English
Chapter Seven: On Shame, Loyalty, Truth, Mercy and Compassion, The Preferred Creed
Our masters declare that these traits are utterly worn out and hollow. Any wretch who catches one of these base qualities stays disappointed and defeated his whole life and never wins a single wish. It is obvious that a person of shame is deprived of every blessing, too weak to gain rank or amass wealth; shame stands forever as a huge barrier and a thick veil between him and his desires, and he is left weeping over his own bad luck. When they call the rain a weeping of shame from the cloud, this is where the idea comes from.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, says: Shame blocks your livelihood. And you can see it: whoever takes up shamelessness as a trade and makes disgrace his stock skins people alive, says whatever his heart wants, does not value anyone's head at the price of a fart, hoists himself past every obstacle to the highest peaks, and lords it over his own patrons and superiors, even over those to whom he owes everything; and people, because of his brazenness, are afraid of him. Meanwhile that deprived wretch branded with shame is always left behind the doors, sitting in hallways with his head on the knee of failure; he takes the doormen's blows, scratches the back of his neck, gazes with envy at the brazen crowd, and says:
The ignorant man sits high on the cushion while the learned stays outside the door;
he seeks a way in by cunning, and cannot even reach the doorkeeper.
As for loyalty: they say loyalty is the fruit of a mean soul and of greed getting the upper hand. For whenever a man gains some small thing from a patron or a friend, or through that patron or friend finds a way to make a living and to socialize, greed and appetite drive him to hope for more of the same profit, so that every single day, like a meddling barber, he pesters that poor soul, and the wretched target is worn out to death by the sight of him, longing to be rid of his company. When he sees that loyal man he says:
The Angel of Death would be more welcome to me than the sight of you.
The ancients, out of ignorance, praised such behavior. And whenever someone reached the utmost extreme of loyalty, they compared him to a dog. A man should keep his own advantage in view: once he has gained what he wanted and has no further expectation, even if it is his own father, he should give him no attention at all; let him spend each morning with one crowd and each evening with another. Anyone who wants to enjoy his life should pay no heed to this nonsense, so that he may delight in everyone's bounty and company; people will not tire of him, and he will know for certain that:
A bite from every pot is the sweetest fare.
A tale: They say Muhyi al-Din al-Arabi, the sage of his age and the model for the scholars of his time, spent thirty years night and day as the companion of Mawlana Nur al-Din the astronomer, and the two could not rest a moment apart. During the several days when Nur al-Din lay on his deathbed, Muhyi al-Din sat at his bedside busy with drinking. One night he went off to his room; in the morning, when he came into the house, he found his servants with their hair cropped, in mourning for Nur al-Din. He asked what was the matter. They said Mawlana Nur al-Din had died. He said, 'A pity, Nur al-Din.' Then he turned to his own servant and said, 'Let us go and find ourselves another drinking mate.' And from there he went straight back to his room. They say he lived twenty years after that, and no one ever heard him utter Nur al-Din's name again. Truly it is everyone's duty to learn loyalty from that peerless sage of the age.
And what clearer proof than this: that everyone who attached himself to loyalty was always full of grief and, at the end of his life, wasted it uselessly on that pursuit? Just as Farhad carved through Mount Bisitun and never reached his goal, until at last he gave up his sweet life over Shirin's affair; he died in longing, saying:
So poor Farhad has thrown away,
for the sake of sweet Shirin, his own sweet life.
And that poor man they call Majnun of the Banu Amir was a wise and accomplished youth. Suddenly he lost his heart to a little girl named Layla. In his loyalty to her life turned bitter for him, and he never had any pleasure from her; he ran through the deserts barefoot and bareheaded, saying:
By God, if I could meet Layla alone just once,
I would walk barefoot in pilgrimage to the House of God.
Our elders speak the truth: 'A trait whose fruit is this is better abandoned.'
