Aligned sentence by sentence
. . .
, , , , , , ,
He said: When the discourse on reliance on God (exalted be He) has come before us, I saw fit to follow that with the explication of the aspects of the purification of the works of obedience for God alone, on account of what is in this of the clarifying of inner beings and the cleansing of hearts from the admixture that corrupts them, and of the safeguarding from the kinds of self-adornment leading to ostentation, to affectation, and to the flattering of created beings — as Elihu said: "Let me, I pray, lift the face of no man, and let me not give honor to the human being; for I do not know how to give honor — in a little while my Maker would take me away" (Job 32:21–22).
, . . . . . .
It is fitting now that I make plain the matters of the purification of action for God in six concepts: 1. **The first**: what the purification of action for God is. 2. **The second**: by what it comes about. 3. **The third**: in which kinds of action the purification for God is binding. 4. **The fourth**: how many genera of its corrupters there are. 5. **The fifth**: how their negation from the soul is to be carried out, that the purification for God may be made valid in the human at every act he undertakes for His face. 6. **The sixth**: on watchfulness over the imagination, and the guarding-against and reining-in of it.
. .
, , .
As for the purification of action for God (exalted be He) — it is the aim, in the outer and the inner, in the work of obedience to God, at His face (exalted be He), seeking His satisfaction alone, to the exclusion of the satisfaction of created beings.
. .
, .
As for that by which the purification of action for God alone comes about: ten concepts. When they are made valid in the soul
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , .
of the human, and verified, and made foundations for his obedience and roots for his action, then his purification for God (exalted be He) in them is completed; he turns to no other than Him, hopes in none but Him, and aims by them at none but His satisfaction.
.
**The first** — purification of the affirmation of God's unity (exalted be He), as has gone before in the opening of this book of mine.
.
**The second** — reflection on God's blessings upon him and their succession to him, as we have explicated there also.
.
**The third** — binding-oneself to obedience to God, as I have mentioned there also.
.
**The fourth** — singling Him out by reliance to the exclusion of created beings.
.
**The fifth** — the soundness of his certainty that benefit and harm are not in the discretion of any created being nor in his power, apart from the permission of the Creator (exalted be He).
.
**The sixth** — that praise and blame from people toward him be equal in his eyes.
.
**The seventh** — the abandoning of self-adornment for people.
.
**The eighth** — emptying his mind and his heart of the preoccupations of this world at the time of his work for the next world.
.
**The ninth** — watchful awareness of God (mighty and exalted) and shame before Him.
.
**The tenth** — taking counsel of the intellect in everything that caprice whispers in his heart, and acting on its judgment to the exclusion of the judgment of caprice.
. .
, .
As for the works that are completed by the purification for God when one undertakes them — they are the works of obedience aimed at the satisfaction of God (exalted be He): namely, the totality of the manifest obligations upon the limbs, in which the doer's directing of them to other than God is possible, so that his aim becomes self-adornment for people by them, the seeking of their honor for him, and their praise of him for performing them.
, ,
As for the duties of the heart — neither ostentation nor love of honor and praise is possible in them for whoever has bound himself to anything of them, since people have no knowledge of that from him; the one who undertakes them aims by them at the face of the One who is informed of them, namely
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , .
God (exalted be He) only, as He said: "I, the Lord, am one who tries the heart, who searches the kidneys" (Jeremiah 17:10); and He said: "The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children" (Deuteronomy 29:28).
. .
. . . .
As for the genera of the corrupters of the purification of action for God (exalted be He) — they are three. **The first**: ignorance of God and of His blessing. **The second**: ignorance of the command of God and of His Law. **The third**: the whisperings of caprice and its signaling to the human of what makes this world beloved to him and removes him from the path of the next world.
, , , , , .
As for the aspect of the corruption that ignorance of God brings to the works of obedience — it is this: that whoever is ignorant of his Lord does not worship Him with his heart. Only the one who is not ignorant of His command — and from whom benefit and harm are valid — worships Him. So if the one who is ignorant of God works some work of obedience, his aim in it is only the aim of the one who fears and hopes in people; he is worshiping people, not the Creator of people, on account of his ignorance of Him and the weakness of his discrimination concerning Him.
, . ,
So too the discourse on the one who worships idols: it is his ignorance of God (mighty and exalted) that carries him to that. The idolater may even be more excellent than the showy actor in four respects.
