“On the day it comes, no soul shall speak save by His Leave. Among them shall be the wretched (shaqiy) and the felicitous (sa‘īd).” (Qur’ān, sūrah 11, Hūd, v. 105)Footnote 1
“Who knows who in reality is reverent towards God?
Among us who is happy (sa‘īd) and who wretched (shaqiy)?” (Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār)
INTRODUCTION
The experience of happiness is so universal that almost anyone from any culture will claim to recognize it when experiencing what, to that person, seems to be happiness—even though some people may have difficulty articulating and defining what it is. If one were to ask a person from Japan or China, India or Burma, Persia or Egypt, France or America, an Aboriginal person from Australia or a member of an indigenous Mesoamerican group, to complete the sentence, “I am happy because . . . ,” the responses would fall into similar categories. Responses would deal with such matters as health, wealth, sensual pleasure, power, and satisfying human relations; some responses would cite prayer, performance of the good, beholding of beauty, and attainment of knowledge. The responses would vary according to human type and individual inclination, but they would also cut across geographical, historical, cultural, religious, and philosophical boundaries. Yet what is considered to be real happiness, and how real happiness should be pursued and attained, is deeply affected by the Weltanschauung of each culture. The case of Islam, which is at once a religion, a worldview, a way of life, and a culture, is no exception. This is why the question of the pursuit of happiness is envisaged differently in Islamic thought than it is in most contemporary Western thought. Islam is concerned above all with the attainment of enduring happiness rather than with the more transient forms of happiness celebrated in modern, secularized, or hedonistic cultures.
In Arabic, the phrase “attainment of happiness” (taḥṣīl al-sa‘ādah), which is in fact the title of a famous work by the fourth/tenth-centuryFootnote 2 Islamic philosopher Abū Nạsr al-Fārābī,Footnote 3 is commonly used, while the phrase “pursuit of happiness” is less commonly used and does not have the same resonance in Arabic as it does in English. Islamic thought, based on the Qur’ān, concerns itself above all with true happiness as a reality that is abiding and permanent and not just a transient experience. It also considers this permanent state—which is, in essence, paradisal—to be attainable and not just a goal to be pursued. And so, let us turn to the Qur’ān, the source of all that is Islamic, and consider how it deals with the question of happiness and the means to attain it.
QUR’ĀNIC TERMINOLOGY RELATED TO HAPPINESS
Perhaps the best way to approach this question is to turn to the cluster of Qur’ānic terms that deal with what would be rendered in English as “happiness,” “felicity,” “joy,” “rejoicing,” “contentment,” “pleasure,” and the like. These Arabic terms are interrelated in their meanings, but there are also nuanced differences between them, as we see between English terms such as “happiness” and “contentment.” The central Arabic term is related to the root s‘d, from which comes the word sa‘ādah, which is the closest Arabic equivalent for the English term “happiness,” or “felicity.” Words derived from this root appear twice in the Qur’ān as follows: “And as for those who are felicitous (su‘idu), they shall be in the Garden, abiding therein for so long as the heavens and the earth endure, save as thy Lord wills—a gift unfailing.”Footnote 4 And, “On the day it comes [referring to the Day of Judgment], no soul shall speak save by His Leave. Among them shall be the wretched (shaqiy) and the felicitous (sa‘īd).”Footnote 5 Both of these verses relate happiness to paradisal states and eschatological realities, and they have permanently molded together in the Muslim mind ultimate happiness with the spiritual world and the abiding states of paradise. Yet this Qur’ānic usage has not limited sa‘ādah to the other world. Words related to the root s'd have also come to be used in relation to man's life on Earth. In fact, Sa‘d, Sa‘īd, Mas‘ūd, Su‘ād, Mas‘ūdah, Sa‘īdah, and Sa‘diyyah, all related to the word sa‘ādah, have become popular proper names for Muslim men and women in the same way that “Joy” and “Felicity” are proper names for women in English.
Another set of Qur’ānic words that relate closely in their field of meaning to “happiness,” “felicity,” “gladness,” and “joy” derive from the root srr and include such terms as yasurru, (“pleasing or gladdening to onlookers”);Footnote 6surūr, (“bestowed upon them radiance and joy”);Footnote 7 and masrūr, (“and will return to his folk joyful”Footnote 8 and, “On that day there shall be faces, shining, radiant, laughing, joyous”).Footnote 9 The last two verses again refer to eschatological and paradisal realities confirming the ultimate reference of terms derived from srr, although surūr and masrūr also refer in some cases to joy in this world.
Other terms, derived from the root frḥ, include the noun faraḥ and the verb yafraḥu, which are usually rendered as “rejoicing” and “rejoice.” These terms are used in eight different Qur’ānic verses and are most often connected with God's Mercy as, for example, “In the Bounty of God and in His Mercy—in that let them rejoice,”Footnote 10 and, “rejoicing in God's Mercy.”Footnote 11 In the manner of words derived from s‘d, moreover, faraḥ and surūr are also used in Islam as proper names, but mostly for women.
