To clean the nafs of the 68 blemishes listed below is the beginning of good adab which is the greater part of Islam and of Sufism (Tasawwuf/Spirituality). Ujub - to be proud of one’s spiritual state Riya - to show off Kibr - arrogance Hasad - envy Bukhul - miserliness Kin - to be vengeful Kufr - faithlessness Bid’at- to distort religion and tradition Kufran-i ni’met - to deny the giver of gifts or to belittle the gifts To be disatisfied and complain about one’s state To cease to have hope for Allah’s Mercy To be sure of Allah’s punishment To condone tyrrany and help tyrants To speak against decent people To keep the heart attached to this world To keep wanting to be a leader To expect approval and compliments To fear criticism Not to be able to prevent oneself from wanting Instead of wishing to learn the truth, being an imitator To fawn over people for personal benefit To be happy about disasters that fall upon people, even your enemies To be a coward To be angry To be a tyrant Not to keep one’s word To believe in bad luck To think unjustly about people To love one’s property To be overly concerned with the world and the worldly To be ambitious To lead an irresponsible life To mix oneself into affairs that do not concern one To be undignified Not to keep the time of one’s devotions due to laziness To be shameless To lament the loss of things To gossip To be stubborn To be an egoist To be a hypocrite To cheat To be brutish To be dishonorable in relations with women To be lustful Not to accept one’s error and continue insisting on it To be afraid of poverty Not to believe in destiny or to talk about destiny To make oneself depressed To take pleasure in belittling others To be indiscriminately happy To be insincerely kind and fawning over rich people To be disdainful of the poor To boast and be proud of one’s past To show off one’s physical prowess To belittle others To like to talk long unnecessarily To be self centered in conversation To forget about one’s own shortcomings and be preoccupied with the shortcomings of others To exclude from one’s heart the fear of Allah and the shame and sadness of one’s state In distress to make excuses and to fall back on and encourage the nafs To decline to help in a struggle for Allah’s sake To pretend to be friends with one’s enemy To cheat in one’s work To set traps for others To identify with the world to the extent of forgetting Allah To take pleasure in people’s suffering Not to suffer because of one’s mistakes These are like thorns growing in a barren field and show you the ugly attributes of the heart which surface and become visible. Avoid them and beautify yourselves with the opposite of every one of these faults, because the prayer which pleases Allah and which brings you closest to Him is to have beautiful adab.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 10:13:13 +0000