Vauxhall Tea Party

Phase 5 · Kader and Vesvese

Week 17

Kader and My Share of Choice

The Words · The Twenty-Sixth Word, Second and Third Topics

01

Story

  1. 01A grown man lifts a small child onto his shoulders. “Wherever you want to go,” he says, “I will take you.”

  2. 02The child points to the highest, coldest mountain, and the man carries him all the way up.

  3. 03At the top the wind bites. The child shivers, slips and falls into the snow.

  4. 04“You wanted this,” the man tells him. The child walked no step of the road, but the choosing was his.

  5. 05Our will is that small, Nursi says, and God has made it the condition of His own. Choose your road, and you are carried along it; the answering is yours (mes’uliyet).

A comparison of Nursi’s own, from the Seventh way of the Second Topic, which he opens with “if the comparison is not mistaken”. It is a picture of responsibility, not advice on parenting. The wording is ours.

02

Meaning

We have a small but real share of will (cüz-i ihtiyarî), and we answer for how we use it. Look at the past and at misfortune through kader, so you neither despair nor blame; look at the future and at your sins through responsibility (teklif), so you make no excuses.

The child carried nothing. The legs, the strength and the road were all the man’s. But the choosing was the child’s, and so the reproach is too. That is our share of will (cüz-i ihtiyarî): very weak, almost nothing, and yet God has made it the ordinary condition of His own will. Last week said that nothing is random. This week keeps that comfort from turning into an excuse. Look back at the past and at misfortune through kader, so you neither despair nor blame. Look ahead at the future and at your sins through your charge (teklif), so you make no excuses. Credit the good to God and do not grow proud; own the wrong and do not blame kader.

Six things this treatise shows

Five from the seven ways of the Second Topic, one from the Third. Try each picture with your own hands.

  1. ????that it is · vücud: evidentfelt in the conscience · vicdannot knowing itis not its not being

    A closed lantern: our share of will. Its light shows through the seams.

    01 / 06

    We know that we choose, not how

    How does kader fit with our share of will (cüz-i ihtiyarî)? Nursi’s first answers are humble. The All-Just and Wise One gave us a share of will whose nature is unknown (mahiyeti meçhul), and not knowing how the two fit does not show that they do not. And everyone feels in his conscience (vicdan) that he chooses. Knowing that a thing is and knowing what it is are two different things (vücud, mahiyet). Many things are evident in their existence and hidden in their nature. Our not knowing is not their not being.

  2. the past · mâzi →← the future · müstakbelafterafterafterafterafterbeforebeforebeforebeforebeforeall at once · birden

    Nursi’s mirror. Raise it and watch how much of the road it holds.

    02 / 06

    Knowing is not forcing

    The share of will is not against kader; kader rather confirms it. For kader is a kind of Divine knowledge, and that knowledge has attached to our choosing. And knowledge follows the thing known (ilim mâluma tâbidir): it knows what you will do as you will do it, and does not push you to do it. Pre-eternity (ezel) is not the far end of a chain of past events dragging us along. It is like a mirror held at the highest place, holding past, present and future at once, and we are not outside it.

  3. one kader · cause with effecta kader for each, aparta choiceihtiyaran actfiilan outcomeneticeif he had not…?

    A choice leads to an act, and the act to an outcome. If it was measured, was the choice his? Hear three answers.

    03 / 06

    Measured with its cause

    Nursi takes a hard case: if a man’s death was measured for that hour, what fault has the one who shot him? Kader, he answers, measured the death together with its cause, through that very shot. Asked “what if he had not fired?”, the fatalist Cebrî says he would have died anyway; the Mu‘tazilî, who makes man the creator of his acts, says he would not (Cebrî, Mu’tezile); the people of the Sunna say: we do not know. That is the middle way (hadd-i vasat), which keeps both kader and responsibility (mes’uliyet).

  4. created · halkthe doingmasdarhis acquisition · kesbwhat comes of ithâsıl-ı bilmasdarthe doer · ism-i fâil

    God creates what comes of an act. Why, then, is the doer’s name ours? Try the name tag.

    04 / 06

    Why the name is mine

    Our share of will is a relative thing (emr-i itibarî), with no full existence of its own; so it needs no compelling cause, and the choice stays free. If we created our own acts, Nursi says, our choice would actually vanish. Then the objection: “If God creates the act, why is the doer’s name mine?” The answer is grammar. The doer’s name (ism-i fâil) is taken from the doing (masdar), which is our acquisition (kesb), not from what comes of it (hâsıl-ı bilmasdar), which is God’s creation. So the name, and the answering, are ours.

  5. the good · hasenatParadise · Cennetthe wrongs · seyyiatthe zakkum treeistiğfarduathe share of will · cüz-i ihtiyarî

    Our share of will is very weak, Nursi says, yet its hand is long in harm and short in good. Give each hand a helper.