As far as the Qur’ānic understanding of happiness is concerned, one of the most revealing clusters of cognate terms is related to the root rḍy, which is usually translated as “contentment.” One of the most famous verses of the Qur’ān is the statement, “O thou soul at peace! Return unto thy Lord, content (rāḍiyyatan), contented (marḍiyyatan). Enter among my servants. Enter my Garden (jannatī).”Footnote 12 Although, here, the word jannah is used, it must be remembered that the name of one of the highest states of paradise is Riḍwān, which is also related to the root rḍy. In this way, the Qur’ān reaffirms the relationship of happiness and contentment with Paradise. In the above quoted verse, it is emphasized that “content” means, ultimately, both for the soul to be content with God and in itself, and for God to be content with the state of the soul—conditions necessary to enter the Garden. But this ultimate state of spiritual happiness or contentment can also be attained in this life though spiritual practice. Man can live in Paradise inwardly while still being alive in this world. That is why the Sufis so often emphasize the state of contentment and consider the station (maqām) of riḍā, or contentment, one of the highest stations to be attained in the spiritual journey. Imām Abū’l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī, the fifth/eleventh century Sufi master, goes so far as to call riḍā the highest spiritual station. Riḍwān, as God's good pleasure or contentment, is mentioned more than ten times in the Qur’ān, and the Sufi Ibn ‘Arabī states explicitly, “The happy person is one with whom God is pleased (or content).”Footnote 13
In this context, it is interesting to note that, for ordinary Muslims who have died, one says raḥmat Allāhu ‘alayhi or ‘alayhā (“may God's Mercy be upon him or her”), while for outstanding religious and spiritual figures, one says raḍī Allāhu ‘anhu or ‘anhā (“may God be content with him or her”), or riḍwān Allāhu ‘alayhi (“may God's Contentment, or riḍwān, be with him or her”). The statement also means “may he or she enter Riḍwān,” an exalted state of paradise. One must also mention the popularity of proper names, all based on the root rḍy, such as Riḍā, Murtaḍā, Raḍī al-Dīn, Rāḍiyah, Marḍiyyah, and Riḍwān itself (the first three names being used for man and the second three for women, the last being used for both genders) throughout the Islamic world. Such usage brings into everyday Muslim life the significance of contentment and happiness as permanent spiritual stations and not merely transient psychological states.
The opposite of the term faraḥ in Arabic is “sorrow,” or ḥuzn. In more than ten verses, the Qur’ān refers to the spiritual character of happiness by negating its opposite, or ḥuzn, with regard to the saints or to the friends of God (awliyā’ Allāh). For example, verse 10:62 states: “Behold! Truly the friends of God, no fear shall come upon them, nor shall they grieve.” In this oft-repeated verse, the Qur’ān emphasizes the connection between the negation or the opposite of happiness—grieving or sorrow—and the transcending of fear. The person who is content with God, and with whom God is content, fears nothing in this world. That person is God's friend, and what fear can such a person have of anything, since God is a Friend, in fact the Friend?
Finally, it must be emphasized that although the Qur’ān relates real happiness to spiritual realities, it also mentions that man can ask God for happiness in this life as well as in the next. In a most celebrated verse that is often recited by Muslims, the Qur’ān states, “Our Lord, give us good (ḥasanah) in this world and good in the Hereafter, and guard us from the Fire!”Footnote 14 The term ḥasanah is related to the word for ḥusn that means, at once, goodness, beauty, and virtue, the attainment of which is inseparable from the state of happiness. This and several other verses point to the unitary vision of Islam; the life of this world is, for believers, profoundly related to the life in the Hereafter, in whose reality one can participate, through the grace of revelation and religion, even in this world.
The sayings of the Prophet of Islam (aḥādīth) are in fact the first commentary on the Qur’ān, and both the technical terminology of the Qur’ān and the meanings of its teaching are reflected in the vast collection of Ḥadīth. For example, in one ḥadīth, the Prophet has said, “God loveth those who are content,”Footnote 15 and many of his companions mentioned that the Prophet himself always had a happy countenance and smiled. ‘Abd Allāh ibn Ḥārith, one of the companions of the Prophet, said that he had seen no one more given to smiling than God's messenger.Footnote 16 Being the Prophet and the universal or perfect man par excellence for Muslims, he could not but reflect, even in his daily life, the permanent inner state of celestial happiness and contentment, or riḍā.
THE UNDERSTANDING OF HAPPINESS IN THE ISLAMIC WISDOM TRADITION
The Islamic wisdom tradition, as I am using this term here, includes not only the sapiential commentaries on the Qur’ān and Ḥadīth, but also the Islamic spiritual and intellectual disciplines, especially Sufism and gnosis (‘irfān), philosophy (as both ḥikmah and falsafah), ethics, the cosmological sciences, and certain forms of philosophical theology (kalām).Footnote 17 The most notable works of this tradition treat amply the theme of sa‘ādah and elucidate and expand the Qur’ānic teachings on the subject of happiness. The titles of many books belonging to this tradition are themselves revealing, for many of them use the term sa‘ādah. One need only recall the Taḥṣīl al-sa‘ādah of al-Fārābī, the Tartīb al-sa‘ādah (Order of Happiness) of Miskawayh (Muskūyah), a chapter of the Futūḥāt al-makkiyah (Meccan Illuminations)Footnote 18 of Ibn ‘Arabī, and, perhaps the most notable of all Islamic works bearing the word sa‘ādah in its title, al-Ghazzālī’s Kīmiyā-yi say’ādat (The Alchemy of Happiness).Footnote 19 This last work, one of the masterpieces of Persian prose literature, is a summary written by al-Ghazzālī himself of his Iḥyā’ ‘ulūm al-dīn (The Revivification of the Sciences of Religion), which is perhaps the most influential work on ethics in Islamic history. There are numerous other chapters and sections in works of Islamic philosophers, Sufis, ethicists, and theologians dealing specifically with the theme of happiness.
