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Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid July 24, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Wednesday Suhbat

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The Khwaja Khwajagan and Naqshbandi Teachings Traveling in Tariqah: Principles to Live By in Overcoming the Nafs

Dinner blessing: Bismillah. O Allah, Ramadan is a time for us to reflect, to see

ourselves, and to pray for the changes we need, and to find strength. We ask Allah to

give us the character and the strength to reflect upon ourselves, to meet the

challenges You shower upon us. Make us worthy to be in Tariqah and to be seekers

of truth. We ask Allah to give protection to all of our community, uplift our hearts

and souls, help us re-establish our intentions, and affirm our direction. Give health

to every member of this community. Amin.

Suhbat: We are about to embark on a journey into the Khwaja Khwajagan and

Naqshbandi teachings. There are certain assumptions made when sitting with

people who are in tariqah. One of the problems with understanding tariqah is that it

is not really possible to understand tariqah unless you attempt to embrace Shar’īah.

It would be like starting with 2 and then trying to figure out where 1 goes, if you

were counting. You have to start with 1. One of the major obstacles today to the

reality or the concept of tariqah is a kind of ambivalence that exists in the world

today toward many things. Though people wrap themselves up with their problems

and become obsessed by those problems and with attractions to the world, there is

also an underlying ambivalence toward what is really truth.

In the social structure (if you follow the news today about the governor of Virginia,

or the candidate for mayor of New York, or the mayor of San Diego), on the one

hand, there is a kind of false outrage about bad behavior; and on the other hand,

there is a real ambivalence toward values. It’s one thing if a person struggles with

problems or values; it’s another thing if they are arrogant and totally disregard the

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value of akhlaq / character itself. To travel in tariqah doesn’t mean you are a perfect

being seeking some kind of supre-perfection. You can be the worse sinner in the

world, but have sincerity and the hope for enlightenment and change.

While tariqah literally means a path or a way, and implies a spiritual path, the

progress one makes in tariqah on the sayr-i-Llah (journey toward Allah), or the sayr-

fī-Llah (journey within Allah), is like most things that have success. There has to be

some kind of structure, organization, or form to it, which is why it begins with

Shar’īah, which is not just law or rules. It’s really the well-trodden path, or the

contextual form in which you can dive into meaning. Without that form, the essence

has no way to manifest itself. And it’s true of every path, whether it is Hindus in the

form of different deities, or Buddhists in the form of deities and recitations, or

Christianity in the constructs of cathedrals and forms and rituals. These are all

intended to be doorways to something more subtle and more profound.

In Islam we have the shar’īah and tariqah in order to get to gnosis / marifah, and

eventually to the truth / haqiq. This word “tariqah” means path, but it also implies

that organization, mu’asis, an organizational form. From the Sufic point of view,

there is a supra-mu’asis, and a more worldly one. In modern Arabic, the word just

means organization. But in Sufic concept, it is an over-riding organization reality.

Once you understand that or find your place within it, you have a context by which

you can unveil the deeper mysteries of life. At the core of that is suhbat, or a force

that brings people together, jedhb. Where in most paths, suluk comes first and jedhb

comes second, in Naqshbandi – Mujaddidi Tariqah and Khwajagan teachings, jedhb

comes first and the suluk follows. The journey follows the attraction.

Also, suhbat in terms of companionship implies at some level, munasabat, this

congenial relationship between the companions of the shaykh and the shaykh, as it’s


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modeled after the Sahabah / Companions of the Prophet and the Prophet (sal). It is

a constructive relationship of trust / tawakkul. Over time, the significance of and the

content of tariqah has entropied. What has remained is a lot of writings and

discussion on turūq and the different Orders. There is a sense, like in the rest of the

world we live in today, that things have moved from their original meaningfulness

or significance to a more social construct and reality. When in truth, turūq and

tariqah are really not separate. In other words, the worldly form of Tasawwuf is

always and will always be linked at some level to its essential mystical, esoteric,

spiritual reality. If you are blessed enough to be in the company of people of

Tariqah, you are near to or close to tasting the dhawq / taste of the Essence, so that

the fragrance gives you some sense of the reality.

