Virtue isn't about being a nice person, or a 'yes man' to holy-sounding things while not putting them into consideration or practice. You don't need to say holy things even, if you are doing the right thing in practice—for correct outward practice is an indication of inward correctness and beauty. (Hence, "They are known by their signs.")
Virtue is both an outer doing, and an inner quality.
The inner quality produces the outer quality.
You go to a neighborhood and they keep their streets filthy, and you go to another, and they keep them clean with flowers blooming, water sabeels for the thirsty, and places for unknown travelers to sit.
What is the difference?
Too often, we are led to believe it's money. Or some form of, "If only we had more". That is quite the opposite of truth: Money may facilitate some displays of virtue, but it is absolutely not needed. A poor man can be virtuous with whatever little he has, and Allah brings barakah (multi-flowing growth) to his/her deeds. Secondly, having lesser often enables greater virtue, for it enables a greater and more precise quality of attention—which is closely related to manifesting virtue in 3D reality (ie expressing the virtue that is sitting within). Having more is often disabling to virtuous expression and quality. That is because virtue is an inside-out quality; and the manifest law of nature is that things grow from smaller to larger (before shrinking back to death), and creation grows outwards from a central point—the example of which is the life and shape of a tree. Branches don't put together a trunk, a trunk yields branches that often grow beyond it. Starting from a smaller place and with lesser outward means may enable more virtue than otherwise.
Above all, virtue is an act of will, and outward resources are not required to CREATE will, they are the PRODUCT of it. When virtue requires resources for its expression, outward resources gather to facilitate its emergence.
As for whether virtue is a necessary quality for outward living, or whether it is just an activity as optional as a game of cards or Monopoly?
Yes, indeed. Virtue is required, it is needed. We would not have food to eat and roads to drive on if Virtue disappears. What would happen if a building contractor built a bridge without the quality of virtue involved in the enterprise? They may build a flimsy bridge, which will one day accidentally take lives and cost money—two things we are very concerned about in the outer world.
What is the difference between a 'good' sweeper and gardener, and one with lesser work quality? It is virtue—and its twin sister, virtuosity, the ability to do things beautifully, which is in itself a product of inner goodness and quality of deification and attention. The sweeper, or their cleaning equipment, or the structure of their work and duty, may have virtue or lack it. This will directly affect the quality of work produced outside.
In fact you can trace all economic and technical and educational and such 'infrastructural' qualities back to the quality of human virtue that had in turn produced those technological or economic or educational or political or environmental condition.
The root cause is therefore Virtue, and it has a very real and direct impact on the physical world outside. The quality of outside existence, in as far as existence is under human rule and management, is a direct product of human virtue's quality.
~
Ramla Akhtar-Neuhaus
10:15 pm
Thursday, January 02, 2014
Sitting listening to music being played overhead
Dining Hall, Old Hunza Inn
Karimabad, Hunza Valley
