THE TRAINING FOR DHIKR

Hasan Kâmil Yılmaz

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    Allah the almighty defines the purpose of man's creation in the holy Qur'an as follows: "I created the jinn and humankind only that they might worship Me." (Dhariyat, 51:56) The Arabic word used in the verse ibadah (worship) is any action that is done for the sake of Allah and ubudiyyah is to accept Allah's acts and destiny with happiness and contentment of heart. The worship of God in Islam includes a large circle of actions as well as emotions. Among them, remembrance of Allah, (keeping the heart alive with His remembrance) occupies an important place. Both in the Quran and hadith remembrance of Allah is described as the best mode of worship. For examples the holy Quran states: "And certainly the remembrance of Allah is the greatest, and Allah knows what you do." (Ankabut, 29:045)
   There are many examples in the sayings of the Prophet with regards to the excellence of divine remembrance for example: "Shall I inform you the best of your deeds, the purest of them in the eyes of your Lord, and the highest of them in significance? This deed is better than giving charity of gold and silver, fighting the enemy killing them and being killed." The companions of the Prophet all asked: "What is this deed?" The Prophet answered: "The remembrance of Allah." (Ibn Majah, Adab, 53; Tirmidhi, Daawat, 6)
   Hence according to the Islamic worldview, the reason for the creation of human beings is to worship God and worshipping God means to establish a spiritual bound with Him. The best way of establishing this relationship is the practice of divine remembrance, which is done with peace of heart and mind. Hence, when divine remembrance is performed with a heedless heart and with the mere chanting of words without the involvement of the heart, it does not have much significance and value. It is the presence of heart that makes the worship valuable.
   The purpose of divine remembrance is to get rid of heedlessness and forgetfulness. Heedlessness is to abandon divine remembrance with one's free will and desire whereas forgetfulness is to abandon divine remembrance due to forgetfulness and without one's control. In order to warn mankind from purposeful heedlessness Allah the almighty commands: "And remember your Lord within yourself humbly and fearing and in a voice not loud in the morning and the evening and be not of the heedless ones." (Araf, 7:205)
   However, He does not mention forgetfulness in the command since it is a natural thing and man is not responsible for his natural weaknesses. The Prophet Peace be upon him states that that there will be no punishment for the bad actions, which are done due to forgetfulness, by forgetfulness, or by force. (Ibn Majah, Talaq, 16)
   Although forgetfulness is a natural thing it should not be a continuous excuse. One should strive to remember Allah as the following verse warns: "And be ye not like those who forgot Allah; and He made them forget their own souls! Such are the rebellious transgressors!" (Hashr, 59:19)
   Forgetfulness is a sign of lack of interest in something and further, lack of love for something. Divine remembrance is the solution to eradicating this lack of interest and it is very effective way of establishing love between the one who remembers and the remembered. Through remembrance, one first attains the state of togetherness and then the state of love. In the beginning a Sufi can have difficulty in concentration during the divine remembrance, but gradually if the Sufi persists in making divine remembrance, he/she can achieve concentration on the names of God, getting rid of unnecessary feelings and images from the heart and mind.
   There are many cases in the Sufi books that in the beginning many of them had difficulty in keeping their divine remembrance and reading Qur'an but later they started to get a spiritual pleasure and taste for these activities. A Sufi once stated that for twenty years he was exhausted by the Quran "But later I started to enjoy reading it." The feeling of togetherness can only be achieved after a difficult process hence one should not give up divine remembrance because one cannot do it properly. A person cannot eat a foreign food easily in the beginning but when he/she keeps eating he/she gets accustomed to the food and starts to enjoy it.
   An Arab poet once said:
   "The soul is such a creature the thing it performs with difficulty in the beginning become a second nature that it keeps performing in the end."
   Allah the almighty who knows the nature of man very well always warns us not to be heedless and to prepare our hearts to be ready for the remembrance of Allah: "Has not the time yet come for those who believe that their hearts should be humble for the remembrance of Allah and what has come down of the truth? And that they should not be like those who were given the Book before, but the time became prolonged to them, so their hearts hardened, and most of them are transgressors." (Hadid, 57:16)

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