There was once an arranged marriage between a student at a madrassa, a religious school, who was a brilliant student, and the daughter of the director of the school. This was a very prominent school, and the director of the school was a very prominent man, he was of a very high genealogy and his lineage was the best in the entire area. And it was the custom in this town to announce the genealogy of the people who are getting married prior to the wedding. So at the engagement they announced the genealogy of the daughter and she was the daughter of the head of the madrassa and he was the son of the so and so and so and so and so and so and so and so and so and so. All incredibly important people.
Then it came time for the boy to announce his genealogy and he said, “I am an orphan, and I have never met my mother and father, my parents died when I was very young. But the man who raised me told me that my father was a tailor and he told this man to give me one piece of advice and my father gave me the following advice before he passed, and that was, try to fix what needs to be mended and don’t destroy what doesn’t need to be mended.
This is very simple advice and when the head of the madrassa heard this, it stunned him, because this was at the root of all understanding and he said, “I approve the marriage.”
The point being that the truth, reality, the path, is not complicated, it is simple. It just takes you being in an appropriate place in order to accomplish it. If you can understand a simple rule like leave things alone that are okay, and try to help situations that need help, you will go very far on this path. We need to understand the simplicity of our relationship with Allah. We need to understand the simplicity of reality and our connection to it. We don’t need to constantly be making things complex and impossible.
Allah has told us that he has given us a straight path, a middle way, without the need for us to be overly taxed, and to go to places beyond our capabilities. What we need to do is be able to find the peace and contentment within ourselves to be able to do that which is correct and appropriate. To be able to do what is correct and appropriate means to keep ourselves within certain bounds. We have to protect ourselves from actions that are inappropriate. This protection is what keeps us from going astray. Now, what is it that we have to protect ourselves from? It is amazing how simple these things are. If we can stay away from becoming involved unnecessarily in the lives of others, from staying away from judging the people who come into our purview, who we associate ourselves with, if we can stay clean of the need to push the things around us into certain directions, we can go extremely far on the spiritual path. Why? Because we don’t soil ourselves.
The Witness Within