In the case of the teachings of the Khwaja Khwajagan, the Masters of Wisdom of

Central Asia, the Sufic Orders of 500 – 600 years ago when they were flourishing

was different from what happened earlier when the transmissions of the shaykhs

were less structured in that organizational sense of turūq. There was a more

spontaneous and less-structured form of transmission between the shuyukh and the

murīds. When you get to about 500-600 years ago, at the time of Khwajā

‘Ubaydullāh Ahrār (ra) and Ahmed Qasim Habidiyya (ra) and others, the Orders

become more structured, organizationally. The principles of the Order—and not

just the Rules of the Order you have memorized, or the Rules of Companionship, or

the rules of the relationship between the murīd and murshid, and those old ancient

recitations and meaningful realities, meaningful statements—become reabsorbed

into traditional Islamic concepts like the principles of tawakkul and fikr and sabr;

but something else happens.

Maybe it’s the premonition that the world is becoming somewhat more organized in

form, and that things are becoming more material. People are not just gathering


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together in the spirit of the mystical, being drawn by the attraction of the teaching of

the shuykh, but something else is happening sociologically and structurally in

society, where people are drawn to more organization. I don’t mean organizations,

but organizational principles. At the expense of really wanting to make parallels to

today’s world, I would say it is being pulled apart again. People are not willing to

commit to a path, not willing to maintain the kind of perseverance and loyalty that is

necessary to really mine the wealth that is within their own hearts and souls; rather,

they just settle for some superficial patina of reality, not caring to look underneath

that patina to find that the patina of walnut is over pine, or gold-fill over nickel.

That’s the world we live in today.

It’s not like that is a conscious decision; quite the contrary. It’s sort of a kind of

surrender or acquiescence to the shallowness of the times we live in, to the speed at

which society is operating, to the fact that people just don’t have the time, or give

the time to go deeper. So we accept these kinds of superficial things I began talking

about in today’s news: the governor of Virginia, the mayor of San Diego, and the

nominee for mayor of New York. Aside from the moral issues, look at the other side.

Look at how people are unaffected by their transgressions, or their weaknesses,

even if they were just weaknesses of normal people. Without the understanding of

such things as adab, and the implications of tariqah, of a path or a way that’s been

available to us since the time of the Prophet Mohammed (sal) (1434 years) and

before that, at other times when a prophet came, from the time of the Magians and

Zoroastrians to the modern times, we have deviated.

In the world we live in today, deviation usually refers in the spiritual world to bida /

innovation: deviation from form—whether you can make dhikr aloud or not, the

form of prayer, things like that. I’m not talking about that kind of deviation. I’m

talking about deviation from the capacity that one has, if they would just take a


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moment and reflect, on the subjects of principle, loyalty, submission, surrender,

trust – all the things that are basically anathematic to the average person today.

They are anathemas. They are signs of weakness, signs of loss of individuality, signs

of ignorance – all of which is totally wrong. Quite the contrary, it takes a lot of

courage to walk on the path. So I guess from that you could extrapolate that we live

at a time when people are not very courageous. Maybe that’s why so many people

have to carry so many weapons in our world today. (The weapons) become an

extension of power, and they are not relying on themselves.

What it boils down to in tariqah is to try to understand on the one hand the

principles by which we should live, and what we should develop: tawakkul, sabr,

rida, rizq, and other principles. On the other hand, I think it has to do with the form

in which we practice to develop an understanding of those principles. What stands

in the center of all that that blocks our ability, our logic, and our reason that tell us

we don’t have the time. We have too many important things to do; we have to do

this and that. Our egos and our sense of individuality tell us we don’t want to be

thought of as ignorant people, or less than someone else, or infantile or childish, or

whatever. This is the nafs / self / ego. The statement of the Khwaja Khwajagan in

the treatise Rules of the Truthful by Kashani, stated very simply: “What is nafs?