As for truthfulness, our elders say this is the meanest of qualities, for truthfulness is the very seed of quarrels and losses. Whoever walks the path of truth finds no honor with anyone. A man should, as far as he can, tell his patrons and friends what pleases them, speak lies and flattery, and use the phrase 'the prince speaks the truth'; whatever suits people's mood, that he should put into words. For example, if some grandee at midnight says, 'Look, it is the noon prayer,' he should leap up at once and say, 'You are quite right, the sun is scorching hot today,' and to confirm it swear by the holy book and by a threefold divorce of his wife. If he is in the company of some old, miserly, ugly-faced catamite, when he opens his mouth he should address him as the champion of the age, the true stud of the world, the sweet young thing just come of age, the Joseph of Egypt, the Hatim of Tayy, so as to win gold, robes, and rank from him and root his friendship firmly in that man's heart.
But if someone, God forbid, lives the opposite of this and brands himself with truthfulness: suppose out of good counsel he tells some grandee, 'In your boyhood you took it a great deal; now you must stop, and you must keep your wife and sister from lewd deeds'; or he calls a baldhead bald; or calls a fool with swollen testicles just that; or calls a whore a whore, then by the curse of truth these people take mortal offense at him, and if they have the power they will set upon him then and there with a beating; and if it is only some feeble cuckold or helpless baldhead, he will fall to squabbling and bickering, hurling every kind of insolence at him; and for the rest of his life, because of that one true word, the feud between them will never end.
For this reason the elders have said: 'An expedient lie is better than a truth that stirs up strife,' and what proof is clearer than this: if a truthful man gives a hundred true testimonies, they feel no gratitude to him but rather resent him bitterly and invent excuses to call him a liar; while if some man without conscience gives false testimony, they bribe him a hundred ways and treat him with every kindness to get that testimony out of him. Just as today in the lands of Islam thousands of judges, sheikhs, jurists, notaries, and their followers make their living exactly this way. They say:
A lie that gladdens your heart on the spot
is better than a truth that leaves you troubled.
As for mercy and compassion, our masters utterly reject this sort, saying that whoever shows mercy to a wronged or deprived soul has committed a sin and exposed himself to divine wrath; on the grounds that nothing happens without God's will. Whatever reaches His servants from His presence, and He is all wise, does not reach them until it is due; as Plato says, 'A thing is not found unless it is warranted.' He who is the Most Merciful of the merciful, had He known that a person did not deserve that affliction, would not have sent it to him; whatever befalls anyone, he deserves it:
Better a hungry dog, a blind crow, a scrawny goat.
And they also say:
There is no blind man who is not worthy of his blindness.
So if you wish to show mercy to a person whom God has made the object of His wrath, you have committed sin, become a sinner over it, and on the Day of Resurrection you will be called to account for it. This is like a man beating his own slave for discipline, and a stranger fondling and kissing the slave, saying, 'Your master does wrong to beat you; he ought to be giving you gifts and fine robes!' Of course the master takes deadly offense at such a person.
A tale: In the blessed time of the Prophet, they used to tell the unbelievers to feed the poor. They would answer, 'The poor are God's own servants; if He wished, He would feed them. Since He does not feed them, why should we?' as the glorious Quran records: 'Shall we feed one whom, if God willed, He would feed? You are in nothing but manifest error.' So it is a duty to show mercy to no creature, and to pay no attention to any wronged person, any criminal, any needy one, any afflicted or captive or wounded man, any orphan, any burdened father, any dervish, or any servant grown old or crippled at someone's door; rather, for the sake of God, one should inflict on them as much harm as one can, so that it becomes a means of raising one's own rank and gaining rewards, and on the Day of Resurrection, the day when neither wealth nor sons avail, he may take you by the hand. This is what was promised to the brothers at the head of the book. There is hope that if the beginner keeps up these preferred traits of the great, and makes them a settled habit of his rational soul, he will reap their fruit most fully in this world and the next.