, , , .
**The first** — the idolater in this present age is not prohibited from the worship of idols by the hand of a prophet who would verify for him the corruption of his school by the signs and the demonstrations. The showy actor in the religion of God, by contrast, is refuted by what has been transmitted to him of the matters of the worship of God, and the prohibition of associationism with Him, and of reliance upon any other than Him.
, .
**The second** — the idolater worships one who does not disobey God; the showy actor in the religion of God worships one who does not disobey God *and* one who disobeys Him among people.
,
**The third** — the idolater worships only one thing; the showy actor's objects-of-worship have no end
Aligned sentence by sentence
.
of his objects-of-worship.
, , , , , .
**The fourth** — the idolater is not hidden from people in his affair, so they are warned of his harm by the renown of his disbelief in God; the showy actor, by contrast, is not manifest in his disbelief in God, so people are at ease toward him, and he is enabled to inflict upon them harms that another could not. He is the most malignant disease in the world. He is the one named in our language *ḥanef* and *yahir* and *mefuteh*.
, , , , " […] .
As for the one who is ignorant of the command of God and of His Law — his action in obedience to God is not made pure for Him. For if he is ignorant of the aspects of obedience in the roots of the laws, how much more is he ignorant of the aspects of its completion by the purification of his heart in them for God (exalted be He). Whatever he undertakes of the work of obedience, his aim in it is other than God; he is like one who doubts the validity of its obligation upon him, since he has no knowledge of what binds his purification in it for God — as the early ones (peace be upon them) said: "An ignorant man cannot be sin-fearing, nor [an *am ha-aretz*] pious."
, , , . [.] […] , .
As for the whisperings of caprice and its signaling to the human in what corrupts the purification of his heart at his working for God — even when he is knowledgeable of God and of His Law — they are divided into two divisions. **The one of them**: thoughts by which it casts doubt upon his realities and confounds his certainty, so that no work is made pure for God for him. **The second division**: its disputing with him, by argument and proof, that whatever he undertakes and exerts himself in of work for God is not obligatory and not [in the way of certainty] for him; rather it directs him to work for this world and its people.
Aligned sentence by sentence
. . .
, , […] .
I see fit to explicate to you, of this, examples that point to the rest I have not mentioned of them, that people may be on guard against them and may purify their devotion to God (exalted be He) — as he said: "Let the wise hear and gain learning" (Proverbs 1:5).
, , , , […], […] , , , , , , , , [……]
That is, by my saying: it is fitting for you, O human being, to know that the bitterest enemy you have in this world is your caprice — mingled with the powers of your soul, mixed in with the temperament of your spirit, sharing with you in the management of your bodily senses, the one with access to the secrets of your soul and to what you keep in your inner being, the one whose counsel is sought in all your manifest and inward movements that arise from your choice, the one who watches the times of your heedlessness. You sleep concerning him, and he is not asleep concerning you; you are inattentive to him, and he is not inattentive to you. He has put on for you the garments of love and adorned himself in the dress of affection toward you, and he has come to be among the totality of your counselors, your guides, and your sincere friends. With the subtlety of his deception toward you, he runs toward what agrees with you in the surface of his hints and his signals — while he shoots you with the deadliest of his arrows.
, .
His state with people is as Scripture said: "As a madman who shoots firebrands, arrows, and death — so is the man who deceives his neighbor, and says: Was I not joking?" (Proverbs 26:18–19).
, , , , ,
Among the strongest of his weapons by which he fights you in the inward of your affair: that he aims to throw your realities into doubt, to admix what has been clear to you of certainty, and to disturb your soul with false imaginings and empty claims by which he preoccupies you from your welfares and overlays for you what was crystalline to you in your faith and your firm conviction. If you are on your guard against him, and have prepared against him the weapons of your intellect
Aligned sentence by sentence
, . , , , .
by which you fight him and ward off his arrows from you, you are saved and delivered from him by the permission of God (mighty and exalted). But if you have given the matter over to him and made your reins to his judgment, nothing of you will satisfy him short of your destruction in the two abodes and your eradication from the two stations — like what the Friend said about a branch from his branches and a person from his army: "For many are the slain she has cast down, and mighty are all her killed; the ways of Sheol are her house, going down to the chambers of death" (Proverbs 7:26–27).
, , , .