Needless to say, we can sample only a few of the most salient and essential teachings from this very rich treasury of texts. We begin with the most immediate and practical realities with which Muslims are concerned in their everyday lives—that is, faith (īmān) and the Divine Law (Sharīy’ah). The possession of īmān in God and His revelation is not only a peerless gift from Him to His creatures, but also the source of happiness in the true sense of the term for those who have received this gift. This is, of course, a universal truth emphasized both in Islam and in other religions as well. The Qur’ān states, “Did we not expand for thee thy breast?”Footnote 20 The expansion (inshirāḥ) of which the Qur’ān speaks in this verse is directly related to the gift of faith and, at the same time, points to joy and happiness, which are characteristics of this state of expansion. When we are happy, we experience, psychologically, an expansion in our being and consciousness. Physically, joy and happiness are reflected in our face as a smile or laughter that expands our face, while sadness is reflected in our countenance as a frown that contracts it. In fact, one of the most commonly used words for happiness in Arabic is mabsūṭ, which literally means “expanded.”
Faith in God is also inseparable from love for God.Footnote 21 On the human plane, love is often combined with pain and sorrow, but love for God is inseparable from joy and happiness, even when one experiences the pain of longing and separation. To love God with all one's being is to love all that one can love and all that can be the source of ultimate happiness. This love results in the attainment of all that is truly beautiful and of all that the soul seeks in the depth of its being, for God is infinite Beauty and the source of all that is beautiful in the world both around and within us. How can a soul that attains, through love of God, attachment to the Source of all beauty and all that attracts our immortal souls, not be in a state of joy and happiness? Moreover, love and faith are antidotes to what usually makes man unhappy—doubt, anxiety, fear, separation and trepidation—provided that human beings learn to have complete confidence (tawakkul) in God and to actually possess this virtue. The person who possesses tawakkul attains the state of contentment (riḍā). This person still faces the ordinary challenges of earthly life but does so in a state of inner contentment. As the Qur’ān states explicitly, this is why the friends of God (the awliyā’), who have fully attained the stations of tawakkul and riḍā, are neither fearful nor sorrowful. For such people, even the fear of God is transformed into joy, for this fear is the beginning of wisdom, as stated by St. Paul and also in the famous saying (ḥādīth) of the Prophet, “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” (ra's al-ḥikmah makhāfat Allāh).Footnote 22 Al-Ghazzālī has stated that the difference between fear of the Creator and fear of the creature is that when one is afraid of a creature one runs away from it, but when one is afraid of God, one runs towards Him.Footnote 23 The Islamic saying tawakkaltu ‘alā’Llāh (“I place my confidence in God”), repeated so often in daily life, encourages one to take refuge in the bosom of the Divine in a state of contentment, a state that overcomes and transcends all that causes sorrow and unhappiness in human life in this world.
Of course, the acceptance of the gift of faith through the exercise of the freedom of will that God has given us brings with it responsibility, which we must accept by virtue of having said “yea” to the question God posed to Adam and all his progeny, including us, even before the creation of the world. The Qur’ān states that, having created man, God asked Adam and his progeny, “Am I not your Lord? They said ‘yea, we bear witness.’”Footnote 24 The acceptance of His Lordship is the trust (amānah) that we all agreed to bear on that day beyond all days, that moment beyond all moments that is called alast (from the Arabic “am I not?”). With the acceptance of this tremendous trust came tremendous responsibility, a responsibility so great that, according to the Qur’ān, when it was offered to the heavens, the earth, and the mountains, they refused to accept it, though man did. As Ḥāfiẓ says in a famous poem,
Whether we like it or not, we have accepted this trust, the responsibilities that go with it, and the danger of falling into the state of unhappiness. This is what defines our nature as human beings. This is why the fulfillment of these responsibilities brings with it, ultimately, joy and happiness, enabling us to be ourselves in the real sense, no matter how difficult fulfilling these responsibilities might be, and why the refusal to accept these responsibilities leads to the state of wretchedness. For all Muslims, these responsibilities include, first, following the Divine Law (Sharīy’ah), which Muslims consider to be the concrete embodiment of God's Will for human beings. Islam considers this truth to apply not only to Muslims, but to followers of all religions, because the Qur’ān teaches that God has sent sharā’il’ (plural of sharīy’ah) for all the different religions He has revealed.Footnote 26
The Sharīl’ah in Islam is usually divided into the ‘ibādāt (matters pertaining to acts of worship) and the muy’āmalāt (matters pertaining to transactions). Performing obligatory ‘ibādāt, which include the basic rites of canonical prayers (ṣalāh), fasting (ṣawm), pilgrimage (ḥajj), and the paying of religious tax (zakāh), requires sacrifice and self-discipline but results in joy and happiness for the person of faith, who knows that in performing these rites one is doing God's Will. How can one not be happy in doing the Will of the One we love and who loves us? Keeping the fast is not easy, but does one not observe much joy and happiness during the holy month of Ramaḍān, the month of fasting, among those who do fast? The pilgrimage is a difficult rite to perform, but when one is making the circumambulation (ṭawāf) around the Kay'bah, does one not see millions of other joyous faces performing the same rite?
