Slave of Desires

  

“If one attains (what he desires), he is pleased & if he is unable to attain it, he becomes discontented.  Such a person is a slave ['abd] to the things he desires.  He is a slave of it, since true slavery & servitude are the enslavement & servitude of the heart.”

-Ibn Taymiyyah [d. 728H/1328CE]

[Ibn Taymiyyah's Essay on Worship, pp. 100-101]

Forgetting The Unpleasant Things That Have Passed

 

Among the necessary causes of happiness and cessation of grief and worry, is striving to remove the things that bring about grief, and acquire those that bring about happiness. This is achieved by forgetting the unpleasant things that have passed and he has no power to bring them back, and knowing that occupying his mind with them is meaningless; in fact it is ...