Dhikr

1:By Allah, an hour of dhikr is better than the Dunia and what belongs to it. ~ Shaykh Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi, @Sufi_Path

2:The bliss of the heart, the purification of the nafs and being a whole human are only possible through dhikr. ~ Maulana Hodshazade Sheikh Sayyid Osman Murteza, @Sufi_Path

3:Those whose heart (spiritual heart) always ponders into the remembrance of Allah (dhikr) are the real devotee, though their inner state is not reflected in their appearance. ~ Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, @Sufi_Path

4:And occupy youself with dhikr, remembrance of God, with whatever sort of dhikr you choose. The highest of them is the Greatest Name; it is your saying "Allah, Allah," and nothing beyond "Allah." ~ Ibn Arabi, Journey to the Lord of Power,

5:Praise be to God; whose compassion is all-embracing and Whose mercy is universal; Who rewards His servants for their remembrance [dhikr] [of Him] with His remembrance [of them] - verily God (Exalted is He!) has said, 'Remember Me, and I will remember you' - Opening lines from Kitab al-Adhkar wa'l Da'awat of the Ihya ulum ad-Din" ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,

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1:Tawbah is the cleaning of the heart, dhikr is the feeding of the heart. ~ Yasmin Mogahed,

2:Dhikr (remembrance of Allah) is to the heart as water is to a fish; see what happens to a fish when it is taken out of water ~ Ibn Taymiyyah,

3:When light engages the heart, it causes an illumination of the path, a purification of the consciousness, an enlightenment of the intellect and an establishment of the foundations of dhikr and shukr and of beautiful worship. ~ Habib Umar bin Hafiz,

4:Engaging in the regular remembrance of God (dhikr) safeguards the tongue and replaces idle talk with words and phrases that raise one in honor. The tongue is essential in developing courtesy with God, which is the whole point of existence. ~ Hamza Yusuf,

5:Khashyah (fear) is to fear Allah until His fear comes between you and your sins - that is true khashyah. And Dhikr (remembrance) is to obey Allah so whoever obeys Him has indeed remembered Him, and whoever does not obey Him is not a dhakir - even if he makes abundant tasbih (glorification) and recites much of Qur'an. ~ Ibn Sirin,

6:"Praise be to God; whose compassion is all-embracing and Whose mercy is universal; Who rewards His servants for their remembrance [dhikr] [of Him] with His remembrance [of them] - verily God (Exalted is He!) has said, 'Remember Me, and I will remember you' - Opening lines from Kitab al-Adhkar wa'l Da'awat of the Ihya ulum ad-Din" ~ Imam al-Ghazali,

7:Praise be to God; whose compassion is all-embracing and Whose mercy is universal; Who rewards His servants for their remembrance [dhikr] [of Him] with His remembrance [of them] - verily God (Exalted is He!) has said, 'Remember Me, and I will remember you' - Opening lines from Kitab al-Adhkar wa'l Da'awat of the Ihya ulum ad-Din ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,

8:We live in the age of Noah (a.s.) in the sense that a flood of distraction accosts us. It is a slow and subtle drowning. For those who notice it, they engage in the remembrance of God. The rites of worship and devotion to God's remembrance (dhikr) are planks of the ark. When Noah (a.s.) started to build his ark, his people mocked him and considered him a fool. But he kept building. He knew what was coming. And we know too. ~ Hamza Yusuf,

9:According to a hadith, the tongue is the “interpreter of the heart.” Hypocrisy is wretched because the hypocrite says with his tongue what is not in his heart. He wrongs his tongue and oppresses his heart. But if the heart is sound, the condition of the tongue follows suit. We are commanded to be upright in our speech, which is a gauge of the heart’s state. According to a prophetic tradition, each morning, when the limbs and organs awaken in the spiritual world, they shudder and say to the tongue, “Fear God concerning us! For if you are upright, then we are upright; and if you deviate, we too deviate.” Engaging in the regular remembrance of God (dhikr) safeguards the tongue and replaces idle talk with words and phrases that raise one in honor. The tongue is essential in developing courtesy with God, which is the whole point of existence. ~ Hamza Yusuf,

