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HAPPINESS AND THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS: AN ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2014

Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Seyyed Hossein Nasr*
Affiliation:
University Professor of Islamic Studies, The George Washington University
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Abstract

Happiness is a universal concept and experience that cuts across cultures and religions. Nonetheless, the particular manifestations and descriptions of happiness are culturally informed and contextualized. This essay explores the concepts of happiness and the pursuit of happiness in Islamic thought, arguing that the pursuit of happiness is envisaged differently in Islamic thought. Rather than the more transient forms of happiness celebrated in modern, secularized or hedonistic cultures, the pursuit of happiness in Islamic thought is concerned above all with the attainment of enduring happiness.

Keywords

IslamhappinessQur’ānḤadīthIslamic wisdom tradition
Type
SYMPOSIUM: PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS IN INTERRELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVE
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 76 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2014 

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References

1 This and other translations of the Qur’ān are from The Study Qur’ān (San Francisco: HarperOne, forthcoming)Google ScholarPubMed. Other translations in this essay are the author's own unless stated otherwise.

2 This dual-dating system is the standard practice in Islamic studies and reflects the lunar Hijrī calendar and the Gregorian/Western Calendar. The Hijrī calendar begins with the first day of the first month of the Hijra, which corresponds to July 16, 622 CE. It marks the Prophet Muhammad's emigration (or Hijra) from Mecca to Medina.

3 See al-Fārābī, , “Taḥṣīl al-sa’ādah” [Attainment of Happiness] in Alfarabi: The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. Mahdī, Muḥsin, rev. ed. (New York, NY: Free Press of Glencose, 1962; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001Google Scholar).

4 Q. 11:108.

5 Q. 11:105.

6 Q. 2:69.

7 Q. 76:11.

8 Q. 84:9.

9 Q. 80:38–39.

10 Q. 10:58.

11 Q. 30:36.

12 Q. 89:27–30.

13 See Sa‘īdī, Gul Ḅābā, Farhang-i isṭilāḥāt-i ‘irfanī-yi Ibn ‘Arabī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Shafīʻī, 1383 SH), 356Google Scholar.

14 Q. 2:201.

15 Al-Suhrawardy, Allama Sir Abdullah al-Mamun, comp., The Sayings of Muhammad (New York: Citadel Press, 1990)Google Scholar, 63.

16 Muḥammad ibn ʻAbd Allāh Khaṭīb al-Tabrīzī, Mishkāt al-Masābīḥ, trans. Robson, James (1970; repr., Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1981)Google Scholar, 2:993.

17 See Nasr, S. H., “A Panorama of Classical Islamic Intellectual Life,” in Islamic Life and Thought (New York: Routledge, 2008).Google Scholar

18 This work, which reveals the knowledge of the author of the Islamic alchemical tradition going back to Jābir ibn Ḥayyān and deals with the ascent of the soul to God, is translated and published as a separate book as Ibn ‘Arabī, , L'Alchimie de bonheur parfait (Paris: Berg International, 1981).Google Scholar

19 There is a partial translation of this work by Field, Claude, The Alchemy of Happiness of al-Ghazzali (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 2007)Google Scholar. The critical edition of this text is edited by Ḥusayn Khadīwjam (Tehran: Shirkat-i Sahāmī-yi Kitābhā-yi Jībī, 1354 SH). There is also a later edition of this text edited by Manūchihr Dānishpazhūh (Tehran: Ahl-i Qalam, 1381 SH).

20 Q. 94:1.

21 In a famous poem, Ibn ‘Arabī related love to faith as follows:

“I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love's camels take; that is my religion and my faith.” Ibn ‘Arabī, , The Tarjumān al-ashwāq, trans. Nicholson, Reynold A. (London: Theosophical, 1978)Google Scholar, 19, 67.

22 This ḥādīth appears in numerous collections of Ḥadīth.

23 See al-Ghazzālī’s Iḥyā’‘yulūm al-dīn and Kīmīyā-yi say’ādat, note 19 and accompanying text.

24 Q. 7:172.

25 Ḥāfiẓ, , Dīwān, ed. Qazwīnī, M. and Ghanī, Q. (Tehran: Anjuman-i Khushniwīsān, 1367 SH), 142Google Scholar.

