Masterpieces of Rhetoric Methood (nahj Al-balagha)

Truthfulness of Life

And this truthfulness is a pledge of, and to, you, since it is the spirit of beauty and right, and the will of able, triumphant life!

Perhaps the most prominent of the aspects of cosmic justice, in the world of inanimate and animate, and in whatever relates to the nature of existence, and features of creatures, is the absolute pure truthfulness. Perhaps truthfulness is the pivot of the earth, the orbit, the night and day. With truthfulness alone the four seasons follow one another, rain falls, and the sun shines.

With it as well, the earth keeps its word when it grows what is above it: each in its time: no advancement and no delay. With it the codes of nature and the laws of life are established. The wind does not flow except with truthfulness, bloods do not ran through veins except with truthfulness, and the living creatures are not born except by a faithful sincere law.

This absolute pure truthfulness on which the law of survival encircle is the first and greatest fountain from which the justice of the cosmos flows and to which it returns.

And since Ali Ibn Abi Talib was very keen on observation of the truthfulness of existence, highly interacted with it, he made his first concern with people is to purify them on the ground of what he conceives, senses and sees. Purification in its right meaning and remote significance is not but the deep sense of the value of life and character of existence. And since this meaning is the unique significance for the great purification, truthfulness to the self, and to every material and spiritual being, is the pivot on which purification encircles, as we have seen it to be the pivot of cosmic justice.

Hence, many of the bases, over which people agreed without thinking over the great codes of existence, are renounced as apart of sound discipline, whereas people assume them as disciplinary bases due to their mere agreement upon them. Thus, too, whatever disagrees with the spirit of the right, the spirit of goodness, and that of beauty, is banished from sound discipline of purification. Disciple based on other than its great principles, is a superficial collusion over ugly lying.

It is, in its remote principles, a deep sense of beautiful faithfulness, which makes it integrate honestly with the uprising of flowing victorious life.

Therefore, the pivot of purification to Ibn Abi Talib was man’s protection from lying, or say protecting him, when he is a live, from the coldness of death.

Man’s protection from lying requires in the first place glorifying truthfulness directly in every situation, showing it as a prominent living necessity before every living creature, and directing people towards it retired to themselves or in groups.

And in this topic, Ali bin Abi Talib appears as a giant who sees what others do not see, who refers to what they are unaware of, practices what others cannot now practice, and he wants them to be able to do it. Ali says:

“Beware of loosening your morals and changing them, maintain one tongue.” And destroying thing means breaking it, and changing it means overturning it from one state to another. He intends to remind true person of the danger which his truthfulness is subjected to if he lies even for one time. For if the truthful person lies once, his honesty is broken, like anything which breaks if it falls on the ground one time.

So are hypocrisy and double standard which are two sorts of the kinds of lying He says too: “Be truthful people. Do things without dissemblance. Respect the right truthful person, and humiliate the wrong liar. Be truthful in speaking, give back the entrusted things, and keep the vow.

He who wants a glory by falsity Allah inherit him humility in a right. If you were truthful we would reward you, and if you were a liar we would punish you. He who lacks truthfulness in his speech is afflicted of his most precious moral, sharp sword at the hand of a brave man doesn’t bring bring for himglory more than faithfulness these master pieces about truthfullness are but samples out for other hundreds by which bin Abi Talib constitutes the base of his great ethical law.

Then take this masterpiece where the share of penetrating conscious mind grows in its weare. He says: “Lying leads to degeneration”. We need not elaborate on showing what lies in this word of a fact that draws beyond it a series on unending facts. And we need not elaborate on portraying what this word refer out of a psychological fact which days do not increase it but firmness.

And there are many like this masterpiece of them: “Lying is not suitable in seriousness and in joke, even that one promises his child, then he does not keep it!” As for the meaning to which the first half of this Allaywiyan masterpiece refer, it was the subject of much dispute among philosophers of ethics, especially the Europeans. In fact those agreed unanimously that truthfulness is a life, lying is a death. But they disputed about whether it is allowable to lie in case of necessity or not? Some of them agree, some others disagree. And every party has their evidence.

However, Ali bin Abi Talib takes a decisive position towards which his phrase arouses, a decisive position which is in harmony with his great code in morals, this faith which we recur to remind the reader that it is resulted from what Ali has sensed and realized, out of the comprehensive justice of the cosmos, so he says without hesitation: “The evidence of faith is you should prefer truth when it harms you to falsehood when it benefits you; and that your speech should not be more than your action.”

