Path of complete surrender

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“As-salamu alaykum”

Probably you are surprised to hear some non English words in the very beginning!. These are Arabic words meant to convey peace to the other person – a beautiful way of greeting each other. Salaam means peace.

Starting from next episode I am going to discuss some illuminating verses from Holy Quran. This holy book – originally in Arabic - with 114 chapters (known as Soorah), with variable number of verses (Ayat) in each chapter, together totaling 6236 verses is the primary religious text of Islamic faith.

This text is believed to have been revealed to Prophet Muhammad by God himself through the Archangel Jebreel. Muhammad used to frequently spend days in the caves near Mecca, mostly meditating, till he finally met this angel.

First of these revelations is believed to have taken place in the caves of Mecca some time during 610 A.D. when Muhammad was 40 years old. Later these revelations continued in different places in and around Mecca for a period of 23 years till Muhammad’s death.

Muhammad’s companions recorded these revelations in the form of verses and finally, after the death of Muhammad they were compiled into a book that we know today as the holy Quran.

Sometime during the end of last year, I had a sufficiently long series of discussions on the ancient Indian scripture namely the Bhagavad Geetha. In that series, I had discussed mainly four different paths suggested by Bhagavadgeetha namely – the path of inquiry or Jnyana Maarg, the path of selfless action or Karma maarg, the path of Meditation or the Yoga Maarg, and the path of devotion or Bhakti Maarg.

Early this year I ran a series on stories from ancient Indian Upanishads, where the focus was mainly on the path of inquiry and the path of meditation.

Islam – as the word itself suggests, is based on total surrender to God or selfless devotion to God. And Quran is the text that discusses this path of devotion. So, I want to start with some verses of Quran keeping this theme in mind.

Quran is a huge text and I don’t intend to cover it chapter by chapter. I will only pick some verses from some chapters and keep my discussions around them.

While I would like to request people, who may have some biases against Islamic faith, to keep an open mind, and accept good things no matter where they come from, I also want to appeal to my devout Muslim readers to bear with me if I am found not strictly adhering to traditions.

My intention is to highlight the basic undercurrent in all religions that potentially unites all humans, irrespective of faith, geographic boundaries and ethnicity.

Let us start our discussions in the next episode, keeping these points in mind.

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Based on verses from Holy Quran. The interpretation is by Dr.King. The Quran recitations are from various sites such as Quran.net, Quran411.com and so on.