Know that the nafs of each thing is the truth of that thing.”

In other words, nafs is what characterizes an entity, or what gives something an

identity. It’s not inherently bad; it’s the I-ness of something. That’s the beginning

point of Rules of the Truthful. The ego, which is the identifier of the self, is also in a

sense the primary enemy of the traveler, the seeker. The only way to overcome that

enemy is to have the rules of tariqah rule over that nafs to give validity and power,

or to give submission to certain principles and rules (tawakkul and sabr and those


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other things I said earlier) over the nafs, and to organize one’s life in such a way that

you continue to give validity to those principles so that they dominate the nafs / self.

The Khwajagan [teaching], the Masters of Wisdom of the Golden Chain of the

Naqshbandi teaching (which is really the mother of all Sufi Orders historically), was

that there are two kinds of nafs: the nafs insan (nafs of the self, the human), and the

nafs hawani, the nafs of the animal, the nafs ammāra. As the story goes, the nafs

hawani was created for Adam (as) merely to give to this new creation of Allah the

attributes of eating, and sleeping, and procreating. He gave the analogy of the horse

of Adam, so that Adam (as) could ride that horse, could control it, and use it for a

purpose in this world. The human is not created just to be an animal running wild in

this world, like a wild stallion, but it is to do work and to be created. “He could ride

that horse and be sent into this world to divulge the beauty of Allah and the Divine

Spirit.” It is to move from the nafs ammāra, nafs hawani to the ruh ilahi, Divine

Spirit, in this world.

This image is carried through in the early Khwajagan teaching of the horse ego.

Adam, by knowing the qualities and attributes of things, gave us the secret of how to

ride this horse of ego in order to move through the world. Once one learned how to

do that, it was a maqam / station from which you would not be removed or

withdrawn. Aside from the nafs hawani whose attributes are not only eating and

sleeping, but also drinking and desire and appetite, and randan, moving about;

there is the nafs insan: the real human ego. That the more Divine aspect of the

human ego is free from those attributes, and characterized by something much

higher: hayat. Hayat has a lot of different meanings: in this case, it means

knowledge. It can also mean goodness, like hayati tayyibah, the good life—

consciousness, ‘ilm / knowledge. It has many, many manifestations.


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In this case, hayat means moving about as a living being, life, hayati tayyiba, or ‘ilm /

knowledge, qudrat / power, hikma /wisdom, irada/ will, sama/ listening, basir/

seeing, firas/discriminating, kalam / noting, talking. These are the higher attributes

of the human being which, when they are turned toward those principles, extract

from those principles like the butterfly extracts from the milkweed plant, its

essence. Attracted by the scent, it finds its nourishment. The human ego, nafs insan,

has these attributes. It is placed in the Khwajagan principles at the mid-point of

reason / ‘aql. The human ego finds its place in qalb, in the heart. It feels settled in

the heart because it’s nearer to Allah in the heart. Allah says, “You will find Me in

the heart of the believer.” So we begin our journey in the heart / qalb—in the

body, qalab; but in the heart.

Allah Swt tells us in the Qur’an why, but Naqshbandi teaching is indirāj an-nihāyah

fi’l-bidāya (we begin where others end). In this core of the heart (in the sense that

the heart is also in the center of our body, in the middle), we experience that the

heart has this taqul al bash, this vacillation. It vacillates between the Haqq / Divine

Truth and the dunya / world, between the dhahir and the batin, between the akhirat

and the dunya. This is the condition we find human beings to be in. How one deals

with these principles and this tariqah as it is manifest in the turūq / orders will

determine the existence of every human being, the human condition—both, the

individual human condition ( my own individual state, your individual state, how we

deal with circumstances around us) and the whole human condition of society. It

comes from this Divine origin to this mundane reality. Though we start our journey

at the Divine origin, most of us start our conscious journey from this mundane

reality.