Let no struggle against another distract you from struggling against him; no fighting against any other than him from fighting against him; no warring against the one who is far from you from warring against the one who does not depart from you; no warding off of the one who can reach you only by leave from warding off the one who needs no leave to come upon you.
, , , , . , . [……]
It has been said of one of the righteous that he met a company of people returning from war against an enemy with the spoils, after a hard struggle. He said to them: "You have returned, by the praise of God, from the lesser struggle with the spoils. Now prepare yourselves for the greater struggle." They said to him: "And what is the greater struggle?" He said to them: "The struggle against caprice and its troops."
. . .
, , , , , , , , . , ,
It is among the wonders, O my brother, that any enemy you have, when you have overcome him once or twice, has had enough of you and is preoccupied no longer with making war upon you, knowing the surplus of your strength over his strength; he is in a state of despair of overcoming you and gaining the upper hand. But caprice is not satisfied with overcoming you once or a hundred times — whether he overcomes you or you overcome him. For if he overcomes you, he kills you; if you overcome him once, he watches you the rest of your days that he may overcome you, as the early ones said: "Do not trust in yourself until the day of your death" (m. Avot 2:4). He does not consider it a small thing to overcome you in any fine point among the fine points of your affairs, that this may be a step-by-luring toward overcoming you in what is above it. In proportion to that, it is fitting that you be in a state of guard against him: do not allow him anything of his demands of you; rather let
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , , .
, , , , , […] () […] […] […] .
.
, , .
[…] , […] […] , .
, , , , , , .
Aligned sentence by sentence
, . , , , , , , .
, ".
, , , , , .
, , .
, , , .
,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , , .
, , , , .
, , , .
, , , .
, , , .
, ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
.
, .
.
, " , .
, , .
, .
, , , , .
.
,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , .
, , , , , , , , .
, , , .
, .
, , , , , ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , , , , , , , , .
, , , " , , , .
" , , , , ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, . , .
, .
, , .
, .
, , , ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
.
, .
, , , , , , .
, , .
, , , , , .
Aligned sentence by sentence
, .
, .
, , .
, , , , , , , .
, , , , ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , , , .
, , , , , , , , .
, , , , , , , .
,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, .
, , , , , , , . , .
, , , , , , , , , .
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , .
, , .
, , . , .
, , , , , , , , , ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , .
, , , .
, , , .
, , , .
, , .
, , , ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , .
, , .
, , , ,
, , , , , ,
, , . , , , , , ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , .
, , , .
, , .
, .
, , , , , , . , , . , , ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, .
, , , , , , , , .
, , , , , , .
, , , , , , , , , , .
When caprice despairs of his deceiving us by this aspect, he aims at it from the side of love of praise and acclaim in this world.
Aligned sentence by sentence
. , , , , ,
So too if you have wealth or sheep or cattle or land that you sow, or service of a sultan or of subjects, or the accounting of the sultan or the subjects; or if you have debts upon you and you cannot pay them; or if you have brothers whose affairs require care of you and reckoning of yourself with them — let it run upon your mind in the time of the leisure of your soul for the work of obedience, whichever kind of these kinds it be — that he may preoccupy you with it and corrupt for you your work. For in the time of its work you are present with your body, absent with your heart and inner being.
.
If he does not preoccupy you with what we have mentioned, he sets running in your heart "he-said and it-was-said and protracted argument."
.
If the human is among those who play with backgammon and chess and the like, he imagines that this is in front of him; he thinks about what he should do of advancing and delaying and the aspects of stratagem in the victory.
, , , , , ,
If he is safe from all that we have mentioned, and is of the people of knowledge and understanding, caprice runs in his mind some difficult concept among the concepts of knowledge, and preoccupies him with the question and the answer, the binding of the question and the loosing of it; what he has neglected of the matter of investigation and what remains upon him of the science. He reckons with himself for the work of it; and caprice imagines to him that this is among the totality of the work of obedience to God, and so corrupts for him the carrying-out of what would set him right.
, , .
He may enter the work of obedience and exit from it, while wandering in the preoccupation of his soul with other than that of the matters of this world. He may seek God's forgiveness with his tongue while running with his thought and his inner being into disobedience to Him — of which one of the excellent ones said: "This forgiveness-asking of ours needs forgiveness-asking."
