The Fortunate One

It is related by Abu Dharr Ghifaari radhiyallahu anhu that the Apostle of Allah sallallahu alayhi wasallam said : “He became fortunate and successful whose heart Allah set aside for faith and made it safe and sound [i.e., whom He blessed with faith so pure and untainted that not an iota of doubt or hypocrisy could enter his heart and protected it against the spiritual maladies like envy and ill-will], and whose tongue He endowed with truthfulness, and in most self with serenity [i.e., whose soul was such that it derived solace from the remembrance of Allah and the things that were pleasing to Him], and whose natural disposition He put right and free from weaknesses [so that it did not tend towards sin], and whose ear He made fit to hear and eyes He made fit to see [i.e., who could hear the truthful word of Allah and see His signs and take warning and draw lessons from them]. Thus, the ear is like the funnel [through which things go into the heart as the liquid is poured into a bottle], and the eye is the conveyor and stabilizer of things which it entrusts to the heart. And blessed, indeed, is the man whose heart the Lord made capable of remembering.”
Musnad-i-Ahmed and Bayhaqi

Commentary
What has been said about the ears and eyes in the concluding part of the above Tradition is to underline the importance of the part the two organs play in the life of a man. Whatever reaches the heart which, so to speak, is the monarch in the human body, and affects it, is generally, through the ears and the eyes. Consequently, the success and salvation of the bondsman is dependant on the ability and fitness of his eyes and ears to see and hear.

The last sentence denotes that even though the things of success and good fortune reach a man’s heart through the eyes and ears, salvation and felicity in the Hereafter cannot be attained unless the heart is capable of preserving and making proper use of them.

In the Qur’aan the three faculties of seeing, hearing and understanding have been mentioned, from place to place, in a way as if man’s guidance and deliverance was contingent on their soundness.

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