Contentment     - A Sermon: Delivered on a Friday as well as a Night of Ramadan

In the Name of Allah, The Most Compassionate, The Most Merciful.

Today I would like to talk about Contentment. According to the Britannica, it means, 1. Rest of Mind, 2. Satisfaction, 3. Freedom from worry, 4. Not inclined to complain or desire something more or different than what one has.

According to Belguy, Contentment is a pearl of great price, and whosoever procures it at the expense of 10,000 desires makes a wise and happy purchase.

If I am not mistaken, the Holy Quran does not define what contentment means, but considers it a blessing to anyone who has it. There are many Suras and verses in the Holy Quran that make this quite clear. I recited the Arabic portions in the beginning, and here are some of the translations:

Sura 47 verses 2 and 5. Verse 2: Those who believe and work righteousness and believe in what was sent down to Muhammad (s) - which is the truth from their Lord; He remits their sins, and blesses them with contentment.

Sura 47, verse 5: He will guide them and bless them with contentment.

Sura 48, verses 4, 18 & 26.

Verse 4: He is the one who places contentment into the hearts of believers to increase their faith in addition to what they have.

Verse 18: God is pleased with the believers who pledged allegiance to you under the tree. He knew what was in their hearts, and consequently blessed them with contentment, and rewarded them with an immediate victory.

Verse 26: While those who disbelieved were enraged, and their hearts were filled with the pride of the days of ignorance, Allah blessed his Messenger with peaceful contentment, and directed them to uphold the word of righteousness. This is what they well deserved. Allah is fully aware of all things.

Sura 76, verse 11: Consequently Allah protects them from the evils of the day and rewards them with joy and contentment.

From all these Quranic verses, one can get an idea of what the Holy Quran says about contentment, that is: it is a blessing from Allah that strengthens one's faith in Islam, and brings about peace and joy to the person who has it.

In this stressful world that we live in, it is really a great gift and a blessing. Unfortunately to the masses in the so called Islamic world, it appears that contentment means to be poor and helpless!!

However, Saadi, the great Persian poet and moralist says: Contentment makes a man potent. Avoid the greediness of the world-consuming greedy. This presents a paradox which needs to be explained. The poet says: contentment makes you potent, whereas to a lot of people it means being poor and helpless!!

According to Bertrand Russell, the famous English philosopher and mathematician: Buddhists believe that in order to be happy one should not have any desires. Because if you have a desire, and most people fail to realize their desires, they become unhappy. Therefore in order not to become unhappy, it is better not to have a desire, and spare the effort in achieving it. You can accept this philosophy for what it is worth!!

But others apply this philosophy to contentment, i.e. if you restrict your needs, you become independent of them. And a person, who is independent, i.e. does not depend on anything or any one is kind of potent and self-sufficient.

Another way to explain this paradox is: that God has created us with different capabilities and potentials, probably programmed in the DNA of our cell!!! So that some of us become doctors, engineers, lawyers, architects, entrepreneurs, craftsmen and some laborers. Such a division of labor is necessary, otherwise human social life and activity, as we know it now, cannot function in an organized though sometimes chaotic manner.

With our God-given potentials, we have this capability of moving ourselves in the direction of our choice. According to the physical law of thermodynamics: any physical system, whether or not it can exchange energy and material with its environment, will spontaneously approach a stable condition, i.e. equilibrium. Take the example of water. We cannot hold water in an inclined position. It will start flowing and seek its own level of equilibrium.

In the same manner human beings will move themselves in the direction to attain their equilibrium of needs!!

According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, our most primal need is food. The next level is shelter and clothing to protect us from the ravages of our environment. Once we attain these, we want to have a family to transfer our genes to the next generation. Having attained this, we want to move up the scale to the next level, which is the satisfaction of our egos.

We want to have higher status, greater fame and fortunes. We like our names to be mentioned in newspapers, magazines, books and television. Once we have achieved all these needs we seek to attain the highest level of our needs, which Maslow calls: Self-Actualization, which is:

The need of our True Self, i.e. our SPIRITS. At this level we may want to devote our lives in the service of humanity, and to help others without any ulterior motives, or like prince Gauthama Buddha to renounce all the pomp and splendor of the palace and meditate in the jungles to attain enlightenment or nirvana.

Based on the fairy tale told to us during our childhood by our parents and grand-parents, we dream of becoming a king or a queen or the president of a country. When we realize this is not feasible, we dream of owning our own company or industrial complex.

