Ihsan - Lives of Beauty

On the role of Beauty in the Religious Life

        Ihsan (إحسان) is a term in our Islamic Tradition that refers to something like 'ethical perfection' or 'spiritual perfection'. The highest state of spiritual life in our tradition, it is the moral goal of every human life and every human person. It is also heavily linked to the idea of Beauty. In fact, the word itself can be rendered as 'beautification' in English. This is because, in Islam, Beauty is inextricably linked to Goodness. The moral life well-lived is no different than a beautiful life. The Divine Law, which is the source and principle of all morality, can be understood as God's artistic self-expression of beauty that he has impressed upon the world and infused into the human heart.

        When the traditional and religious talk about Beauty, we do not use it in its conventional sense. The Beautiful, with a capital B, does not refer to all that is pleasing to look at, excluding simple eye-candy or anything that is pretty. The witness of the Beautiful is a much more transcendental and mystical experience, and this is the basis of any genuine religious spirituality. To be authentically religious is to see the world through the lens of Beauty, and to demote reason to a secondary role. The Religious Life is a life of aesthetics and ethics, not of logical analysis or rational self-interest. To open oneself to God, one must first open oneself to Beauty.

        What exactly is Beauty? It is hard to construct a definition that can render the concept justice, yet it is certainly a reality all of us have encountered. Whether we have been confronted by the lovely forms of the natural world, or have had our hearts moved by some particular pieces of art, we become charged with awe and wonder. Unlike eye-candy, which (though pleasing to look at) stands passive before us (like images displayed on the screen of our lives), Beauty is energetic and dynamic. It arrests our gaze vigorously, ensuring that we confront it face-to-face. It draws our attention towards its very own splendour, enchanting and enrapturing us by its power. Far from being a docile thing, it is a forceful reality with an almost coercive nature. It breaks through the 'screen of our conscious experience', so to speak, and invades the deepest chasms of our hearts with emotion and passion.

        In thinking about Beauty, I've always found this heuristic helpful: Think about the happiest moments of your entire life, especially those moments where joy has poured out from your heart in the form of tears flowing from your eyes. Those moments may be far and few between but I hope we've all experienced something at least close to that. Think about what those moments feel like, and how incredible they really are. That one is drowned with such an abundant goodness, that it commands the eyes to cry. That is the work of Beauty. That is what Beauty does, and that is how it ignites the human heart.

        These kinds of moments, where the soul has a near-perfect apprehension of Beauty, are truly remarkable upon a second look. That is because they involve the presence of tears, which normally accompany sorrow not joy. So how is it, during the happiest moments of our lives, we are met with tears? Are our bodies malfunctioning, or our intellects impaired? No, for tears are the most appropriate way we can respond to encounters with Beauty. I hold that the reason we cry at our most joyful moments is because we have been broken open and laid bare. That Beauty, by its sheer radiance and glory, breaks down the comfort and security of everyday life, leaving us vulnerable and exposed to its sheer splendour. Beauty and Joy makes us cry because our very hearts wrestled from our very own secure hands and seized by divine glory.

        Let me try to explain this point by painting a rather complicated picture. What interests me most about Beauty is how immensely we feel our encounter with it. It is no doubt a positive experience, yet it is clearly distinguished from other positive experiences by its sheer intensity. Non-beautiful pleasures, whether they be received from the body, e.g., food, drink, or sex, or from mundane from community, e.g., humour enjoyed with friendly company, don't hold a candle to the kind of ecstasy Beauty brings. Whether it be the taste of some dish, or the feeling of sexual orgasm, or the revelry found in jokes, as good as these things are, they will not call forth tears of joy from one's heart (tears of some other sort perhaps, but certainly not the kinds of tears that characterizes soulful weeping).

        What accounts for this difference? I think this is a good way to think about it: Think about the Human Person primarily as a personal subject, consciously aware of other objects in the world. When she enjoys the worldly pleasures, it is nothing more than her having some conscious awareness of that experience.

But, in any particular experience she has of worldly pleasures, there will always exist some sort of barrier between her and her object of experience. This barrier is what enables her to separate herself from her experience, and identify herself as a conscious subject and her experience as the object of consciousness. It what allows her to form a sense of identity and distinctness, as this barrier provides her a sense of separation and distance from the world. It enables her ability to use reason and logic by viewing the objects of experience from a detached third-person perspective. She is able to relate to different objects in different ways, e.g., by liking or disliking them, categorising and analyzing them, etc. 

        When the human person encounters The Beautiful, her barrier is pierced and broken.

