Zhuhr Suhbah
A`oodhu billahi min ash-Shaytaani 'r-rajeem. Bismillahi 'r-Rahmaani 'r-Raheem.
Nawaytu 'l-arba`een, nawaytu 'l-`itikaaf, nawaytu 'l-khalwah, nawaytu 'l-`uzlah,
nawaytu 'r-riyaadah, nawaytu 's-sulook, lillahi ta`alaa fee haadha 'l-masjid.
The wisdom of mentioning these stories is to show that it is not easy. It is easy to become a scholar, an academic who studied everything as you go to school and you learn, but it is not easy to speak with the heart of the mureeds, to make a connection from the mureed to the shaykh. The shaykh is always connected to the mureed, but the mureed’s pipe is broken, it needs heavenly insurance as it is too much leaking that you cannot fix it until you must have heavenly insurance that, regardless of what the mureed is doing, or by his knowledge he thinks himself okay but he is not okay, the shaykh always, because there is heavenly insurance, the shaykh will always respond to the necessity and needs of the mureeds even though the mureeds don’t know. And this heavenly insurance is on the shoulders of the shaykh.
Why he insured us? It is his responsibility. I come to you, extend my hand and taksponsible any more, whatever I do he has to cover it, which doesn’t mean you go and make sins, you de baya` from you, you accept, so who is responsible? You or you? As a student of the shaykh, I am not reon’t pray and don’t fast, no! What you do from your desires through your ego and high arrogance, big arrogance, (you think), “I left in your hands, that’s your (the shaykh’s) responsibility!” That is bad adab from you to say this, but that’s the meaning! The one who is inheriting from Prophet (s) for guiding:
وَالَّذِينَ جَاهَدُوا فِينَا لَنَهْدِيَنَّهُمْ سُبُلَنَا
And those who strive in Our (Cause), We will certainly guide them to Our Paths.
(Surat al-`Ankaboot, 29:69)
For sure, finished, that ayah is clear! You, all of us who are taking the difficulty and connecting ourselves through our baya` with our shaykh, Mawlana Shaykh Muhammad Nazim al-Haqqani (q), he has to take the responsibility, not us.
كُلُّكُمْ رَاعٍ، وَكُلُّكُمْ مَسْؤُولٌ عَنْ رَعِيَّتِهِ
Each of you is a shepherd and each of you is responsible for his flock.
(Narrated by Ibn `Umar, Bukhari and Muslim)
We are a flock. Who is responsible? I don’t feel shy to say it, that is fact: Mawlana is responsible and that’s why Grandshaykh, may Allah bless his soul, and Mawlana Shaykh Nazim, may Allah give him long life, always used to say, “Don’t let me be in a shamed position in front of the Prophet (s),” because every day they are responsible to present their followers to Prophet (s)! Scholars cannot do that! A scholar comes and takes his honorarium, his flight ticket in business class or first class also as they don’t accept economy class, hotels and cars (are reserved for them) and he goes, gives his speech and who cares? (He thinks,) “Finished, I gave my speech, you study your lesson and apply it.”
No! Awliyaullah don’t do that as they are carrying you to the Day of Judgment. They are always polishing you and as much as you polish what will happen? More shining. They polish you in dunya, they polish you at death, they polish you in the grave, they polish you on Judgment Day and then present you Prophet (s), Prophet (s) makes shafa`ah, asking Allah to forgive and Allah will forgive!
But `ulama have a limit, so they cannot go beyond their limit. What is their limit? (They only know) ‘This’ or ‘that,’ is there anything else? You pray five prayers, every prayer is two or four or three raka`ats, and they explain, “Alhamdulillah, thank you very much,” but that’s it, they cannot let you reach a high level as we explained yesterday in the story with Shah Bahauddin Naqshband (q) with one of his mureeds, Mawlana Sayfuddin. I will repeat a summary as they asked me to repeat. The story says that one day Shah Bahauddin Naqshband (q) was walking with his followers; this was the case in Grandshaykh’s (q) time, he goes somewhere and we followed. And with Mawlana Shaykh Muhammad Nazim al-Haqqani (q), what will happen? We follow, but that is bad adab! If he didn’t tell you, “Come,” you cannot follow, but people show up at the door of the invitation before the shaykh shows up! You experienced that in England, everywhere. Correct, yaa shaykh? You experienced that; you are one of those and you are one of those (points out mureeds), you show up at the door, and I am one of those, you show at the door before Mawlana is there and Mawlana comes and sees you, saying, “Oh! What are you doing here?”