It is not however only the ‘ibādāt themselves that bring about happiness; it is also our knowing that in performing them we are doing God's Will and thereby experiencing the grace (barakah) that issues from the performance of sacred rites. In carrying out ordinary human transactions, or muy’āmalāt, in accordance with the Sharīy’ah, one is also doing God's Will. To make a living in a manner that is legitimate (ḥalāl) according to the injunctions of the Sharīy’ah also brings with it an inner satisfaction that results in happiness, no matter how difficult the chores of one's work might be. One can observe this truth in the degree of happiness apparent in those places in the Islamic world where the rhythm of life is based on traditional norms, in contrast to the hectic pace of life in modernized societies. One need only compare the number of smiling faces in a still-traditional village, no matter how poor it may be economically speaking, with the number of visibly happy people riding on a subway in a big city. To surrender to the Will of God and to live according to His Will is such a source of joy and contentment that, for the person of faith (mu'min), doing so turns even the bitterness of death into sweetness—for such a person knows that, in dying, one is surely doing God's Will, for no soul leaves the body without His Will, as the Qur’ān makes clear in many passages.Footnote 27 For the spiritual person, in fact, death is combined with ecstasy.
On the basis of these universal considerations, the Islamic wisdom tradition has sought to bring out the deeper meanings of happiness and contentment, and to articulate what it means to attain happiness in a permanent, and not only a transient, manner. Muslim sages have repeatedly pointed out that since God is the Source of joy and contentment at the highest level, it is in remembering Him (dhikr Allāh) that this highest level of happiness is to be attained. Dhikr, a practice used by the sages and especially by the Sufis, is not only mental remembrance of the concept of God, but actual repetition of His Holy Names in the form of incantatory and quintessential prayer, the goal being to make this remembrance permanent in the soul so that the soul may ultimately be completely content and contented. To cite an example, Khwājah ‘Abd Allāh Anṣarī, the famous fifth/eleventh century Sufi master and patron saint of Herat, says, “There are three things upon which the happiness (say’ādat) of the creature depends and the face of servanthood is illuminated by it: the business of the tongue with the invocation of the Truth (or the Real) (dhikr-i Ḥaqq), the drowning of the heart in the love of the Truth (mihr-i Ḥaqq) and the filling of the secret [of the heart] by the gaze of the Truth (naẓar-i Ḥaqq).”Footnote 28 The person to whom God has given His own Name to invoke possesses the most precious of all treasures, for ultimately, God and His Name are one; therefore, the Name contains all that the soul could possibly desire in order to be ultimately happy. God is contented with the soul that remembers Him, for He has created us and put us here on Earth in order to be His witnesses and to remember Him at all times. When the Qur’ān says that God has created man and jinn in order to worship Him, it means that on the highest level we are to know Him, and this knowledge is not possible without dhikr Allāh, the invocation and remembrance of God, the prayer of the heart that is the heart of all prayer.Footnote 29
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In the Islamic wisdom tradition, happiness is often associated with the attainment of perfection (kamāl). Of course, the human state opens onto the Infinite, and the universal man or perfect man (al-insān al-kāmil)—which we all are potentially, but which few become in actuality—is the theatre for the theophany (tajallī) of all the Divine Names and Qualities (al-asmā’ wa'l-ṣifāt). And yet each human being has an archetype (‘ayn) in God, and there is a perfection particular to each individual. Happiness for each person is inseparable from the realization of that particular perfection, or kamāl, and this principle applies in a sense to all beings, not only human beings. The seventh/thirteenth-century Sufi and philosopher Afḍal al-Din Kāshānī, widely known as Bābā Afḍal, writes in a treatise entitled, significantly, Madārij al-kamāl (Degrees of Perfection), that, “The happiness (sa‘ādat) of each thing is in reaching the perfection (kamāl) that exists within itself and its wretchedness is not reaching and being disconnected from that totality (tamānī) and perfection.”Footnote 30
This pithy statement is, in a sense, a summary commentary on what al-Ghazzālī had written two centuries earlier. In the sixteenth chapter of his Kīmiyā-yi sa‘ādat (Alchemy of Happiness), titled “The Happiness of Mankind Is in the Knowledge of God-the Exalted,” he writes,
If you say, “How does one know that the happiness of human beings is in the knowledge of God-the Exalted?” Know that this becomes known if you become aware that the happiness of each thing is in what it finds pleasure (liththat)Footnote [31] and ease. And the pleasure of each thingFootnote [32] is in that it be in accordance with its nature. And that which is in accordance with its nature is that for which it was created, so that the pleasure of passion is in reaching the object of its desire; and the pleasure of anger is in taking revenge from the enemy. The pleasure of the eye is to see beautiful forms and that of the ear to hear beautiful songs and melodies. Likewise, the pleasure of the heart is in that which characterizes it and it has been created for that characteristic which is knowledge of the truth of things. As for passion and anger and discovery of sensible objects through the five [external] senses, they are also to be found in animals.
That is why whatever man does not know, there is in his nature the sense of searching to know it and whatever he does know, he is happy with it. He becomes joyous with it and takes pride in it . . .