10:There is no way to neutralize causes because the source-forms necessitate them. They only
appear in existence by the form on which they are based at the source since "there is no
changing the words of Allah." (10:64) The words of Allah are not other than the sources of
existent things. Timelessness is ascribed to Him in respect to their permanence, and in-time
ness is ascribed to them in respect of their existence and appearance. Thus we say, a certain
man or guest happened (26) to be with us today." That does not mean that he did not have
any existence before this event. For that reason, Allah says about His Mighty Word which is
timeless, "No reminder (dhikr) from their Lord comes to them lately renewed (27) without
their listening to it as if it were a game," (21:2) and "but no fresh (28) reminder reaches them
from the All- Merciful, without their turning away from it." (26:5) The Merciful only brings
mercy, and whoever turns away from mercy advances the punishment which is the absence of
mercy. ~ Ibn Arabi,

11:A potential dajjalic interruption is an excessive esoterism. All of these people on a grail quest and looking for the ultimate secret to Ibn Arabi’s 21st heaven and endlessly going into the most esoteric stuff without getting the basics right, that is also a fundamental error of our age because the nafs loves all sorts of spiritual stories without taming itself first. The tradition that was practiced in this place for instance (Turkey) was not by starting out on the unity of being or (spiritual realities). Of course not. You start of in the kitchen for a year and then you make your dhikr in your khanaqah and you’re in the degree of service. Even Shah Bahauddin Naqshband before he started who was a great scholar needed 21 years before he was ‘cooked’. But we want to find a shortcut. Everything’s a shortcut. Even on the computer there’s a shortcut for everything. Something around the hard-work and we want the same thing. Because there seems to be so little time (or so little barakah in our time) but there is no short cut unless of course Allah (SWT) opens up a door of paradise or a way for you to go very fast. But we can’t rely on that happening because it’s not common. Mostly it’s salook, constantly trudging forward and carrying the burden until it becomes something sweet and light. And that takes time, so the esoteric deviation is common in our age as well. ~ Abdal Hakim Murad,

12:What distinguishes us above all from Muslim-born or converted individuals—“psychologically”, one could say—is that our mind is a priori centered on universal metaphysics (Advaita Vedānta, Shahādah, Risālat al-Ahadiyah) and the universal path of the divine Name (japa-yoga, nembutsu, dhikr, prayer of the heart); it is because of these two factors that we are in a traditional form, which in fact—though not in principle—is Islam. The universal orthodoxy emanating from these two sources of authority determines our interpretation of the sharī'ah and Islam in general, somewhat as the moon influences the oceans without being located on the terrestrial globe; in the absence of the moon, the motions of the sea would be inconceivable and “illegitimate”, so to speak. What universal metaphysics says has decisive authority for us, as does the “onomatological” science connected to it, a fact that once earned us the reproach of “de-Islamicizing Islam”; it is not so much a matter of the conscious application of principles formulated outside of Islamism by metaphysical traditions from Asia as of inspirations in conformity with these principles; in a situation such as ours, the spiritual authority—or the soul that is its vehicle—becomes like a point of intersection for all the rays of truth, whatever their origin.

One must always take account of the following: in principle the universal authority of the metaphysical and initiatic traditions of Asia, whose point of view reflects the nature of things more or less directly, takes precedence—when such an alternative exists—over the generally more “theological” authority of the monotheistic religions; I say “when such an alternative exists”, for obviously it sometimes happens, in esoterism as in essential symbolism, that there is no such alternative; no one can deny, however, that in Semitic doctrines the formulations and rules are usually determined by considerations of dogmatic, moral, and social opportuneness. But this cannot apply to pure Islam, that is, to the authority of its essential doctrine and fundamental symbolism; the Shahādah cannot but mean that “the world is false and Brahma is true” and that “you are That” (tat tvam asi), or that “I am Brahma” (aham Brahmāsmi); it is a pure expression of both the unreality of the world and the supreme identity; in the same way, the other “pillars of Islam” (arqān al-Dīn), as well as such fundamental rules as dietary and artistic prohibitions, obviously constitute supports of intellection and realization, which universal metaphysics—or the “Unanimous Tradition”—can illuminate but not abolish, as far as we are concerned. When universal wisdom states that the invocation contains and replaces all other rites, this is of decisive authority against those who would make the sharī'ah or sunnah into a kind of exclusive karma-yoga, and it even allows us to draw conclusions by analogy (qiyās, ijtihād) that most Shariites would find illicit; or again, should a given Muslim master require us to introduce every dhikr with an ablution and two raka'āt, the universal—and “antiformalist”—authority of japa-yoga would take precedence over the authority of this master, at least in our case. On the other hand, should a Hindu or Buddhist master give the order to practice japa before an image, it goes without saying that it is the authority of Islamic symbolism that would take precedence for us quite apart from any question of universality, because forms are forms, and some of them are essential and thereby rejoin the universality of the spirit.
(28 January 1956) ~ Frithjof Schuon,

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