You say, “I am bringing new people to enjoy and to come in tariqah and learn adab,” but you are breaking the adab coming here!
So Shah Bahauddin Naqshband (q) was walking in the alley with his mureeds and one of them is Mawlana Sayfuddin (q) and walking through the alley, passing, and one other shaykh was coming, very famous, like too many people today are very famous. His name is Muhammad al-Hallaj, not the Hallaj (Mansour al-Hallaaj of Baghdad) you heard about, but by coincidence in the same surname. So he saw him coming, so out of adab, Sayyidina Shah Bahauddin Naqshband (q)--although Muhammad al-Hallaj was always attacking Shah Bahauddin Naqshband (q) and his followers, he was a big `alim and he had a lot of followers attacking the wali of Allah--when someone attacks like that what will happen?
من عادا لي وليا فقد آذنته بالحرب
(Allah [swt] said) Whoever comes against My wali, I declare war on him.
(Hadith Qudsee; Bukhari)
Prophet (s) said that Allah said, “If someone comes against my awliya, I declare war on him!” Allah doesn’t like His awliya to be attacked and all of them are attacked! Who attacks them, shaykh? Who attacks them? [Scholars?] Allahu Akbar, you said it. Yes, scholars attack them because of jealousy, thinking, “Oh, I know more than him!” Like the son of the khalifah of Sayyidina `Abdul-Qadir al-Jilani (q); he had a son who was as `alim and his father is one khalifah and he always he attacks his father in his heart, thinking, “What does he know? I know better than him.” One day his father let him speak.
He said, “O my son, I am sick today so you go and give the suhbah today.”
He was so happy, thinking, “Today I am going to show my father and Sayyidina `Abdul-Qadir al-Jilani (q) and everyone how lectures will be given!”
Today too many `alims teach like this one, so he began his advice, his lecture, and in that association they say there were at least 5,000 people. He began his lecture in very eloquent Arabic and everyone was sleeping. Slowly, slowly the whole 5,000 were snoring like Beethoven (a symphony), like this one. We were in California in a wooden house, it is a protected house, you cannot change anything, a pink house, and he was sleeping down and I was sleeping up. The whole house was shaking.
“What’s going on?” Hajjah said. “Might be there is an earthquake?”
I said, “Let me check.”
I went down and found him snoring, maybe up to the third level of Paradise his voice was reaching! And the next week it was doubled because (that one) came! One began African snoring, the other American snoring and it became mixed African-American snoring! (Laughter.)
So who have been attacked most? Mashayikh, awliyaullah. This is how it works, this is how Allah put it. Who was attacked most? Sayyidina Muhammad (s), Allah’s Prophet, Allah’s Messenger. Allah was able to kill all of them, to punish them in one strike like He did to `Aad and Thamood: with one wind He blew out their homes, He killed them all. Is Allah not able? He is able! He was giving, although I feel bad to say that, He was giving a lesson to everyone that, “My Prophet (s), My Messenger, if he asks, not even with his mouth but only if in his heart comes an appearance against these people, Allah would have crushed them all.” Like when they broke the Prophet’s (s) front teeth, rubayaatu ’n-Nabi (s), Allah ordered Jibreel (a), “If you don’t catch that blood before it touches the Earth, I will make the whole Earth a desert!” and Sayyidina Jibreel said, “That was the fastest I reached Prophet (s), in one fraction of a moment I was holding the tooth of Prophet (s).” Allah is teaching us, “If My Prophet (s) is patient, why are you not patient?”
And especially the `ulama attacking! So Muhammad al-Hallaaj was attacking Sayyidina Shah Bahauddin Naqshband (q) and with all that, they met in that alley so that people--say you are attacking me or he is attacking you and then you came at the same time in that alley, you wouldn’t look at each other, you would turn your face away and pass. But Shah Bahauddin Naqshband (q) went to him and walked with him several steps out of respect, saying, “He is Allah’s servant, he is `alim, I have to give him respect even if he attacks me.” And that is what we see with Mawlana Shaykh Muhammad Nazim al-Haqqani (q), that he respects everyone even if they attack him.
