| EXCERPTS FROM KASHF-AL MAHJUB |
| Ali B. Uthman Al-Jullabi Al Hujwary |
| Trans. Reynold A. Nicholson |
| Poverty is annihilation of all stations. Bishar Hafi has said, �The best of �stations� is a firm resolution to endure poverty continually. The poor man is not he whose hand is empty of provisions, but he whose nature is empty of desires. |
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| Discourse on the Poverty |
| Yahya b. Muad al Razi has said, It is a sign of true poverty that, although one has reached the perfection of sainthood and contemplation and self-annihilation, and still be dreading its decline or departure.
Ruwaym has said, �The �poor man�s� heart is protected from selfish cares, his soul is guarded from contaminations, and that he performs the obligatory duties of religion.� The �poor man� rests not content with anything except God because he has no other object of desire. Junayd has said, �When heart is empty of phenomena he is poor�. |
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| (Pages 261-266) |
| Abdullah Ansari had advised, �Our sorrow is everlasting, that our aspiration never reaches its goal, and that our sum (kulliyyat) never becomes non-existent in this world or the next, because for the fruition of anything homogeneity is necessary, but God has no congener, and for turning away from Him forgetfulness is necessary, but the dervish is not forgetful.
The dead (fani) never become live (baqi) so as to be united with him; the living never become dead, so as to approach His presence. All that his lovers do and suffer is entirely probation (mihnat). God is above every human attribute and relationship. All symbolic expressions begin and end in themselves and does not rise above their own genus. |
| The meaning here is not �the not-being of the essence�, but �the not-being of that which contaminates the essence�; and all human attributes are a source of contamination: when that is removed the result is annihilation of the attributes. (fana-yi safat).
The expressions �not-being� (adam) and �annihilation� ( fana) as they are used by Sufis, denote the disappearance of a blameworthy instrument and disapproved attribute in the course of seeking a praise-worthy attribute; they do not signify the search for non-reality by means of an instrument which exists. |
| Poverty consists in never being independent of Poverty. |
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| Etiquettes of Poverty |
| Poverty is not-being without existence. |
| Dervishhood in all its meanings is a metaphysical poverty, and amidst all its subordinate aspects there is a transcendent principle. The Divine mysteries come and go over the dervish till he is in acquiring stage and everything may be attributed to him, and his ideas attached to himself. When he is free from bounds of acquisition, he is no longer a wayfarer, but he is the way himself. He is the place over which something is passing and not a wayfarer following his own will. |
| Dervishhood is metaphysical poverty |
| Some false pretenders because of their lack of desire for the reality of poverty seemed to deny the attributes of its essence. They revert to perverse behavior and they call by the name of �poverty� and �purity� their failure to seek Truth and Reality. They seem to affirm their own fancies and deny everything else due to self-conceit. |
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| Therefore the seeker has but no choice to journey on their path and to traverse their �stations� and to know their symbolic expressions, in order that he may not be a plebeian (ammi) among the elect. |