WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.600 --> 00:00:04.121 This is one of the densest sermons in Nahj al-Balaagha. 2 00:00:04.121 --> 00:00:07.833 It's called Khutbat al-Ashbaah, the Sermon of the Figures. 3 00:00:07.833 --> 00:00:12.250 And if you try to read it line by line, from the top, you will drown. 4 00:00:12.700 --> 00:00:14.668 So we're not going to do that. 5 00:00:14.668 --> 00:00:18.472 We're going to learn it the way an expert learns anything. 6 00:00:18.472 --> 00:00:19.653 Big picture first. 7 00:00:19.653 --> 00:00:21.096 Then the moving parts. 8 00:00:21.096 --> 00:00:22.867 And only then, the details. 9 00:00:23.867 --> 00:00:27.383 Here's the mistake most people make with a text like this. 10 00:00:27.383 --> 00:00:28.777 They start at line one. 11 00:00:28.777 --> 00:00:30.535 They look up every rare word. 12 00:00:30.535 --> 00:00:33.263 And they try to hold all of it in their head. 13 00:00:33.263 --> 00:00:39.083 Twenty minutes later, they have a pile of facts, and no idea what the sermon is actually saying. 14 00:00:39.533 --> 00:00:43.940 The problem is, your brain doesn't store isolated facts very well. 15 00:00:43.940 --> 00:00:45.543 It stores relationships. 16 00:00:45.543 --> 00:00:49.817 So we build the frame first, and then we hang the details on it. 17 00:00:50.267 --> 00:00:51.161 Four layers. 18 00:00:51.161 --> 00:00:52.727 Layer one, the logic. 19 00:00:52.727 --> 00:00:54.964 What is the whole thing doing? 20 00:00:54.964 --> 00:00:56.754 Layer two, the concepts. 21 00:00:56.754 --> 00:00:59.736 The few big parts, and how they connect. 22 00:00:59.736 --> 00:01:04.136 Layer three, the details that make those concepts concrete. 23 00:01:04.136 --> 00:01:06.969 And layer four, the arbitrary details. 24 00:01:06.969 --> 00:01:09.206 The vocabulary, the footnotes. 25 00:01:09.206 --> 00:01:10.996 We leave those for last. 26 00:01:10.996 --> 00:01:11.667 Or never. 27 00:01:12.667 --> 00:01:17.608 Let's start with the setting, because it holds the key to everything. 28 00:01:17.608 --> 00:01:20.615 In Kufa, a man comes to Imam Ali and says: 29 00:01:20.615 --> 00:01:24.983 صِفْ لَنَا رَبَّنَا لِنَزْدَادَ لَهُ حُبّاً وَبِهِ مَعْرِفَةً 30 00:01:25.433 --> 00:01:30.283 Describe our Lord to us, so we can love Him more, and know Him better. 31 00:01:30.733 --> 00:01:32.098 And Ali gets angry. 32 00:01:32.098 --> 00:01:36.121 He calls the people together until the mosque is packed. 33 00:01:36.121 --> 00:01:43.017 He climbs the pulpit, his face changed, praises God, sends blessings on the Prophet, and begins. 34 00:01:43.467 --> 00:01:44.585 Now, pause on that. 35 00:01:44.585 --> 00:01:48.056 Why would a question that sounds so sincere make him angry? 36 00:01:48.056 --> 00:01:50.175 I want you to actually make a guess. 37 00:01:50.175 --> 00:01:54.000 Because everything that follows, the whole sermon, is the answer to that question. 38 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:57.539 So here is layer one. 39 00:01:57.539 --> 00:01:59.883 The whole sermon, in one breath. 40 00:02:00.333 --> 00:02:02.919 You can't describe God by picturing Him. 41 00:02:02.919 --> 00:02:05.117 The human mind cannot measure Him. 42 00:02:05.567 --> 00:02:08.155 But you can know Him, through two doors. 43 00:02:08.155 --> 00:02:10.484 What He has told you, in revelation. 44 00:02:10.484 --> 00:02:12.683 And the signs in what He has made. 45 00:02:13.133 --> 00:02:17.492 And real knowledge of God doesn't end in a neat definition. 46 00:02:17.492 --> 00:02:21.850 It ends in awe, in humility, and in turning to Him in need. 47 00:02:22.300 --> 00:02:24.021 That's the answer to the man. 48 00:02:24.021 --> 00:02:25.386 He asked for a picture. 49 00:02:25.386 --> 00:02:26.751 Ali gives him a method. 50 00:02:26.751 --> 00:02:29.481 And commentators read the anger in that light: 51 00:02:29.481 --> 00:02:35.000 it's aimed at the idea behind the request, describing God the way you would describe a thing. 