Trait #6: Stinginess

The speaker discusses the importance of discipleship and the study of ruinous traits such as anger, love of the world, malice, and stinginess. He emphasizes the need to refine the soul and connect with Allah through reflection, listening to the teachings, and asking questions. The speaker encourages sharing the teachings with like-minded individuals and practicing generosity as a way to purify the heart and be closer to Allah. He also highlights the generosity and character of Prophet Muhammad as a role model. Overall, the message urges listeners to overcome ego, listen to advice, and strive for spiritual growth. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alamin Abdullah Salatu wa Atamu Taslim Ala Sayyidina Mawlana Muhammadin Wa Ala Alihi Wa Ashabihi Ajmain Beloved Muridin, Muhibbin Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuhu Alhamdulillah Thumma Alhamdulillah Thumma Alhamdulillah Our gratitude to Allah For having able us to be here On this very blessed Thursday evening In a state of good health and Iman May Allah increase our Iman And our Taqwa Until our very last days, Amin So in the study of The ruinous traits that we've been Talking about these past few weeks We've started with The importance of discipleship Talking about the ego And how the wrestler Went to look For a sheikh And the sheikh asked him to meet his three murids Indirectly And what happened after that You can refer back to the videos And then after that is the The first ruinous trait Is actually anger Before that we spoke about Hadith And how our Ibadah Is being brought up To meet Allah SWT And how some of these Ibadah Have been thrown back to us Because of our own evilness And our own Evilness in the heart Then we spoke about anger Then we spoke about love of the world Then we spoke about Hassan And then last week we spoke about Malice So this Four to about seven weeks We've been talking about this My sincere hope For all of you Is to re-listen those videos again Because the reason being You know come here We've got our Zikir time Alhamdulillah We've got the Ibadah Aspect done But the next most important aspect Is actually the working in refining The soul So we you know the Tariqah MashaAllah This is not my Tariqah Although people think he put his name etc It's not The reason why I'm putting my name Putting the videos is so that we are Open about what we do There's no other reason of Why I put my name And I put accountability That's it This Tariqah has been brought by Khwaja Habibullah In hand given to Khwaja Wajahullah Shah Khwaja Anwarullah Shah And also to my grandfather Khwaja Kaleemullah Shah With the goal and Khwaja Habibullah Shah Explicitly says this Ya'ni To be Drowned in the presence of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala That's a very lofty goal It's very simple It's very lofty Why? Because we're very connected to our senses We're very connected to our dunya We're very connected to time and space So what I've been going through this past few weeks Is a reminder to myself Firstly and to all of you Ya'ni these are the things that are Trapping us In time and space So one hand when we make du'a etc Our du'as are accepted That is from the mercy of Allah Our du'as are accepted Because of Allah's rahmah If we were to look at our adab in making du'a I think from the first one already we feel Ya'ni to have yaqin in Allah The first adab In etiquette in making du'a Is that you must be certain that Allah accepts the du'a Allah hears you You see How do you achieve to the first adab? By taking away the Love of the world By taking away anger By taking away malice By taking away all of these other Ruinous things that we've been talking about So why Are we not getting what we want in dunya? It is because Probably because we're We're wanting it out of our ego We're wanting it out of our nafsu We're wanting it out of our Love of the world or dunya We're wanting it out of the whispers of Shaitan And that's why Allah has not given it to us Maybe But if we want it Because we want it to be as a way of being Servanthood of Allah Then Allah will make it easy for us You see So there's this sohbah And it's not for us to relax after zikr Allah It's actually We stop all classes Because I feel classes are technical Or difficult to understand spirituality So sohbah is More organic in that sense It's easier Just listen and absorb and contemplate And that's the reason why Mondays inshallah After a certain period there'll be no more class Mondays will be questions and answers For the sohbahs that I've given throughout the week The sohbahs on Thursday, the sohbahs on Friday And the sohbahs on Sunday So your job as mureedeens Is to listen to the sohbah and Ask those questions on Monday And this is a way That you can actually reflect back You get what I'm trying to say So there's now no book No reason for you to let me know Oh this book is difficult Or the lessons are boring The lessons will always be boring because that's the ego So what we need to do Is to reflect back, listen back And from now on If you come to me with any of your problems You get what I'm trying to say If I have explained this Then I will direct you back to the video Why? Because this is the mujahadah The struggle If we are not listening To advice and sohbah Right? Then nothing is going to help us In this world Like I've said before Everything has a cure Except for one, stubbornness Nobody can cure stubbornness Stubbornness falls under the ego Then only you Can take that hijab