Ethical Lesson from the Quran, part 16

Ethical Lessons from the Quran, part 16

وَأَمَّا مَنۢ بَخِلَ وَٱسْتَغْنَىٰ         وَكَذَّبَ بِٱلْحُسْنَىٰ           فَسَنُيَسِّرُهُۥ لِلْعُسْرَىٰ

Layl, 92:8-9-10 “There is the one who is miserly, thinks himself self-sufficient, and denies the truth of ultimate beauty.  We will facilitate for him the way of hardship.”

To read the manifested qualities in creation is a human choice and, in turn, to acknowledge its Creator.  If one chooses the option of not acknowledging their Creator, then they set themselves up on the path to temporary worldly satisfaction.  We are not given existence for this universe only.  Our human feelings expand to eternity, and we need to look for a way to secure an eternal happy existence.  We will continue studying the latter part of the above verse, where we touched upon what it means to deny “ultimate beauty”.  By mentioning “ultimate beauty”, the aim of the Quran is not to draw our attention about what is beautiful and what is ugly in creation as we can detect what is beautiful and not beautiful in creation.  Then, what is the purpose of the Quran?

The purpose of the Quran is to prepare our spirit to be satisfied eternally.  The purpose of the Quran is not to mention something that its reader can obviously find out in creation.  For example, question, why are you given hunger and the means to prepare food to satisfy your hunger?  The Quran mentions eat and drink, but you already know that when hungry, you must eat.  We don’t need the Creator to tell us to eat when we are hungry, so why does the Quran mention that?  The purpose of the Quran is to draw our attention towards the existence of hunger, the existence of the food and the existence of your being.  We are given existence here through various stages of life, and after a certain period of time we are given death.  This type of existence cannot be meaningless, cannot be a joke of living for some time and dying. We must wonder what is the point of life then?  That is the purpose of the Quran, to answer our human existential questions.

How come things are coming into existence?  For example, an Engineer makes a laptop for specific purposes, giving it a perfect design, abilities, which shows wisdom.  Similarly, this creation must be created and brought into existence by its Creator with perfect wisdom and for a purpose.  Let us investigate the creation of a bird.  Don’t you think the One that creates the bird must have perfect Knowledge by designing the birds with the qualities of flying, jumping, balance and all other qualities manifested in it!?  The bird is created in such a way that it can survive out there, can procreate, take care of its offspring, and communicate with other beings.  The Quran mentions that these are the manifestations of the perfect qualities of its Creator.  If someone denies these perfect, beautiful and purposeful qualities as belonging to its Creator (i.e. ultimate beauty), then they are denying the existence of a Creator of the universe and reducing its existence to purposeless accidental happenings.  

Whoever denies the truth of “ultimate beauty” i.e. the qualities of the created things as belonging to its Creator, then s/he is setting himself/herself up to the way of hardship. For example, Jane presents delicious food to you and after eating it, you conclude that Jane is an excellent cook.  This means that you have accepted the qualities of Jane as a cook.  If Jane was present, would she be pleased to hear that?  Now, if you say that Jane is not the cook because you picked up the food from the table and it has just happened to be there , then Jane would not be pleased to hear that.  How can you eat the food without acknowledging the cook?  Similarly, the Quran says that if you do not acknowledge the Source of Existence of the qualities manifested in creation as belonging to its Creator then you will not experience and get these qualities in eternal form after death.  That is the message of the Quran, and the verse under study means that if you choose to live without acknowledging and appreciating the Creator behind everything you experience, your life inevitably becomes devoid of meaning- both in this world and beyond. If you believe that the universe exists by itself, without a conscious Creator, your own existence loses purpose, reduced to a fleeting moment destined to vanish upon death. Such a perspective traps you in a cycle of dead ends and a constant sense of loss as time passes. This understanding contradicts the innate expectations of your feelings, leading to self-inflicted suffering. As the verse suggests, this is how one’s life becomes “the way of hardship.”.

