Where Does Happiness Come From Part 2

foreign today is the second installment of a series of problems i intend to give on the source of happiness where does happiness come from last week i introduced the topic by discussing some things about ayah number 58 absolutely we're going to work our way backwards and look at some things 57 where allah azza actually describes the components that one needs in their life to get to a place where they're actually genuinely happy bear in mind that the quran gave a different definition for things that we use conventionally so for example success right so we have in life doesn't matter what culture you and i come from even as a matter for most people or religion they come from they have similar ideas of what success means a good career success a good education is success a good financial situation is exactly a success health is success these are things that we associate with success similarly uh we have similar definitions of happiness similar definitions of enjoyment human nature is similar right so it's not just because we belong to the religion of islam and somebody else is a hindu or somebody else is a christian or somebody else is an atheist doesn't mean that their ideas or their emotions towards happiness or success towards sadness towards triumph and difficulty are different in fact allah said we're all created in the same kind of struggle right so we have the same trials that follow on you and me are the same kind of trials that fall in anybody else doesn't matter what their religion is right but what what does the quran do in addition so we have this common human experience but what allah does is he offers us an additional insight additional wisdom that could only come from him about some of these things that we take for granted like for example success you and i have a definition like every other human being of success but allah adds something to that definition that only a believer has so now everybody else can see success the same way and maybe a percent of that is true for us too but there's something else that's been added and redefines it for us same thing with loss same thing with in fact happiness and that's actually one of the things we're trying to accomplish in this attempt at contemplating is number 57 and 58 of s is that allah is in fact talking about happiness because of that they should be filled with joy they should be overly happy they should be overjoyed so allah is talking about happiness but he's talking about it from a point of view that only at the end of the day there's a dimension of it that only a believer can truly understand and experience so what that does then for us is something really interesting there's a there's a kind of happiness that huma other human beings can't even imagine like it doesn't exist for them it only exists for us there are other kinds of happiness they can go to six flags and go on a ride and feel happy we can do that too right they're they're elements of happiness that we have in common with everybody else but there is a dimension of happiness that is unlocked in the quran that if you if you meet these pieces if you if you have these pieces of the puzzle in your life that you will experience a kind of divine happiness that is not accessible to other human beings and that's what we're trying to get to that real true missing component of happiness because at the end of the day it seems easy to say well i know a lot of novel songs they seem happy too they're happy and that's true they can be happy they can be but there's a side of it that they don't even know exists and that's the side that we're trying to unlock okay and in fact this one side of it affects all the other dimensions of happiness too it affects all of them so here's where we want to begin so i said this is towards the end of you know towards really the thick of the surah the beginning of it there are two major debates that are happening that the quran has revealed the prophet is actually engaged in a very intense back and forth with people who don't believe in it and there are two major subjects one whether or not the quran is made up by a human being or is it from allah or not okay so is it is it made up or is it is it is it the word of muhammad sallallahu alaihi or is it actually revelation and why is this such a hard thing to accept because one of the claims of the quran is very difficult for them to accept and that is the claim of judgment that is coming the claim of the afterlife that has come there's a life that's coming after this death this is one of the big reasons for them to think that this these words that are coming are just a fantasy they're just this crazy story there's no reason to believe it and the debate about that why should you believe this is the word of allah and why should you believe that there's an afterlife that's definitely on its way that's the conversation that's been happening in surah yunus up until now so we're talking about number 57 this is what's been happening from the beginning all the way to 56 okay now that's important to know because now we're talking this conversation is happening with those who are aggressive against the quran they already have an opinion towards the quran then it's nonsense to them it doesn't make any sense but it's a lie it's a propaganda to them it's the enemy's word to them so there's an ideological conflict that's being talked about and then allah takes a pause from that conflict and turns to the rest of society so this is really important because you know the loudest people in the world they can get on media and get into debates right and the majority of the people are silently watching they're just silently watching a debate and the majority of the people are not this way or that way they're just watching the show they're just the silent majority right so just because some guy who speaks out against islam or somebody who is debating has millions of views on his video doesn't mean that all the people who watch the video are on his side they're just spectators so what does allah do allah acknowledges that there's a debate going on but the debate is not happening with everybody it's happening with the prophet a handful of believers and a handful of very aggressive but then there's the rest of mecca there's everybody else they're just the silent majority what about them so what allah does now is he takes a pause from that debate and he turns to the entire majority and essentially says you don't have to have a preconceived bias towards what the quran is or isn't you should approach this invitation this word of allah from scratch with no previous preconceived notions and so the ayaats begin humanity people people this is so there's an open invite to everybody else and in those words what's embedded is you and i are supposed to undo the debates