And when you have come to know that the pleasure of the heart is in the knowledge of things, you will know that the greater and nobler the knowledge of something is, the greater the pleasure [of attaining that knowledge]. He who is informed of the secrets of the vizier, how he is happy because of it, and if he is informed of the secrets of the king and knows his thoughts in running the country, [that person] is happier. He who knows geometry and the configuration and measure of the heavens is happier than he who knows the game of chess . . .
Likewise the nobler the object of knowledge, the nobler that knowledge and the greater the pleasure [of possessing that knowledge]. And no being is more noble than the Being upon Whom depends the nobility of all beings, Who is the king and sovereign of both worlds, and all the wonders of the worlds are results of His creation. Therefore, there is no knowledge that is nobler and gives greater pleasure than [knowledge of] It and no vision that is more pleasurable than the vision of the Presence of Lordship which is what is suitable to the nature of the heart, for the suitability of the nature of each thing is in its characteristics for which it was created. If there be a sick heart in which desire for this knowledge has been destroyed, it becomes like the body of a sick person in whom desire for food has been destroyed so that it prefers mud to bread. If it is not cured so that natural passion [for food] returns to it and this corrupted passion is removed from it, it will become miserable in this world and it will die. Likewise, he in whose heart the passion of other things has overcome the passion for knowledge of the Divine Presence is sick. If they do not cure him, he will be miserable in the other world and will perish. All the passions and pleasures in sensible objects that pertains to man's body are of necessity terminated at the moment of death and the pains he has suffered come to naught. The pleasure of knowledge, however, that belongs to the heart doubles with death for the heart does not perish with death. Rather, it becomes more illuminated and its pleasure doubles while the burden of other passions is lifted.Footnote 33
We have cited this passage in full because it describes clearly the different kinds and degrees of happiness, which Ghazzālī associates with pleasure, or liththat, which are available to man and, which stand in a hierarchy at the top of which is the happiness that results from the knowledge of God. The passage also points to the essential difference between happiness that is transient and real happiness, which is associated with permanence and does not come to an end with the end of man's earthly life. It therefore associates happiness with paradisal realities, echoing the major theme of the Qur’ān concerning real sa‘ādah. Like other Muslim sages, Ghazzālī identifies happiness with knowledge of that which is abiding and, at the highest level, with the knowledge of God.
This theme was taken up shortly after Ghazzālī by Ibn ‘Arabī who, in many of his writings, especially al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyyah, provides the profoundest exposition of the subject. According to him, everything in this world is a reflection of some Divine Name or Names. The reflections of Names related to Divine Wrath lead to wretchedness (shiqā’), and those related to Divine Mercy lead to happiness or felicity (sa'ādah).Footnote 34 Authentic knowledge leads to salvation and deliverance (najāh), which is, itself, happiness and avoidance of wretchedness. It is in the nature of this kind of knowledge to lead man back to God through the path of happiness and felicity, and any knowledge that does not do so is not authentic knowledge but what Ibn ‘Arabī calls “opinion,” “conjecture,” or “surmise” (ẓann).Footnote 35 Rūmī echoes the same truth in his Mathnawī, where he writes,
Ibn ‘Arabī also states that knowledge of God brings us close to Him, and ultimate happiness is associated with this proximity to the Divine as ordinary happiness in this world is related to nearness to our objects of desire. He writes, “All felicity lies in knowledge of God,”Footnote 37 and also,
The nearness which the Sufis define as “undertaking acts of obedience” is a nearness to the servant's felicity through his being safe from wretchedness. The “felicity” of the servant lies in his attaining to all his desires without exception, and that takes place only in the Garden. As for this world, he must necessarily abandon those of his individual desires which detract from this felicity. The “nearness” of the common people and of people in general is nearness to felicity. The person obeys in order to gain felicity.Footnote 38
Furthermore, Ibn ‘Arabī insists that the knowledge that leads to felicity must be combined with practice, with living that knowledge and not only in knowing it theoretically, and this practice in its most inward aspect is “faith in God and what comes from Him in accordance with the words of the Messenger, not in accordance with [only] knowledge of it. Faith embraces all acts which are to be performed or avoided.”Footnote 39
The existence of the cosmos and of all things in it issues from pure Being, which is the pure good and felicity in itself. Felicity, or happiness, like goodness and beauty, thus permeates creation, and we are able to experience it whenever and wherever we behold the wonders of the world of nature not sullied by human hands. We experience this happiness in beholding the majesty of the sunrise, the flight of birds, baby whales playing with their mother as she sings, the joy of lion cubs and kittens playing, the blooming of flowers, and the flow of a mountain stream. Everywhere virgin nature smiles at us, even in its majestic and terrifying aspects, for these also remind us of the Majesty of God; joy and happiness are kneaded like leaven in the dough, in the very substance of created things, if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear. As the Qur’ān asserts, God did not create the world in vain but in goodness and joy, and He placed us in a natural environment that scintillates with happiness by virtue of its very existence that issues from His Being, the Source of all happiness. Ibn ‘Arabī emphasizes this basic truth again and again and writes explicitly, “God brought the cosmos from non-existence which is evil, only for the good which He desired for it, and that is nothing but existence. Hence the cosmos exists fundamentally for felicity, and it will reach its property in the end.”Footnote 40 He goes further to state, “God created the cosmos only for felicity in its essence.”Footnote 41 This assertion also implies that God has placed us in such a cosmos in order to be happy. He wants us to be happy if we submit ourselves to Him and live according to the reality of our primordial nature (fiṭrah), which we still hear deep in our souls, and to fulfill the purpose for which we were created.
