The three roots of happiness
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
ِ
In the Name of Allah Most-Compassionate, Most-Merciful
Ghadab (anger), Sha’wah (desire), Ilm (knowledge)
Taken from the book ‘Alchemy of happiness’, is a remarkable understanding of Imam Al-Ghazali’s, which is of considerable benefit to us all, especially if we are able to remember this wisdom in our every day activities.
Ghadab
Imam Al-Ghazali said that there are three sources of felicity, of happiness related to the next life. Which means three things that, of we can perfect in this life, will be our source of happiness in the next, insha’Allah. These are anger, desire and knowledge. Now ordinarily one may not understand this idea without further explantion because, whilst knowledge is self-explanitory, anger and desire are not. The prophet has commanded, and there are several hadith that reiterate the need to not get angry and the need to control ones anger. The course of action is not to supress ones anger but to use it:
- at the right time,
- for the right cause,
- to the right extent, and
- for the right duration.
Furthermore, and more importantly Allah subhanhu wa ta’ala has granted anger as a means of protecting honour, that is ones own honour as well as that of ones family, beloved and community. Thus Islam presents two concepts that could be understood together, anger and honour, as being bound together. Another good aspect of anger is that its use enables a person to defend justice, to be just and hence to be an ambassador for Al-Adl (The Just), which is one of the important attributes of Allah. The kind of anger being referred to here is not an uncontrollable loss of control in which a person is not in control of ones senses and intellect, for this is haraam in Islam. But instead anger is positive when used only for just means, and when its used through ones rationality, and intellect.
Sha’wah
Again, similar to anger one may superficially consider desire to be something bad, and it is, but it is only so when that desire consumes a person, when it removes a person from the remembrance of Allah, and which may also and more fatally lead to the disobedience of Allah. But in the positive context of desire Imam Al-Ghazali states that it is a force, a power that must be used for the service of the individual and not the other way around where the individual is used at the service of the desire. The necessity of desire is that is compels a person to achieve his aims and goals in the world, to strive for his benefit, to travel the earth and all those activities that propel a human being. Without the desire to, for example work, a person would remain at home. Without the desire to eat a person would remain hungry, as happens when a person falls ill. And in this is a sign that desire is very much a blessing from Allah. There are numerour other blessings that we may find in desire, but it also has very strict limits as ordained by Allah, which must not be transgressed.
In summary, both anger and desire are necessary and beneficial, which then allow the third component to become more effective, which cannot be unless one has brought under complete control ones desires and anger. The key adjective in which to think about anger and desire is balance, which are the terms in which Imam Al-Ghazali presents it. That the two must be balanced which allows greater ease in the acquisition of knowledge.