we've heard and so what does that mean for us right now in 2021 as we're listening to this what that means is muslims and non-muslims alike we have certain assumptions about what the quran has to say what the quran means for me in my life what its role is and sometimes misinformation about that comes from non-muslims and other times misinformation comes about that from muslims muslims are also often disinformed about what the quran really says or what it's supposed to be what role is it supposed to play in my life now what allah does is believer non-believer all humanity are put in one address and we're basically being told start from scratch start over renew your connection with the quran and here's how you define it for yourselves and if you define it in this way this might have something to do with what i but the real subject is happiness itself joy itself so what does he say he says that a council a powerful council certainly has come to you from your master now this statement we're going to try to unpack it a little bit and and learned some things from this first portion of ayah number 57 today i've given about this ayah before so i'll i'll you know remind you of some things about the word that's being used it comes from the word wealth in arabic and this is actually you know uh so this is any speech or any action any gesture that brings a human being's attention to the consequences of what they're about to do so we're getting more technical now so what if that means in the arabic languages when you tell somebody something or you show somebody something by actions that is making them realize that what i'm about to do is gonna have certain bad consequences so i should stop from what i'm just about to do so you were about to do something stupid you're about to do something that was going to hurt yourself you're about to say something that wasn't going to be good you were going to land yourself in trouble and mother eva the purpose of regular is somebody said a word to you or you saw something you saw someone act a certain way and you realized about yourself man i need to maybe i need to rethink what i was about to do right and that if if you took that from the speech or somebody else's action then you have taken malaria so it's essentially the kind of speech where you're not just having someone do this and don't do this you're trying to help somebody understand if you do this then here are the bad consequences that might come to you or if you do this good thing instead here are the good things that might come your way right so you know often we when we want somebody to do something or not do something we just say do this don't do this like with kids you know do this and the most annoying question kids ask is but why why can't i do it why can't i you know the why question but why is at the heart of being human like you can't do you can't really stop yourself from doing something if you don't understand why should i stop you're really not going to convince yourself to do something until you really understand why should i do this and a lot of what we do in life is hard it's hard work and a lot of things we should stop from like bad food tastes really good right it just tastes really good and so when sometimes i stop eating chocolate why taste so good why then somebody needs more dilla right or they need to see somebody who's in the hospital because they eat the same kind of food for several years so they're like oh that's why okay now i kind of get it right so they're taking more involved from somebody's speech or some direction well that's a little bit about the word but the actual word in arabic is wow these are the words that are used in the arabic text but allah instead uses the word but i will tell you that this form of the word is used this is mean this muslim is called it's done to take a word and make it feel a lot heavier so if this was being translated as the word counsel or advice or a sense of consequences then it would have to be all capital and bold and the font size might have to be a little bit bigger because with the meme in the beginning right so it's very serious great powerful council has come to you and what happens on top of that is this was called a muslin infinitive and the infinitives in the arabic language should typically come with in the beginning is unexpected and what that does for english audiences is it makes it grand so it's grand for several reasons it says it allah is saying if i was trying to translate that in english counsel do you understand counsel advice has come to you from your wrestling like it's not a small word it's not being said in a small way and then appreciate the other side of this the word which means the idea of the verb to come or to arrive is actually a metaphor it's a figure of speech it's not literal because advice doesn't come to you a person comes to you right an advisor comes to you right and it's actually a metaphor for badah to reach like you know how they say the news has reached me the news reached me so well first let's understand the difference between advice has reached me and advice has come to me let's understand the difference between those you know what can reach you the air can reach you a sound can reach you two people are arguing down the street and you're walking about you're walking by and their argument reached your ear which means it wasn't meant for you but it still reached you anyway you understand news can spread the intention wasn't that the news was meant for you but it reached you anyway you overheard so reaching can happen by accident but when something comes to you when something comes to you you know what that implies it was directly meant for you it was specific for you so not only is this council remarkable it's grand it's a huge deal but it specifically came for you it came to all of you if i just came home i think the bait i came home but if i came from a long distance and it was a really difficult journey then jeep would wait in classical arabic it's actually uh it involves hard work it's not an easy thing what allah is indicating there is not only is this very powerful advice not only is this specific to me but it came from a long distance it came from the heavens all the way to you specifically a special package for you you know how people get excited when they see an amazon package at their door then they say oh it's for dad like they want to see their name like ah did mom come did mine come like a package just for you you know and then the the more you had to wait for something because it came from a longer distance is being shipped from china or somewhere and it came with lots of stickers now you're more excited because it came from a longer distance what allah has done for humanity here is people all of you listen up some a really beautiful big powerful bit of advice