The Methods of Coping with Stress/Sorrow: The Case of al-Kindī

Enver Uysal*

Stress and Sorrow

Stress is a nervous process that manifests itself as a result of the failure of the person to cope with the problem in question physically and emotionally in the face of any threat perceived by the person or a negative situation that is difficult to bear and generally affects daily life negatively. Stress constitutes one of the back-breaking problems that we have to deal with in many stages of our lives. Although it is not normally a disease, in some cases it can be as harmful as a disease. Nevertheless, stress is not always evil and harmful. Stress that does not become chronic and can be kept under control can enable human beings to be more aware of the situations going on around them and to focus more comfortably. Furthermore, in some cases, stress has a motivating effect on the individual and can help the individual to be more successful. However, in the event that the individual loses control over his/her life as a result of stress, the professional life, family life, health and relations of the individual with his/her environment may be seriously damaged. Under such circumstances, stress stands before us as a problem that should not be neglected and should be managed.

In his book titled Hüzün Hastalığı, Kemal Sayar argues that although most of contemporary psychiatrists and psychologists consider sorrow (stress in the sense we tried to express above) as a ‘‘disease’’ that needs to be treated in a medical sense, in the religious culture and national tradition of Turkish society, sorrow is not a disease, but a positive state that leads to the maturation of the person. In this article, the expression sorrow is used in the sense of sadness, distress, grief, stress, trouble and calamity. It would be correct to argue that sadness is also used in this sense in the Islamic moral philosophy. The deceased Hüseyin Aydın, my lecturer, used to say that ‘‘a person matures after facing serious situations over and over again’’. In other words, ‘‘encountering serious events that are difficult to cope with leads the person to become more mature mentally.’’ It is a well-known fact that a person who lives his/her life in a way that is the equivalent of the saying ‘‘eating the bread of idleness’’, without assuming any responsibility and without having to endure any difficulties, and who finds everything he desires readily available, will be extremely incapable of coping with the problems that he encounters. Certainly, it is not desirable for people to encounter difficulties in life that will make them tired and upset and cause them to experience stress. However, it would not be correct to ignore the maturity that coping with those difficulties will bring to the individual. Accordingly, The Prophet of Islam (pbuh) advised, ‘‘Do not seek patience from Allah unnecessarily. But when a trouble and calamity befall upon you, show patience’’. Apart from the positive meaning of patience as ‘‘persistence in good and beautiful things and in worship’’, the common meaning of patience is the endurance against the calamities. In other words, patience is a concept that a person needs to have in case of a calamity. The Prophet (pbuh) warned against asking Allah for patience out of the blue, as this would be in a sense inviting calamity. When people are faced with calamities and troubles that are beyond them, they are asked to endure them and have patience.

How We View the Life Bears Importance

Life is not a uniform process. Life has good, beautiful, cheerful and joyful days as well as bad and sorrowful days. The life is complete only with these. We live in a world where we are tested. Allah has created life and death to recognise who has committed good and beautiful deeds. Traumatic incidents such as the death of a beloved one, divorce, loss of a job, bankruptcy, difficulties that may be experienced in marriage, chronic diseases, natural disasters, rape or violence are negative incidents that cause human beings to feel sad. However, human beings are subjected to a divine examination with what they have, what they do not have or what they cannot have despite their wishes, and what they have lost. Where there is a test, inevitably there is joy and success as well as difficulties, sorrows and failures. What really matters is that people realise these things and pass the test successfully by showing patience, effort and endeavour.

