Not Chasing the Shadow: A Comparative Reflection on Zuhd, ʿUzlah, and the Modern Mind's Quest for Stillness

“The world is like your shadow: chase it and it flees from you; turn your back on it and it follows you.” — A free rendering of a saying attributed to Hatim al-Asamm (for the original report, see Abu Nu’aym al-Isfahani, Hilyat al-Awliya)

Abstract and Theoretical Introduction

This study reads the sense of unrest that the modern lifestyle of “busyness” and “connectivity” has opened up in the human heart through the Islamic concepts of zuhd (asceticism/detachment), ʿuzlah (withdrawal), khalwah (seclusion), and tawakkul (trust in God) — without confining these concepts to a single religious frame, but grounding them comparatively alongside kindred insights from ancient and modern thought.

Zuhd’s classical definition — “not abandoning the world, but refusing to let the world master the heart” — takes on new resonance when read alongside the Stoic principle of dichotomia (the discipline of distinguishing what is and is not within our control), Carl Jung’s concepts of individuation and the shadow, the Buddhist critique of upādāna (clinging), and Cal Newport’s proposal of digital minimalism. Read together, these traditions suggest that the effort to correct the human relationship with “having” belongs not to any single lineage, but to a shared human inquiry. In its second half, the study treats the stories of Joseph and Noah as examples of maintaining one’s bearings under enforced isolation and social rejection; its final section translates this theoretical framework into concrete, everyday practices.

1. Introduction: The Age of Busyness and the Heart’s Estrangement

Today’s human being has become, through the possibilities technology affords, more “connected” than at any point in recorded history; yet the same age leaves many people feeling more scattered and estranged from themselves and their surroundings. A stream of information and stimuli — from the notifications that greet the first seconds of the morning to the flood that lasts until midnight — keeps the mind in a state of constant alertness, while the heart struggles to hear its own voice amid the noise.

1.1. Busyness as a Status Symbol

In much of contemporary social discourse, busyness — the state of being perpetually occupied — is often coded as an implicit virtue and a marker of productivity. In many contexts, the answer “I’m so busy” has come to function less as an excuse than as a declaration of status. By contrast, being idle, falling silent, or “doing nothing” is frequently equated with laziness and worthlessness. This inverted scale of values leads people to experience any moment alone with themselves as a kind of threat; when silence arrives, the reflex is to reach for a screen or a new task.

This pattern of behavior is not merely a habit; it is also a kind of ontological escape. A person senses, intuitively, that stopping means confronting their own mortality and the question of meaning — and stays busy precisely to defer that confrontation.

1.2. Conceptual Framework: Zuhd, ʿUzlah, Khalwah

Islamic literature approaches this problem through three complementary concepts:

Zuhd is not indifference to the goods of this world, but the will to live without being emotionally bound to them.
ʿUzlah, in the Sufi literature, denotes a person’s withdrawal — to a certain degree — from society or worldly occupations, for the purpose of turning toward God, disciplining the self, and reducing the grip of worldly concerns. In some contexts this withdrawal has been understood as literal seclusion; in others, as remaining with God in one’s heart while living among people.
Khalwah is a contemplative process of stepping back from external stimuli in order to review one’s intentions and conduct and to reconstruct the heart.

As the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam defines it, ʿuzlah is “a devotee’s or Sufi’s withdrawing from worldly affairs, with his whole being, in order to worship God more sincerely.”¹ As we will see below, these three concepts have been reproduced, in strikingly similar forms, across different traditions of wisdom and philosophy.

2. The Sufi Ground: The Shadow Metaphor of the World

2.1. The Definition of Zuhd: A Possession of the Heart, Not the Hand

Imam al-Ghazali, in Ihya’ ’Ulum al-Din, defines zuhd as “turning one’s inclination away from the transient and base goods of this world, for the sake of attaining something more excellent and lasting.”² To put the matter’s backbone in one formulation: zuhd is not possessing nothing of this world, but refusing to let anything possess you.

The Qur’anic verse from Surat al-Hadid points to this same psychological balance: “That is so that you may not grieve over what has escaped you, nor exult over what He has given you.” (al-Hadid, 57:23) The measure of zuhd is not the scarcity or abundance of possessions, but whether their loss provokes despair and their presence provokes arrogance.

2.2. Rumi’s Definition, and Hatim al-Asamm’s Shadow

Rumi offers a striking definition of the world: “What is the world? To be heedless of God; it is not clothing, silver, sons, or wives” (Chīst dunyā az Khudā ghāfil shudan / Nah qumāsh u nuqrah u farzand u zan). (Rumi, Masnavi, Book I, verse 983.) This definition shows that the issue lies not in the object itself, but in one’s relation to it.

