These habits gradually result in deeper attachment to and love for those things...

These habits gradually result in deeper attachment to and love for those things, and he is bound to them with invisible bonds, thus becoming helpless and impotent in front of them. That is, the same thing which had once added charm and delight to his life later deprives his personality of its vigour, and the same thing which once made him feel powerful against nature now turns him into a helpless slave without a will of his own. Man’s inclination towards zuhd is rooted in his love of freedom.

By nature he is disposed toward possession of things and their exploitation; but when he realizes that the things, to the very extent they make him outwardly powerful and successful, inwardly transform him into a weakling without willpower and a slave, he rebels against this slavery. This rebellion of man is what we call zuhd. Our poets and sages have spoken a lot about freedom and liberation.

Hafiz calls himself ‘the slave of the magnanimity of him who is free of everything under the blue sky that carries any taint of attachment.’ Among the trees, he admires the cypress which to him seems ‘free of all woes.’ What those great men meant by ‘freedom’ is freedom from attachment, freedom from being possessed, bewitched, and captivated by anything. But freedom implies something greater than being devoid of attachments.

The ties which make a man weak, helpless, dependent, and impotent are not only those which originate in the heart or emotional attachments; to these must be added the various bodily, physical and psychological conditioning and artificial appendages that are first acquired for adding charm and glory to life and for the satisfaction of the lust for power and strength, later growing into a form of addiction or rather becoming second nature.

These, while they may not involve one’s emotional attachments, or may even be regarded by one as reprehensible, should be counted as even stronger means of human servitude and which may bring greater even degradation than emotional attachments. Take the example of an enlightened ‘Arif with a heart free of worldly attachments, for whom, nevertheless, addiction to tea, tobacco or opium has become second nature, or for whom abstention from foods to which he is accustomed may endanger his life.

Can such a man lead a free existence? Liberty from attachments is a necessary condition of freedom, but it is not sufficient in itself.