Lest one think that this knowledge that leads to happiness is not bound with love, Ibn ‘Arabī also emphasizes the central role of love in the attainment of real happiness. “[W]e love God in everything that we love. The love of God that is made possible through revelation and the divine reports have a salvific function, leading to felicity. But even without revelation, love of God is a fact of existence, though it cannot lead to our felicity unless we are aware of Him Whom we love. God reveals Himself in every form, thus making it necessary that we love Him in any form that we love.”Footnote 42 To be happy in this world is to realize that all love is ultimately the love of God, a truth that we can realize only if we gain a knowledge of the Divine that is possible only through faith in His revelation, a knowledge that is not possible to attain without Divine Love. As the Qur’ān states, “God will bring a people whom He loves and who love Him.”Footnote 43
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The Islamic philosophers have also dealt extensively with the question of happiness, which they, like the Sufis, associate in its essence with the abiding and the enduring and, following the Qur’ān, with paradisal realities and the Hereafter. Ibn Sīnā [in Latin, Avicenna], the prince of the Islamic philosopher-scientists whose influence pervades all later Islamic philosophy, associates happiness with purification of the soul and knowledge of the intelligible world, the world of light, from which it descended into this world. In his famous “Poem of the Soul,” he writes,
According to Ibn Sīnā, with whom the Islamic mashshā’ī, or Peripatetic School of philosophy, reached its peak a thousand years ago, the soul has descended from the luminous intelligible world, the ‘ālam al-ma‘qūlāt, and the soul's happiness comes in returning to that world. It is a world at once intelligible and spiritual, with an independent ontological reality of its own, and not simply a world of abstract concepts of the mind. This world is also called ‘ālam al-mujarradāt, the world of “disentangled” beings. The comprehension of this term is essential for the understanding of what constitutes happiness of the soul according to the philosophers of this and later Islamic schools. Tajarrud, to which mujarrad is related etymologically, can be translated as “catharsis” in its original Greek sense, and it refers to being disentangled from the confines of physical and also ordinary psychological conditions.Footnote 45 Like many Greek philosophers, Ibn Sīnā considers the happiness of the soul to be the result of the process of the soul to reach, through self-purification, the state of tajarrud, which can be attained not only in the Hereafter, but also in this life. Through tajarrud, man can reach the world of mujarradāt, which is also the angelic world, a world of permanence beyond the confines and the withering effects of temporal existence and the corruption of the world of transience. Ibn Sīnā writes about this process in his discussion of the Afterlife, with which he associates real felicity, or sa‘ādah, in accordance with the teachings of the Qur’ān, as follows:
We have established the true nature of the afterlife and have proved that true happiness in the hereafter is achieved through the soul's purification. The soul's purification removes it away from the acquisition of bodily dispositions opposed to the means for happiness. This purification is realized through moral [states] and positive dispositions. Moral states and positive dispositions are acquired by acts whose task is to turn the soul away from the body and the senses and to make continuous its remembrance of its true element.”Footnote 46
Needless to say, since tajarrud is related to the world of intelligibility, it is also related to knowledge. Purification prepares the soul for the attainment of that knowledge that results in true happiness.
The major school of Islamic philosophy that followed the Avicennan was the school of Illumination (ishrāq), founded by Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī in the sixth/twelfth century. As can be surmised, a school that is based on viewing reality at all its levels as but levels of light (nūr), on viewing knowledge as, essentially, illumination, and on viewing God as the Light of lights (Nūr al-anwār) and the source of all light, would have something very pertinent to say about happiness. After all, do we not experience happiness and inner expansion in beholding light, and do we not speak of a “shining smile?” Do we not associate the state of sadness and depression with darkness? For Suhrawardī and the school of ishrāq, happiness is inseparable from the experience of light. To become illuminated is to become happy, and the highest form of happiness is to behold the Light of lights, which results in reaching the state of ecstasy, or wajd. The Supreme Reality is at once wujūd—which, in this school, is identified with light, consciousness, or wijdān, which is also light—and wajd, which is bliss or ecstasy.Footnote 47 Happiness is thus a constituent element of all reality and, like reality, partakes of grades and degrees. From the most ordinary experience of eating to the gaining of supreme knowledge, the soul experiences light and therefore happiness. In his main work, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq (The Theosophy of the Orient of Light, also sometimes translated as The Philosophy of Illumination), which is the bible of the school of Illumination, Suhrawardī writes, “Because there is a correspondence between happiness and light, everything that is generated—that is, from every kind of food—becomes joyful, luminous spirit. Because of the correspondence of souls with light, souls flinch from darkness and are happy in beholding lights.”Footnote 48
One could not deal with the Islamic philosophical and sapiential tradition's treatment of the theme of happiness without saying a few words about Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī (Mullā Ṣadrā), foremost among later Islamic philosophers, who in the eleventh/seventeenth century created a synthesis of the earlier major schools of Islamic thought, which he named al-ḥikmat al-muta‘āliyah, or transcendent philosophy or theosophy.Footnote 49 To understand his treatment of the theme of sa‘ādah, it is necessary before all else to state briefly several of the major principles of his metaphysics and ontology. First, there is the basic doctrine of the unity, gradation, and principiality of being (wujūd). Reality is one and unified; it is nothing but wujūd, yet it is also graded and possesses many levels, from the wujūd of a gnat to that of God whose Being is nevertheless transcendent vis-à-vis all existents in the created order. Furthermore, while everything that we perceive consists of a quiddity or essence that possesses wujūd, in every case it is the wujūd and not the quiddity that is principial and that bestows reality on what we perceive.