Allah possesses both the attributes of beauty and the attributes of anger, and these attributes of the Creator can manifest themselves at any moment. There is a state of distress in Sufism as well as a state of comfort/well-being. A Companion of the Prophet (pbuh) has reported that during one of His journeys he witnessed the Prophet (pbuh) uttering takbir (Allahu Akbar - Allah is the greatest) while ascending a hill, and when the Prophet (pbuh) was descending downhill, His takbir transformed into tahlil (Kalima Tawhid- No God Except Allah) and tasbeeh (Glorification of Allah). Isn’t human life also just a journey? During this journey, humans sometimes face a difficult slope to overcome, that is, troubles. The above hadith advises us to take refuge in Allah by saying takbir and to seek His help in order to overcome difficulties when we are faced with troublesome situations, but once we overcome the difficulties and feel relieved, we must not break our connection with Allah and transform our takbir into glorification of Allah. Such a practice constitutes a spiritual support and metaphysical reinforcement for a believer who faces difficulties in life.

Accordingly, how we view life bears great importance. In this regard, Mevlana said, ‘‘those who look cross-eyed will see cross-eyed’’. If one's view of life is wrong, it will not be possible to see the right, beautiful and wise side of life. Even in mathematics, when the solution of a problem is started to be solved with the wrong formula, it is not possible to reach the correct result. In this sense, how we view life is of great importance. It is possible to see the full side of the glass as well as the empty side. When the Prophet (pbuh) was walking with a few of His Companions, they noticed a dead dog on the side of the road. While His Companions were covering their noses because of the foul odour emitted, the Prophet (pbuh) said, ‘‘How beautiful its teeth were’’. The Prophet (pbuh) was able to see a beauty even in the negativity.

In M. Akif Ersoy’s book titled Safahat, there is a story called ‘‘Küfe’’ (Basket): In a nuclear family consisting of a mother, father and a 10-year-old boy, the father earns a living for his family by carrying loads with a basket on his back, but he has been infected with tuberculosis. The child leaves the house a few minutes after his father in the morning to go to school. One morning when the child leaves the house, 100-200 metres away, he sees that his father has fallen on the road and is bleeding from his mouth. Undoubtedly, this is a traumatic scene for a child. The child picks up his father from the ground, takes him by the hand, brings him home and hands him over to his mother. Unfortunately, the father passes away after a while. Now the burden of providing for the family falls on the shoulders of the little boy. After the death of his father, the boy goes to school until noon and sells lemons in the afternoon. One morning, as the boy, overwhelmed by the situation he is in, leaves the house to go to school, he catches sight of the basket that his father had been carrying for years behind the door and kicks the basket by cursing it: ‘‘God damn you basket. My father was crushed under the loads he carried with you all his life and he eventually passed away.’’ Hearing these words, the mother replies, ‘‘My son! Why are you kicking the basket? It was our bread and butter. Without it, how would your father have been able to earn a living for our family?’’. His mother then explains to her son that his behaviour is not right. In this story, there are two different perspectives on life: On the one hand, the optimistic view of a woman who has been matured by the troubles she has experienced throughout her life, and on the other hand, the pessimistic view of a little boy who is overwhelmed by the negativities he has experienced and whose shoulders have been burdened with heavy loads at such an early age. For the mother, the memory of that basket is great, she ascribes almost a sacredness to it, while for the child its meaning is completely different.

In daily life, we sometimes hear a saying or find a sentence that catches our attention while reading a book and say, ‘‘What a beautiful sentence! How wonderfully the author expressed it!’’. But we do not think about what experiences are behind the emergence of that sentence. In fact, no sentence is said out of the blue, on the contrary, each sentence is said as a result of a life experience. For instance, ‘‘Your grace is sweet just as your curse’’ and ‘‘Didn’t I say this is a bite of blessing, you cannot eat it?’’ are among the words that are pleasant to the ear. The grace is already pleasant, but can we also tolerate the same person's misfortune? Can we consent to what has been judged about us? What sufferings has the person who said this experienced during his lifetime and then started to tolerate the sufferings of the other person? When Erzurumlu Ibrahim Hakkı said; ‘‘Let's see what Allah will favour, whatever He wills, His will will be always glorious’’, as a result of which experiences did he say this sentence? We do not think much about this side of the story.

