(ChittickSPK)
Qunawi was better versed in Peripatetic philosophy than Ibn Arabi and made active attempts to harmonize it with the intellectual expression of Sufism. This attempt at harmonization appears in the manner in which he brings the discussion of wujud (Being, existence) to the forefront. Philosophy was generally defined as the study of wujud qua wujud. Ibn Arabi frequently discusses wujud, but there is no special internal reason why his followers would have extracted this particular term from his writings and placed it at the center of their concerns. This was done as a result of various external factors personified by Qunawi himself. He and his disciples set the stage for the later understanding of Ibn Arabi’s works throughout the Islamic world, since the tradition of Fusus commentary goes straight back to Qunawi.
“Finding” renders the Arabic wujud, which, in another context, may be translated as “existence” or “being.” The famous expression “Oneness of Being” or “Unity of Existence” (wahdat al-wujud’), which is often said to represent Ibn al-‘Arabi’s doctrinal position, might also be translated as the “Oneness” or “Unity of Finding.” Despite the hundreds of volumes on ontology that have been inspired by Ibn Arabi’s works, his main concern is not with the mental concept of being but with the experience of God’s Being, the tasting (dhawq) of Being, that “finding” which is at one and the same time to perceive and to be that which truly is. No doubt Ibn Arabi possessed one of the greatest philosophical minds the world has ever known, but philosophy was not his concern. He wanted only to bask in the constant and ever-renewed finding of the Divine Being and Consciousness. He, for one, had passed beyond the veils, though he was always ready to admit that the veils are infinite and that every instant in life, in this world and for all eternity, represents a continual lifting of the veils.
We return to the word wujud, “finding,” “being,” or “existence.” Ibn Arabi employs the term in a wide variety of ways. Without getting embroiled at this point in philosophical niceties, we can discern two fundamental meanings that will demand two different translations for a single term. On the one hand we “find” things wherever we look, both in the outside world and inside the mind. All these things “exist” in some mode or another; existence can be said to be their attribute. The house exists and the galaxy exists in the outside world, the green-eyed monster exists in the hallucinations of a madman, on the film screen, and on the written page. The modes arc different, but in each case we can say that something possesses the attribute of being there. When Ibn Arabi speaks about any specific thing or idea that can be discussed, he uses the term existence in this general sense to refer to the fact that something is there, something is to be found. In this sense we can also say that God exists, meaning, “There is a God.”
In a second sense Ibn Arabi employs the word wujud when speaking about the substance or stuff or nature of God Himself. In one word, what is God? He is wujud. In this sense “finding” might better convey the sense of the term, as long as we do not imagine that God has lost something only to have found it again. What He is finding now He has always found and will ever find. Past, present, and future are in any case meaningless in relation to God in Himself, since they are attributes assumed by various existent things in relation to us, not in relation to Him. But “finding” is perhaps not the best term to bring this discussion into the theological and philosophical arena where Ibn Arabi wants it to be considered. We are better off choosing the standard philosophical term “Being, ” which has normally been chosen (along with “existence”) by Western scholars when they have wanted to discuss the term wujud in English. However, one needs to keep in mind the fact that “Being” is in no way divorced from consciousness, from a fully aware finding, perception, and knowledge of the ontological situation. Since this point tends to be forgotten when the term is discussed, I will have occasion to come back to it, hoping for the reader’s indulgence.
In what follows, “Being” in upper case will refer to God as He is in Himself. For Ibn Arabi, Being is in no sense ambiguous or questionable, though our understanding of Being is something else again. Being is that which truly is, while everything else dwells in fog and haziness. Hence, when we say that something— anything other that God—“exists,” we have to hesitate a little in saying so. The statement is ambiguous, for just as a thing pertains to existence, so also it lies in the grasp of existence’s opposite, nonexistence (’adam). Every existent thing is at one and the same time He (Being) and Not He (not-being, absolute nothingness). Only God is Being without qualification, without hesitation, without doubt.