State Of Heart

The state of our hearts is something that we must question and reflect upon. There may be a person who does so much good and you will see him giving to the poor, feeding the homeless, giving advise to others, being there for another person and so on. The problem with this person is their heart is not sincere and so they are not sincere and they do these actions and they say what they do to others only to gain personal benefit and not for the benefit of the other people. So in actuality he is not being good to the people but he is being good to himself and by doing so he becomes famous among the people and this is what he would have wanted the whole time. Apart from this individual you find someone who keeps to themselves, they are quiet, they speak but they don't say much and they will see a brick on the road or a big stick in the path of where children play and so he or she goes and they pick up this brick or this stick and they put it aside so that others might not get hurt. The second person didn't do this so people could say good things about him or make him famous but he did it out of sincerity. Out of these two people, the second one is better even though the first person did more than the second person. The reason is because the sincerity was there. Moderation is key and extremism is destruction. Some say listen to your heart but if we only listened to our hearts then we would destroy ourselves with our own hands because we have evil desires and if we rush to do everything our hearts desire then we become like animals. We've been given intellect while the animals act on instinct. If we only listened to our brains then you would see our hearts becoming hard because there is no softness in it. Both of these two are extremes. Sometimes we should listen to the heart over the brain and at other times the brain over the heart and if the heart is sincere then the heart becomes clean and if the heart is clean then it will be shown through that person's limbs and speech.

The Prophet(Peace be upon him) saw an old woman struggling. She was trying to put some luggage up on her camel to go home and when he saw her he raced to her and helped her with her luggage. He walked with her all the way to her home and when they arrived to the destination he put the luggage down and made sure she was comfortable and he made sure that everything has been given to her. So this old woman then looked at him and told him that his words are full of comfort and he brings softness to her heart and she wants to give him advice. So she told him that there is a man named Muhammad and he is a bad man, he has disunited the people and she wants him to keep away from Muhammad. After she asked for his name and he turned to her and said his name is Muhammad(Peace be upon him) ( At that time there wasn't many people with the name Muhammad) and she was shocked and accepted Islam. Sincerity and good character go a long way. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGfyD5aCBL0 My post was based on this video and it's advice from the Prophet(Peace be upon him) with regards to our hearts. ( it's about one minute and 29 seconds). The Qur'an is a warning and reminder for mankind whereas hadiths are the saying and teaching of the Prophet(Peace be upon him). The hadiths are compiled into books and they are what the companions were told when talking to him, what he said to them, what he did with them, how he was with his wives. The companions would study him and try to spend as much time as they could with him and later they would relate these incidents and these descriptions of him to others. The hadiths need to have a chain of authenticity. There are weak hadiths and authentic hadiths and so I have to be careful to share authentic information and not false information that someone could have just made up and then posted online or put in a book. It's a whole science on it's own that many go to universities to study.