this came from somewhere. Right? All my happy memories, my happy times, my friends, my family, my support all this stuff that came from a source. What is that source? How do I show my gratitude? How do I be thankful? Right? Not every everybody gets to that level. But when you are get to that level, and you do get to that level, you start to think, wow, I actually have to worship, for my own benefit, in order to express my gratitude for all these things that I have.

So that's the second level, then there's a third level beyond that, that even people, some people from the second level won't get to. And that is

a healer. That is being a steward.

Right or being a protector of Allah. That means that

the person recognizes their duty towards society first and recognizes their duty towards their community, that they're not just content to be grateful by sitting in their homes or sitting in their house of worship and Word and worshipping their Lord, that they understand that they have to contribute to society, and they have to represent Allah, they have to represent their Creator, in the society, in the community. If Allah is the most merciful, they need to establish mercy in the community. If Allah is the most just they need to establish justice in the community, etc, etc. So that the community, the entire society actually reflects something that Allah is happy with, which

is a different type of gratitude, which is a lot harder than just doing it yourself. Because you have to go out and you have to convince you have to go out and you have to struggle, you have to face the opposition of people who just want to stay at level one, and just want to, you know, take care of their livelihoods and no bother me and leave me alone.

So those are the three levels that are also honey talks about all derived from the Quran, taking care of your livelihood, a matter of I bet a total rock man worshipping out of gratitude for the Most Merciful and then craft Allah is that being allows representative or being a laws steward for the whole creation.