Quotes About Detachment and Freedom from Dunya (Worldly Life)

“In God, there is no sorrow or suffering or affliction. If you want to be free of all affliction and suffering, hold fast to God, and turn wholly to Him, and to no one else. Indeed, all your suffering comes from this: that you do not turn towards God.

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali

“The more you let go, the higher you rise.

“Holding onto dunya creates a veil that blocks Light from entering the heart. When you stop chasing dunya and let go, you remove that veil. When the veil is removed, Light can enter the heart. The same dunya you used to run after, will now run after you, because all things are attracted to Light.

“Don’t think of the trials in your life (‘balaa’) as just a ‘test’ in the human form. Allah is not like a professor who hands you a test, moves away and just watches from afar to see how you’ll do. Allah is our murabee—the One who raises us with more mercy than a mother raises a child. The Prophet (pbuh) tells us that when Allah wills good for someone, he sends them ‘balaa’ (trials or tests). When Allah wills good for us, He purifies us. That is why each person is tested in what they love most. In other words our greatest possible ‘competitor’ in our love for God is what is withheld or must be sacrificed. This is the purification process because it cures the heart of competitors. Why was Prophet Ibrahim (AS) asked to slaughter the most beloved thing to him? Did Allah actually want him to *kill* his son? No. He didn’t kill his son. He killed the attachment. By being willing to sacrifice what he loved most, he had slaughtered any possible competing love. Allah was raising him, purifying him and elevating him. Allah tell us, “By no means shall you attain righteousness unless you give (freely) of that which you love.” (3:92)

“O People! Work for the Hereafter (work towards heaven) . For indeed I have seen in my life, anyone who works for the Hereafter also gets the dunya. The dunya runs after him. But I have not found anyone who works for the dunya ever get any piece of the Hereafter.

al-Hasan al-Basri

“He breaks you, to build you. Deprives you, to give you. This pain in your heart was created to make you yearn less for this life and to yearn more for Jannah

““Do not love this world, Allah would love you and do not have a longing for whatever people have, people would love you”.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“It will keep hurting you, until you let go and there remains nothing in the heart but Him. Once that happens you will no longer love for your own sake. Everything you want, love, or hate will be for, through and by Him.

“Ironically, the less we chase after the approval and love of the people, the more we gain it. The less needy we are of others, the more people are drawn to us and seek our company. ... Only by breaking out of the orbit of the creation, can we succeed with both God and people.

“But the more I fear the people, the more I become enslaved. True freedom only comes when I let go of the fear of anything and anyone other than God.

“Before anything can break your heart, it must first own your heart. Stop handing your heart to dunya—it'll stop breaking it.

“Only by escaping the false dependencies, letting go of our fleeting attachments, and holding on to Allah, can we return with water from the mirage of oceans. Only Allah is lasting. Everything else, we are in a constant and active state of losing. Everything else is only that withering petal which we fall in love with today, but which crumbles tomorrow.

“Let your heart go Home, even before your body arrives.

“I discovered that I tend to outgrow things too quickly. I look forward to a day when I outgrow everything I run after, but You.

“There's something so much bigger than what I want and what you want. There's a world beyond the 'I'. If you find it—that's Freedom.

“Getting dunya out of the heart is like getting ink out of a sponge: Painful and repetitive squeezing. Be patient. Cleansing won't last forever.

“When you let go of a gift that occupied your heart, there's an amazing light that comes with it when it's returned in your hand.

“Freedom comes when you love and fear the Creator more than the creation.

“Gifts like marriage will be a means to bring you closer to God—so long as they remain a means, not an End.

“Indeed I have fasted from all of the delights in my life, and the day that I meet You, that day shall be the Iftar of my fasting.

Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali

“When you are free inside, you will never allow anyone to take away your freedom. And when you have inner freedom, you can look through tyrants and thugs to the Lord of the tyrants and thugs. When you are free inside, you become unenslaveable, because you can only enslave a person with attachments. You can only threaten a person who is afraid of loss. You only have power over someone when they need or want something that you have the ability to take away. But there is only one thing which no person has the power to take away from you: God.