    05 / 06

    A weak hand, so give it two helpers

    Our partial will is weak, but God has made it the ordinary condition (şart-ı âdi) for His universal will to act: the child on the shoulders. Then Nursi turns to the reader. Your share of will is very weak, he says, yet its hand is very long in harm and very short in good. So give one hand to supplication (dua), and it will reach the fruit of good deeds, Paradise and lasting happiness. Give the other to seeking forgiveness (istiğfar), and it will be drawn back from harm. Prayer and trust (tevekkül) strengthen the pull to good; repentance (tevbe) breaks the pull to evil.

  6. ship of kader · kaderin sefinesia tiny freedom · cüz’î hürriyeta world-heavy load

    Does kader take away our freedom? Watch what it takes, and what it gives.

    06 / 06

    Lighter, not heavier: the ship of kader

    Does kader take away our freedom? Absolutely not, says the Third Topic: it gives lightness, ease and security. Without it a person is tied to the whole universe, with endless hopes and needs, and power, will and freedom enough for not a millionth of them: a load as heavy as the world on a poor spirit, inside a tiny, passing freedom. Belief in kader throws that whole load onto the ship of kader (kaderin sefinesi) and leaves the heart free to roam. It takes away only the petty freedom of the commanding self (nefs-i emmâre), its Pharaoh-like claim to do as it pleases.

03

Read

مَٓا اَصَابَكَ مِنْ حَسَنَةٍ فَمِنَ اللّٰهِ وَمَٓا اَصَابَكَ مِنْ سَيِّئَةٍ فَمِنْ نَفْسِكَ

“Whatever good comes to you is from God, and whatever ill comes to you is from yourself.” (Qur’an 4:79)

Every person, of necessity, feels a choice within himself, and knows in his conscience that it exists. Knowing what beings are is one thing; knowing that they are is another. There are many things whose existence is self-evident to us while their nature is unknown, and this share of will (cüz-i ihtiyarî) may be one of them. Not everything is confined to what we know; our not knowing a thing does not show that it is not. And the share of will is not contrary to kader; rather, kader confirms choice. For kader is a kind of Divine knowledge, and Divine knowledge has attached itself to our choosing. So it confirms the choice; it does not cancel it.

To uncover this mystery, look at this comparison. Suppose there is a mirror in your hand, and the stretch on your right is taken as the past and the stretch on your left as the future. The mirror holds only what faces it. Then it holds the two sides one after the other, and cannot hold most of them. The lower the mirror, the less it sees. But as you climb higher with it, the circle facing it widens, until little by little it holds the whole stretch of both sides at once, in a single instant. In its reflection, the things passing along those stretches cannot be called earlier or later, agreeing or opposed (mukaddem, muahhar, muvafık, muhalif). And we and our reasoning are not outside that knowledge, as if we were a mirror set back in the past.

Man’s partial will is weak, a merely relative thing (emr-i itibarî); yet God, the Absolutely Wise, has made that weak will an ordinary condition (şart-ı âdi) for His universal will to act. It is as though He says: “My servant, whichever road you choose, I will take you along it; so the answering is yours.” In short: O man, in your hand is a will called the share of choice, very weak, but with a very long hand in wrongs and destruction and a very short hand in good. Give one of its hands to supplication (dua), so that it reaches Paradise. Give the other to seeking forgiveness (istiğfar), so that it is cut short from the wrongs.

Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, The Words, the Twenty-Sixth Word (the Second Topic, the Second to Fourth and the Seventh ways)Working translation from the Turkish, made for this draft. Check against a published edition before release.Read the Second Topic of the Twenty-Sixth Word in full, in English with the Turkish original

04

Explore

One “if only…”, three ways

“If only I had taken that offer two years ago.” Switch between the three ways of carrying it, and watch the figure on the road.

Mixed upFacing backwards, bent under a sack, he replays the same scene over and over, as if the past could still be chosen. The road ahead lies in fog: since “it was all written anyway”, no step is taken. Regret and idleness, together.

The past, through kaderWhat happened was measured, with a wisdom he may not see yet. The sack goes onto the ship of kader (kaderin sefinesi), and the road behind becomes lines on a page. No despair, and no blame, of God, of others or of himself. Grief is allowed; despair is what kader cures.

The future, through teklifNow he turns round. The road ahead is his charge (teklif): one lit stone, the next step. The email, the application, the apology. No “it was written anyway”. If the regret was a sin, istiğfar first, then the step, and then that too goes to the past.

Neither fatalism nor self-made pride. The past is in good hands, so it need not be carried; the next step is in yours, so it need not wait. Next week the course turns to the Treatise on Whisperings: the voices in the head that are not you.

Course