away from yourself You get what I'm trying to say You must tell yourself I have to stop being stubborn I have to stop to do things According to my ego Listen to nasiha And I'll be safe Simple, that's what I had to learn The long road Everybody has a certain stubbornness As long as it has not destroyed you Alhamdulillah Allah loves you If your stubbornness Has destroyed you, you won't be here So this is very important All that you need Go back to the sohbah and listen to them Go back You have the whole week and the sohbah are not long 15 minutes, 20 minutes Skip the zikr You don't have to listen to the zikr Share the sohbah to your family And friends, talk about it You know those who are like-minded Don't go and talk about it to people who don't want to listen Then you're finding fault Like your own fellow murids Instead of sharing where is the sale What murshid like to do and eat They're all not important What's more important is Talk about the sohbah last week I don't see that being discussed That means the sohbah Two meanings That means the sohbah is not important Or you have mastered it And it's kindergarten level Or something astronaut level You know when I was a teenage There was a local band called Plain Sunset And they made this song called I wanna be an astronaut I wanna be an astronaut Itu aja, repeat itu aja Doesn't make any sense right People like Frivolous things That doesn't make sense But when you tell them things That goes back to the ego It's very difficult That's where the nafs retaliate So if you find it difficult To listen back to the sohbah Then know that It is the nafs retaliating So we should start to discuss the sohbah It doesn't have to be a complex The sohbahs nowadays are not complex It's not out of the world Things which are Found in the heart And today We are going to talk about Bakhil Stinginess There is a hadith of the Holy Prophet He says The ones who are The one whose hands The one who is open handed Is close to Allah That means they are very close Raqib, very close to Allah To mankind and to paradise So if your hands are Constantly open You are giving There are many levels of giving Wealth, giving, time Even a smile is a sadaqah Right? So it's all You are close to Allah And remote from the hellfire So this is the easiest route To jannah The easiest way to purify the heart Ya'ni being what? The opposite of bakhil Generous, kareem The opposite of bakhil is Kareem And the hadith continues, it says Sorry I can't even read It's remote from The one who is Remote from God Basically the one who is remote from God From mankind The miserly one The one who is remote from God Remote from mankind and remote from paradise And close to Hellfire A generous Ignorant Is more beloved to Allah Than a stingy worshipper Someone who is Ignorant but generous Is more beloved to Allah Than someone who is a proper abid But is bakhil You see The dangers of Being like this So what is bakhil? Bakhil is one who Is easily run by Hassan Because your stinginess Is that you don't want to see people better than you And Nabi Has been described And within you There is esteem of character Which means Nabi is most Generous with his character It's not just he is generous But his whole character Is generous If he is patient he is generous In his patience as well If he is generous He is double generous in his generosity If he is What else He is upright He is generous in his uprightness Which means there is no stinginess I can be patient with this person Maybe I am not patient with this person He is patient with all And that's why It's like There is no comparison In the character of Sayyidina Muhammad And that's why his deen The deen that the Prophet Brought Even removing the thorn On the path of a Muslim Is generosity It's a form of sadaqah It's part of your faith If removing one thorn To stop people from being Hurt Can you imagine If you have the ability but you did not do that That's bakhil So most of the time It's not just with our Our money But it is What we call initiative We don't really relate Miserliness With being Not initiative We don't relate being generous With having initiative So example simple things If you see the dishes not done at home Right And then you're not doing it Sometimes ok we understand people are tired And all that kind of thing but If you're constantly not doing it What do you think that is Not having Initiative because someone else is going to do it Which means you're not You're not generous You see the generosity of the Prophet Is such there was a man that came to him Ya Rasulullah I'm paraphrasing It's very heavy, difficult for me There's a lot of injunctions Can I do this, I cannot do that Prescribe for me something which is easy And the Prophet s.a.w. says Do as much Zikir as you can until your lips Are moist with it You see that kind of Guidance and ruling Can only come from someone who's generous He's not making the rules He did not flatten the rule He just widened The rule to include The weaker people That's initiative Flattening the rule is Don't do anything like that, it's ok you just rest And Nabi s.a.w. opened up more doors Of Ibadah for him Until he's able to actually achieve more And then we know about the famous hadith Of the Prophet s.a.w. When is the end of times And Nabi s.a.w. asked what have you prepared for it Not much prayer or fasting But I love my Prophet s.a.w. And Nabi s.a.w. said you'll be with whom you love He did not just make it Easier, no he actually Widened it, it's two different things Generous people