So that is what happened and then they separated. So Sayyidina Shah Naqshband’s mureed, it came to his heart, “It was not enough, that was only a few steps he walked with him.” So in order to make him more happy, he was thinking he was doing favor for Sayyidina Shah Naqshband (q), he thought that he is doing something good that Shah Naqshband (q) would be happy with, but he didn’t know he was doing tark al-adab, he dropped discipline, because he put his thinking from his mind with the action of his shaykh. No, you cannot. Who are you to put (interpret) what the shaykh must do or worse, “I must do this on his behalf.”
So the mureed went and walked with Shaykh Muhammad al-Hallaj a few more steps and Shah Bahauddin Naqshband (q) didn’t say anything, but man `adaa lee waliyyan faqad aadhantahu bi ’l-harb, and that mureed died after three days! Alhamdulillah, Mawlana Shaykh Muhammad Nazim al-Haqqani doesn’t do that or there will be no more mureeds! Everyone (will be dead)! You see the difference?
So when you take baya` you see the shaykh, when he extends his hand and gives you baya` he is responsible. So, awliyaullah they struggle, Wal-ladheena jaahadoo feena la-nahdiyannahum subulanaa, “Those who are struggling in Our Way, We will guide them.” Guide them to what? If I am learning how I make wudu, I have to learn how to make wudu or I am not a Muslim. If I am learning to pray or fast, I have to learn that or I am not a Muslim. But to struggle in Allah’s Way, that is what they want from us: to struggle, to make sure when you face a problem that you forgive for it. Can you do that? That is what is important.
Ibrahim ibn al-Adham (q), his maqaam is outside Damascus and his story is well known and I said it many times. He was a king and to summarize it, we come to the conclusion. He was a king, very famous and he was always drunk and every night womanizing. For Allah, when He wants to guide a servant He will guide him: He doesn’t see if they are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, but He guides him. He was a king struggling in Allah’s Way to guide the ummah, but his mistake was that he was drunk. One day, he had a dome in his palace that was all glass over his bedroom where he looked at the stars, that tafakkur sa`a that saved him:
تفكر ساعة خير من عبادة سبعين سنة
Tafakkarru sa`atin khayrun min `ibaadati saba`een sannah.
To remember Allah (swt) (contemplate or meditate) for one hour is better than seventy years of worship.
“To meditate for one hour.” Here sa`a is not “one hour” but means even for “a moment”, ya`anee some of your time day or night, where you make meditation will reward you as if you did seventy years of worship. What do you want better than that? So he used to have this dome and he was looking at the stars, and Allah knows what he was thinking, but what was his meditation?
الَّذِينَ يَذْكُرُونَ اللّهَ قِيَامًا وَقُعُودًا وَعَلَىَ جُنُوبِهِمْ وَيَتَفَكَّرُونَ فِي خَلْقِ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالأَرْضِ رَبَّنَا مَا خَلَقْتَ هَذا بَاطِلاً سُبْحَانَكَ فَقِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ
Alladheena yadhkuroonullaha qiyaamaan wa qu`oodaan wa `alaa junoobihim wa yattafakkaroona fee khalqi ’s-samawaati wa ’l-ard, rabbanaa maa khalaqta hadhaa baatilan subhaanaka fa qinaa `adhaba 'n-naar.
Those who remember Allah (always, and in prayers) standing, sitting, and lying down on their sides, and think deeply about the creation of the heavens and the Earth, (saying): "Our Lord! You have not created (all) this without purpose, glory to You! (Exalted be You above all that they associate with You as partners). Give us salvation from the torment of the Fire. (Aali `Imraan, 3:191)
“They meditate on the creation of the Earth and Heaven.” Every night he was looking and after being drunk, sleeping. One day he was looking at the stars and hearing some movement on the roof. “Well, I know myself that I am drunk, but it is not to that extent that I am imagining things. I am hearing that!” He heard one time, two times, three times. Then he went up and looked, but there was no one. Then he slept again, but heard it again and he went and looked up and found a man on the roof. Who can reach the roof of a president or a king? Can you? So that first came to his heart that this is someone special.
He said, “What are you doing here? Don’t you know this is the house of the sultan?”
And the man said, “Yaa Ibraheem,” (no ‘King Ibraheem’). “I lost something special and I came to look for it.”
