A Meaningful Existence

It’s an age old question, that have plagued generations before  me and most certainly will plague those to follow me. Why I am here, is there any purpose to my life? What am I to do with my life as it is now? I do not profess to have found an answer to it, nor do I preach a ‘summum bonum’ to the readers. The question has been knocking at the doors of by conscience and sub-conscience since my early teens and within these years I have gone through phases of transformation. At the British Council Library, instead of looking up a GCSE Chemistry book, I would often stand by the ‘Philosophy section’ looking up works of Bertrand Russell. At age 16, I picked up Russel’s History of Western Philosophy, and upon reading the chapter on Pythagoras, came to the instant conclusion that the purpose and meaning of life must exist in the realm of ‘mathematics’ and the domain of science in general. Therefore, it is necessary to under understand natural sciences at the particle level as well as astronomical level to understand the creator and its creation.  Alas that Eureka moment was short lived. Coelho’s ‘Alchemist’ led me to the realm of omens and symbolism. Please do not take the impression that I am an avid reader. Truly, I am not. I do not have the mental tenacity to go though critical literature. The age of multi-media has to some extent crippled my generation on the skill of reading. Its simply too boring! A great source of learning for me over the years has been the countless hours I have spent watching movies, documentaries and  listening to audio books which courtesy of the world wide web and piracy is now available at the fingertips of  a boy from a third world country with otherwise no access to such materials.

Coming back to the question, at age 15, during a month of Ramadan, as I was going to school on my car, the driver put on a waz-mahfeel by ‘Delwar Hossain Sayedee’ (by the way, he was not this heinous monster back then that seems to be common knowledge today courtesy of his conviction as war criminal serving life sentence). At first, I found the sermon rather embarrassing, I became self-conscious that no body should see me in the act of listening to something so ‘khet’. However, as the words and his powerful recitation of ‘Holy Quran’ penetrated my ears I started to ease out and pay attention to it. I had a small cassette player at home and for the next week I kept listening to the sermon again and again on ‘life after death’. By the end of that Ramadan, I fell into a state of ‘transcendental spirituality’, losing touch with the perceived sense of immediate physical reality. I vowed never to miss a rakat of salat hence forth, which at that state of mind seemed something fairly easy task to accomplish; little did I know it was not. Eid came, holidays was over , school resumed and gradually I slipped off to the mundane reality and before I knew it, I was intentionally foregoing salat and completely lost track of that spiritual side of me. I tired listening to Sayeede’s sermons again many times later, but it had no  impact on me and I now find it rather hilarious than spiritually enriching. In fact it has been a roller coaster ride for me since and to this date those few days of Ramadan, the intensity of being in the zone, where you just know what you need to do, remains the most spiritual days of my life.

I have gone through phases where I have questioned whether God exists at all and whether life on planet earth is entirely meaningless. I have been inspired by Camus and Sartre’s idea of life having no inherent meaning and individuals defining their own reality within the context of their limited existence. There is no inherent ‘good’ and ‘bad’ they say, ultimately it’s a construct of man. Life is one, and you are amongst one in a billion of the current population living on planet earth today. Billons have come before you and billions will come after you. Your bedroom today will probably be a bathroom someday where some stranger takes a shit. As such my life is entirely insignificant and meaningless in the entire scheme of things; hence camus in his book ‘myth of sisyphus’ was contemplating why is it that man does not commit suicide. My life has only the meaning that I give to it in my relative context, it has no meaning to someone else. This gloom and dark view of life seems to be the message that is directly or indirectly being bombarded into our heads constantly by the popular culture. ‘Life is one’ they say, ‘ don’t have any regrets’, ‘live like a king on earth’ – these are practical manifestations of existentialist philosophy to its core.

Again I have watched countless hours of Islamic programs in TV channels and YouTube contemplating a very different purpose of life solely defined by Man’s spiritual connection with GOD and the ultimate reality of transition to life after death. I have argued with my Islamist friends about Islam and its teaching, many have been offended by my views and asked me to refrain from reading philosophy due to its character to confuse the mind and weaken ones ‘Iman’. Needless to say, I was not swayed by their warning one bit. I have gone from phases where I felt rituals and strict adherence to sunnah as unproductive, clouding ones judgment to separate good from bad, but that is before I found Hamza Yousuf and Abdul Hakim Murad in YouTube that completely reversed my stand on sunnah. I have no shame in admitting that I am a half baked, half educated, self-taught student of Islam who have nothing to contribute or teach others. Nonetheless, I felt sharing my feelings and my struggles with others in the hope that it may  clarify my own though process and can help others who may be in a similar mental and spiritual state of confusion as I have been for the good part of my adult life.

