Accordingly, it behoves you not to seem to be anything except what you really are. It is inward glow that makes the Sufi, not the religious habit.
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Sufi
Ali Hujwiri (Data Ganj Bakhsh)
Sufic. 1009 – c. 1072Hujwir, Ghazni (present-day Afghanistan)220 quotes
Ali ibn Uthman al-Hujwiri, known as Data Ganj Bakhsh ('Bestower of Spiritual Treasures'), was an 11th-century Persian Sufi mystic and the author of Kashf al-Mahjub, the oldest surviving Sufi treatise written in Persian. He is venerated as the patron saint of Lahore, where his shrine remains one of the most visited spiritual sites in South Asia.
Born in Hujwir, a village near Ghazni in present-day Afghanistan, Ali ibn Uthman al-Hujwiri trained under several great Sufi masters and travelled widely across the Islamic world before settling in Lahore, where he spent the latter part of his life and died. His Kashf al-Mahjub ('Unveiling of the Veiled') is a comprehensive manual of Sufi doctrine, presenting the lives of major Sufi masters, the stations and states of the spiritual path, and key metaphysical concepts, making it an invaluable primary source for the history of Islamic mysticism. The work systematically surveys the major Sufi schools of his day, covering topics such as poverty, love, gnosis, and the nature of the soul's relationship to God. Al-Hujwiri's shrine (dargah) in Lahore, known as Data Darbar, attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims annually, particularly on his annual urs (death anniversary). He holds the revered title Data Ganj Bakhsh among devotees who regard him as a powerful intercessor and a symbol of universal love.
Wisdom
He can serve God Almighty only when he cuts off all his selfish interests relating either to this world or to the next, and worships God absolutely for His sake alone, inasmuch as whoever worships God for anything's sake worships himself and not God.
There are two ways: one of knowledge and one of action. Action without knowledge, although it may be good, is ignorant and imperfect, but knowledge, even if it be unaccompanied by action, is glorious and noble.
Whoever is ignorant of himself is yet more ignorant of other things; and inasmuch as a man is bound to know God, he must first know himself, in order that by rightly perceiving his own temporality he may recognize the eternity of God.
The human soul is habituated to things, and fond of custom, and when anything has become habitual to the soul it soon grows natural, and when it has grown natural it becomes a veil.
Prayer requires purification of the body, and gnosis requires purification of the heart. As, in the former case, the water must be clean, so in the latter case unification must be pure and belief undefiled.
He who would serve God must purify himself outwardly with water, and he who would come nigh unto God must purify himself inwardly with repentance.
If the whole world wished to attract love, they could not; and if they made the utmost efforts to repel it, they could not. Love is a Divine gift, not anything that can be acquired.
Unless the whole universe is a man's trysting-place where he comes nigh unto God and a retired chamber where he enjoys intimacy with God, he is still a stranger to Divine love; but when he has vision the whole universe is his sanctuary.
The beginning of love is search, but the end is rest: water flows in the river-bed, but when it reaches the ocean it ceases to flow and changes its taste.
What we choose for ourselves is noxious to us. I desire only that God should desire for me, and therein preserve me from the evil thereof and save me from the wickedness of my soul. I have no choice beyond His choice.
The Law without the Truth is ostentation, and the Truth without the Law is hypocrisy.
When an anchorite goes into a tavern, the tavern becomes his cell, and when a haunter of taverns goes into a cell, that cell becomes his tavern.
When a man sees God's choice and abandons his own choice, he is delivered from all sorrow. Satisfaction expels sorrows and cures heedlessness, and purges the heart of thoughts relating to other than God and frees it from the bonds of tribulation.
Nothing is harder to a man than spiritual sacrifice and to refrain from the object of his love, and God hath made this sacrifice the key of all good. When a man's spirit is sacrificed, of what value are his wealth and his health and his frock and his food? This is the foundation of Sufiism.
Resistance to the lower soul is the chief of all acts of devotion and the crown of all acts of self-mortification, and only thereby can Man find the way to God; for submission to the lower soul involves his destruction and resistance to it involves his salvation.
One whose every act depends on passion, and who finds satisfaction in following it, is far from God although he be with you in a mosque; but one who has renounced and abandoned it is near to God although he be in a church.
Gnosis is the life of the heart through God, and the turning away of one's inmost thoughts from all that is not God. The worth of everyone is in proportion to gnosis, and he who is without gnosis is worth nothing.
This world is the abode of trouble, the pavilion of affliction, the den of sorrow, the house of parting, the cradle of tribulation.
The method of spiritual purification is to reflect and meditate on the evil of this world and to perceive that it is false and fleeting, and to make the heart empty of it.