What does life mean?

What does life mean? It means clear-sightedness and ability. The difference between life and death lies in these two. The greater the measure of these two, the livelier is life. Why do we call God alive? Does it mean having a beating heart and blood flow? This meaning does not apply to God; in His case heart and blood do not exist. Does life mean breathing and letting breath in and out? No, this is not the meaning of life. These are conditions of life for us, not life itself.

Life itself is awareness and ability, we call God alive because He represents Absolute Wisdom and Ability, and because an excellent human life reflects qualities of His Essence, including kindness, mercy, compassion and beneficence. Islam, too, promotes wisdom and ability in actual practice, as it did for many centuries.

Therefore, when human thought does not reflect the divine-endowed wisdom and ability, and instead, leads only to aggravation of ignorance and inactivity, it no longer represents Islam. Islam is the religion of life which is incompatible with ignorance and inability. You can accept this as a general criterion of understanding Islam. In the last session I mentioned action as an element of life in Islamic thought.

Islam tries in its teachings to predicate human destiny on action, so as to make man rely on his own will. Islam says that your unhappiness is the result of your own misdeeds. A human being must rely on his own conduct and personal initiative. What is more explicit than the phrase of the Quran which says: "There is not for man save what he strives for." (53:39). No doubt, it involves human dynamism, alertness, insight and ability.

To-day, educators try hard to awaken the sense of self-reliance in man, and rightly do so. The kind of self-reliance that Islam awakens in man is that it puts an end to the hope of relying on everything outside himself, and if there is a hope it must be centered on oneself. Similarly every connection with other things or persons is through action. You cannot be connected with the Prophet (s.a.w.) or Imam Ali (a.s.) or the latter's chaste Fatima (a.s.) except through deeds.

I remember a narration from eighteen years ago which affected me deeply. It was an anecdote from the life of the Holy Prophet (s.a.w.), so fine and meaningful, and peerless in the biography of all human beings. It is amazing how a man in a desert environment, such as that of the Prophet's could act in an extraordinarily thoughtful manner.