Prof. Nevzat Tarhan: "To be in harmony with Ramadan means to live in accordance with existence"
President of Üsküdar University Prof. Nevzat Tarhan's 'Psychological Conversations from Existence to the Search for Meaning' continues in Ramadan which was held by the Conscience of the Age Club with the support of Üsküdar University Health, Culture and Sports Department. Sharing his evaluations within the context of Ramadan in the program, Prof. Nevzat Tarhan talked about the fact that patience trains people in overcoming difficulties and that being grateful enables people to appreciate what they have in order to see the positive and to look at life with a sense of hope. Tarhan said that "To be in harmony with Ramadan actually means to live in accordance with existence, to return to the factory settings.".
Two magical concepts: Patience and gratitude
Emphasizing that Ramadan gives people two abilities, President of Üsküdar University Prof. Nevzat Tarhan stated that “In the second point, it deals with the blessing of Ramadan from the point of view of gratitude because these two emotions of a person are important magical concepts. One of these two concepts is patience and the other is gratitude. When you say from existence to psychology conversations, the psychology equivalent of patience is endurance training. What is in endurance training? You keep your stomach hungry, you control yourselves, you temporarily postpone many of your desires in the lawful way such as many pleasures and desires. From sunrise to sunset, you postpone the part from imsak to iftar. It is kind of normal, so you are postponing a lot of things like food, drink, and reproduction. Apart from that, you are doing emotional fasting in the dimension of self-discipline, besides normal fasting for eating and drinking, it is just like postponing your five senses. You train your desires, your impulses, it has this dimension, as well. Worship has a social dimension after that. It appeals to many psychosocial emotions. For this reason, it addresses not only our physical humanity, but also our biological living humanity and our psychosocial humanity in three dimensions. While doing this patience, endurance training, and the second teaching is its ability to delay gratification. People acquire two abilities. We measure this with tests. For example, we look at substance users, their endurance training is always low. The ability to delay gratification is low. That's why people make a lot of mistakes.".
“Ramadan is putting our souls into gratitude training”
Prof. Nevzat Tarhan talked about going out of routine with the rule. Tarhan said “If a person does not learn to control themselves, if one is not grateful and does not think about the one who gives the blessing, that person begins to see themselves as a blessing and sanctifies themselves. Humans have this feature. In order not to sanctify the soul of Ramadan; ‘There is a willpower for you to give thanks, to be grateful. It's waiting at the table, you can't extend your hand. You are not the owner of this blessing, there is someone who gave it, think about it and be thankful.' It puts our souls in such gratitude training. When a person is hungry in Ramadan, he needs to think about the blessings in such situations. It has the rule we said before, you kind of go out of your routine. One gets used to it after a while because it comes automatically like this. When you are deprived of something, for example, when you become ill, you understand the value of health. When the blessing does not come, you realize the value of the blessing when you are hungry, but a smart person should be able to give thanks without losing this blessing. Then God will not inflict misfortune on you. It is necessary to see the blessing, there is even a priest story about it, it has been mentioned before. It is told about France, a flooded place, the priest; ‘God will save me. I am a good person.' The man who has risen to the flood, the rescue team has come; He said, 'God will save me.' When the flood rose, they sent a boat; He said, 'God will save me,' and did not come again. When they get to the roof, they bring a helicopter to the man as a rescue team, and he doesn't go to him because God will save me. He dies after that. When he appears before God; He says, 'Oh my God, I waited for you to save me, why didn't you?' My servant says; ‘I sent a rescue team to the people, you did not return with them. Then I sent the boat, you didn't get on. I sent a helicopter, you didn't get on. He says what should I do?' You did not attempt the causes sent by Allah here, when you do not, Allah sends a message to people with the language of events and events, he speaks in this world. What is the meaning of wisdom? There is the world of causes, the apparent cause and the invisible cause. The obvious reason is that he brought the boat there, sent the rescue team. The invisible cause is Allah, the name of the trustee, who rules this universe, who established this order, who created it first, and whose existence is now in place of everything. said.
“We will be ambitious at harvest time and accepting fatalist at harvest time”
Underlining that Ramadan is a period of awareness, Tarhan said that “We will be ambitious at the time of harvest, we will be an accepting, contented and fatalist at the time of the crop. While working, planting, reaping and watering, we will give it its due, but at the time of threshing, they will be accepting instead of saying, 'Why is there little amount of crop, why does another person have a good field, why is mine not like this?' If a contented attitude happens, there will be peace, this is something that faith provides us. Ramadan is the period of awareness. At that time, the person who gives unjustly, is worthy of gratitude, to thank him, to appreciate being able to use those blessings directly. I am trying to express it as Spinoza's Error. Along with Descartes, he is one of the philosophers of the enlightenment. He says ‘Do not seek God in the sky, God is in nature, nature itself is God. Everything is in order.' and gives holiness to nature. The naturalism came out of there and here he says 'it is perfect, nature is perfect' but then he says ‘Why does the evil exist, why do this ugliness exist, why do some people get sick, why are they born crippled, why do they exist if life is perfect? The nature is smart but has no mercy. So, the nature has done so much evil, or it is not strong enough to do these things.’. And he also says, ‘Then I cannot believe that nature is god. I am an Agnostic.' If he knew tawhid, he would accept it. We explain this with the dialectic of examination, the existence of evils, the disadvantaged birth of some people, that is, there is a test in the competition of equals. Equal in rights and opportunities or not? If a person is sane and conscious, that person is equal in rights and opportunities. Both those born with disabilities and those born in wealth are all equal in the race to be a good person, but if you think only earthly, not as being a good person, there is tremendous injustice. If we say the race to be a good person, if we say it is a race that will end at the end of life, maybe those who are chronically ill at a young age, maybe those born with disabilities are more advantageous, so we will approach here with the dialectic of exam. In that case, there is no injustice.”.
“Ramadan is a great opportunity to return to our factory settings”
Noting that patience gives people endurance training in overcoming difficulties, Prof. Nevzat Tarhan; “Ramadan is a great opportunity to return to our factory settings. If we stop, think and adjust ourselves to return to our factory settings, improve our skills, increase our capacity for patience and gratitude, expand our reserves of patience and gratitude, we will cope better with the difficulties that will come before us in Ramadan. We are happy with the little things we have. Patience trains people to overcome difficulties. Gratitude enables people to appreciate what they currently have to see the positive and to look at life with a sense of hope. Why do I have to wait for these words to happen? It takes patience to reach the goal, but the goal also has a goal. There is a destiny of destiny, and there is someone who provides destiny. When you see it, you establish your bond with Allah there, you surrender. At that time, you will have lived in accordance with your existence. For this reason, we can say that being in harmony with Ramadan actually means living in accordance with existence, returning to factory settings.”.
Üsküdar News Agency (ÜNA)