If you choose to live a life of meaninglessness as if you are an accidental being, then the Quran says that you will be living a life of hardship. Can we confirm that?  If we confirm, then that is believing in the message of God.  If I think that this is the only life then what is the point of living? I will always be disturbed within my being as everything keeps on changing and doesn’t last. With these characteristics, life itself demonstrates that it cannot sustain its own existence. This urges us to question why we have been given an existence that longs for eternal, perfect life, yet remains transient and a source of pain due to its inevitable loss. Can mere chance instill in me the desire for eternal happiness while being incapable of fulfilling it? Or is this a deliberate act of creation by a Conscious Creator—the One who brought the entire universe into existence? We must work on using this life to fulfill the purpose of our existence and keep improving our human potential to connect to its Creator to secure a happy pleasurable eternal life.  How many of us are working towards that aim?!  Unfortunately, we are giving priorities to our professions, we spend half of our life in achieving our profession, the rest on securing wealth.  After a certain age, we start losing our qualities and see signs of death.  We must seriously start thinking about what we have done to search for an answer to satisfy the need of our feelings so that we will prepare for our eternal life and take action to secure a meaningful life.  Alas, we reduce the Quranic message to only following the rituals, doing good and abstaining from bad.  Are we properly confirming God’s message!?  Each one of us must be asking that question to ourselves?

What does it mean to confirm the message of God?  It means to fully focus on the existence of creation, rather than losing our humanity with bad and ugly events that occur.  Although no one desires wars, we must be aware that these events are political maneuvers.  We must be careful not to focus on the ugly side of creation to the point of losing the ability of reflecting upon the existence of creation.  The media fills our minds with negativity, but no one talks about the existence of “ultimate beauty” in creation.  For example, how does the sunrise come into existence every day with an infinite number of good news?  Most of the time, we are experiencing the good aspects of creation.  Occasionally, we come across something unpleasant, bad and ugly, which is our perception.  How we deem something to be is our interpretation of it!  That is, if we pay attention to the existential aspect of creation, then we can see the qualities of the Creator manifested in everything.  For example, who can create an Earthquake which lasts only a few seconds?  The rest of the years the earth is stable and we feel completely comfortable living on it. The Earthquake comes into existence within a particular order of the universe.  Whoever sets up the universe positions the Earth in a way that it relates to the rest of creation such as the solar system, galaxies, gravity…and the whole universe.  While the rest of the creation is perfectly maintained in a perfect harmony, the Earthquake cannot happen accidentally.  Think about the Earthquake from the Creator’s side, what can be the purpose and wisdom in the existence of the Earthquake? What can we learn from its creation about  the purpose of our existence?

We are so familiar with seeing creation happening harmoniously that we lose track of who is creating, arranging this universe for us.  When we are shaken for a few seconds with the experience of an Earthquake or an unpleasurable event, we wake up from our heedlessness. We must learn to shift our focus from the Earthquake to the reason for the creation of the Earthquake.  We need to remember that the One who is creating the whole universe perfectly is creating the Earthquake.  

The Quranic message in this verse is also pointing to the fact that if one denies the purpose of their existence, then they will never attain a happy life with a satisfied heart. 

What are we expected to do when something happens to us that we do not like?

Let’s say that John enjoyed his youth.  Like most adolescents, he got familiar with taking his health for granted.  After a certain age, he starts feeling chest pains and is advised to see a medical professional.  John does not like this event, and the One who created John gave him the sense to dislike the event and look for a cure for his illness.  As a believer, John obeys the order of His Creator by going to the doctor because he realizes that the One who creates his illness has given him the sense not to like the illness and thus, look for a cure.  Similarly, the One who creates death has given us the sense not to like death.  We must seek wisdom from the Creator’s side in the creation of what we like and dislike.  As forgetful people as we are, we will take the opportunity to reflect on the wisdom in the creation of the events we dislike and take them as an opportunity for us to realize that health is a precious gift and that the human heart performs innumerable functions ceaselessly and harmoniously.  John also needs to remember God’s blessing when everything worked perfectly; how many of us are really thinking about how miraculously our being is made to function here?  Have you ever thought about the food that you ate, how seamlessly it is digested and the waste excreted from our bodies?  We just chew the food, swallow, and we do not know how the nutrients are wonderfully being delivered and absorbed in our bodies.  Have you ever thanked God because He gave you the ability to swallow your food?  There are some people who find it difficult to swallow the food because their mouth does not produce saliva.  Who creates the saliva with such perfect arrangement?  When you study anatomy, you find more mysterious performances of the human body.  As a result, you are bound to prostrate in wonderment and gratitude to your Creator. 

Our sad reality is that not only are we unaware of what is going on in our spiritual being, but also, we are oblivious of our spiritual side.  Only when something shakes us that we dislike, we then realize how negligent and ungrateful we were with acknowledging our Creator.  Therefore, when something bad happens that we dislike, we must look for the purpose in its existence, rather than criticizing it.  It is a wakeup call for us that we cannot forget about “death” i.e. we can die at any moment.  The creation of death is beautiful, which is the ultimate reminder of our reality, so we seek the purpose of our existence.

