Paradigm (1)
The birds again gathered. As usual, the nation's first teacher, Parrot, acted as a moderator, while Shama, the second teacher of the nations, acted as a source. There were interesting things from the two teachers of this nation. Actually, the quality of Shama as a knowledgeable person was better than that of Parrot, but during the nation's teacher election, many birds did not yet know Shama. They preferred Parrot over Shama because Parrot was very well known. In addition to being clever, Nuri was also good at luring birds from his humorous behavior. In addition, the news, more often mentioned the Parrot rather than Shama. However, after time went by and the birds knew who really the Parrot was, they realized that with just facetiousness, it was not enough to be able to lead them to perfection. However, everything returns to Allah, life would still going on.
Then Shama said, "O my brothers and sisters, we must look at the lens through which we see the world, as well as at the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world. If we wanted to change the situation, we first had to change ourselves. And to change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions. A naturalist's or a physician's perspective of the things we have been talking about, is different from a knowledgeable believer's. The naturalist and physician are concerned with investigating aspects of preserving good health and averting sickness; a believer, on the other hand, contemplates things with a view to discerning proofs in them of their Creator and Maker; His exceeding wisdom, generous liberality and bounty, which He urges His servants to respond to with remembrance and gratitude.
Parrot asked, "What is paradigm?" Shama said, "The word paradigm comes from the Greek. It was originally a scientific term, and is more commonly used today to mean a model, theory, perception, assumption, or frame of reference. In the more general sense, it's the way we "see" the world—not in terms of our visual sense of sight, but in terms of perceiving, understanding, interpreting.
Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are—or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. Looking, has two senses; there is "looking" with the eye, the external organ, by which one may see for instance the blue of the sky, its stars, its height and vastness. In such vision man is equal to other species, and so it is not the vision that man is exhorted to practice.
In the other sense, "looking" is to go beyond the first external vision to see with the mind's eye, so that the heaven's gates are opened to the observer; he wanders among its territories and lands, and associates with its angels. It is then that gates are opened for him, one by one, until his mind's journey carries him to the Throne of the Compassionate, where he envisions its huge and great size, its majesty, glory and elevation; he envisions the seven heavens, and the seven earths, whose mass is, compared to the Throne's, Like a ring to a desert; he envisions the angels circumambulating the Throne, with their hymns of praise and glorification of the Lord rising in chorus.
He sees with the mind's eye, Allah's commandments descend from above, managing the worlds and directing Allah's soldiers, whose swarms no one can count but their Lord and King. He realises how directives descend to determine the reviving of multitudes of creatures and the perishing of other multitudes; the honouring of some and the suffering of others; the enthroning of someone and the dethroning of another; the transporting of a blessing from one place to another place; and the fulfilling of all sorts of needs, in all their variety and abundance: the rescue of a bankrupt, the enrichment of an indigent, the healing of an invalid, the saving of someone stricken with disaster; the forgiveness of a sin, the resolution of a crisis, the supporting of a persecuted one, the guiding of a lost one, the educating of an ignorant one, the reclamation of an escaped slave, the safely of a terrified one, the succour of a succour seeker; the empowering of a feeble person, the support of a distressed one, the help of someone who is handicapped, lite revenge on an oppressor, the stopping of aggression; all decrees towards the establishing of justice, sympathy, wisdom and mercy, covering all corners of the world, no call distracts Him from another call, the great succession of pleas and petitions do not confuse Him, no matter how numerous, diverse, or simultaneous. He does not complain at the insistence of insistents, and His bountiful bestowings do not decrease the riches of His treasure by a fraction, for there is no god but He, the Majestic, the Wise.