grand advice has come all the way just for you good job good morning okay fine that's you know we got this far but then there's the other component to it which is council itself i told you the technical definition is when you make somebody aware of the consequences of what they can do right that's not always a comfortable thing to hear like if your friend told you bro come on stop doing that then you don't want to be your friend anymore like uh excuse me i thought we were friends why are you talking to me like this why are you always correcting me why are you pointing that out and if family tries to correct you can you stop you starting again it's not jumar you don't have to give me a football right like you can get annoying because somebody's giving you counsel we don't like getting counsel we don't like because when somebody's giving you counsel what's implicit inside it what's the key in the implicit the idea is i'm heading in the wrong direction i'm about to do something wrong or i'm engaged in something wrong i'm saying something wrong right my behavior has something wrong with it and somebody's pointing that out now our defense mechanism is when somebody points out that we're doing something wrong or we could be doing something better then they are attacking us and you know self-respect ego pride you name it whatever you want to who are you to join me have you seen yourself you want to give me more let me give you no you can flip it around because you're deflected or you can deflect not only back to the person who's trying to give you advice you can deflect to somebody else you seriously are going to tell me what to do don't you know there are mass murderers out there that do a lot worse you can't advise them i'm the only one left in the universe you left headlines right so we're we're first we're allergic to being advised it doesn't feel good it doesn't it feels like being attacked it feels like being attacked what's interesting about the word is that the word in it contains what reaches into the heart what so it's an advice it's advice about something that needs to get corrected something that could be better but it's said in a way that instead of making you make your guard go up and become you know uh become offended it comes in a way that actually hits your heart now how can that happen how could that possibly happen the only way that can happen because naturally we are allergic to advice is the last portion of this description lawrence has a actually wants to see you mature wants to see you receive more and more gifts so whenever he gives you some counsel it's actually for your own benefit this is a relationship of very serious trust when you're able to take advice and not be offended by let me give you a scenario there are athletes that are training for you know whatever sport right and they have coaches athletes have coaches so a coach can be pretty hard on the athlete you can say hey your posture is no good or you're doing this right they can be pretty tough on them and the athlete if they if they realize that this is a world-class coach and i'm very lucky to get coached by this trainer then even when they're giving the toughest advice and being the most critical they are even more grateful that i'm lucky enough to be corrected and be counseled by this trainer because he wants me to win the olympics he wants me to surpass all expectations he will take me further than i can take myself so a real genuine athlete that wants to excel is actually going to surrender his ego to his coach or her coach and the coach can discipline them make them do extra laps make them quit certain kinds of food make them do whatever kind of exercise make them repeat things and you know what even when they're annoyed they will do it because they know this they see my success as their own success they're invested in me and so i'm not offended by the advice that they're given right why does that happen because the athlete handed certain level of authority to the coach that's the only scenario in which that can happen now what happens in school in school a lot of you guys especially in the american public school system or even in the university system you have professors you have teachers that so many students have genuinely no respect for them none at all so when that teacher gives you advice or whatever like it's not like he cares about me or my success he's just doing his job and you have this perception that this teacher is not invested in me so why should their advice matter to me the only time you take somebody's advice seriously even especially critical advice seriously is when you see how much they're pouring into you how much they're investing into you and that's the only time you can take their advice to heart otherwise it's just going to bounce right off and there's just annoying words right and so what allah has done here is given us an invitation by even the use of the word first realize what what has allah been doing for me my entire life what has he been doing for me how has he been taken care of how has he kept me healthy when i know there are so many sicknesses in the world how has he provided for me when there's so much bankruptcy in poverty in the world you know how how many opportunities has he given me that's people smarter than me never even imagined those kinds of opportunity that he gave to me so he's been taking care of me and now he's giving me advice and somehow my immaturity makes me think that his advice is annoying or his advice is a burden or his advice is come on man let me live no his advice is the best possible thing for you're lucky enough to get his advice you're lucky enough to get his counsel so before i i i conclude this football this question is supposed to be about happiness if you remember that's the conversation we're leading to this it seems like we're a completely different topic how are we going to end up in happiness one of the missing components of happiness in a person's life that modern psychology might not be able to tell you is that you you need someone in your life that is invested in you and can give you tough advice real advice even advice that doesn't feel good when you hear it even if advice that exposes my flaws for what they are they expose them for what they are and you can recognize that even when that criticism is coming it's coming from a place of love now compare this to human beings for a moment okay the the people that love us the most in the world for example an easy example of that is our mothers our fathers their parents but parents at the end of the day are also human beings you know what can happen to parents parents can get in the habit of only criticizing they find everything wrong with you you sit the wrong way you stand up the wrong way you smile the wrong way you dress the wrong way you're you know