The Science of Morality

In a sense, morality can be defined as ‘‘the art of being a good person’’ or ‘‘the struggle to become a good person’’. This struggle has started with the first human being and will continue until the last person on earth. Morality has been the greatest concern of both prophets and philosophers. We know that the Prophet (a.s) said, ‘‘I have only been sent to perfect good moral character’’. In other words, the aim of the previous Prophets was also to introduce and make humanity adopt good morals, but this morality was finalised with the Prophet (pbuh). The books on morality in Islamic thought are organised under three main categories: a) Ethics books written in the light of verses and hadiths, b) Books in which Sufi ethics are explained, c) Ethics books written with philosophical method. The works in this third group were largely inspired by the book of Aristotle titled Nicomachean Ethics. In these works, morality was regarded as ‘‘the art of attaining happiness and getting rid of unhappiness’’. Accordingly, the title of the work on morality of al-Kindī (death 866 or 870 AD), who is accepted as the first Islamic philosopher, is Fi’l-Hīle li Def’il-Ahzān (in English: The Methods of Getting Rid of Sorrow); Tahsīlu’s-Saāde (The Attainment of Happiness) and Tenbīh alā Sebīli’s-Saāde (Warning on the Way to Happiness) are the two works of al-Fārābī (death 950 AD) on morality. The title of Rāgīp Isfahānī’s (death: first quarter of the V/XI century) work on ethics is Tafṣīlu’n-Neş’eteyn ve Taḥṣīlu’s-Saādeteyn (Explanation of the Two Sources and the Attainment of Happiness in the Two Realms). Happiness, in the eyes of Islamic ethicists, is the permanent happiness that is achieved through spiritual, mental, rational and intellectual development and proficiency beyond the ordinary pleasures obtained by satisfying bodily, worldly and transitory desires, and the highest degree of which will be enjoyed only after death. When the objective of morality is happiness, the individual needs to exhibit behaviours that will make him/her happy and avoid attitudes and behaviours that will make him/her unhappy, and also determine his/her expectations about life based on this. In the works listed above, this idea seems to be dominant.

The Epistle of al-Kindī on Sorrow

It has been mentioned above that the name of the epistle in question is Fi’l-Hīle li Def’il-Ahzān. This epistle was translated into Turkish by Mustafa Çağrıcı under the title of Üzüntüden Kurtulma Yolları (The Methods of Getting Rid of Sadness) and published both by Marmara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Yayınları (Faculty of Theology Publications, Marmara University) (1998) and Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları (Türkiye Diyanet Foundation Publications) (2022). The translation of the epistle by Mahmut Kaya is included in the work titled İslam Filozoflarından Felsefe Metinleri (Philosophical Texts from Islamic Philosophers) (Classic, 2014).

Humankind is a creature consisting of desires and ambitions. The desires of the human beings are unlimited while their needs are limited. However, modernism and the contemporary capitalist system, through the advertisements published, constantly shouts to people that their needs are infinite and that they must satisfy these needs. This is because in the capitalist system, a human is considered as a "homo economicus" and therefore must constantly spend and consume. Man is only worth as much as he spends. Yet, it is not possible for human beings with limited means to fulfil their infinite needs. In fact, this fact forms the basis of the unhappiness of modern human beings. If people were able to realise that their desires, not their needs, are infinite, they would try to control their desires instead of constantly seeking to satisfy their needs, and if they succeeded in this, they would attain peace and happiness. For this reason, classical Islamic ethics books usually begin with ‘‘the definition of the human soul (nafs)’’ and ‘‘self-awareness’’, continue with the powers of the human soul and how to utilise these powers, and finally reveal the profile of a ‘‘virtuous and happy person’’. A person should be aware of himself/herself and be aware of his/her abilities and means so that he/she can adopt a lifestyle accordingly. The opposite of this situation means that the person is dragged into unhappiness. The following Turkish proverb is literally addressed to those who do not realise their means and act presumptuous: “Upon seeing that the horse was shoed, the frog also lifted its foot and said, please shoe my foot too.” It is inevitable for a person who pursues things that are beyond his/her means to experience sorrow and distress because of not being able to obtain them.