52 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:36.840 Layer two. 53 00:02:36.840 --> 00:02:37.931 The concepts. 54 00:02:37.931 --> 00:02:40.450 The sermon has five big parts. 55 00:02:40.900 --> 00:02:42.668 Part one, generosity. 56 00:02:42.668 --> 00:02:43.594 Who God is. 57 00:02:43.594 --> 00:02:49.150 He gives without losing anything, and He is beyond time and place. 58 00:02:49.600 --> 00:02:51.052 Part two, the boundary. 59 00:02:51.052 --> 00:02:53.767 Don't measure Him by the size of your mind. 60 00:02:53.767 --> 00:02:55.850 Follow what revelation tells you. 61 00:02:56.300 --> 00:02:58.790 Part three, creation as proof. 62 00:02:58.790 --> 00:03:04.517 A grand tour, from the sky, to the angels, to the earth, to humanity. 63 00:03:04.967 --> 00:03:06.847 Part four, total knowledge. 64 00:03:06.847 --> 00:03:11.583 His knowledge reaches all the way down to the winter home of an ant. 65 00:03:12.033 --> 00:03:13.676 And part five, the prayer. 66 00:03:13.676 --> 00:03:17.150 Ali stops talking about God, and starts talking to Him. 67 00:03:17.600 --> 00:03:18.717 Notice the shape. 68 00:03:18.717 --> 00:03:20.162 It's like a zoom lens. 69 00:03:20.162 --> 00:03:22.002 It starts with the infinite. 70 00:03:22.002 --> 00:03:23.184 It sets the rules. 71 00:03:23.184 --> 00:03:26.995 Then it zooms from the heavens all the way down to an ant. 72 00:03:26.995 --> 00:03:30.017 And then it turns, and speaks directly to God. 73 00:03:30.467 --> 00:03:34.630 Before you go further, I want you to sketch these five boxes yourself. 74 00:03:34.630 --> 00:03:36.473 Seriously, pause and draw them. 75 00:03:36.473 --> 00:03:40.933 The act of drawing the map is what makes it stick, not watching me draw it. 76 00:03:41.933 --> 00:03:47.655 Now layer three, the details, but only the ones that make each part concrete. 77 00:03:47.655 --> 00:03:49.512 Part one opens like this: 78 00:03:49.512 --> 00:03:55.085 لاَ يَفِرُهُ الْمَنْعُ وَالْجُمُودُ، وَلاَ يُكْدِيهِ الإِعْطَاءُ وَالْجُودُ 79 00:03:55.085 --> 00:04:00.583 Withholding does not make Him richer, and giving does not make Him poorer. 80 00:04:01.033 --> 00:04:02.000 Why start here? 81 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:04.579 Because the man wanted to love God more. 82 00:04:04.579 --> 00:04:08.318 And Ali starts with the thing that makes you love someone. 83 00:04:08.318 --> 00:04:09.027 Generosity. 84 00:04:09.027 --> 00:04:11.477 But it's a strange kind of generosity. 85 00:04:11.477 --> 00:04:13.798 When a person gives, they have less. 86 00:04:13.798 --> 00:04:16.183 When God gives, it costs Him nothing. 87 00:04:16.633 --> 00:04:18.324 Then the details stack up. 88 00:04:18.324 --> 00:04:23.072 He is just as generous with what you didn't ask for as with what you did. 89 00:04:23.072 --> 00:04:27.949 He is the First, with nothing before Him, and the Last, with nothing after. 90 00:04:27.949 --> 00:04:29.510 Time doesn't change Him. 91 00:04:29.510 --> 00:04:30.745 No place holds Him. 92 00:04:30.745 --> 00:04:39.850 And if He gave away every treasure the mountains and the seas have ever produced, gold, silver, pearls, coral, it wouldn't dent what He has. 93 00:04:40.300 --> 00:04:42.864 So right from line one, there's a thread. 94 00:04:42.864 --> 00:04:46.990 Every description is built to stop you from picturing God like us. 95 00:04:46.990 --> 00:04:48.678 Keep an eye on that thread. 96 00:04:48.678 --> 00:04:50.367 It runs through everything. 97 00:04:51.367 --> 00:04:54.082 Part two is the hinge of the whole sermon. 98 00:04:54.082 --> 00:04:56.475 Ali turns to the questioner directly. 99 00:04:56.475 --> 00:05:00.742 Look at what the Quran shows you of His attributes, and follow it. 100 00:05:00.742 --> 00:05:01.971 Take light from it. 101 00:05:01.971 --> 00:05:11.217 And whatever Satan pushes you to know, that isn't in the Book, or in the way of the Prophet and the guiding Imams, leave that knowledge to God. 102 00:05:11.667 --> 00:05:13.855 Then comes a beautiful redefinition. 