An image related to this, yet roughly four and a half centuries older, also exists: a shadow-simile attributed to the ninth-century Khurasani ascetic Hatim al-Asamm (d. 237/851).³ In the accounts attributed to Hatim al-Asamm in Abu Nu’aym al-Isfahani’s Hilyat al-Awliya, the world (in some transmissions, one’s provision) is likened to a shadow that recedes when pursued and follows when turned away from. This saying reveals the paradoxical mechanics of zuhd: the world’s bounty is likened to a shadow — the more one runs after it, the farther it recedes; the moment one turns away, it follows of its own accord. The image also illuminates the psychology of the consumer race: a satisfaction that recedes the more it is chased traps a person in an endless pursuit.

2.3. ʿUzlah and “Khalwat dar Anjuman”

In some Sufi traditions, a common typology divides ʿuzlah into two dimensions: outward ʿuzlah (the body’s physical withdrawal from people — khalwah, i’tikaf) and inward ʿuzlah (the heart remaining constantly with God while the body continues its duties within society). Particularly in the Naqshbandi tradition, this second understanding reaches its summit in the principle of khalwat dar anjuman (“solitude within the crowd,” or “outwardly with the people, inwardly with the Truth”): the believer trades in the marketplace, cares for his family, and takes on social responsibilities, yet does not let his heart be enslaved by this multiplicity. Surat al-Nur states this balance directly: “[Those] whom neither trade nor sale distracts from the remembrance of Allah.” (al-Nur, 24:37)

3. Prophetic Teaching: The Traveler, the Stranger, and the Love of the World

The most operative metaphor in the Prophet’s ﷺ vision of the world is his description of the human being’s place in this realm through the figure of a journey. In a hadith narrated from Ibn ’Umar, he is reported to have said:

“Be in this world as though you were a stranger or a traveler.” (Bukhari, al-Jami’ al-Sahih, Kitab al-Riqaq, hadith no. 6416)

In another narration, this image is deepened through the simile of a mounted traveler who rests briefly and moves on:

“What have I to do with this world? I am in this world like a rider who takes shade under a tree, then leaves it and continues on his way.” (al-Tirmidhi, Sunan, Kitab al-Zuhd, hadith no. 2377; al-Tirmidhi grades this report hasan-sahih)

The function of the traveler metaphor is not to devalue the world, but to prevent one from mistaking it for the final destination. The traveler does not attempt to build a palace at the shade where he stops; he meets his needs and continues on. This loss of awareness is associated, in ascetic and Sufi literature, with a widely transmitted saying — traced back, in mursal (unbroken-at-the-Companion-level) form, to Hasan al-Basri — that “the love of the world (hubb al-dunya) is the root of every sin.”⁴ This saying is not a sound (sahih) hadith traced to the Prophet, but a venerable maxim of ascetic literature. Once the world settles at the heart’s center, one’s perception is thrown out of balance: a small gain looms large, while a great truth appears distant and heavy.

4. The Qur’anic Diagnosis: The Race for Increase, and the Source of Light

Surat al-Takathur describes the modern human obsession with “growth,” “accumulation,” and “visibility” centuries in advance:

“Competition in [worldly] increase diverts you, until you visit the graveyards.” (al-Takathur, 102:1–2)

The Diyanet commentary makes the contemporary parallel of this obsession explicit: the secular worldview, devoid of spirituality, of “producing without end, consuming and reproducing, endlessly multiplying profit and wealth,” is the present-day manifestation of the takathur to which the verse points.⁵ The accumulation of likes on social media, the cycle of consumption, and the race for “success” are merely new interfaces for this ancient trap.

Against this race, the Qur’an sets a different source of illumination: “Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth.” (al-Nur, 24:35) In this essay’s own contemplative reading, this verse is treated as an image pointing to the idea that the heart’s true satisfaction lies not in outward accumulation but in a different orientation altogether — a similar intuition, as we shall see below, is shared, in an entirely different conceptual idiom, by the Stoic and Buddhist traditions.

5. A Comparative Layer: The Philosophical and Psychological Kin of Zuhd

To leave zuhd and ʿuzlah confined to their Islamic frame alone would narrow the universal human problem these concepts carry. The four traditions below, though proceeding from different cosmological assumptions, arrive at strikingly similar solutions to the same basic diagnosis — that the human being exhausts itself in an insatiable outward search.

5.1. The Stoic Dichotomy: Epictetus and Tawakkul

The central proposition of Stoic philosophy is formulated in the opening line of Epictetus’s Enchiridion: existing things are divided into “what is up to us” (our judgments, impulses, desires) and “what is not up to us” (the body, property, reputation, others’ actions); the source of distress is trying to control the second category as though it were the first.⁶ This distinction bears a notable structural resemblance to the concept of tawakkul — the consciousness of “doing what is within one’s power, then entrusting the outcome to God,” a clear separation between the domain of effort and the domain of surrender.