Since Adam (as) inherited these attributes / sifat from Allah, he was appointed or

accepted as the khalifa of Allah Swt. So he in this world takes the “throne” of


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creation. But Iblis, who is evil and is condemned by Allah Swt, becomes the enemy of

Allah and of Adam (as), because he uses the nafs hawani to carry out his temptations

or bad deeds in this world toward Adam, who represents all of humanity to come.

Since this enemy is a very powerful enemy and can’t be fought alone, Allah creates

Hawa / Eve. Allah orders them, in a very roundabout way, to conceive of children

(all of us) to create ultimately an army to fight against this evil. But Iblis in this

world is very powerful, and this drama plays out in each one of us in some way or

another—the eternal struggle. In some sense, each one of us is Adam; and each one

of us is in need of someone to fight the battle with. Each one of us plays out this

drama in some way of procreation and keeping this process going.

This is the foundation of how the nafs hawani / animal nature is sustained, and how

it has to be transformed into the nafs insan, and then go through the process of nafs

lawwama, nafs mut’mainna, and all the different stages of the “I” as we move toward

awakening in that Divine presence. And it is how Allah Swt keeps this message

alive, because we are sitting here in 2013 talking about a message that Islam alone

started 1434 years ago, preceded 600 years by the Judaic teachings of Isa, which

later became to be called Christianity, which was preceded by 2000 some years by

the teaching of Sidna Musa, and before that the teaching of Ibrahim (as). You also

have the Zoroastrian teachings of Ahura Mazda (good) and Angra Mainyu (evil).

Then you have the early, early teachings in Iraq and the Code of Hammurabi.

This is the story of each one of us, and we are still telling the story. We still have the

same responsibilities, and it takes the same sincerity to win this battle, personally.

But we are all invested in the social winning of this battle, too. We are all invested in

how society progresses or digresses. If you don’t believe that, go to Syria today. Go

to Tahrir Square today. Just because we are sitting safe and sound in Virginia, the

USA, doesn’t mean that battle isn’t going on as a battle somewhere in the world.


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Whether in Tehran, Aleppo, Baghdad, or Homs or Fallujah, it’s the same battle. We

can sort of relax and engage in the battle whenever we want to, because we are safe

and sound here. If we want to engage our nafs, fine. If we want to indulge our nafs,

ok, fine. Who’s going to know? Who’s going to say? I can hide under here and eat

my melon, and nobody sees me eat the melon. Nobody sees me but Allah, and

there’s the battle. As soon as Adam (as), in the story, in reality, leaves this world

and returns to his source as we all do (hopefully), human beings lost their leader

and were alone. Then what? Immediately Iblis starts his influence. He encourages

our inclination toward desire, toward the nafs hawani, feeding the nafs hawani,

pushing us away from the right way, then, making us infidels, infidelity, lowering the

value of loyalty and trust.

But Allah says, “I’m going to send a Nebi to each generation of people, a prophet to

each people, to struggle against those evil influences.” “Never was a community

that I did not send a prophet to.” What does that mean, a community of Muslims?

He’s talking about a community in the Amazon jungle, too. There was never a

community He did not send a messenger to, to put people back on the siratal

mustaqim, the straight path. So the prophets gathered their sahabah / companions

around them in suhbat like this, to help them fight, collectively. How do you fight

collectively, if you don’t fight individually? Worse than being alone is to have a

poorly trained army, because alone, at least you know your capacity. But if you

assume the capacity of an army that is not trained, then you have a real problem.

So Allah sends the prophets and the pirs, the awliya-Llāh, the murshids and shaykhs,

to help people escape from that nafs hawani and to find the way to Rahi Rahman, the

way to compassion and mercy. What is the way to rahmat? We have to go back

again to rahīm. It’s a way back to the seed moment in the womb of reality, the rahm.

