Riḍā

Riḍā is satisfaction: contentment with what God has decreed. Nicholson’s translation of al-Hujwīrī renders it in one place as “quietism”: the author complains that his contemporaries have turned “its back on the path of quietism (riḍá)” (Author’s Introduction). The word carries both ideas, acceptance and rest, and it is the subject of one of the Kashf’s most careful arguments.

God’s satisfaction and ours

Al-Hujwīrī begins from a tradition about Moses:

It is related in the Traditions that Moses said: “O God, show me an action with which, if I did it, Thou wouldst be satisfied.” God answered: “Thou canst not do that, O Moses!” Then Moses fell prostrate, worshipping God and supplicating Him, and God made a revelation to him, saying: “O son of `Imrán, My satisfaction with thee consists in thy being satisfied with My decree,” i.e. when a man is satisfied with God’s decrees it is a sign that God is satisfied with him.

— Kashf al-Maḥjūb, Chapter XIV

So satisfaction is not a task one performs to earn a reward: it is the form the relationship takes. The reasoning is made explicit in a saying he attributes to the unlettered master Abū ʾl-ʿAbbās Qaṣṣāb, from the chapter on the saints of recent times:

“All mankind, whether they will or no, must reconcile themselves to God, or else they will suffer pain,” because, when you are reconciled to Him in affliction, you see only the Author of affliction, and the affliction itself does not come; and if you are not reconciled to Him, affliction comes and your heart is filled with anguish.

— Kashf al-Maḥjūb, Chapter XII

Al-Hujwīrī’s commentary adds that, since “God having predestined our satisfaction and dissatisfaction, does not alter His predestination,” our own satisfaction with His decrees “is a part of our pleasure.” It is a kind of freedom, then, not a surrender of it.

A station or a state?

The theological stakes appear when al-Hujwīrī asks where riḍā belongs in the scheme of ḥāl and maqām. If it is a station, it can be earned and held. If it is a state, it can only be given. The schools divided:

The peculiarity of his doctrine is this, that he does not reckon satisfaction (riḍá) among the “stations” (maqámát), but includes it in the “states” (aḥwál). He was the first to hold this view, which was adopted by the people of Khurásán. The people of `Iráq, on the contrary, asserted that satisfaction is one of the “stations”, and that it is the extreme of trust in God (tawakkul).

— Kashf al-Maḥjūb, Chapter XIV

The “he” is Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī. Al-Hujwīrī’s own report is that “the controversy between them has gone on to the present day,” and he sets out to establish the true nature of satisfaction before returning to the difference between station and state. The disagreement is about whether a person can make himself content, or can only be made so. The Iraqi view, linking it with trust in God, puts it at the end of the discipline described in Zuhd and Tawakkul. The Khurāsānī view puts it in the category of gifts, with contraction and expansion.

What the satisfied person has

A short anecdote gives the practical shape. In the notice of Abū Ḥāzim, al-Hujwīrī reports that he was steadfast in poverty and that, “on being asked what he possessed he answered: ‘Satisfaction (riḍá) with God and independence of mankind.’” (Chapter XI) A saying in an editor’s note in Rabia the Mystic puts the idea from the other direction. “That man is a Sufi,” it is attributed to Abū Saʿīd, “who is satisfied with whatever God does so that God will be satisfied with whatever he does.” (Chapter X) See also Faqr (the poverty that satisfaction rests on) and Maḥabba (the love that satisfaction expresses).