“Our weight was only meant to be carried by God. We are told in the Quran: “…whoever rejects evil and believes in God hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And God hears and knows all things.” (Qur’an 2: 256)

There is a crucial lesson in this verse: that there is only one handhold that never breaks. There is only one place where we can lay our dependencies. There is only one relationship that should define our self-worth and only one source from which to seek our ultimate happiness, fulfillment, and security. That place is God.

“This world cannot break you—unless you give it permission. And it cannot own you unless you hand it the keys – unless you give it your heart. And so, if you have handed those keys to dunya for a while—take them back. This isn’t the End. You don’t have to die here. Reclaim your heart and place it with its rightful owner:

God.

“Fasting is all about detachment. It is the detachment from food, drink, sexual intimacy, vain speech. By restraining our physical self, we ennoble, purify and exalt our spiritual self. Through fasting we are forced to detach ourselves from our physical needs, desires, and pleasures.

“Five times a day we must pull away from the dunya to focus on our Creator and ultimate purpose. Five times a day, we detach ourselves from whatever we are doing of worldly life, and turn to God. Prayer could have been prescribed only once a day or week or all five prayers could have been done at one time each day. But it is not. The prayers are spread throughout the day. If one keeps to their prayers at their specified times, there is no opportunity to get attached. As soon as we begin to become engrossed in whatever dunya matter we’re involved in (the job we’re doing, the show we’re watching, the test we’re studying for, the person we can’t get off our mind), we are forced to detach from it and turn our focus to the only true object of attachment.

“If there is anything—or anyone—other than God, that we could never give up, then we have a false attachment. Why was Prophet Ibrahim told to sacrifice his son? It was to free him. It was to free him from a false attachment. Once he was free, his object of love (not attachment) was given back to him.

“Like the ocean’s water entering the boat, the moment that we let the dunya enter our hearts, we will sink. The ocean was never intended to enter the boat; it was intended only as a means that must remain outside of it. The dunya, too, was never intended to enter our heart. It is only a means that must not enter or control us. This is why Allah (swt) repeatedly refers to the dunya in the Qur’an as a mata’a. The word mata’a can be translated as a “resource for transitory worldly delight.” It is a resource. It is a tool. It is the path—not the destination.

“Detachment [from Dunya] is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.

Imam Ali bin Abi Talib

“This worldly life, the dunya, is just like the ocean. And our hearts are the ships. We can use the ocean for our needs and as a means to get to our final destination. But the ocean is only that: a means. It is a means for seeking food of the sea. It is a means of travel. It is a means of seeking a higher purpose.

“When what you hold on to is strong, you too become strong, and with that strength comes the truest freedom. It is of that freedom that Ibn Taymiyyah, may Allah have mercy on him, said: “What can my enemies do to me? I have in my breast both my heaven and my garden. If I travel they are with me, never leaving me. Imprisonment for me is a chance to be alone with my Lord. To be killed is martyrdom and to be exiled from my land is a spiritual journey.” (Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Wabil, p.69)

“One easy step to make the dunya stop breaking your heart: stop loving it!

“Stop trying to make this life into what it cannot and never was intended to be: jennah. Only then will it stop breaking your heart.

“Attachments are the chains that bind us to the earth. It only hurts because of them. Find freedom.

“The world is a shadow: if you run after it, you will not catch it, but if you turn your back to it, it will follow you.

Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyyah

“If you are able to conquer your own nafs, other nufoos will automatically be conquered, for they will take yours as a leader.

“This world in the eyes of the believer is like the restroom: he has a need for it and uses it, but it occupies no love in his heart.

“Allah has created you free, therefore be free the way He has created you, work solely for Allah and stop trying to please people.

Imam ash-Shafi`i

“Be indifferent to the world and Allah will love you; be indifferent to what people possess and they will love you.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“Lower your gaze from the world and turn your heart away from it…

Umar ibn al-Khattab

Follow us on:

Twitter Facebook Tumblr

Newest Browse Top Collections Today's Most Popular Quotes Posters Photos