everything's wrong about you everything's just there's some constant criticism like what happens to a child a daughter a son that's constantly being criticized criticized criticized they become numb right it's like mom doesn't even see anything good in me it's like that all he sees is i'm a walking problem i'm just a walking disappointment that's all i am right once in maybe three eighths he might tell me he's proud of me or once in 30 years and i might hear those words but otherwise i i hear nothing good for me i only hear criticism from it all he's got is advice about what i should be doing what i should be doing what i should do how i could have done this better than that better regret would you regret negative negative negative right but you know what if someone's always giving you advice then the relationship becomes blurred because there's no encouragement there's no affirmation allah is not this way when allah is giving counsel he's encouraging he's filling you with hope he's also scaring you of consequences he's also rewarding you it's it's not a one-way relationship it's not a one kind of relationship human beings can become like that sometimes but allah doesn't become like that and finally what i want to include in this is a disclaimer that was going to be a problem by itself but i want to include it here inshallah your thoughts are are are deeper about the subject as we try to get towards the place where we can genuinely live a happy life so what one component of a happy life is what if we don't have genuine counsel coming our way and we think that we don't need any advice i don't need anybody's help well the fact that no ego was given to all of us you know what that means all of us are in need of right so i want to give you advice and somebody says i don't need advice allah has already said in this ayah every one of you needs advice and no nobody's free nobody's doing okay everybody needs it you and i are all in need of it but the scary thing here is this disclaimer that i want to tell you and that disclaimer is that of self-righteousness so let me just explain what i mean by that really quickly and we'll conclude today's quote what happens is i'll give you a scenario you have a fight among friends right and now your friends are talking trash about you online right and you're like oh man these people i thought they were my friends and look at how evil they are i'm gonna seek some counsel from allah because allah has given that are trashing you right because now you and you're like to yourself you told yourself i just saw counsel from the quran because allah gave me comfort by telling me they plan and allow plans and allah is the best planet that's adorable but there's something very deeply wrong about that now let me explain why that's not clear to you in this scenario what did you do you assumed that the grand word of allah in the conflict that you your penny little facebook conflict that you have with your friends the great word of allah is on team you [Music] right it's there to for you to get back at them and allah you're not in the service of the word of allah but allah is there allah is there to make you feel better about the position you're in you're already without any faults you're already right and they're the ones that are wrong and now you can cite the word of allah to justify yourself even more this is not you humbling yourself to the word of your master this is you humbling the words of your master to you this is a serious problem so when people take when you take ayat of the quran or the council allah is given and instead of actually taking the council you use them as a weapon you recognize the word of allah against somebody else you recognize it against someone else this is a mockery of the word of allah this is not how counsel was taken and the ayah that we're reading actually protects us from falling into that trap because allah says because when you call him you are no longer in a position of using his words the way you want for your belief that makes you feel better to project yourself onto the word of allah but actually you and i come to it with an understanding that we are slaves faulty slaves and he has given us counsel from a position of supremacy from a position so we don't become self-righteous and say this ayah this is about this is about my friends because then think about that for a moment just complete that for a moment this was about uh trying to spread the word of allah on earth spreading the quran and in the meantime the quraish are realizing that the prophet's word is spreading quickly the quran is spreading quickly it's becoming a big problem in mecca and they're having late night meetings on how to take care of this problem should we get him killed should we pay somebody to create you know new scandals against him should we create the allegation that he's a poet or he's stealing this material from somewhere else how should we undo this spreading of the mecca and they're having late night discussions about this they're doing good and the prophet saws on the other side is not having counter meetings on how to undo their propaganda he's standing in darjeev he's standing there reciting quran and so on the one hand is the slave of allah turned into allah and we're sharing his word and on the other are people that have converged to destroy the word of allah spreading in the world and allah looks at that scenario and says yes they're doing that don't worry about that i'll take care of that i'll take care of that for you that noble scene where the slave of allah is there to serve allah's word and those who conspire against that person that messenger allah will deal with them directly you're taking that ayah to use it for the beef you got between your friends or your cousins you see how petty you you turn that something something so grand and you turn it into something so funny the quran applies for everyone bro it's not just about the time of the prophet so i have to apply the universe that's not how you apply it there's a the missing ingredient here is maybe you know there's a lack of humility and there's a self-righteousness that somehow the quran is always on your side which means you can't be wrong everybody else is wrong don't consider yourselves pure he knows better who has that one he knows better who has stuff so yes we i have to encourage myself i have to encourage as we make our journey towards finding real happiness in this life allah grant us real far in this life and in the next and allah the guidance and the light and the wisdom of the quran to all of our hearts in the hearts of our families [Music] foreign foreign

Channel: Bayyinah Institute

Views: 141,400

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Id: SbeeXVj32aM

Length: 31min 51sec (1911 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 15 2021