وَمَا يُغْنِى عَنْهُ مَالُهُۥٓ إِذَا تَرَدَّىٰٓ

Layl, 92:11 “His wealth will not help him the least when he falls dead.”

What encompasses “wealth”?  We mostly think of money, assets, property, but there is also health, beauty, intelligence, technology, services and children (just to name a few items) as property that we own.  Even if someone does not believe in a Creator of the universe, s/he will think of wealth and property along the same line.  However, what does the Quran refer to when it says “wealth” (maal) and “property” (amwal)?  Let us remember that the purpose of the Quran is to give us news of what we do not know, and that which we cannot find by ourselves.  We are given the wealth of our human potentialities which can recognize the manifested qualities of its Creator.  As we mention in the series of these discussions. The universe manifests the perfect Absolute qualities of its Creator, which we call “al-asma-ul-husna” i.e. the beautiful names of God.  That is, the human beings or Adam has been endowed with the tools to discover and acknowledge the beautiful Names or attributes of perfection of its Creator.  In and of itself, any Beautiful Names points to a certain quality and feeling that we experience.  Thus, when you look at a bird, you observe that it has perfect design, shape, functioning body and flying qualities.  As a result, you conclude that nothing in this universe can give those qualities to this bird (lailaha).  Only a One possessing infinite power, knowledge and wisdom (just to name a few obvious qualities) can give existence to this bird (illallah).  Therefore, you must use these tools to get to know who your Lord is.  These tools are the most precious wealth given to our spirit.

All the qualities that we observe and appreciate such as health, beauty, intelligence are to be used to question its Source of existence and then acknowledge the Source of existence of this universe.  The universe is like a treasure box and the keys are within us.  The Quran helps us open that treasure box so that we can appropriately make use of that wealth within us.  For example, when you look at a banana, you see perfect taste, creation, color and texture (just to name a few qualities).  Human mind questions how these qualities exist.  For example, the Architect of this building has designed the windows with respect to the whole room, floor and entire building.  Similarly, the banana relates to the air, the soil, gravity, water, and the rest of creation.  The One who creates the whole universe is the One who is creating the banana to entertain us.  The banana exists in conjunction with the whole universe.

In the verse above, the Speaker in the Quran is asking us to question how we are utilizing the wealth that has been endowed to us by the Creator of the universe?  We cannot reduce wealth to just giving out charity to the poor (zakaat).  Rather, we must ask ourselves, are we giving out the zakat of our human spirit?  What does it mean?  It means am I using my consciousness, intelligence and the tools that can detect the feelings of likes/dislikes to help others.  In other words, I must use myself, my intelligence, and wisdom to help others reach God consciousness as well, where we realize that we are created for an eternal life, not for this world.

When we utilize our wealth for its true purpose of existence (as to be the Speech of the Creator of our wealth the Quran guides us how to fulfill this purpose), then we benefit from that act and we gain more wealth.  That is, when we use our human qualities to fulfill our mission, then we feel good.  For example, when you give charity to the needy, which is named in the Qur’an as “zakat,” don’t you feel happy?  Yes, we feel satisfied when we help the poor and needy people.  Therefore, as per the Quranic understanding of wealth, by giving to charity, our wealth increases i.e. as a reward we feel more satisfied in our existence than if we ignored the needy.  In other words, we realize that we belong to the Owner of the universe.  What a great feeling!?  Otherwise, if we define ourselves in terms of natural happenings, then it is impossible to attain such eternal feelings and state of being.  

We must be watchful not to define ourselves in terms of our body only.  When we die, our body dies but the spirit remains as fresh as ever.  The Speaker in the Quran promises us that the qualities that we develop within ourselves to acknowledge our Creator, accordingly we will be given that experience and a body in eternal form after death.  For example, while taking care of your cat, you feel a sense of mercy towards the cat.  When you acknowledge this sense as belonging to an Eternally Merciful One, then God promises to give you this experience in Eternal form.  Let us take another example, if you say that I love my grandparents, then that sense of love goes to the things/objects/events.  Rather, you must acknowledge the Creator of the grandparents and the Source of existence of the sense of love to secure an eternal Lover.  Say, I love the Creator for employing my grandparents as my family.

If we appreciate and acknowledge that our qualities have been created by the Creator of the universe to be used within our capacity, we will be given eternal life according to how much we have used them to develop ourselves.  Hence, we must work on increasing our capacity to appreciate and be in connection with the Creator of the universe as much as we can.  Our aim is to secure an eternal life based on our acknowledgment of the Creator of the universe in every transaction and interaction with the universe.