The work of al-Kindī, Fi’l-Hīle li Def’il-Ahzān, was in a way written based on the principle that life consists of an ‘‘endeavour to overcome unhappiness.’’ Al-Kindī started his epistle with the definition of sadness. ‘‘Sadness is a soulful pain arising from the loss of loved things or the non-fulfilment of intended things.’’ This definition actually also gives the reader the way how to get rid of sadness: Since we feel sorrow when we lose the things we love and fail to achieve the things we aimed for, then we will avoid experiencing this pain when we try to love and acquire the things that we cannot lose and aim for the things that can be realised. So, what are the things that cannot be lost? The answer to this question is moral values. According to al-Kindī, ‘‘if we desire not to lose what we love and not to be deprived of our desires, then we should focus on the realm of the mind. We need not be sad about what we lose, and we should avoid desiring material, sensual, and impermanent things. The sorrow of those who grieve over the loss of blessings that are of a temporary nature and the loss of things that can never be obtained is never-ending.’’ The material values that we possess are things that come and go. Such assets may be in our hands today and in the hands of someone else tomorrow. It is as much our right to have them as it is the right of other people to have them. Spiritual values, on the other hand, are things of permanence. No one can take them away from us. For example, truthfulness, honesty, generosity and honour; no one can take these away from me. And what really makes me ‘‘the real me’’ is not the material things I have, but the moral values. So, in the light of all these explanations, if we wish to avoid being sad, we should only care about having moral values.

Al-Kindī also suggested very practical formulas that are sometimes easy to say but very difficult to apply: ‘‘If what we want has not happened, we should desire what is possible to happen, and thus we should not prefer the continuation of sorrow to the continuation of joy.’’

Al-Kindī was well aware that we live in a world of existence and destruction, in which it is not possible not to feel any sorrow at all. Because every existence and destruction brings with it joy or sorrow. According to him, ‘‘to desire not to be sad at all is, in a sense, to desire not to live.’’ Therefore, al-Kindī’s purpose in writing this epistle was not to ensure that one does not feel sad at all, but rather to explain the methods of how one can overcome the sorrows one may experience in a lighter way without harming oneself and those surrounding one.

In this context, al-Kindī emphasised the importance of human habits and self-discipline. For example, a gambler feels sad on the day he/she cannot continue this habit. Therefore, the habits one has also play an important role in one's happiness. Therefore, we should only care about having habits that will make us happy. In this respect, the word morality (akhlaq in Arabic) is the plural form of the word ‘‘huluq’’, which means ‘‘habit’’. The habits of an individual constitute the morality of that individual. If the habits of an individual are good, we look at that person as a person with good morals, and if they are bad, we look at that person as a person with bad morals. For this reason, al-Kindī emphasised the importance of self-reformation and self-discipline. According to al-Kindī, while human beings care about their physical ailments, they do not care so much about their spiritual problems. However, the body is mortal and the soul is eternal. Healing the soul and saving it from diseases is more important than healing the body. Because the body is only a tool used by the soul. ‘‘It is not our bodies that make us who we are, but our souls. Our soul constitutes our personality.’’

After giving the above-mentioned information that constitutes the infrastructure for his epistle, al-Kindī, by declaring that sorrow is a reality of life and an inevitable part of it, explained how one can overcome these sorrows in a lighter way without harming oneself and the people around one, in other words, by listing the methods of getting rid of sorrow through some reasoning and sometimes by adopting a mystical attitude. These articles will be attempted to be summarised in this article. It is also worth mentioning that al-Kindī’s epistle had a great influence on the future Islamic ethical philosophy. After him, all of the ethical books written with a philosophical method, especially the books by Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, Ibn Miskawayh and al-Ṭūsī, included this subject under a separate title.