,
He beseeches God with his limbs and is heedless of Him with his heart and his intent — like what Scripture said: "With his mouth and with his lips they have honored Me, but their heart
Aligned sentence by sentence
, .
his heart and his intent — like what Scripture said: "With his mouth and with his lips they have honored Me, but their heart is far from Me" (Isaiah 29:13); and He said: "And they enticed Him with their mouths and lied to Him with their tongues, while their heart was not steadfast with Him" (Psalms 78:36–37).
, , , , ,
If, at this, you wake and reckon with your soul, and say to it: "How shall I treat the Creator (exalted be He) with what would not become me to treat created beings with — at my need of them and their need of me? For one whom I have approached for a need, and have asked the meeting of it with my tongue while being inattentive to him with my heart and inner being — were he to become aware of this from me, he would shun me and hate me, and would more rightly deny me my need.
, , , , ,
How then if he came to know that I am preoccupied of mind with what does not agree with his satisfaction, indeed with what angers him against me — his hatred for me would be more severe and his denying me more incumbent. By the like of this I would surely set against myself any who asked of me a need, when I was made aware of his secret state as God is made aware of the secret of my intent. How then am I not ashamed before my Creator that I should be content from myself toward Him with what I would not be content with from a weak one like me, and with which no created being needy and weak like me would be content from me? Scripture has said: 'Were they ashamed when they did abomination? They are not ashamed at all, neither do they know to blush' (Jeremiah 6:15).
.
caprice is broken at this.
, , , , ,
When caprice despairs of deceiving you from this aspect, he proposes that to you by way of *abandoning ostentation*. He says to you: "The completion of your purification toward God (exalted be He) is not made valid except by the negation of ostentation from you, much and little, fine and great. The negating of ostentation toward people from you is made valid only by the concealment of your work in its totality from them, and the manifesting of the contrary of what is in your inner being toward them.
, , , , , ,
So when you pray, abridge; let no eagerness for it nor exertion in it appear from you. When you wish to learn something of knowledge, isolate yourself; let none other than God know it; let no excellence appear from you. Show forth heedlessness and slackness in the works of obedience, lest your name become famous through them and you forfeit your reward. Do not command the right or forbid the wrong, do not spread your knowledge, let no other benefit by it; let no mark of fear of God appear upon you,
Aligned sentence by sentence
. , , , , .
It has been related of one of the excellent ones that he said to a companion of his: "Are you equalized?" The companion said: "In what concept?" He said: "Praise and blame are equal in your eyes." He said: "No." He said to him: "If you have not yet attained, then exert yourself; perhaps you will reach this rank — for it is the highest rank of excellences and the limit of praiseworthy things." When caprice despairs of deceiving you by this aspect, he aims at corrupting your work by preoccupying your mind with this world and its people and lengthening your hope and forgetting your term.
. , , , .
, , , , . , , , , , .
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , . , , . , , , , , .
If he is safe from all that we have mentioned, and is of the people of knowledge and understanding, caprice runs in his mind some difficult concept among the concepts of knowledge, and preoccupies him with the question and the answer, the binding of the question and the loosing of it; what he has neglected of the matter of investigation and what remains upon him of the science. He reckons with himself for the work of it; and caprice imagines to him that this is among the totality of the work of obedience to God, and so corrupts for him the carrying-out of what would set him right. He may enter the work of obedience and exit from it, while wandering in the preoccupation of his soul with other than that of the matters of this world.
, , , , , , , " , .
, ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , . , , , , , , , , , , .
If you obey him in this, he strips you of your religion while you do not perceive it. But if you turn upon him and say to him: "You have advised me well, O my enemy, in your struggle against me and your subtlety with me — to demolish my strength and hasten my fall! How shall I flee from the fire to the burning sand? I am fleeing the love of praise and honor only that I should not strive in self-adornment toward people; and you command me to self-adorn toward them while neglecting obedience to God! It is fitting for me to conceal my work when it is sound and valid without people's knowing of it; but as for when it is among the works that are not made valid except by people's knowing of them — like prayer with a congregation, commanding the right and forbidding the wrong, the spreading of knowledge, doing-the-beautiful, and the like — it is not from prudence to abandon it and neglect it on account of ostentation; rather it is incumbent upon me to do it for the face of God (exalted be He).
.
, , , . ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , .
, , , , , , , , , .
, . , , , , , " . ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , . , , , , , , […] , , , , , . , , , , , , . , , .