are generous They widen the entry The doors are even more open for all to come But people who are miserly because they are Actioning on hasad We spoke about hasad right, go back to that video They're not able to give Because there's the ego So it's not just how much you donate It's not just how much you volunteer It's how you donate And how you volunteer And that reflects the initiative that one has So if removing the thorn Is saving someone Imagine if you're doing You're creating more initiative To save people Because there are many thorns that are unseen In this world That's what the Prophet did s.a.w. He came and he warned us About Shira, Naveera He came and he told us Look, there is this going to happen This is going to happen That's out of his generosity because he can choose not to It doesn't matter When they meet the thing they can handle it How are we going to handle it? And those who understand the importance of this Are actually teachers and parents Because teachers will always understand If I don't do this for this generation The next batch of students that comes they will face this problem So there's a constant refinement Of teaching Of making it easier, making it simpler But not Diluting the message Not diluting the importance Of the knowledge They're making it wider because more people With different spectrums of understanding And ability are going to come in How are they then going to Bring everybody towards the same goal And Nabi s.a.w. Reach out to 124,000 people Or more Can you imagine then How generous he was And still is And how much People who are bakhil Because after seeing him in his generosity They became Muslims, they said there's no fear There's a man that came And the Prophet s.a.w. said Take all these hundreds of camel and give it to your Tribe The man went back to his tribe and said Might as well we all become Muslims Because you'll never fear with the generosity of the Prophet s.a.w. And that is the reason why Allah then shows his Generosity, his kareem Jalla jalaluhu and Nabi s.a.w. In salawat For everyone Salawat you do on the Prophet s.a.w. Allah himself Is going to be Generous upon you Can you imagine that And then yet the Prophet s.a.w. Is mentioned in the hadith The bakhil are those Who hear my name but do not make salawat Which means Those who when they hear my name Nabi s.a.w. They do not want to run after The generosity of Allah So they are bakhil, they are competing with Allah Because no one loves Nabi s.a.w. more than Allah s.w.t Allah loves the Prophet the most Yet Allah has been the most generous By allowing us to be his Ummah The Ummah of Nabi s.a.w. So those who are the Ummah of the Prophet s.a.w. Are supposed to be the most generous In their thoughts In their actions In their speech In everything that they do Why? Because they get This from Allah They follow the Prophet s.a.w. Allah is generous on them But they love the Prophet s.a.w. So they are getting from Infinite treasuries Oceans and Oceans of treasuries that Allah says Even if you take all the Branches of the tree As pens and all of the ink In the ocean as All the water in the ocean as ink It will not be enough to praise me If that is what he has Can you imagine then how much He Allah s.w.t To praise Prophet s.a.w. So we too want to praise the Prophet s.a.w. Cannot, it is never going to be enough Because you cannot match The generosity of Allah Yet what is holding us back From being generous None other than the ego So it all comes back to fall The ego Shaytan Dunya, Nafsu So when we have the ego We think we are generous But actually we are pompous To different things because you do things To show off But when you are generous The right hand does, the left hand doesn't know People don't need to know It has to come to a point of time For the Sufiya That they do Amal It doesn't make a difference People know it, people don't, it doesn't make a difference Because that is time and space It doesn't make a difference If people chide you Or people praise you Because that is time and space What matters is what? Allah The Rida of Allah s.w.t If you have that It doesn't matter Because you know You have Allah And you have a Nabi S.a.w. With this strength And if you are constantly Realigning yourself to this Then you are actually Saving yourself, your generosity Would save you But your Bakhil, your miserliness Is actually putting you in Hot soup We think we have an option But actually we don't To be Generous, actually we don't Because Our miserliness will just cut us off From From the generosity That flows from Allah s.w.t Through our Nabi s.a.w. Inna a'tayna kal-kawthar fa-salli li-rabbika Wan har-inna sh-shani'aka huwa Abathar, we are cut off We are cut off from the Kawthar The love of our Nabi s.a.w. And for the Sufi, the one who is aspiring To be close to Allah This is the one thing that is most important So if you have to be generous Be generous in the name of The Prophet s.a.w. Not even your name Be generous in the way of The Awliya Allah s.w.t Be generous in the name of your parents Your elders What do I mean by in the name Your good deeds etc You take it as a Hadiah for them Then we will ask, what about me? I don't have Pahala like that Please, don't limit Allah's Pahala Allah says Oh You given this person reward You want to compete with my Generosity Ok, I give you more Because, you know The Kibriya is the Rida of Allah s.w.t It's not ours So he is the one that is Practicing that, and when he does that It's all just and majestic But when we are Kibir We are