So that’s where we find ourselves. We have to understand our own nafs. We have to


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understand what it is. We have to understand to know what it means to “know your

nafs is your truth,” which is reflected in the hadith qudsi, which is “know yourself

and you will know your Lord.” See that, refine that. If you really know yourself, you

will know your Lord. It comes in a hadith qudsi from the lips of the Prophet

Mohammed (sal) from Allah Swt. Allah has placed this self in the heart, and the true

heart has certain attributes, which we will talk about the next time as move towards

tawakkul. I hope you find this interesting. If it doesn’t inspire us to be better, then I

won’t have accomplished anything. Life is full of disappointments.

Question. Hanifa: Are there times in history when progress cannot be made on this

issue, because people are so degenerated? What brings it back out eventually to a

time when people connect again?

Shaykh: Yes and no. There are places where it can’t, but not time. There are always

some places where the message is kept alive, and places where it gets occluded. This

is the symbolism of the 12th Imam; he goes into occlusion. Whether it’s true actually

or not, the Shi’a would say one thing and the Sunni another. There are different

concepts of the Mahdi. Symbolically, it represents that the message gets hidden for

a while. There are others who say the Mahdi is always present and alive and known

by some, but unseen by others. There are different ways of looking at it, but more

“where” than “when.”

If you are asking me if this is a time, I think we live in a time where it’s kept alive by

very few people against all kinds of odds and challenges. But don’t let that go to your

head. Unless you, yourself are striving to stay spiritually alive, it’s going to die in

you or with you, and you are going to be adding to the problem, not the solution.

How many people are willing to embrace the path? Very few. You all are a very

unique group of people, and as imperfect as you all are – and we are all aware of it –


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it’s true. I include myself. As imperfect as we all are, I guess that answers your

question. To show you to what ends Allah will go to keep something alive, that He

will put it in the hands of a group of such imperfect people, who don’t really practice

that well, and who are not really as committed as they appear to be in some cases.

Then on the other hand, you find out how pure their intentions were, not their

actions, like our dear Sahar, or Iman, or Musa, or Daoud.

You see that just the company, the suhbat alone, brings a tremendous amount of

growth and capacity to carry the message. But the message has to be articulated. It

has to be. It’s not going to be passed on by imperfect people through transmission.

It has to be passed on in a very formal way for it to take seed. We can put seed in the

ground… Pax was very excited because she had 10 year old seed that grew, but

that’s a miracle. It’s quite a miracle. You can’t rely on that to get food. So it’s

possible we can pass on these teachings in a less perfect way, but not usually.

Obviously, I’m passing on the teachings in an imperfect way myself so…

Really, the real challenge is to keep people inspired and help people have the

willpower to participate sincerely. As you get older, it’s harder. You have all these

habits. You think, “Oh, how can I start and do this and that?” It’s not all form; but it is

form. It’s not all essence, but it is essence. It takes courage and strength and

commitment, just to sustain the venue, the community. Arifa, give the really hard

recitation. (Arifa: “I will practice loyalty and steadfastness unto death, and hereby

endow, both symbolically and if asked, practically, the Order in the person of my guide

and murshid, with all my property and all my expectations in this life.”) Now, who’s

going to buy into that today? Remember that? That’s one of the inner teachings.

I spent a couple of weeks explaining that, and to some degree putting some caveats

into it so people wouldn’t have too hard a time with it. But that’s the reality. That’s


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the mentality one has to have the courage to have, and the trust. It’s not just trusting

in the shaykh; it’s trusting in Allah and the process. What did you come into this

world with? Alhamduli-Llāh, up until now, we have not had a day when there hasn’t

been food on our table, or a roof over our head, although some of those roofs leaked,

were porous, and were made of cardboard. There have been days when we didn’t

have money in the bank. When was the last time I asked you to sign over all your

assets—ever? Did my Shaykh ever ask me to do that? It has to have some meaning.

Asalaam aleikum.

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