It is clear that Ibn Abi Talib does not see in lying what benefits, and in truthfulness what may harm, so he speaks to people in a range of the scope of their conception so that his speech to them leaves on them an intelligent effect. To ascertain that he says: “Keep to truthfulness in all your concerns”. He too says: “Be on your guard against falsehood since a truthful person is on the edge of salvation and dignity, while the liar is on the edge of ignominy and degradation.”

As for the meaning that the second half of the phrae mentions: “Nor one promises his child, then he does not keep it”, it is a great attention to an educational truth which life itself determines, as well as the psychological sources upon which man grows up and progress. It is sufficient that it refers that child is brought up by practical example not by advice, and this view is the pivot of Jean Jack Rousseau’s educational philosophy.

Truthfulness with life entails simplicity and detests from complexity, since every fact is simple as such as the sun is shining and the night dark as on indication of this warm simplicity, as it is a living, spontaneous outcome of truthfulness, we say that Ibn Abi Talib hates arrogance as it is not a true nature; rather dignity is truthfulness; then the arrogant person, in his view, is one who rises above his nature itself, and he says: “So not be like him who feels superiority to the son of his own mother.”

He, at the same time, dislikes modesty if it is inten-tional, since it is not then a true nature; rather the feeling that man is equal to every man in his dignity is the truthfulness. Hence he addresses him whose modesty leads him to humiliate himself, saying to him: “Beware of humiliating yourself”. Then he follows that with a more wonderful saying: “Do not accom-pany, in a travel, him who does not see your superiority to him like what you see of his superiority to you!”

I do not know, in the principles of the protectors of man’s dignity as a man who is not arrogant or humilliated, rather is truthful only, that excels this word of Ibn Abi Talib or that equals it in value: “Man is man’s mirror!”

And from his sayings that indicates the necessity of taking life easy and simply are: “How bad it is to bend down at the time of need and to be harsh in sufficiency. To praise more than what is deserved is sycophancy; to do it less than, is either because of inability to express oneself or of envy. Do not say what you do not know. Do not do the good hypocritically, and do not leave it shyly. O’ son of Adam, whatever you earn beyond your basic needs you store it for others. “He does not keep silent for good so as to be proud of it, nor does he speak to tyrannize over others.

He who overload himself more than he could, failed. There is no good in an ignoble helper. As though I saw Ibn Abi Talib not leaving a side, which his feeling and thinking have realized out of the concerns of life and man, unless he uttered for it a masterpiece that sums up acomplet law. This is what he did the hour he liked to direct people towards taking life truthfully and simply, so he said this word full of the warm of the spontaniety of life: “When your brothers visit you do not save up anything of what is at home and do not bother to bring what is beyond the door!”

When Ali concludes his long speech about the necessity of truthfulness with life directly, then about simplicity without which truthfulness could not exist, and it could not exist without truthfulness, he pursues his way in showing the concepts of discipline which correlate in his belief and connect as if they were a picture of all creatures of the cosmos, in which truthful-ness remains its first orbit, even though they speak of other aspects of morals.

He advises man to disregard other’s shortcom-ings, for this contains a mercy from the over looker and an education to the wrong-doer by conduct and example which is more influential than correcting him through advice and hate. He says: “The most honorable work of a honest person is his over looking what he knows. Likewise he advises of forbearance and endurance as they are the result fo ambition, then an advance towards self’s noble-mindedness” Forbearance and endurance are twins brought about by high courage”.

He hates backbiting as it is a way of hypocrisy, offence and evilness as a whole: “Avoid backbiting for it is the food of the dogs of people of Hell”. Cheating is like backbiting, both of which come of dirty natures: “Beware of cheating as it is the nature of sordid people”. And as he saw that one lie is not allowed, for truthfulness is broken by it, he sees that every sin, however slight and unimportant in his committer’s claim, is but so severe because it is a sin, rather it is more influential on man’s dignity if its committers belittled it, that a great sin which its committer repents at once: “The worst sin is that which its committer takes lightly”.

And Ali forbids you from hastiness in saying and doing as it leads to fall, and a courteous man should not allow himself to have any short coming: “I forbid you from haste in saying and doing.” He likes you to apologize for every sin you have committed as a correction for one’s manners, but he awakens you in a genius observation and statement to the fact that man does not apologize for a good action, then he should not do what forces him to apologize: “You should avoid what you may have to apologize for it is not apologized for a good action.