103 00:05:13.855 --> 00:05:17.989 Who are the ones firmly rooted in knowledge, ar-raasikhoona fil-ilm? 104 00:05:17.989 --> 00:05:20.117 Not the people who know everything. 105 00:05:20.117 --> 00:05:27.595 They are the people whose admission of what they don't know keeps them from trying to force the barriers around the unseen. 106 00:05:27.595 --> 00:05:30.817 God praised that admission, and called it rootedness. 107 00:05:31.267 --> 00:05:32.780 And then the warning: 108 00:05:32.780 --> 00:05:39.482 وَلاَ تُقَدِّرْ عَظَمَةَ اللهِ سُبْحَانَهُ عَلَى قَدْرِ عَقْلِكَ فَتَكُونَ مِنَ الْهَالِكِينَ 109 00:05:39.482 --> 00:05:46.183 Do not measure God's greatness by the size of your own mind, or you will be among the ruined. 110 00:05:46.633 --> 00:05:48.300 He paints it as a picture. 111 00:05:48.300 --> 00:05:52.401 Minds rush out like scouts, trying to find where His power ends. 112 00:05:52.401 --> 00:05:55.413 Hearts strain to grasp how His attributes work. 113 00:05:55.413 --> 00:05:57.016 And they are turned back. 114 00:05:57.016 --> 00:06:01.245 They return, admitting that His essence can't be reached this way. 115 00:06:01.245 --> 00:06:03.937 Here's the learning lesson hiding in this: 116 00:06:03.937 --> 00:06:08.423 knowing the limits of what you can know is part of real understanding. 117 00:06:08.423 --> 00:06:09.833 Ali makes it a virtue. 118 00:06:10.833 --> 00:06:14.657 So if we can't picture Him, how do we know Him at all? 119 00:06:14.657 --> 00:06:15.790 Door number two. 120 00:06:15.790 --> 00:06:16.498 His works. 121 00:06:16.498 --> 00:06:22.728 فَصَارَ كُلُّ مَا خَلَقَ حُجَّةً لَهُ وَدَلِيلاً عَلَيْهِ، وَإِنْ كَانَ خَلْقاً صَامِتاً 122 00:06:22.728 --> 00:06:27.402 Everything He created became a proof for Him and a pointer to Him. 123 00:06:27.402 --> 00:06:29.030 Even the silent things. 124 00:06:29.030 --> 00:06:31.083 Their design speaks for them. 125 00:06:31.533 --> 00:06:34.865 And He made it all with no model to copy from. 126 00:06:34.865 --> 00:06:37.183 So creation points to its Maker. 127 00:06:37.633 --> 00:06:41.026 But immediately, Ali blocks the opposite mistake. 128 00:06:41.026 --> 00:06:47.950 Whoever compares God to the creatures He made, with their limbs and their joints, has not known Him. 129 00:06:48.400 --> 00:06:51.059 So here's the key concept of the whole text. 130 00:06:51.059 --> 00:06:52.449 Creation points to Him. 131 00:06:52.449 --> 00:06:54.142 But He does not resemble it. 132 00:06:54.142 --> 00:06:56.499 You have to hold both at the same time. 133 00:06:56.499 --> 00:07:00.367 If you only remember one idea from this video, make it that one. 134 00:07:01.367 --> 00:07:03.268 Then Ali takes us on a tour. 135 00:07:03.268 --> 00:07:08.700 And this is where most readers get lost, because the language is extremely rich. 136 00:07:08.700 --> 00:07:10.736 So let's keep it in its frame. 137 00:07:10.736 --> 00:07:11.483 Four stops. 138 00:07:11.933 --> 00:07:13.265 Stop one, the heavens. 139 00:07:13.265 --> 00:07:16.411 He arranged their gaps with nothing holding them up. 140 00:07:16.411 --> 00:07:18.590 They were smoke, and He joined them. 141 00:07:18.590 --> 00:07:26.517 He made the sun a seeing sign for the day, and the moon a fading sign for the night, so we can tell them apart and count the years. 142 00:07:26.967 --> 00:07:28.473 Stop two, the angels. 143 00:07:28.473 --> 00:07:31.558 And this is where the sermon gets its name. 144 00:07:31.558 --> 00:07:33.854 Ashbaah means figures, or forms. 145 00:07:33.854 --> 00:07:35.648 Here it means the angels. 146 00:07:35.648 --> 00:07:39.594 They come in many forms, with wings in twos and threes. 