The Methods of Coping with Sorrow

1. Al-Kindī argues that ‘‘if we want to deal with something, we must first know what it is and why it happens’’. Therefore, he defines sadness at the beginning of the epistle. As for the cause of sadness, according to al-Kindī, the cause of our sadness is either ourselves or another person. If we feel sad because of something we have done, we should avoid doing things that will cause us to feel sorrow. If we know that we will be sad as a result, but we still commit that action, this is only an indication that we lack reason. If we are upset about something someone else has done, we should warn that person appropriately, but if they continue to behave in the same way, we must stop feeling upset about it.

According to al-Kindī, in cases where sadness is inevitable, we should not be sad about the relevant situation at least before the sadness actually occurs. Because when we feel sad about something before the cause of sadness is actualised, that cause does not disappear. There is no point in making those three days miserable for ourselves because that thing may happen to us three days later. Moreover, it is shameful to feel upset before the cause of the sadness actually occurs. Yet it is necessary to try to prevent the cause of the sorrow from arising. It is therefore within our control to shorten the duration of the sadness.  

2. Another way of overcoming sadness is to think about the sadness we have experienced and overcome, and the sadness others have suffered: ‘‘I have had similar problems before, but I got over them, so I can get over this sadness too. This trouble will also pass. Besides, such things happen to other people too. Since those people can be patient and overcome these periods of sadness, I can overcome them too.’’ Thinking in this way becomes a form of consolation for the human being and gives the person the strength to withstand. In this context, al-Kindī mentions the letter left by Alexander the Great to be given to his mother upon his death. In the letter Alexander the Great left to his mother, he wrote that a feast should be organised for him when he passed away, and that all people from Europe, Asia and Africa should be invited to this feast, but those who had suffered any sorrow until then would not be allowed to attend this feast. This will of Alexander the Great was fulfilled. However, on the day of the feast, the mother was surprised to realise that there was no one other than the palace officials at the designated place of feast. A detail in the letter written by her son had escaped the attention of the mother. When the officials said to her, ‘‘Madam! It seems that there is no one in these three continents who has never experienced any sorrow. Everyone has experienced some sort of sorrow, that is why the feast place was left empty’’; his mother, faced with this situation, said: ‘‘Oh my son, even with your death you have managed to teach me something important. I realised that I was not the first one to suffer a calamity, that calamity is not an event that happens only to one person’’.

3. We may have lost something or been deprived of something, and if we feel sad about it, many other people have also been deprived of such things. There are even people who have never possessed them. For example, if someone has lost a child, it would be a source of consolation for that person to think of those who never had children; if someone has lost property, it would be a source of consolation for that person to think of those who never possessed it. In this case, the source of sorrow is the individual him/herself.

4. According to al-Kindī, if we want nothing bad to happen to us, it means that we do not want to exist at all. Because we live in a world of existence and destruction. Therefore, when we ask for the absence of calamities in this realm, we are actually asking for the annihilation of the law of existence and entropy in the nature. This means asking for the impossible. The one who wants the impossible will be deprived of his/her will. This situation is nothing but misfortune. According to al-Kindī, one should be ashamed of such a behaviour.

5. Things that others may also possess are common to all human beings. The fact that such assets are closer to us does not mean that we are more worthy of them than others. That is the nature of material things; they are ours only as long as they remain in our possession. However, our real gains are our good deeds in moral terms. No one can share in them and no human being can take them away from us. Therefore, it is the moral favours that we should feel sorry for when we lose them. Grieving over the acquisition of certain things by other people is an act of envious people. Envy constitutes the worst of evils. A person who wants his/her friend to be deprived of something or who is happy to see misfortune befall his/her friend is truly a bad person. A person who feels sad that his/her friend has good things is a true envious person. 