To prevent preoccupation with people’s defects, and negligence of one’s defects – which leads to bad manners and path negatively and positively – Ali says: “The greatest defect is to find fault with from which you suffer”. And “He who sees into his own defects abstains from looking into other’s defects.” If a bad thing comes to you from a source, you first have to disapprove it, and if you could not do that, you are to disapprove it lest you should be a partner in it: “He who approves a bad thing is a partner in it”.

If kindness among people is a moral necessity since it is an existential necessity as we have stated in the former chapter, so the logic of mind and heart orders that your kindness, on Him who gave you the power to speak and gave charity to, is more and broader. In that Ali says: “Do not try the sharpness of your tongue against Him who has given you the power to speak, nor the eloquence of your speaking against Him who showed you the right path.” Then he says: “The reward of him who honoured you is not to humble him; the reward of him who pleases you is not to displease him.”

He attacks greed pride and envy as they are a way to moral decline: “Greed, vanity and envy are incentives to falling into sins.” If the ancient moralists censured stinginess, it is as such in their view because of being a bad feature in itself. However, as for Ibn Abi Talib, who observes morals with a more compre-hensive insight and a deeper thought, stinginess is not bad in itself as much as it is bad for it includes all the defects, as it drives its doer to every evil in manners and behaviour. The miser is hypocritical, aggressors backbiting, gealous, lowly, forging, greedy, selfish and unjust. Ali says: “Miserliness contains all other evil vices.”

The speech lengthens and elaborates if we like to mention the details of Ibn Abi Talib’s code in morals and the self’s discipline; they are too many, they did not leave any activity of man’s activities except that they portrayed and directed it. If I say that such a task is long, wide, and tiresome, then I mean what I say.

The reader need not but to learn about the masterpieces which we took from Ibn Abi Talib’s literature in this book, so as to be certain that volumes may be narrow in studying his belief of morals and the self’s education as well as in what these chosen extracts entail of explanation and commentary. It is enough to refer to the matter that these Allawyiah masterpieces are one of the most honourable of man’s heritage, and of the greatest in capacity and depth.

However we have to refer to the masterpiece of masterpieces in the great discipline as it is a deep sense of the value of life, the self’s dignity, and the perfection of existence. Very few of the excellent persons like Budha, Christ, Bethoven, and their likes are those who realized that the mark of courtsy lies in the first place between man and himself. It does not exist between man and what is outside him except it is an obvious natural outcome of the first case.

Ibn Abi Talib has realized this truth powerfully and clearly, with no ambiguity or vagueness. He expressent it in a comprehensive manner. Ali says of the necessity of man’s respect to himself and his works without the presence of an observer on him: “Beware of committing a sin in solitude.” And he says in the same sense: “Avoid every such action which is performed in secret and from which shame is felt in the open.

Also avoid that action about which if the doer is questioned he renounces it.” And here is what he says of the relationship between one’s secret and overtness, or between what we called the masterpiece of courtesy and what we call ‘an outcome’ of it: “Whoever set right his inward self, Allah sets right his outward self.”

From the masterpieces of the chinese wiseman Confucius on the self’s courtsy is this word: “Eat at your dining table as if you eat at a king’s dining table.” It is clear he likes to respect yourself in an absolute way that is not connected with any situation or occasion, so that it is worth that you behave when you are alone as you behave while you are before a king. Such a meaning Ali says in a new shape: “You should adorn yourself to your brother like him who adorns himself for a stranger as he likes to see him in the best appearance.”

In every case he likes you to preach your brother so as to help him to convey from a good to a better stance in manners, taste, and path. But the true spirit of courtsy prevents you from injuring or hurting him by advising him publicly; rather this spirit requires that you should be soft and gentle, then you do not advise except stealthily, do not preach except secretly. Ali says: “Whoever preaches his brother secretly adorns him, and whoever preaches him publicly shames him.”

However situation you had, you have to be truthful with yourself, life and people. You live with this truthfulness, and without it you perish. You protect the safety of your soul, your heart, and your body with this truthfulness and without it you lose it. With truthfulness you love, is loved (by others), and is trusted in you without it you bring to yourself oversion, hatred, and all evil vices, and people see you as worthless and mean. And this truthfulness is a pledge from, and upon, you since it is the will of the able, victorious life – which is a will that ordain you to see your pledge every day. And Ibn Abi Talib says: “Every man has to think deeply over his covenant everyday.”