26 This truth is repeated in many verses of the Qur’ān.

27 For example, Q. 7:34.

28 Gul Bābā Sa‘īdī, Farhang-i isṭilāḥāt-i ‘irfānī-yi Ibn ‘Arabī, 355; Shams al-Dīn Maybudī quotes the same saying with a slightly different phrasing in his Kashf al-asrār, ed. ‘Alī Aṣghar Ḥikmat (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1331–39 SH), 9:345–46Google Scholar.

29 Many verses of the Qur’ān point to the dhikr as the highest form of prayer and also associated with the heart. See for example, Q. 13:28, 29:45, and 20:42.

30 Afḍal al-Dīn Kashānī, Muṣannafāt, eds. Mīnuwī, Mujtabā and Mahdawī, Yaḥyā (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Khwārazmī, 1366 SH), 5Google Scholar.

31 Al-Ghazzālī is using pleasure, or liththat, here not only in its sensuous sense but also as a quality associated with happiness on all levels.

32 The usage of the term “thing” (shay’) by al-Ghazzālī is in the philosophical sense of “being” (mawjūd) and not “thing” in its ordinary English usage.

33 Ghazzālī, Kīmīyā-yi sa‘ādat, 39–41. The translation is our own.

34 See Chittick, William, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn ‘Arabī’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1989), 150–52.Google Scholar

35 “If anyone sets up in himself an object of worship which he worships by surmise, not in certitude, that will avail him nothing against God.” Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabī, al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyyah (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, n.d.)Google Scholar, 2:612.6, quoted in Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 151.

36 The term wonder (ḥayrānī) used by Rūmī here refers to Divine Knowledge, whose attainment brings about a sense of wonder that is combined with unbounded joy. A saying attributed to the Prophet states, “O Lord, increase our wonder in Thee” (yā Rabb, zidnā taḥayyuran fīk).

37 Ibn ‘Arabī, Futūḥāt, 4:319.10, quoted in Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 151.

38 Ibn ‘Arabī, Futūḥāt, 2:558.34, quoted in ibid.

39 Ibn ‘Arabī, Futūḥāt, 2:559.20, quoted in ibid., 152.

40 Ibn ‘Arabī, Futūḥāt, 3:315.6, quoted in ibid., 291.

41 Ibn ‘Arabī, Futūḥāt, 3:389.21, quoted in ibid.

42 Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 180–81.

43 Q. 5:54.

44 Arberry, Arthur J., “Avicenna: His Life and Times,” in Wickens, G. M., ed., Avicenna: Scientist & Philosopher (London: Luzac, 1952)Google Scholar, 28; See also Nasr, S. H., An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 259–60.Google Scholar

45 Henry Corbin translates this term as esseulement, which could be translated as “alonement,” if such a term existed in English.

46 Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing, trans. Marmura, Michael E. (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005)Google Scholar, 369 (the translation has been slightly modified). In his Najāh (Salvation), which is a summary of the Shifā’ (Healing), Ibn Sīnā turns to this theme again and writes:

We have established the situation of the true Return. We have proved that felicity in the next world is earned by making the soul incomparable. “To make the soul incomparable” is to keep it far from those bodily conditions that conflict with the causes of felicity. This making the soul incomparable is acquired by character traits and second natures. Character traits and second natures are earned through specific acts. Their characteristic is that the soul turns away from the body and sense perception and constantly remembers its own Source. When it keeps on going back to its own essence, it no longer receives the activity of bodily states.

Quoted in Murata, Sachiko, The Tao of Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992)Google Scholar, 283.

47 This tripartite division corresponds exactly to the Hindu description of the Supreme Reality as satchitananda: sat is wujūd; chit, consciousness; and ananda, bliss. See Nasr, S. H., Knowledge and the Sacred (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989)Google Scholar, 1.