As we grow older, we realize this goal is also not attainable. So we dream of becoming the president of a company. When we realize it is not easy, we settle in our dream to become the manager of a division or a department in a company. When we find the competition is too great, we lower our expectations to become a supervisor.

Finally, when we find that even this is not attainable, we pray to God to give us a job so that we can earn enough money to take care of our children and our immediate family!!!!!!!

Intermission

As mentioned earlier, Allah has given each of us certain potentials, which we can use and arrive at a certain point of equilibrium in our lives. Some experts have called this point the "comfort zone". For some of us the comfort zone may be an earning of $20,000/year. ; for others may be $30,000/year and yet others $100,000/year. And for someone like Bill Gates there seems to be no limit for income!!!!!!!!!

Recently Ted Turner, the billionaire founder of CNN, while chastising his fellow billionaires, mentioned that we do not need all these billions of dollars!! We should give our excess money to charity. All we need, he said, is only $250,000,000 to live happily and comfortably!!!! That defines Ted Turner's comfort zone!!!

There is nothing wrong with maximizing our true potentials, and earning as much as we can, as long as we do not become greedy or jealous of other people's achievements, and then in order to equate with others, resort to unethical and unlawful means, and hurt others in the process of reaching our goals.

A contented person can reach his or her full potential without being greedy and jealous. The Holy Quran has condemned both greediness and jealousy. And to quote Shakespeare: beware that green- eyed monster of jealousy!!

People with excessive wealth, especially those who have obtained them through unethical means and by hurting others, seem to be haunted by it towards the end of their lives, which prompts them to give it to charity.

It is said that John D. Rockefeller Sr., the founder of the Rockefeller oil empire was plagued by a very rare skin disease towards the end of his life, which bothered him a lot. Eventually a lot of his wealth was given away to charity and the formation of the Rockefeller Foundation!!

In this connection, Robert Louis Stevenson, the famous British author and poet tells us an interesting but allegorical tale:

One day a drunken sailor, who had committed all kinds of sins known to man, and cared tuppence for his future, was walking along a seaside promenade. As he was walking he came across a beautiful mansion. Next to one of the windows by this mansion facing the sea, was sitting an old man, who looked very frail, diseased and unhappy. As the sailor was staring at him, the old man, motioned him to come up. When the sailor approached him, the old man asked him: why he was staring at him? The sailor replied: I am kind of puzzled to see that you have such a beautiful mansion and everything that you need, why do you look so unhappy and sick.

The old man pointed to a green bottle resting on a table next to him, and said: this green bottle is the real cause of my misery, unhappiness and all the painful diseases that I am suffering from. I bought this bottle from someone for 2 cents, i.e. exactly half the price that its previous owner had bought it for.

In the beginning the green bottle will fulfill all your wishes, but once you have attained your wishes, you have to sell it at exactly half the price you bought it for. Otherwise it will torture you with unhappiness and all kinds of painful diseases!!

Nobody is willing to buy the bottle from me because they know what will happen to them if they can't sell it for 2 cents. Since 2 cents does not exist I have to sell this bottle for 1 cent.

The sailor said: I will buy it from you. He took out a $10 bill from his
pocket and gave it to the old man. The old man refused, saying it has to be 1 cent or else the bottle will come back to me. So the sailor who did not care for what might happen to him paid the 1 cent and happily walked away with the green bottle. I will leave to you to figure out the allegories!!

So going back to Sa'di's poem: contentment makes a man potent. Avoid the greediness of the world-consuming greedy!!

We can develop our full potential together with contentment, because contentment does not mean that we have to be static or sedentary. True contentment is a dynamic process that stands fortified by implementing the Quranic code of ethics against the encroachment of greed, jealousy, unlawful, unethical practices, and hurting and trampling upon the rights of our fellow men.

But then Sa'di also says: O' Sa'di! Although you give a lot of advice and make moral proverbs and sermons, it is only through action that you get things done and not by delivering sermons!!!!!!!

To sum up this discourse: let us recall once more Belguy's statement: contentment is a pearl of great price, and whoever procures it at the expense of 10,000 desires makes a wise and a happy purchase.

May Allah bestow upon us health, prosperity and the joys of contentment and peace. And may Allah also strengthen the bonds of friendship, love and brotherhood amongst us and grant us all our wishes and desire for our ultimate good!!!

Was salaam-o 'alaikom...

 

Hamid Zavosh

With Research Assistance from Mr. Amin Zavosh
Los Angeles, CA