Beauty is not merely some object of experience present in her field of consciousness. It breaks into her very heart and soul, annihilating the barrier between her and the world. This is why she becomes vulnerable and exposed, and that is what causes tears to flow. It destroys her ability to reason and secure herself, leaving her fully open to the sheer power of the experience-itself. 

        I think we can all relate to this. In those moments where we cry tears of joy, we feel vulnerable and exposed. Even though that feeling is undoubtedly positive and good, flooding our hearts with joy, it is a kind of joy that is too much for us to bear, so to speak. It is a kind of joy that does not feel psychologically safe or easy, else we wouldn't be crying. Encounters with Beauty are transgressive, breaking down the defences we've built against the world and directly piercing our hearts. It does not rest our hearts in a gentle stream of serenity or tranquility. No, that is not at all the case. Instead, Beauty launches our hearts into a roaring and raging river, filled with thunderous waves of ecstasy crashing against rocks of glory.

        Moreover, when thinking about Beauty as the kind of thing that calls forth tears, another thing becomes apparent: that Beauty belongs not just to joy but also to sorrow. For tragic fiction is no less beautiful just because they're tragedies. For sorrowful music is no less beautiful just because it's sorrowful. Tragedy has just as much right over Beauty as Joy does. I hope this is something we can all see even in our own lives for all of us has had some experience with the calamities and suffering life is capable of hurling at us. Sometimes in those moments, we can do nothing but weep, for our power is just not enough to protect ourselves or those whom we love. In those moments, of course, we want nothing but the removal of that pain and suffering. But take a second glance at those moments again, now from a place of emotional sobriety. There is no doubt that the tears we've shed in those moments were an appropriate response to those tragedies we've suffered. In a way, they are undoubtedly good, for if they were not shed, what kind of cold and cruel monsters would that reveal us to be? When one loses a beloved so dear to them, is that beloved undeserving of mournful weeping?

        Beauty, then, has rights not just over joy but also over sorrow. Its melodies are composed of both minor scales alongside major ones. In both delight and grief, the power of Beauty is able to break through the walls of ordinary experience and reach deep into our hearts, and all of this calls forth tears to flow soulfully from the spirit. And, of course, this kind of weeping is soulful and spiritual, not the irritated or whiny kind of crying. It is a kind of true weeping that is spoken from the depths of the human heart and reaches out for God.

        This Beauty is what the religious life centers itself upon. Ihsan is the state in which the human person is perpetually and intentionally open and disposed to encountering The Beautiful. There is a reason our Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.) said that being in a state of Ihsan means to "worship Allah as if you see him." In this life, the closest things we have to glimpses of God are the experiences we have with Beauty, for that is ultimately nothing but the cosmic radiance of the Divine Dancer himself breaking through into our world. So we religious, in order to draw ever closer to our Lord God, hunger for Beauty and search for it in every nook and cranny of our human lives. In every moment of everyday, we posture our hearts to receive as much of the Divine Beauty as our Creator wishes to share with us. Religious lives are lived by a kind of spiritual ambitiousness and greediness, to have as much of God as one can.

        Ihsan is the opposite of Ghafla (غفلة), which means to live in a state of sin, distraction, and disorder. It is what happens when one "sleep walks through life", shutting himself off from all that is Beautiful and meaningful. In this state, the human person becomes spiritual decadent and comatose, concerning himself only with that which brings him cheap pleasure and comfort. These twin idols of pleasure and comfort are the sedatives of the spiritual life, keeping one idle and asleep. But the person of Ihsan cannot be chained by them. Against pleasure, she must engage in a kind of spiritual athleticism (what we muslims traditionally refer to as Jihad), disciplining her mind against sloth and guarding her body against lethargy. Against comfort, she have the courage to put herself in situations where she knows she could be deeply wounded, for that is the only way to open herself up to God and Beauty. As our great Jalaluddin Rumi once said, "You have to keeping breaking your heart until it opens."

        The spiritual life, then, is a radical and romantic adventure in the pursuit of God and Beauty, willing to strive, overcome and sacrifice to reach that divine destination. A readiness to shed tears accompanied with a forgetfulness for one's own smallness are the virtues that constitute the religious life. May God bless and empower us to live these lives of greatness and adventure, so that we may always move closer and closer to the beatific vision of His Blessed Face.

Alhamdulilahi Rabbil Alameen
Wasalatu wasalamu ala Sayyidina Muhammad
wa'ala Alihi wa Sahbihi ajma'een