Saturday, February 27, 2010

Training of a novice in the Middle Path Sufi tradition

According to Hamdûn, on the other hand, spiritual practices were criticized and denounced in order to eliminate conceit and inflation. Abû 'Uthmân taught the middle path. He said:

Both ways are correct; each, however, in its right time. At the beginning of his novitiate we train the disciple in the path of practices and we encourage him to follow it and establish himself in it. However, when he is established and consistent in this path he becomes attached to it and dependent on it. Then we show him the shortcomings of this path of actions [or efforts] and our disregard for it, until he becomes aware of his helplessness, and sees how remote his efforts are from completion. Thus we make sure that first he becomes grounded in practices, yet does not (later on) fall into self-delusion. Otherwise, how can we show him the shortcomings of his practices if he has no practices? . . . Between the two this is the most balanced way.(42)

In response to a letter from Muhammad ibn al-Fadl al-Balkhî, a close companion of Abû 'Uthmân and another of the correspondents of Hakîm al-Tirmidhî mentioned above (also see below, section X), who asked him how one can perfect one's actions and states, Abû 'Uthmân wrote:

No action or state can become perfect unless God brings it about without any wish on the doer's part and without any awareness of the doing of the action, and without awareness of another's observation of the action.(43)

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