a companion of Iblis, allied with loss, thinking ill of God and His servants, and his scrupulousness becomes hateful. “God speaks the truth, and He guides the way” [33:4].
Chapter Ninety-Three: On Renunciation
Renunciation is leaving the permitted, the permitting,
and the permitted: renounce, and renounce your renunciation.
Leaving is a thing whose entity has no existence,
yet it has a tongue praised within the Law.
Renunciation magnifies matters; for the realized one
it has no value—do not deny this.
Renunciation concerns only what is actually possessed. Seeking is actually possessed, so renouncing seeking is renunciation. Our companions differ about the poor person who possesses nothing: can the name renouncer apply to him, or has he no footing in this station? Our position is that the poor person can desire this world and exert himself to acquire it, even if he does not acquire it. His leaving that effort and seeking, and turning his desire away from it, is undoubtedly called renunciation. That seeking is actually in his possession, which is why we define it as we have.
I have indeed
Notes
Translator’s note TN4017-1: The poem repeats the unvoweled form محلل three times. “The permitted, the permitting, and the permitted” represents one possible distinction of the vowels, without asserting which entities the three terms denote. The final imperative is read as renouncing one's renunciation. Renunciation, zuhd, remains distinct from the preceding scrupulousness, waraʿ.
