Spiritual training (riyada)

"Training" (riyada) is the eleventh of the stations in Madarij al-Salikin; Ibn al-Qayyim defines it as training the self in truthfulness and sincerity. ¹

Ibn al-Qayyim quotes al-Harawi in the Manazil: it is "training the self to accept truthfulness". He finds two meanings in this: training the self to accept truthfulness when it is put to it in one's own words, deeds and will, and accepting the truth from whoever presents it. He cites al-Zumar 33 to show that one's own truthfulness is not enough without affirming the truthful, since many people are truthful but are kept from affirming others by pride or envy. The editor notes that al-Harawi placed it after fleeing, in Ibn al-Qayyim's own order. ¹

For al-Harawi it is refining character by knowledge, purifying deeds by sincerity, and rendering rights in full in one's dealings. Ibn al-Qayyim explains: refining character by knowledge means making no outward or inward movement except as knowledge requires, so that one's movements are weighed on the scale of the revealed law; purifying deeds by sincerity means freeing them from any motive other than God – "making the aim one and the motive pure"; rendering rights means giving God's right and people's rights in full. Since these three are very hard on the self, taking them on is training; once habitual, they become character. ²

For al-Harawi it is cutting off dispersion, ceasing to look back at a station one has passed, and letting knowledge run its course. Ibn al-Qayyim explains the first as cutting off what disperses the heart from God by gathering it upon Him, and the second as not lingering in admiration of the knowledge and delight of a station already passed, lest it become a veil at which one halts – "for there is no standing still in nature or on the journey: either forward or backward". ² Letting knowledge run its course means, for him, surrendering to knowledge and not opposing it with inner gathering, taste or state: knowledge is to be made judge over the state. Many wayfarers, he says, when a flash appears or a state overwhelms them, throw knowledge behind their backs and let the state rule; this is why the shaykhs of uprightness so stressed knowledge and holding to it. ^{2 3}

For al-Harawi it is detaching witnessing, rising to union (jam'), rejecting what opposes and cutting off recompense. ³

• Rising to union: Ibn al-Qayyim calls this "a place where feet slip and understandings go astray" and distinguishes two unions. Union in the cosmic decree is the gathering of all created effects in God's decree and destiny; witnessing it is true, he says, but gives no faith, and annihilation in it is at most annihilation in the oneness of lordship, which does not suffice on its own. Essential union is the gathering of the names and attributes in the Essence, and witnessing it is sound. Rising above the names and attributes to an Essence bare of them can at most be excused, owing to a narrow heart or an overwhelming experience, but not praised; he likens this negation in witnessing to the negation of the Jahmiyya in belief, while noting the difference between them. Perfection, for him, is witnessing the Essence described by the attributes of perfection, and the more one witnesses the meanings of the names the more perfect one is; he does not deny unveiling and taste, he says, "but the question is their rank". ^{3 4} A footnote signed "al-Fiqi" sees in this witnessing the first step towards the doctrine of the unity of being – the annotator's judgement. ⁴
• Rejecting what opposes and cutting off recompense: Ibn al-Qayyim reads the first as rejecting what opposes the witnessing of union, or – the more perfect sense – rejecting every wish that opposes what God wills; and the second as freeing one's dealings from seeking recompense, since God deserves to be worshipped for Himself. ⁴ He then qualifies this: regard for recompense is necessary to anyone who acts, and the true lover who has ceased to regard recompense has in fact regarded the greatest – nearness to God, delight in loving Him and longing to meet Him; asking for Paradise alongside this is no defect, as the hadiths "it is around it that we hum" and on asking for al-Firdaws show. He refers to what he wrote in "Safar al-Hijratayn" on the defects of the stations. ⁵

Al-Harawi's own text and the other commentaries on the Manazil have not yet been added.