Second, Mullā Ṣadrā speaks of the principle of trans-substantial motion (al-ḥarakat al-jawhariyyah), according to which all that exists in this world is in a state of motion and change that involves not only the accidents of things, as claimed by the Peripatetics, but also their very substance, or wujūd. Through this constant becoming, there is a vertical ascent up the ladder or chain of cosmic existence. Third, in the act of knowing, there is a unity of the knower and the known, or what Mullā Ṣadrā calls the unity of the “intellector” and the “intelligible” (ittiḥād al-‘āqil wa'l-ma‘qūl).Footnote 50 Therefore, knowing and being are united. We know according to who we are, and who we are is affected by what we know. It is only in light of these principles that we can understand Mullā Ṣadrā’s teachings about happiness, which, like wujūd, partakes of gradation and states of perfection.
All qualities, including happiness, derive their reality from wujūd and not from māhiyyah. Therefore, in the same way that wujūd partakes of gradation, happiness also has grades. These range from happiness that results from the pleasure of the senses to that which accompanies intellectual life to, finally, the highest happiness, that which comes from the virtuous soul's meeting with God. Moreover, participation in the intelligible world and meeting with God requires disentanglement from ordinary existence (tajarrud), and this disentanglement is itself a form of death. In this context, Mullā Ṣadrā refers to the Socratic-Platonic dictum, which is also a ḥadīth of the Prophet, which states, “Die before you die.” To gain happiness that is not fleeting and transient, and that is not followed by sorrow and pain, we must die to the world even while living in it. Mullā Ṣadrā writes,
Our self-consciousness is more intense when we leave the body because [at that moment] our presence to ourselves becomes more complete and firm…
When this relationship between the soul and the body is terminated and this obstacle disappears, the intelligibles become visible, their consciousness present, their knowledge real (‘aynan) and [their] perception an intellectual vision (ru'yā ‘aqliyyah). Thus the pleasure of our intellective life becomes more perfect and nobler than all other forms of goodness and happiness. You have already learnt that real pleasure is existence (wujūd) and especially intellective existence due to its detachment from the mixture of non-existence. This is particularly true for the Real Beloved and the most perfect Necessary Being for it is the reality of existence that contains in itself all aspects of existence. Partaking of Its pleasure is the highest pleasure and repose.Footnote 51
Mullā Ṣadrā follows in this matter the teachings of al-Fārābī, Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyā’ al-Rāzī, Ibn Sīnā, al-Ghazzālī, and many others in identifying happiness with knowledge of the immutable intelligible world and detachment from the entanglements of material existence, but he does so in the context of his metaphysics based on the unity, gradation, and principiality of wujūd, on trans-substantial motion and on the ultimate union of knowledge and consciousness with the object of knowledge, being. Through an ever-greater knowledge of wujūd, we ascend the ladder of existence and gain an ever-greater degree of happiness. In fact, happiness results from our consciousness of the reality of being, or what Mullā Ṣadrā calls al-shu‘ūr bi'l-wujūd: “Happiness as the ‘consciousness of existence (al-shu‘ūr bi'l-wujūd)’ is true felicity, for it is found not in the fleeting reality of becoming but in the permanent habitat of the intelligibilia.” In one of his bold contrasts, Ṣadrā adds that, “The pleasure of the angels of the spirit in perceiving the light is above the pleasure of the donkey's perception of sexual pleasures and nuts.”Footnote 52
Mullā Ṣadrā ultimately removes the boundary between ontology in the philosophical sense and spiritual realization, and he summarizes his view of true happiness with these words:
Know that existence is goodness and happiness, and the consciousness of existence is also goodness and happiness. But existents are of varying degrees in terms of perfection and imperfection. Whenever existence is more perfect, its detachment from non-existence is more [real], and happiness in it is more immediate.Footnote 53
Mullā Ṣadrā adds that knowledge of this truth/reality results in the highest happiness, for the “cause of this pleasure [i.e., the consciousness of existence] is the strongest, most complete, and most immediate of all joyous pleasures.”Footnote 54
THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS
To understand theoretically the meaning of happiness is one thing, but to attain and realize it is another. Human beings, whether Muslim, Buddhist, or Christian, whether followers of the Navajo or of other religions, know how to attain transient happiness, whether in the enjoyment of sensual pleasures or in psychological satisfaction. A hungry person is happy in eating a meal, just as a person imprisoned in a room is happy in getting fresh air outside, or a lover is happy in meeting his beloved. But these ordinary experiences of happiness are passing states, and they are often followed by sadness. Yet the yearning of human beings for happiness does not cease, and that yearning itself leads to sadness if it is not satisfied. The difficulty lies in attaining permanent happiness in a world that some have characterized as a vale of tears. In Islam, as in other authentic religions, that permanent state of happiness is attained by gaining not the freedom of the passionate self to receive whatever it desires, but freedom from desire and from the passionate self.