147 00:07:39.594 --> 00:07:44.472 No doubt shakes them, no envy divides them, no tiredness slows them. 148 00:07:44.472 --> 00:07:49.638 Some have feet in the lowest earth, like white banners piercing the air. 149 00:07:49.638 --> 00:07:56.167 And there isn't a hand-span of the heavens without an angel bowing, or hurrying in service. 150 00:07:57.167 --> 00:08:00.189 There's one line here I want you to notice. 151 00:08:00.189 --> 00:08:07.919 يَزْدَادُونَ عَلَى طُولِ الطَّاعَةِ بِرَبِّهِمْ عِلْماً، وَتَزْدَادُ عِزَّةُ رَبِّهِمْ فِي قُلُوبِهِمْ عِظَماً 152 00:08:07.919 --> 00:08:15.017 The longer they obey, the more they know their Lord, and the greater His might grows in their hearts. 153 00:08:15.467 --> 00:08:16.649 Look at the pattern. 154 00:08:16.649 --> 00:08:18.600 They know Him better than anyone. 155 00:08:18.600 --> 00:08:20.314 And they are the most humble. 156 00:08:20.314 --> 00:08:25.693 Their backs are bent from long obedience, and they never think their past worship is a lot. 157 00:08:25.693 --> 00:08:29.417 That's what the boundary from part two looks like in real life. 158 00:08:29.867 --> 00:08:32.452 And there's a learning principle in here too. 159 00:08:32.452 --> 00:08:37.967 Their knowledge grows through doing, through long practice, not just through thinking about Him. 160 00:08:38.967 --> 00:08:40.850 Back to the tour. 161 00:08:41.300 --> 00:08:42.837 Stop three, the earth. 162 00:08:42.837 --> 00:08:51.292 He pressed it down onto raging waves, which Ali describes like wild stallions, until the water is tamed under its weight. 163 00:08:51.292 --> 00:08:52.689 Mountains steady it. 164 00:08:52.689 --> 00:08:54.995 Springs burst out from the peaks. 165 00:08:54.995 --> 00:09:03.450 And for high land that the rivers can't reach, He sends clouds, lightning, and rain, until the bare hills put on flowers. 166 00:09:03.900 --> 00:09:05.389 Stop four, humanity. 167 00:09:05.389 --> 00:09:13.354 Adam, the garden, the one thing forbidden, the slip, the repentance, and being sent down to fill the earth. 168 00:09:13.354 --> 00:09:17.746 Then prophets, generation after generation, until Muhammad. 169 00:09:17.746 --> 00:09:25.264 And provision split into plenty and scarcity, to test gratitude in the rich and patience in the poor. 170 00:09:25.264 --> 00:09:27.199 Ease paired with hardship. 171 00:09:27.199 --> 00:09:28.316 Joy with grief. 172 00:09:28.316 --> 00:09:31.517 Lifespans long and short, all cut by death. 173 00:09:31.967 --> 00:09:33.111 Now ask yourself: 174 00:09:33.111 --> 00:09:34.120 why this order? 175 00:09:34.120 --> 00:09:35.870 Try to answer before I do. 176 00:09:35.870 --> 00:09:39.706 It moves from the vast to the near, and it ends with you. 177 00:09:39.706 --> 00:09:46.167 Your own life, your wealth or your poverty, your joys and your losses, are part of the evidence. 178 00:09:47.167 --> 00:09:47.997 Part four. 179 00:09:47.997 --> 00:09:50.403 The zoom goes all the way in. 180 00:09:50.403 --> 00:09:51.150 He knows: 181 00:09:51.600 --> 00:09:55.536 Where the ant spends its summer, and where it spends its winter. 182 00:09:55.536 --> 00:09:58.426 Where the mosquito hides in the bark of a tree. 183 00:09:58.426 --> 00:10:00.517 How fruit grows inside its sheath. 184 00:10:00.967 --> 00:10:03.447 Where every leaf joins its branch. 185 00:10:03.447 --> 00:10:05.636 The faint sound of a footstep. 186 00:10:05.636 --> 00:10:08.117 The yearning of a grieving mother. 187 00:10:08.567 --> 00:10:11.192 Birds singing in their dark nests. 188 00:10:11.192 --> 00:10:12.813 Every lip that moves. 189 00:10:12.813 --> 00:10:15.283 The weight of every single atom. 190 00:10:15.733 --> 00:10:18.744 Now, here's a question that should bother you. 191 00:10:18.744 --> 00:10:20.838 Earlier, Ali told us not to dig. 192 00:10:20.838 --> 00:10:22.605 So why all this detail now? 193 00:10:22.605 --> 00:10:24.896 Because it's a different direction. 194 00:10:24.896 --> 00:10:26.860 We can't dig into His essence. 