Poverty
Poverty has a high rank in the way of the Truth, and the poor are extremely esteemed, as God hath said, “(Give alms) unto the poor, who are kept fighting in God’s cause and cannot go to and fro on the earth; whom the ignorant deem rich forasmuch as they refrain (from begging).”
(Qur’an, 2:273) And again,
“Their sides are lifted from their beds while they call on their Lord in fear and hope.” (Qur’an, 32:16)
God has exalted poverty and has made it a special distinction of the poor, who have renounced all things external and internal and have turned entirely to the Causer, whose poverty has become their pride so that they lamented it is going and rejoiced at its coming, and embraced it and deemed all else contemptible.
Hazrat Muhammad (SAW) chose
poverty and said, “O God, make me
live lowly and die lowly and rise from
the dead amongst lowly!”
The friends of God live through His secret bounties and not by worldly wealth. Hazrat Muhammad (SAW) has said, “Poverty is glorious to those who are worthy of it.” It is preserved from base and sinful acts and his heart from evil and contaminating thoughts because his outward parts are absorbed in (contemplation of) the manifest blessings of God, while his inward parts are protected by invisible grace so that his body is spiritual (ruhani) and his heart divine (rabbani). No relation between him and humankind exists: This world and the next weigh less than a gnat’s wing in the scales of his poverty.
Shibli has said,
Poverty is the sea of trouble, and all troubles for His sake are glorious.”
Trouble is changed into glory, and their glory into a spiritual state (waqt), and their spiritual state into Love, and their Love into contemplation, so that finally, the brain of the aspirant becomes wholly a center of vision through the predominance of his imagination: he sees without eye and hears without ear. However, some prefer wealth over poverty: God has commanded us to be patient in poverty and thankful for prosperity. He has made thankfulness the means of increasing our prosperity; and prosperity is essentially better than adversity.
Both poverty and wealth are Divine gifts: wealth is corrupted by forgetfulness, poverty by covetousness.
Every man is "poor" even though he may be a prince
Essentially, Solomon’s wealth and poverty are one. God said to Job (Yunus [pbuh]) in the extremity of his patience, and likewise to Solomon in the plentitude of his dominion: “Good servant that thou art!” (Qur’an: 38:29; 44) There was no difference between Solomon’s poverty and wealth when God’s pleasure was attained.
Etiquettes of Poverty
Poverty is the annihilation of all stations. Bishar Hafi has said, “The best of ‘stations’ is a
firm resolution to endure poverty continually.” The poor man is not a man whose hand is empty of provisions but whose nature is empty of desires.
Yahya b. Muad al Razi has said it is a sign of true poverty that, although one has reached the perfection of sainthood, contemplation, and self-annihilation, is still dreading its decline or departure.
Ruwaym has said, “The ‘poor man’s’ heart is protected from selfish cares, his soul is guarded from contaminations, and he performs the obligatory duties of religion.” The “poor man” rests not content with anything except God because he has no other object of desire. Junayd has said,
“When the heart is empty of phenomena, he is poor.”
Poverty consists of never being independent of poverty
Moreover, because for the fruition of anything, homogeneity is necessary, but God has no congener, and for turning away from Him, forgetfulness is essential, but the dervish The dead (fani) never become live (baqi) to be united with him; the living never become dead, to approach His presence. All that his lovers do and suffer is entirely probation (mihnat). God is above every human attribute and relationship. All symbolic expressions begin and end in themselves and do not rise above their own genus.
Poverty is not being without existence
The meaning here is not “the not-being of the essence” but “the not-being of that which ontaminates the essence,” all human attributes are a source of contamination: when that is removed, the result is the annihilation of the attributes. (fana-yi-safat).
The expressions “not-being” (adam) and “annihilation” ( fana), as Sufis use them, denote the disappearance of a blameworthy instrument and disapproved attribute in the course of seeking a praise-worthy attribute; they do not signify the search for non-reality through an instrument which exists.
Dervishhood is metaphysical poverty
Dervishhood, in all its meanings, is a metaphysical poverty, and amidst all its subordinate aspects, there is a transcendent principle. The Divine mysteries come and go over the dervish till he is in the acquiring stage, and everything may be attributed to him and his ideas attached to himself. When free from the bounds of acquisition, he is no longer a wayfarer but the way himself. He is the place over which something is passing, not a wayfarer following his own will.
pretenders because of their lack of desire for
the reality of poverty seemed to deny the attributes of
its essence. They revert to perverse behavior, and they
call by the name of “poverty” and “purity” their failure to
seek Truth and Reality. They seem to affirm their own
fancies and denies everything else due to self-conceit.
Therefore, the seeker has no choice but to journey on their path, traverse their “stations,” and know their symbolic expressions so that he may not be a plebeian (ammi) among the elect.
Further Links
Learn more about the concept of poverty in Spiritual Islam at: Spiritual Poverty In Sufism: Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