all dirty and dark Gloomy Not illuminated That Darkness that stems From Shaytan You know, actually Shaytan has not much power But he is very generous In tricking us So when you When you do Zikr He always comes back He will do Zikr He will make it difficult for you Essentially always brings Right, it always brings But he makes it look Makes it look real That he has power, etc Actually he has Nothing, he is just using illusion The one that really has the power is Allah, that's why when you say In Tafsir Ruhul Bayan, it is mentioned That Shaytan will be thrown 600 years away from you In terms of travel Shaytan will be thrown away 600 years worth of travel That's one Others will also come after that But Allah is very generous Each time I say one You can go 600 years 600 years, very far Right So the more we are Connected to Allah The more we experience His generosity Then you are receiving His Tajalli Because you are generous with His Prophet S.A.W You are generous Not for yourself, you are generous for the sake of My Nabi, for the sake of My Deen, for the sake of My Awliya Allah S.A.W Look how I will be generous to you That's why people Rush to serve the Awliya They rush To be serving the Prophet S.A.W because they know Right, the Nazar, the sight of Allah Is upon them Yes, this is a form of Tawassul, my friend Being generous And overcoming Bakhil, is a form of Tawassul, of earning the Nazar of Allah You know there is one verse in the Quran When people die I think it is Surah Munafikun People die They want to be resurrected, right And then the verse goes right Not that they can pray But so that they can be Making Sadaqah To be resurrected, not to do more Ibadah But to do more what? Later I will try to find the ayat to pass it to you You see how powerful The The generosity is Sadaqah here in terms of your energy Your Initiativeness, people always think Either Sadaqah I put in the money Or I volunteer Then you ask for a letter Because you need it for school you see Get what I am trying to say But what about initiative Of oh if I come I help to do the It will help how many people At home If they get to do Zikir You are getting the rewards of all of these people doing Zikir You get what I am trying to say I am just giving a no brainer Example, but there are other things That you can think about Being generous in your relationship Is not just providing For a home and shelter But being there Having initiative To help your People in relationship Whatever it is That relationship is different right It is no longer what I want It is how can I be here for you And then the normal question will come back What if I go through burnout? I don't know You have to ask Prophet, did he go through burnout? Oh he is Prophet Not me, I am not Prophet Then there is a question From someone who is not connected If you are experiencing burnout What do you do? They connect lah No one ask the modern whether they are burned out or not The internet world right, they supply the internet All these running under the ocean You know that there are cables Under the ocean that brings your internet etc Now one question is about that They keep giving right Why? Because it is illusions Shaitan Awliya Allah Saliheen And Nabi S.A.W How many thousands of Hadith In his 23 years of life And he is still giving Awliya Allah Saliheen They are still, all of Aspects of their life, their sleep, their eat Their meeting of people Everything becomes a teaching They are giving Some of people always ask when can we Start ready to teach When you are ready to what? Connect and not afraid of being Burned out The burnout comes because of the ego Because you think you are the one giving People need rest That I agree So you need to know when to rest You need to reconnect in your rest Like I was saying It is not rest but it is repose It is two different words Quran uses the word repose You need to, you know You go back home, even your rest is an Ibadah Because you are connecting back You are repairing yourself So the Awliya Allah Saliheen they are constantly doing that Even in their repairing Of their self, their breath They take care, their sight they take care Their food they take care etc So that they can be ready to give back to people Simple, so the best way for us Is to serve To serve the Deen of Allah Allah doesn't need us The Deen, so we need to give back To the religion The Prophet His messages needs to go out The Silsila Insha'Allah So this is the way we can Really look at generosity And really look at Bakhil Am I lacking that initiative And if I am How can I increase it Number one and the easiest way Is start by Having generosity with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam And you will see your life change Whatever that was That was once constricted Becomes easier bit by bit Look at yourself You have been with me for a few years Every Mawlid Every Mawlid I see each and every one of you Becoming better Why? Because you were Generous with the Prophet for 12 nights Allah repay you back 12 months Even more That's why Mawlid is very important For us, we want to show that We try to be generous but actually we are saving ourselves Our generosity is Our salvation It's simple Whatever you can be generous with Your words, your sight Your nether, the way you look at people The way you smile The way you talk, the way you greet people etc These are ways that your nether, your words Right If we are generous with each and every one of them Allah will open up Hujnul Dhawn, having good thoughts But that doesn't