195 00:10:26.860 --> 00:10:32.750 But we can look outward, at the detail of His knowledge in the world, and that is endless. 196 00:10:33.200 --> 00:10:35.472 Same humility, opposite direction. 197 00:10:35.472 --> 00:10:37.143 And none of it tires Him. 198 00:10:37.143 --> 00:10:47.300 His knowledge reaches them, His count numbers them, His justice covers them, and His grace floods them, even though they fall short of what He deserves. 199 00:10:48.300 --> 00:10:49.952 And finally, part five. 200 00:10:49.952 --> 00:10:50.599 The turn. 201 00:10:50.599 --> 00:10:54.550 Ali stops talking about God, and starts talking to Him. 202 00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:55.562 He says: 203 00:10:55.562 --> 00:10:59.283 this kind of praise, I won't spend on anyone but You. 204 00:10:59.733 --> 00:11:02.647 Everyone who praises someone hopes for a reward. 205 00:11:02.647 --> 00:11:06.350 So I'm hoping You'll guide me to the treasures of Your mercy. 206 00:11:06.800 --> 00:11:10.217 I have a need, and only Your grace can mend it. 207 00:11:10.667 --> 00:11:11.465 And then: 208 00:11:11.465 --> 00:11:15.986 وَأَغْنِنَا عَنْ مَدِّ الأَيْدِي إِلَى مَنْ سِوَاكَ 209 00:11:15.986 --> 00:11:20.950 Free us from stretching out our hands to anyone but You. 210 00:11:21.400 --> 00:11:24.295 That's the real answer to the man's question. 211 00:11:24.295 --> 00:11:26.932 He wanted to know God, and love Him more. 212 00:11:26.932 --> 00:11:29.119 Ali shows him where knowing leads. 213 00:11:29.119 --> 00:11:30.212 Not to a picture. 214 00:11:30.212 --> 00:11:33.300 To need, to hope, and to depending on God alone. 215 00:11:34.300 --> 00:11:36.128 Now let's do the expert move. 216 00:11:36.128 --> 00:11:37.830 Don't just store the parts. 217 00:11:37.830 --> 00:11:38.650 Connect them. 218 00:11:39.100 --> 00:11:43.150 The sermon opens with a Giver who loses nothing by giving. 219 00:11:43.600 --> 00:11:48.351 And it closes by asking that same Giver to make us need no one else. 220 00:11:48.351 --> 00:11:51.634 The first line is the reason for the last line. 221 00:11:51.634 --> 00:11:57.083 If He loses nothing by giving, why would you stretch your hand to anyone else? 222 00:11:57.533 --> 00:11:59.597 And the middle holds it together. 223 00:11:59.597 --> 00:12:04.912 The boundary in part two, admitting what you can't reach, is lived out by the angels. 224 00:12:04.912 --> 00:12:07.975 They know Him most, and they are the most humble. 225 00:12:07.975 --> 00:12:10.914 And Ali models the same humility in his prayer. 226 00:12:10.914 --> 00:12:14.728 When you can see links like these, you understand the sermon. 227 00:12:14.728 --> 00:12:16.667 You're not just remembering it. 228 00:12:17.667 --> 00:12:20.183 So, here's what I want you to do next. 229 00:12:20.633 --> 00:12:22.190 Don't re-watch this video. 230 00:12:22.190 --> 00:12:25.541 Instead, try to answer these four questions from memory. 231 00:12:25.541 --> 00:12:29.731 Why did the question anger Ali, and how is the whole sermon an answer? 232 00:12:29.731 --> 00:12:32.185 What are the two doors, and the one wall? 233 00:12:32.185 --> 00:12:35.477 Why does the tour move from the heavens down to an ant? 234 00:12:35.477 --> 00:12:38.350 And how does the first line connect to the last? 235 00:12:38.800 --> 00:12:42.609 Then draw the five-box map, and add one detail to each box. 236 00:12:42.609 --> 00:12:44.997 Only then, go and read the full text. 237 00:12:44.997 --> 00:12:48.613 You'll find the details suddenly have somewhere to land. 238 00:12:48.613 --> 00:12:51.711 And when you hit a rare word, that's layer four. 239 00:12:51.711 --> 00:12:54.100 Look it up, but keep it in its place. 240 00:12:55.100 --> 00:12:56.364 Big picture first. 241 00:12:56.364 --> 00:12:57.278 Details last. 242 00:12:57.278 --> 00:13:03.600 That's how you learn a text like this, and honestly, that's how you learn almost anything.