One Hour of Reflection

 "One hour of reflection is better than a night's vigil." Muhammad, Hadith

One of the many beautiful things about Ramadan is the continual revisiting of text, and the new lessons that you draw from them. On the one hand, I suppose this is a duh statement, because I draw different meanings from every re-read of The Book of Disquiet or In Search of Lost Time or Bleak House, so I guess it shouldn't be different if the text is of divine origin; I'm still a human trying to work my way through the words and meaning, no matter their origin. Sometimes the different meaning comes from a passage that you somehow had glossed over, even if you've read the work many times. That said, I think it's interesting how yet another re-read will inspire a new understanding, even if you've tagged the passage before. For example, I was involved in my early morning Quranic study, and was devoting myself to both the Quran and also the voluminous notes in Seyyed Hoissein Nasr's wonderful Study Quran. I came across a line that I had underlined (who knows how many years ago): "A hadith states, 'One hour of reflection [or meditation, tafakkur] is better than a night's vigil.'" Obviously, I thought it was important previously because I had already underlined it, but for some reason it really spoke to me this time. This is doubtless true because it is a message that continually resonates with me: in Ramadan if we're only focusing on getting in all of our prayers and and fasting, and not devoting more time to Quranic study and reflection then we're missing out on an extraordinary opportunity for growth. One of the things that I'm looking forward to as I face down retirement is the extra time that I'll have every day to read and study and reflect more. Of course, this also places greater responsibility on us. Nasr quotes Hasan al-Basri as having said, "If one's words are not wisdom, they are vain. If one's silence is not reflection, it is absent-mindedness. If one's thought is not contemplation, it is play."