Conceiving this, the believing heart is prostrated in the presence of the Compassionate, bending in awe of Him, subservient to His might; bound to His hegemony; it will prostrate in front of the King, the True, the Clear, a prostration that is never interrupted until the day of recompense. All this the heart does while it is still in its place, at home, and not leaving its residence which is a most marvelous wonder of the Lord's and an over whelming occurrence. Blessed be the journey, a most rewarding trip, lifting the human and blessing his life and rewarding him amply and ensuring good consequences. It is the trip that revives souls and wins the key to happiness; fills the minds and hearts with peace, not borne with hardship like other trips.
In relation to this, there is a difference between remembrance and thought. What is the difference, you may ask, between remembrance and thinking? Recognizing the difference is beneficial to those who realize it. Thinking and remembrance are the basis of guidance and success, the two poles of happiness. That is why we expatiated on thinking because of the great benefit connected to it and the great need for it. It is as Al-Hasan said: People of knowledge have always based remembrance on thought and thought on remembrance, and they addressed hearts until they came to be articulate, and they acquired hearing and vision.
Let it be known, then, that thinking is the search by the heart to acquire from the knowledge already attained, knowledge that is not yet acquired. This is the reality about thought, because if there is no objective to be sought by thinking, then thinking will be impossible; thinking without a focal destination is not possible; and the means to it is the facts that are already acquired. If those means are employed to acquire that which is already known there will be no thought. Realizing this, we may go on to say that a thinking person proceeds from premises and assumptions he already knows to the concept he seeks to unveil. Once that is attained and acquired, he remembers on the basis of that, and perceives what to seek and what to shun; what to hold as dear and what to avoid.
Remembrance, then, is the eventual fruit and outcome of thinking. Once a person has remembered, that remembrance enhances thinking, and so he can make inferences that he was unable to make before. This reciprocal relationship goes on, from thinking to remembrance and from remembrance to thinking, as long as reflection lasts: knowledge and the will have no limit to stop at, and a person can progress indefinitely drawing on knowledge and will. If you realize that Allah's signs operate as eye-openers and reminders, enlightening one to overcome the heart's blindness and to awaken it from its forgetfulness, it will then be dear that the opposite of knowledge is either the heart's blindness, and the remedy for this is enlightenment, or its forgetfulness, and the remedy for this is remembrance. The idea here is to awaken the heart from its forgetfulness by invoking some of Allah's signs. To try to follow that up to its end, we would have to devote all our life to it, and even then we would not be able to exhaust even the details of one of His signs comprehensively. But if the whole is not feasible, it should not follow that the matter should be dropped completely. The noblest employment of time and effort is the reflection on the signs of Allah and the wonders of His creation, to go on from there to linking the heart and will to Him rather than to any of His creations.
Consider, then, the wisdom of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in remembering and forgetting, a quality unique to the human species. Reflect on the many services they give, and the benefits that accrue to the human from them. Without the faculty of remembering, bestowed solely on man, there would be a great muddle in all his affairs; he would not distinguish what is due to him from what is his duty; what he received from what he handed out; what he heard from what he saw; what he uttered from what was addressed to him; he would not distinguish his benefactor from his antagonist; he would not recall those who had dealings with him; he would not remember to seek closeness to the one who had done good to him, nor to avoid the one who had done him mischief; he would not find a way that he had tried and found right even after going along it many times; he would not accumulate knowledge in any particular field even if he had devoted all his life to it; he would not benefit from experience, or draw a lesson from what has passed - Indeed he would cease to be a member of mankind.
Reflect, then, on the immense blessing of all these benefits. Think of the amount of good each aspect realizes for you, and then how much they represent in their totality! One of the most curious blessings is forgetting: without forgetting a human being would find no consolation for any loss, his grief would be without end; he could not get over the effect of a disaster; his mourning would be permanent, his malice would be for ever; he would not enjoy any of life's amusements with his mind full of the memory of catastrophes; he would have no hope of the relenting of an adversary, or the abating of the ill-feeling of an envier. Reflect, then, on Allah's bounty in providing you with the ability to remember and forget, despite their antithesis and opposition; each performing its respective part."
(Part 2)