.
, , […]
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , , , .
, , , " , , .
, , , .
Aligned sentence by sentence
.
So too in every kind among the kinds of excellences and obligations, he aims to frighten you and make the matter great in your soul that you may be lazy.
, .
When you are about to do an act of disobedience, he makes its pleasure beloved to you and makes you forget its outcome; he makes you eager to do it and to incline toward it.
, , , , ,
When you are sharp to the like of this from him, respond to him that every pain that has passed over you in what has gone before of your life has left no trace in you; rather it has gone quickly and waned swiftly. The reward for it remains for you forever, never ending. For one who fasts and then breaks his fast at night, it is as though he had not fasted; he returns to his strength, and the reward of his fast remains preserved. So too the one who keeps watch part of the night — when he sleeps he returns to his alertness, as though he had not been awake; and the reward of his standing and the bounty of his prayer remain for him forever.
.
As for the matter of the zakāh, I have explicated it in the Gate of Reliance with sufficient explanation.
, .
As for the matter of the acts of disobedience: repeat in your soul, summon to your mind the swift departure of their pleasure — what is permitted of them and what is forbidden — and the remaining of the disgrace of what is ugly among them upon you, and their punishment in this world and the next.
, , .
At this, caprice is routed before you, and you are alert to good work and lazy concerning every ugly work.
, , .
If he despairs of you in this aspect, and you have set your resolve and have done some of the obediences, he aims to introduce griefs into your heart and the succession of sorrows upon you, that regret may fall upon you for what has come before of good work — that he may deprive you of the reward upon it and of God's acceptance of it from you.
.
If you have done something of the acts of disobedience, he aims to introduce joy into your heart and gladness in what has come before to you — that he may strengthen your judgment by that and make you eager toward it.
, .
If you are sharp to his stratagem and aware of his various snares, you are on guard from them; you take help from God in delivering yourself from them.
, .
If you are not aware of them, he throws you down suddenly and unloads his arrows upon you in heedlessness, as Scripture said: "Until an arrow split his liver, like the bird hastening to the snare, and he did not know that it was for his soul" (Proverbs 7:23).
Aligned sentence by sentence
, ,
If you stand against him in all this and he cannot deceive you by what we have mentioned, he aims at it from the side of your knowledge.
, , , , , , , , , , , , , .
If he sees in you eagerness for the learning of knowledge, he says to you: "Does there not satisfy you what satisfies the great of the people of your present age and your shaykhs of acquaintance with your Truthful Book? Do you not know that knowledge has no end and no limit? Aim at the eye of religion and the root of the Law; then learn what you can adorn yourself by before people — of the meaning of poetry and prosody, the science of rare lexicography, the unusual hadith, the popular proverb. And let go from yourself of the news of jurisprudence and the disputes of the scholars in it. Do not expose yourself to the science of the roots of demonstration, the elements of speech, the kinds of analogical reasoning, the modes of evidence, the manner in which the cause runs alongside the caused, and the agreement of manifest knowledge with hidden knowledge — on account of its obscurity and the subtlety of its meanings. Imitate the people of transmission in what you can stand upon its validity, as you imitate them in what is impossible for you to stand upon."
, , .
If you do not accept from him, and take up prudence for yourself, he shoots you with the arrow of envy toward your companions. If they have attained knowledge to the exclusion of you, you bear a grudge against them; you aim at their fault-finding, their undermining, the mention of their faults, as if they had stripped you of your understanding and seized your knowledge.
, , , , , , , , .
If you have attained to the exclusion of them, you undermine them by the surplus of your understanding; despise them for their ignorance; make manifest that to the populace; and become conceited with yourself and proud of your understanding — to the point that you claim knowledge of what you do not know; you scorn learning; you tilt your nose at being taught; you are agitated when objected to; you multiply claims of knowledge; you adorn yourself by ignorance-attribution-to-your-companions; you adorn yourself by reproach of your peers — and so you are stripped of the manners of the people of knowledge of God and of His religion.
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , , , . , , , , , , , , . , . , , , . , .
. . , , ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , , , , .
, , . , , , , , , , , , . , , . , , , . , , , , ,
Aligned sentence by sentence
, , . , , .
, , , .
, . . .
Aligned sentence by sentence
" .
. .
.
, , , , . , , , " , . , , , , . . . . . . .