Happiness is a paradisal quality. Sparks of it shower upon us from the world of light, but the sparks are soon extinguished and turn into cinders in the world of darkness in which we live. This fact itself demonstrates to us that happiness issues from another world, from the spiritual world beyond the confines of material existence. And the fact that we continue to yearn for happiness proves that in its essence, our souls belongs to that paradisal world from which it has descended to the world here below. As that cherubic poet Ḥāfiẓ sings,
To attain permanent happiness, we must therefore remember who we really are, where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going. We must detach ourselves from fleeting pleasures and joys and seek permanent joy by attaching ourselves to the spiritual world, which is our original home and the only place where we shall attain permanent happiness. We must die before we die; die to the world here and now in order to gain eternal felicity in the life of the spirit and the intellect understood in its traditional sense. We must experience the happiness that issues from faith (īmān), which provides for us security (amān) from all that would deprive us of happiness. On the highest level, we must experience the happiness of our own annihilation (fanā’) in God and subsistence (baqā’) in Him in the full realization of unity (tawḥīd). Only through leading a spiritual life do we gain that peace that “passeth all understanding” and attain that abiding happiness for which we were brought into this world and which is our birthright by virtue of our primordial nature (fiṭrah), yet which we have forgotten and have to recall. To be truly happy, we must rediscover who we really are.
In this process of rediscovery, even sadness can be a major step towards the attainment of happiness, if this sadness is nostalgia for our original abode in its proximity to the Divine. It is in this sense that one must understand the famous Persian poem:
Experiencing sadness that results from nostalgia for our original home means that we already remember who we are and where we have come from; thus, experiencing spiritual sadness is better than experiencing various forms of fleeting happiness, which is based on the forgetting of our essential nature. In this context, it is interesting to note that our physiological responses to great joy and to great sorrow are similar. In both cases we shed tears. We all shed tears both of happiness and joy, and of sorrow and sadness. The inner meaning of this phenomenon is not unrelated to the nexus that exists between sorrow and joy and should be understood spiritually as well as psychologically.
Happiness is related not only to goodness but also to beauty. As the famous ḥadīth of the Prophet states, “God is beautiful and He loves beauty.”Footnote 57 And since God loves us and His love permeates His creation, He has poured a drop of His Beauty into the very substance of His creation. That is why beholding beauty in all its different forms, from the beauty of virgin nature to that of sacred art, brings us happiness, even if only for a moment. Beauty itself is a recollection of the Beloved, whose Face is the source of all beauty and beauty as such. Like happiness, which accompanies our experience of the beauty of that Face and of His creation, as well as our creation of things beautiful and our beholding of the beauty of art made by others, beauty is ultimately a paradisal quality that comes from the beyond yet shines in our world. Islamic spirituality has always emphasized the spiritual significance of beauty, as one can see in the ubiquitous art of traditional Islamic civilization, an art that combines the qualities of serenity, peace, and joy. As already mentioned, in Arabic the word for beauty, virtue, and goodness is the same. It is the word ḥusn. To behold beauty permanently, and therefore to attain permanent happiness, one must become inwardly beautiful and possess iḥsān, or spiritual virtue; in this way, one becomes one of the muḥsinīn, or possessors of iḥsān, to whom the Qur’ān refers.
Human existence is such that there are numerous ways for men and women to experience happiness, but for the fallen man caught in the prison of the passionate soul, which, according to the Qur’ān, commands man to evil, all earthly happiness is transient. Life presents us with experiences of sadness, sorrow, and pain that punctuate and often dominate our experience of happiness and pleasure. Here, already, is a metaphysical lesson for those who are sufficiently perspicacious. A wisdom lies in the very experience of the transience of happiness in this world. This experience reveals to us that the quality of happiness belongs to another domain of reality, to the abode of permanence that is the sole place where permanent happiness is to be found. Here below, happiness is transient, but the yearning for it by human beings in a state of psychological health and stability is permanent; this truth, itself, proves that our souls belong to the abode of permanence, to that which the Islamic sages refer to as dār al-baqā’.
Islam recognizes the need of man for happiness, and it points men and women to that spiritual reality that is the sole place where permanent happiness can be attained. It also provides, through its moral and spiritual teachings, the means to attain a happiness that does not cease. It teaches that through reverence towards God and reverential fear of Him, what the Qur’ān calls taqwā, we must pull the roots of our souls from this transient world and plant them in the Divine Reality from which our souls have come. We must transcend the stifling prison of the ego, the nafs. Through faith, correct action, prayer, and realized knowledge, we must break the walls of the ego, and we must do so through generosity, compassion, and charity, through īthār and karam, which are bound to love and are means of overcoming the self-centeredness and selfishness that are such impediments to the attainment of real happiness.
As all the sages, some of whom have already been cited, repeat, the highest happiness comes from knowledge of the Truth and its realization in our being. We must seek with our whole being that salvific knowledge that transforms the very substance of the soul; we must sacrifice the transient experiences of this world in order to gain the paradisal experience of permanent happiness. To attain this station, or maqām, we must remember who we are; we must remember that our goal is to become one of the friends of God, the awliyā’ Allāh, who “fear overcometh not nor are they ever sorrowful.” The advice that Islamic spirituality offers to those who wish to attain permanent happiness is, therefore, to practice remembrance, or dhikr. Let us then, throughout the fleeting moments of this life, remember, and remember to remember.