6. Al-Kindī emphasises that the material values we possess are entrusted to us only as a trust and that their rightful owner is Allah. According to him, everything we possess is entrusted to us by Allah, who is the True Rightful Owner of all things. Allah has the power to take it back when He wishes and give it to someone else when He wishes. Not wishing to return it to him and being upset when it is taken from us is a behaviour worthy of condemnation. When someone is entrusted with a property, treating it as one's own property is a betrayal of the trust and ingratitude towards the original owner of the property.  

7. If we don't want to be sad at all, we should not have any material possessions. However, even when we avoid material things, we experience sorrow because we are deprived of them. This demonstrates to us that sadness is inevitable. But, on the other hand, we wish not to be sad and we seek ways not to be sad. According to al-Kindī, this constitutes a contradiction.

Thus, suffering from sorrow is not an unavoidable necessity for human beings. Since we feel sad because of the loss of material things, al-Kindī argues with a mystical approach that we can reduce our sadness by reducing our material needs. Since material things are alien to the true nature of human beings, the loss or deprivation of material things causes sorrow. If the possession of material things brings us joy, their loss will cause sorrow to the same extent. Kindī narrates two different anecdotes in this respect:

When Socrates was asked, ‘‘How do you manage not to feel sorrow?’’, he replied: ‘‘it is very simple, by possessing things that I will not feel sorrow if I lose them’’.

A crystal vase was presented to Emperor Nero in the presence of the palace officials. Having such a vase made Nero extremely happy and he could not hide his joy from the people present. This situation attracted the attention of a philosopher who was present and said to Nero ‘‘Sir, having this vase has made you extremely happy. However, when you lose it, your sorrow will be equally great.’’ In reality, when that vase was broken one day, the sorrow of Nero was also great.

8. Al-Kindī emphasises that the fear of death is one of the sources of sorrow for human beings. However, he distinguishes between death and fear of death. According to al-Kindī, people generally think that there is nothing worse than death, and they worry and grieve for death. However, death itself is not bad, what is bad is the fear of death. Death is a part of our nature. Accordingly, the human being is defined as ‘‘an intelligent and mortal creature’’. Accordingly, if there were no death, there would be no human being either.

Al-Kindī also claims that human beings are creatures who get used to the place they are in and do not want to leave it easily. Just as the foetus in the womb does not want to leave its safe haven, human beings feel a deep fear of the idea of departing from this place called the world. As long as a person realises that death is a fact of being human and is prepared for it, death will be no longer something to be feared.

9. Another method suggested by al-Kindī to get rid of sorrow is the following: When we lose something, instead of preoccupying our minds with the loss and feeling sorrowful, we should focus on the rational possessions we have; such as ‘‘I lost my property, but I am in good health, I lost my assets, but I have credit, I am still a reliable person’’. According to al-Kindī, the contemplation of what is preserved and still possessed serves as a consolation against the calamities encountered. 

10. Finally, al-Kindī approaches this issue from a very different perspective: According to him, after material gains, people psychologically expect a calamity. Therefore, when material gains are no longer available, the expectation of calamity will be deemed to be eliminated, and in this case, the thing that reduces the cause of sorrow becomes a blessing. If some calamities serve to reduce some other calamities, this actually constitutes a blessing.

What makes a human being human and makes him exist is not the material values he possesses, but rather the spiritual values. Material values are not things that are intrinsic to human beings and do not add value to their essence; on the contrary, as al-Kindī expresses it, these values are "alien to the nature of humans" and are transitory things that are added to human beings subsequently. Therefore, their loss should not cause one to grieve. The following sentences which appear at the end of the epistle are remarkable sentences in the nature of a warning: ‘‘The person who does not waste time in the pursuit of obtaining things (material values) other than his/her own existence, achieves dominance over anger and lust, which are the source of power and pain that enslave kings. The most dangerous of all diseases are the diseases brought about by the desires of the human soul. If the forces of anger and lust fail to exert their negative effects on a person, that person gains a superiority similar to the power of kings over their servants and is deemed to have defeated his/her most powerful enemies.’’
 

*Prof. Dr. Bursa Uludağ University