Original content

English translation

In explaining this doctrine, the condition is that we first establish the reality of contentment (rida) and set forth its divisions, then present the reality of the state (hal) and the station (maqam) and the difference between the two, God willing, the Mighty and Glorious.

Now know that the Book and the Sunna speak of contentment, and the community is agreed upon it; as He, the Exalted, says: 'God is well pleased with them, and they are well pleased with Him' (al-Ma'ida 119); and His saying, the Exalted: 'Certainly God was well pleased with the believers when they swore allegiance to you under the tree' (al-Fath 18); and his saying, peace be upon him: 'He has tasted the sweetness of faith who is content with God as Lord.'

Contentment is of two kinds: one is God's contentment with the servant, and the other is the servant's contentment with God, the Exalted and Sanctified. The reality of God's contentment, Mighty and Glorious, is His willing of reward, blessing, and honor for the servant; and the reality of the servant's contentment is his abiding by His commands and submitting his neck to His decrees. Thus God's contentment, the Exalted, precedes the servant's contentment; for unless His enabling grace (tawfiq), glorious is His majesty, be present, the servant will not submit his neck to His command nor abide by His will, the Exalted and Sanctified; because the servant's contentment is joined to God's contentment, Mighty and Glorious, and its subsistence is through it. In sum, the servant's contentment is the equilibrium of his heart before the two sides of the decree: whether withholding or bestowing; and the steadiness of his innermost secret in beholding the states: whether majesty (jalal) or beauty (jamal); so that whether he is confronted with withholding or reaches bestowal, both are equal in the sight of his contentment; and whether he is burned by the fire of the awe and majesty of the Truth or illumined by the light of His grace and beauty, burning and being illumined become one in his heart; because his Witness is the Truth, and whatever comes from Him is all good to him, if he holds contentment with His decree.

The Commander of the Faithful Husayn ibn Ali, may God be pleased with him and ennoble his face, was asked about the saying of Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, may God be pleased with him, who said: 'Poverty is more beloved to me than wealth, and sickness more beloved than health.' He said: 'May God have mercy on Abu Dharr; as for me, I say: whoever looks upon the excellence of God's choice does not wish for anything except what God has chosen for him.' That is: 'Poverty is dearer to me than riches, and sickness dearer than health.' Husayn, may God be pleased with him, said: 'May God's mercy be upon Abu Dharr, but I say: whoever comes to overlook the excellence of God's choosing wishes for nothing except what the Truth, the Exalted, has chosen for him.'

And when the servant beholds the Truth's choice and turns away from his own choosing, he is delivered from all sorrows; and this cannot be sound in a state of absence (ghayba), for this requires presence (hudur); 'because contentment is a remover of sorrows and a healer of heedlessness.' Contentment delivers a man from sorrows, snatches him from the grip of heedlessness, wipes the thought of the other from the heart, and frees him from the bond of hardships; for the attribute of contentment is deliverance. As for the reality of the practices (mu'amalat) of contentment, it is the servant's finding sufficiency in the knowledge of God, Mighty and Glorious, and his belief that God, the Exalted, is Seeing in all states; and the people of this are of four categories:

A group who are content with the Truth, the Exalted, in His bestowal, and that is gnosis (ma'rifa).

A group who are content with the blessings, and that is the world (dunya).

A group who are content with affliction, and that is the various trials.

A group who are content with being chosen (istifa), and that is love (mahabba).

So whoever looks from the Giver to the gift accepts it with his soul, and once he accepts it, hardship and toil vanish from the heart; but whoever looks from the gift to the Giver is held back by the gift and travels the road of contentment with affectation, and in affectation there is all pain and hardship. And gnosis is real only when the servant is one to whom disclosure is granted in the truth of gnosis; when gnosis becomes for him a prison and a veil, that gnosis is denial (nukra), that blessing is a curse, and that gift is a covering.

And as for the one who is content with Him through the world, he is in ruin and loss, and his contentment is wholly of the fires; because the world, in its entirety, is not worth that love should fix the heart upon it, nor that any sorrow over it should pass across his heart; and its blessing is that blessing which is a proof leading to the Benefactor, but when there is a veil from the Benefactor, that blessing is an affliction.

And as for the one who is content with Him through affliction, he is one who sees in affliction the One who afflicts (mubli), and can bear the hardship of it through the contemplation of the Afflicter, and reckons its pain no pain through the joy of contemplating the Beloved. And as for the one who is content with His choosing, they are His lovers, whose very existence in contentment and displeasure is borrowed, and the dwellings of whose hearts are nowhere but the Presence of Transcendence, and the pavilion of whose secrets is only in the garden of intimacy. They are those present yet absent, wild ones of the Throne, corporeal ones who are spiritual, monotheists who are lordly, their hearts severed from the world and freed from the bondage of stations, their innermost secrets cut off from created things and their loins girded for love; as God, the Exalted, said: 'They possess for themselves neither harm nor benefit, and they possess neither death nor life nor resurrection' (al-Furqan 3).

Thus contentment with other-than-Him is loss, and contentment with Him is divine acceptance (ridwan); because contentment with Him is a pure sovereignty and the beginning of well-being. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said: 'Whoever is not content with God and His decree, his heart is preoccupied and his body wearied.' The one who is not content with Him and His decree, his heart is occupied with the means of his own portion, and his body wearied in seeking it. And God knows best.