mean everything was a good thought You get what I am trying to say Sometimes there needs to be some things Okay, we move away There is a boundary Then you ask Allah to help you Allah help me Be generous with you defending me And Allah will be generous Because it's Help me, protect me Save me Like I say One shaitan goes 600 years In terms of distance Imagine if you are generous With your worship to Allah Allah will protect you If you are generous with your Prophet You earn the love of the Prophet You are generous with the Awliya Allah Salihin You earn their duas and their protection Simple formula my friend The easiest formula So this is This week is Bakhil So when you look at donation box Don't think oh I must donate So that I am not Bakhil, no There is one, look at laundry Look at What do you call that Dishes Look at the floor, does it need wiping Look at the toilet, does it need washing You know Look at the ceiling, does it need sweeping You get what I am trying to say Everybody can complain, I come back from work, I am tired True, true, very true Then when you are tired And you are generous That is when Allah will repay you back She went to the Prophet To complain about her hands That were having blisters, her blessed hands Right, she said Ya Rasulullah it would be good if we have a helper Because we are doing all this, we are needing all of this food Not only for us but for the people And the Prophet came back and said I can give you better Than having a helper Subhanallah 33 times Alhamdulillah 33 times Allahu Akbar 33 times Which means when you are generous in your zikr to Allah You receive that energy But why I do zikr I am very tired Because you are doing it with the ego Shaytan wants to trick you and say Now you do zikr you are very tired already Never mind you have work tomorrow Don't worry I will give you food All these are good But you are generous with Allah Thursday evening only a few hours Or I need to go back and do this I need to do that Ya correct, 2 hours If you come for 3 days Thursday, Friday, Sunday 6 hours in a week Out of all of our busy schedules Allah repay you You are generous with your time with me In this day and age where time moves A month is like a week A week is like a day We just had our symposium Felt like we just had the last one A month ago No space No time That's why this symposium was really important To talk about the dimension of space And time Because if not we will always be tricked by it And the same thing that makes us Bakhil, it makes us Stingy, because we are looking at Money, limited We are looking at our energy Based on space and time We are looking at money based on space and time We are looking at our resources based on Space and time, but when you look at it From Allah's Generosity You should not Then that's where the yakin comes in Say the Fatima didn't get the helper She got the zikr Right So it's something for us to think about Tariqah is the way of yakin Not the way of dalil only It is the way of yakin So now we have to reconfigure Ourselves And reconfigure generosity And be skillful with it Be skillful with it Be skillful with being generous At every point You know how generous Allah is The nose right, what does it do Smell Breathe as well right Two things right, smell and breathe Do you know that scent Is the one that is most connected to your memory Why do you respond to fragrance Do you know that Because your ruh understands And remembers The essence of jannah I'm not talking about those cheap Modern perfumes I'm talking about perfumes of the ancient Myrrh You know frankincense, jasmine Those kind of perfume It reminds you There's an attraction to natural scents Rose And it triggers a certain memory Not impulse For those who know It brings you back to Jannah Look at how Generous Allah is, even in this Dimension of space and time Allah makes you remember Your life in jannah Through fragrance So your nose is not just for you To smell and breathe But it is for your ruh To connect back to jannah And when we use this nose for the wrong reasons To smell things which are haram To smoke Right, to do You smell the cigarettes etc It kills because those are smells of jahannam That's why you fall ill Your ruh will be damaged You get what I'm trying to say So when you want to arise to jannah Your nose is being generous by reminding you Look, this is what jannah smells like So sit down, go back And think about what are the scents That you should have at home To bring you back to jannah When he left the laboratory Sayyidatina Aisha said Ya Rasulullah, why is it that you smell so beautiful Ya Aisha, don't you know Ya Aisha, don't you know And Prophet doesn't give out anything He says The insights of Prophets are made from jannah The insights of the Prophets are made from jannah So his zahir and batin is jannah Even if a place is dirty If he were to see it, it becomes jannah That's the generosity of the Prophet How can we be generous to him Our generosity to him Saves us I hope this sohbah will open More depth to the inner self That will bring us closer to Allah To open more doors of shariah Of tariqah, of haqiqah, of ma'rifah And bring us closer to our maqsud The rida of Allah And the love of Allah As a way for salvation For us in this dunya And in akhirah And may we be those who are generous And even if we have nothing People feel this generosity In sha Allah And Allah will constantly increase this generosity Within us in sha Allah To bring us closer to our Nabi Sallallahu alayhi wa alihi wa sahbih Alhamdulillah