HAVE YOU EVER noticed a drop of water? You know the type I am talking about-picture it. It is the kind that drips out of the faucet, drop by drop. It is the same one that seems so loud that it echoes as it hits the porcelain and is magnified a million times louder than it actually is when you can't sleep in the middle of the night. Did you ever pay close attention to how it trickles down? Or, have you ever wondered where it went and how far it may have traveled? I know it is a little weird, but I have spent some serious time thinking about it; probably one of those nights I spend counting sheep. Just imagine it for a minute, I mean really think about that single little drop of water and the journey it would take all the way down the drain.
AN OYSTER SHUTS its shell upon a crystal of
moisture. A pearl results. The child of Adam, if he remembers Allah, closes his mouth
around uncertain words.Then he speaks, and the jewels he utters bedazzle in
both word and form. The path to eternal
bliss is thus paved by provisional guardedness, the sort that preserves the
sanctity of each of our organs, spiritual and physical.
The human being attains to tranquility by deliberately
reducing four of his innate qualities: Socializing, eating, sleeping, and, our topic, talking.
Cutting back speech is the flintiest of the four, for it is the nature of speech
to flow. Eating, sleeping, and socializing are the more fluid behaviors in
their way than words, which are like rock carvings. Once chiseled and engraved, we either present
them or return them for refinement to the molten deep.
As to those we present, they take their place in one of
three collections:The useless, the harmful, and the beneficial. Many of our scholars
have viewed the useless and harmful in a sort of parent-child relationship, for
the former tends to beget the latter.
Useless talk is most of what we utter.We need not spend
many words here. It is that which is said with little thought and less purpose,
often the programmed or prompted discourse of the culture.
Harmful words consist in anything that invites evil. Most
talk of God and religion today falls with irony in this category, even among
Muslims, for it is uttered without proper knowledge, released before proper reflection,
and conjectured void of due awareness and trepidation of discussing Allah's
existence.
As to worldly matters, almost all language in our time is
harmful. Its form tends toward the vulgar and foul, its effect amounts to
backbiting, arguing, debating, and lying, and its consequence is misguidance. The value of such speech is in the literal negative,
for it brings nothing but distraction with the trivial, dissatisfaction, and disgrace.
Some use the realms of politics and sports today as an analogy.They hold that
politics and sports in our culture (like our speech) are largely damaging
because in most cases they serve no purpose of livelihood. Playing sports and
involving oneself courageously and virtuously in the political life of people,
however, yields a high value.The latter is like speaking the good word at the
point of need.
Beneficial speech thus contains whatever is wholesome and
constructive.This can include any transaction, worldly or spiritual, that does
not inure to the detriment of specific people. Scholars debate the risks of general
comment on public life, but most are of the opinion that it does not bring spiritual
harm.Yet only when our lips are sealed about the ordinary does beneficial speech
become illumined, for it means that when we speak we are constantly clarifying the
connection between our terrestrial lives and our divine destiny. Exposing the tongue
more or less only in this manner causes untoward desire to evaporate from the
soul.
It is essential to keep in mind that excessive talking can
be a serious threat to our souls. And that while it is true we have been given
a mouth from which words flow smoothly, it is not fitting for us to forget its
primacy and its privilege among the other organs of our body. But since most of
us do, Muslim scholars highly recommend that we heal this excessiveness with an
essential cure: Contemplation combined with Thikr or Allah's remembrance. We have been told from our earliest days to
first think and then speak. But that aptitude has almost been lost.The true
beauty of life, the morality which has been transmitted to us, has been largely
abandoned to ignorance and the spreading absence of concern.
And while it may not be possible for us to spend every
moment of it in His remembrance, those who came before us in faith have
recorded for us, their believing posterity, that being increasingly mindful of
Allah cannot be achieved without contemplation.
And herein resides the virtue of silence:
It has been given to us as a means by which to attain
salvation from the scorching difficulties of this world and the flaming fires of
the Next.