“What did you lose? Can I help?”
“I lost my camel.”
“Your camel is on the roof of the building?”
“Yes, the last one to see my camel said it was here on your roof. I want my camel.”
He said, “This is the house of sultan, there is no camel here. We use horses.” (We use cars, trucks and rockets!)
He said, “Yaa Ibraheem, there is a possibility for me to find my camel here, but there is no possibility for you to find Allah in this situation you are in!”
Then that man disappeared and that arrow hit him in the center of gravity of his heart. He fainted, he fell down, like when you hit the center of gravity of a truck it will flip over. So he hit the center of his heart like a laser beam and he fainted. When he woke up he took off his royal clothes, took a shower and left the kingdom and became Sultan az-Zaahideen, King of the Ascetics. He asked Allah’s forgiveness and left his kingdom, left his wife pregnant with a child and left. He didn’t stay back as he was struggling in Allah’s Way and asking Allah’s forgiveness.
What did he do for work? He was hammaalat al-hattab, a carrier of wood. He used to take a donkey or carry wood on his shoulders, cut wood and take and sell it and make some money to eat. This is what he was doing until Allah threw in his heart something that he went and found a shaykh, a teacher, and learned from him. For seventeen years, he was khaadim `alaa baabu ’sh-shaykh, servant on his shaykh's door for seventeen years, and from his carrying wood his whole body was getting covered with wounds.
Can we do that? This is struggling in Allah’s Way. It is not just coming and listening to a speaker, giving a lecture and going, even me, and getting paid. No, you need a teacher who, when he gives a lecture he is carrying the people sitting in that conference or else there is no noor in that. There are 124,000 awliya; we cannot deny that, so search for them and find them! Alhamdulillah we found a sultan, but alhamdulillah there are many others they have also teachers, shuyookh from whom they learn. When you give a speech you have to carry them: you are like a carrier and they send you like a carrier to carry the people’s difficulties and to present you to the shaykh. The shaykh has eyes. What does it mean, ‘the shaykh has eyes.’ What do we mean here? It means he has eyes through his representatives. When you are in a place, the shaykh sees through you. Understand that in tariqah? That is why he has many (representatives), especially in this time Mawlana Shaykh Nazim has many, and if he wants to see he can, but he doesn’t want to spend his spiritual power as he saves that for you when you are in need; he keeps that and he uses you: through your eyes he can see whatever he wants. “This one in Chicago, this one in Montreal, I see through him; this one is in Canada, I can see through him,” and he (a mureed) is putting his head down, and this one in Senegal, he can see through him as it’s easier.
For seventeen years Ibraheem ibn Adham was at the door of his shaykh, and blood and puss coming from his wounds. He did everything from the door of his shaykh, but he never went inside. One day, after seventeen years, he asked the shaykh if there is permission to go inside. He asked one of the mureeds, “Go and ask the shaykh for me if there is permission to go inside.” There are people today who push themselves inside without permission and that is tark al-adab. Those who think they are the bodyguards, the spaceship to reach the shaykh and too many of them!
So what answer came? To allow and accept him inside and to accept him as a student. Seventeen years at the door of the shaykh and he never dared to go inside. After seventeen years, he asked someone to ask the shaykh permission to go in! Look at the adab: he didn’t go inside and today everyone is going in the house of the sultan, and people push to go inside. Why, you cannot see him through your heart? For all these years what are you doing, what? You are not learning?
What did the shaykh say? “Throw him out, fire him! I don’t want your service and don’t stand at my door, don’t come here, don’t stand on my door!”
What he did? He began to repent, regretting that he asked the mureed to ask the shaykh. He was happy at the door, then thought, “Why I spoiled my happiness to go inside? Why I have to go inside? My shaykh is inside, that is enough.”
Do you find anyone like that today? Those who are `ulama giving conferences and those who blend incarnation and crucifixion, and here and there, and Hinduism and Buddhism (with our teachings).
[Mawlana quotes from Grandshaykh `AbdAllah’s private notes.]
He went, he left and felt sad and regretted that he asked. One question and he was thrown out, but he was not able to be patient so he went back to his shaykh.
And all the mureeds, like today they didn’t know hikmah, they didn’t know wisdom.