From a strict Islamic point of view, the purpose of life is rather straight forward or is it ? The following ayat is often quoted to explain purpose of life in Islam.  {I have only created jinns and humans that they may serve Me.} (Adh-Dhariyat 51:56).Note- other translations use the word worship/ibadah in place of service. Now what is the nature of this service/worship one may ask?  Allah is unlike man in the sense that he does not need anything from us like we may need from our subservient. The often recited sura Ikhlas reads as follows; "He is Allah, the One and Only. Allah is Independent of all and all are dependent on Him.”. To attempt to draw an analogy one may compare the nature of man’s relation with computers. Man created computer and the computer in my household serves me in the way I want it to perform. I need something from it. I ask it to play games, play multimedia, check mail and it does as it is commanded by application of binary programming. If my computer stops functioning I will be suffer due to its absence. Surely, I can replace it with a new one, but the essential point is that, a computer although a creation of man, is capable of affecting its creator positively or negatively as the case may be. Now if we try to speculate between the nature of man and its creator in light of Islam, one will observe that it is a recurrent theme in Quran is that Allah is self-sufficient, he does not need us, we are insignificant to him but rather it is we that need him for our sustenance. He is our Rab (nourisher, sustainer, and provider). One may look carefully at the ‘ayatul-kursi’ (the ayat of the throne) , 2:255 which reads as follows : “Allah! La ilaha illa Huwa (none has the right to be worshipped but He), the Ever Living, the One Who sustains and protects all that exists. Neither slumber, nor sleep overtake Him. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on earth. Who is he that can intercede with Him except with His Permission? He knows what happens to them (His creatures) in this world, and what will happen to them in the Hereafter . And they will never compass anything of His Knowledge except that which He wills. His Kursi extends over the heavens and the eartand He feels no fatigue in guarding and preserving them. And He is the Most High, the Most Great.”  To my knowledge Allah has not disclosed anywhere in Quran his intentions for creating man kind to serve any higher purpose. He is Ar-Rahman and Ar-Rahim to us from our perspective, but it is entirely voluntary and there is no reciprocity in this relationship.

The question therefore begs to be asked, what is it to worship Allah then? What is it that he expects from us? it is fairly clear from the life of our prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that Allah does not expect a life of isolation and meditation like the Buddhist monks. We are to live in this world, pursue the worldly aims of having a vocation, earning a wage and raising a family. The prophet was a husband, a father, a businessman, a politician, a spiritual leader, an army general, all under one umbrella. And if we are to model out life on  Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) we are to do all these things also, but bearing in mind that our sole purpose at the end of the day is to worship Allah at all material times.

That is where I find living in the 21^st Century modern world rather challenging. I feel a consistent dichotomy in my heart between the temporal and spiritual realm of existence. How does an accountant carrying complex calculations over a spread sheet, or cashier at a bank counting money all day worship Allah ? How do I worship Allah as a lawyer, living and breathing law about 12 hours a day approximately for the rest of my healthy moral life? One has to be highly motivated to reach the top they say, be good at you job and attain perfection they say?  And I am motivated, ambitious to be recognized, to be good at what I do, to be taken seriously, to be rewarded for my excellence in terms money and social recognition- this ego needs a lot of feeding to feel good! I am the same person in evening, socializing with friends and family at a party having idle chit chats. I am the same person at night, playing cricket in my xbox360, completely absorbed in it, completely oblivious to my surrounding. I am the same man that is moved by the injustice in my society and want things to change. But I am also that man, that feels ultimately its all meaningless, and what matters is the life after this one. At the end of the day, if one is to live life in the modern world, one has to face this this recurrent question – how is it that I am serving Allah in what am doing today , tomorrow and for the next year to follow ? Often it is suggested by scholars that to serve Allah means to abide by the commands or rulings and injunctions prescribed by Allah in the Holy Quran and illustrated in the sunnah of the prophet. Proponents of  ‘personal Islam’ therefore take the view that as long you are performing you daily prayers, keeping the mandatory fasts, doing the fards, keeping away from the prescribed harams, you are fine. What else you do with you life at most of the waking hours of the day is therefore not relevant to you piety. Just make sure, you are not doing something haram. 

I find this black and white distinction, of basing you Godliness on the basis of ‘dos and ‘don’t’s of Islam rather limiting. In any case it does not give you any guidelines or direction as to the meaning and purpose of your life. You are then left to you own devices again to find your purpose or calling in life based on the secular methods of determination. Therefore, it is inadequate to define life’s meaning and purpose form an Islamic perspective based on do’s and don’t or ones tenacity to follow the sharia to the letter. Does Islam therefore, give us something more comprehensive, a more detailed guideline to find out true calling in life? or shall we resort back to existentialist mode of discovery to find ones calling purely form ones relative point of view divorced from perceived objectivity of society in any time and place. 

I have perhaps dragged on for long with this piece for and perhaps I am starting to bore you now (if you are still reading that is). So I will end it abruptly here without trying to draw a conclusion. Frankly, I am in search of the conclusion myself.