Junayd al-Baghdadi, one of the most important early masters of Sufism, explains tasawwuf in the following manner:
‘Sufism means that God makes you die to yourself and makes you alive in Him. It is to purify the heart from the recurrence of creaturely temptations, to say farewell to all the natural inclinations, to subdue the qualities which belong to human nature, to keep far from the claims of the senses, to adhere to spiritual qualities, to ascend by means of Divine knowledge, to be occupied with that is eternally the best, to give wise counsel to all people, faithfully to observe the truth, and to follow the Prophet in respect of the religious law’.
He explains the sources of sufism thus:
‘We did not take Sufism from talk and from words, but from hunger and renunication of the world and cutting off things to which we are accustomed and which we found agreeable’.