They saw the shaykh kicked him out and they said, “We have to throw him out.” They didn’t know what kind of teaching the shaykh is giving him. Seventeen years! He was a king and left his kingdom, wandering in the wilderness and then was kicked out of the home of his shaykh. He went back and the mureeds were in the alley, the street that leads to the shaykh, and they beat him and cursed him and then one of them went and told the shaykh what is happening. The shaykh immediately left his meeting, went into the alley, reaching Ibraheem ibn al-Adham (q) wa fatawajah ilayh wa fawassala, and came to him and connected his heart to Ibraheem ibn al-Adham’s heart.
After what? After a big lesson. Anyone has a lesson like that before? Might be this one. You remember in the Priory?
Until he reached a level that one time he was on a hill and he saw someone falling into the river and he said, “Qif!” and that man was standing in the air, not falling, as if there was no gravity, and he put his hand under him.
Like Sayyidina Muhiyuddin ibn `Arabi (q), who said, “I saved the boat of Sayyidina Nuh (a) from sinking.” They said, “What are you saying? It is thousands of years between you and Sayyidina Nuh (a)!” He said, “No, because that hand that saved Nuh (a) is my grandfather, is Prophet (s). I was in that hand, a drop of blood in that hand, so I was part of that.” Like that hand of Ibraheem ibn Adham (q). So seventeen years he was struggling. That is why Allah said in Holy Qur'an:
وَالَّذِينَ جَاهَدُوا فِينَا لَنَهْدِيَنَّهُمْ سُبُلَنَا
And those who strive in Our (cause), We will certainly guide them to our Paths.
(Surat al-`Ankaboot, 29:69)
“Who strives in Our Way, We will guide them.” What is the Way? “To reach the level of Divine Knowledge is not easy.” You can reach what Sayyidna Musa (a) had of `Ilmu Shari`ah, but he needed to go to Sayyidina al-Khidr (a) to learn from the Divine Presence, from Heavenly Knowledge, `Ilm al-Ladunni. `Ilm al-Ladunni is different from `Ilm ul-Dhaahir. Ilm ul-Dhaahir you have to follow or you are not a Muslim, so you follow `Ilm ul-Dhaahir, but you must find teachers who teach you `Ilm al-Ladunni. With `Ilm al-Ladunni, what Khidr (a) did? He sunk the boat and killed the boy and he built the wall and Sayyidina Musa (a) was not able to take it. And in summary, what Khidr (a) did? He learned from Rahmatan li ‘l-`Alameen, from Prophet (s), as Allah dressed him from the rahmat.
And so in summary, he put hole in boat. Kaana maalikin, there is a king that takes every boat: that is Iblees and you are the boat! So when he put a hole in you he sunk you, ‘he put a hole’ means he killed your desires, he put a hole in your desires. When he killed your desires, it is manifested in the killing of the boy: the boy is your nafs at-tiflati ’l-madhmooma, the ego that is within you is that boy. So he killed that bad desire that everyone thinks himself, “I am this, I am that, I am Heraclius, I am a giant, I am Dracula.” The ego is like that. So he put that hole and killed the nafs, so when he sank the boat and put you in the water that you cannot breathe anymore, you are dead, he put you in the station of mootoo qabl an tamoot, “Die before you die.” Like when Prophet (s) said, “You want to see someone who died before he died? Look at Abu Bakr as-Siddiq (r),” who has no nafs, no ego, no questions, no arguments, he listens and obeys, that’s it. Tariqah is to listen and obey, sami`naa wa ata`anaa.
So then Khidr (s) built the wall, because there was a treasure that was going to be lost as someone was going to steal it, so he saved your treasure after killing your ego, the child within you, and built that wall on your treasure, which means there will be coming a time when they will break that wall and give you your treasures! That is `Ilm al-Ladunni, and that is what you need beside `Ilm ash-Shari`ah. Without `Ilm ash-Shari`ah you will never reach `Ilm al-Ladunni.
Don’t say like some of the Sufis...we are Shari`ah people, we don’t speak like those who say, “We take Sufism and leave Shari`ah.” You are with Shaytan at that moment! We have to follow Shari`ah first, then they allow you to go to tariqah.
We didn’t go into Grandshaykh’s (q) notes yet, nor to the three things of keeping adab with the shaykh. We will go into these next time.
Wa min Allahi ‘t-tawfeeq bi hurmati 'l-Fatihah.
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