48 Suhrawardī, , The Philosophy of Illumination, trans. Walbridge, John and Ziai, Hossein (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1999), 135–36.Google Scholar On Suhrawardī’s teachings and discussion of light and its hierarchies, see Nasr, S. H., “Suhrawardī and the Illuminationists,” in Three Muslim Sages (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964; Delmar, NY: Caravan, 1976)Google Scholar; Nasr, , “Suhrawardī: A General Survey,” The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia, ed. Aminrazavi, Mehdi (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 1996)Google Scholar, 125; Aminrazavi, Mehdi, “Philosophical Sufism,” in Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 1997)Google Scholar, 78; and the many works of Henry Corbin on Suhrawardī, especially Corbin, Henry, En Islam iranien: Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1971)Google Scholar.

49 Until a few decades ago, Mullā Ṣadrā was hardly known in the West. Now, there is an ever-growing body of works about him and his teachings. See Nasr, S. H., Sadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī and His Transcendent Theosophy: Background, Life and Works (Tehran: Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, 1997)Google Scholar; Moris, Zailan, Revelation, Intellectual Intuition and Reason in the Philosophy of Mulla Sadra: An Analysis of the al-Hikmah al-’arshiyyah (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003)Google Scholar; Rizvi, Sajjad, Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī: His Life and Works and the Sources for Safavid Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; and Safavi, Seyed G., ed., Perception: According to Mulla Sadra (London: Salman-Azadeh Publications, 2002)Google Scholar. There is even a journal published in England by Seyed Gharheman Safavi, with the title Transcendent Philosophy, which is based primarily on Ṣadrean teachings. Some of Mullā Ṣadrā’s works have also been translated into French, German, and English, including Corbin, Henry, trans., Le Livre des pénétrations métaphysiques (Paris: Verdier, 1988)Google Scholar; Chittick, William, trans., The Elixir of the Gnostics (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Peerwani, Latimah-Parvin, trans., Spiritual Psychology: The Fourth Intellectual Journey in Transcendent Philosophy (London: ICAS, 2008)Google Scholar; and S. H. Nasr, The Book of Metaphysical Penetrations (forthcoming).

On his metaphysical, epistemological, and cosmological ideas, see also Kalin, Ibrahim, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mullā Ṣadrā on Existence, Intellect and Intuition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar (This work includes the translation of Mullā Ṣadrā’s Risālah fi ittiḥād al-‘āqil wa'l-ma‘qūl, 256–91); Jambet, Christian, The Act of Being: The Philosophy of Revelation in Mullā Ṣadrā, trans. Fort, Jeff (New York: Zone Books, 2006)Google Scholar; Jambet, Christian, Se rendre immortel: Suivi du traité de la résurrection, Mollā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (Cognac: Fata Morgana, 2000)Google Scholar; and Rizvi, Sajjad, Mullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics: Modulation of Being (New York: Routledge, 2009)Google Scholar. There are also chapters devoted to him in S. H. Nasr, The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia, ed. Mehdi Aminrazavi; Nasr, S. H., Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the Land of Prophecy (Albany: The State University of New York Press, 2006)Google Scholar; and Nasr, S. H. and Leaman, Oliver, eds., History of Islamic Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2001).Google Scholar

50 See Kalin, Ibrahim, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mullā Ṣadrā on Existence, Intellect and Intuition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 Mullā Ṣadrā, Asfār (Tehran: Bunyad-i Hikmat-i Islāmī-I, n.d.)Google ScholarPubMed, 4:2, quoted in Kalin, Knowledge, 209–10.

52 Mullā Ṣadrā, Asfār, 4:2, quoted in ibid., 212.

53 Mullā Ṣadrā, Asfār, 4:2, quoted in ibid., 213.

54 Ibid.

55 Ḥāfiẓ, Dīwān, 245.

56 A popular poem that many consider to be anonymous (I have quoted it here from memory).

57 This ḥadith appears in most collections and is used especially frequently by Sufis. For its inner meaning, see Ibn ‘Arabī, al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyyah, vol. II, 112.34.