5.2. Premeditation of Adversity, and Patience

In the Stoic tradition, a practice found in the writings of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, and referred to in modern scholarship by the Latin label praemeditatio malorum (premeditation of misfortunes), aims to soften the sudden blow of loss and hardship by mentally “rehearsing” them in advance.⁷ This serves the same function as the Islamic definition of patience (sabr) — “maintaining one’s bearings in the face of hardship”: both traditions refuse to deny pain, yet both propose a mental resilience built in advance of it.

5.3. Jung’s Shadow: Individuation and Inward Turning

In Carl Jung’s theory of individuation, the person moves beyond identification with their social mask (persona) and attempts to confront unconscious contents — especially the repressed aspects Jung called the “shadow.”⁸ This confrontation can, at times, be supported by inward turning and solitude, but it would not be accurate to reduce Jung’s approach to a practice of mere withdrawal from external stimuli: the shadow is, more often than not, recognized precisely through the projections cast onto the outside world — the traits we find irritating in others — and can only be integrated into consciousness once those projections are withdrawn. Even so, a notable methodological kinship emerges with the Sufi practices of muhasabah (self-reckoning) and muraqabah (watchfulness) — the practice of asking oneself, “What occupies the most space in my heart?”: both traditions assume that a certain kind of self-examination is transformative. Indeed, the ATU 1645 tale type examined in this journal’s The Treasure at Home essay — the treasure being found not in a distant land but in one’s own house — is, in its own way, another literary expression of this same principle of inward turning.⁹

5.4. Buddhist Anatta: The Limit of the Kinship with Non-Attachment

In Buddhist teaching, the concept of upādāna (clinging/attachment) locates the source of suffering (dukkha) in clinging to impermanent things as though they were permanent.¹⁰ Liberation lies not in rejecting objects, but in loosening one’s grip on them — a claim that nearly overlaps with zuhd’s own definition: “not abandoning the world, but refusing to be its captive.” An important conceptual distinction must be observed here, however. The Buddhist doctrine of anattā (Sanskrit anātman) holds that there is no permanent, independent, and unchanging self; this is less a wholesale denial of the everyday sense of “I” than a rejection of treating the constituents of experience as a permanent, independent essence.¹¹ Islamic zuhd rests on a different rationale: the self and one’s possessions genuinely exist, but they are not one’s own property — they are a trust temporarily placed in one’s care by God, for which a person will one day be held to account. Both traditions show an affinity in holding that clinging estranges a person from freedom; but the metaphysical grounds differ: Buddhist thought rejects the notion of a permanent, independent self, while Islamic zuhd frames the human relationship to property and blessing within trust, responsibility, and God’s absolute ownership.

5.5. Digital Minimalism: A Secular Counterpart to ʿUzlah

The computer scientist Cal Newport, in Digital Minimalism (2019), proposes a philosophy of “intentional technology use” against the fragmentation of attention: withdrawing entirely from digital tools for set periods, being willing to encounter solitude and silence during that time, and readmitting technology into one’s life only insofar as it produces genuine value.¹² Newport’s principle of “not fleeing solitude” can be read as a secular counterpart to the classical understanding of ʿuzlah — he himself makes no such claim; this is the essay’s own comparative reading. The difference is that ʿuzlah’s ultimate aim is orientation toward God, whereas digital minimalism’s aim is a deliberate use of technology consistent with one’s own values.

Comparative Typology Table

Point of Comparison	Islamic Zuhd/ʿUzlah	Stoic Philosophy	Jungian Individuation	Buddhist Non-Attachment	Digital Minimalism
Diagnosis of the Problem	The heart’s captivity to the world (hubb al-dunya)	Trying to control what is not within one’s control	Discord between persona and shadow	Clinging to the impermanent (upādāna)	Fragmentation of attention
Method of Resolution	Zuhd, ʿuzlah, dhikr, tawakkul	Dichotomia, premeditation of adversity	Inward turning, confronting the shadow	Loosening attachment, awareness	Deliberate digital withdrawal
Ultimate Reference	Orientation toward God (sayr ila’llah)	Reason in accord with nature (logos)	The integrated self (Self)	Awakening (nirvāṇa)	Technology use aligned with one’s values
Relation to Society	Khalwat dar anjuman (inward solitude, outward participation)	Cosmopolitan sense of duty	Moving beyond the social mask	Sangha (monastic community)	Selective, reduced connectivity

What this table points to is not so much a single truth as a closeness in diagnosis: traditions developed in different eras and geographies, apparently without knowledge of one another, appear to have arrived at similar conclusions — that outward accumulation does not satisfy the heart.

6. Examples from Qur’anic Stories: Bearings Under Enforced Isolation

Qur’anic stories are not merely historical narratives; they are moral prototypes for how a person might comport themselves under differing circumstances.

6.1. Joseph: Bearings Preserved in the Well and in Prison

The life of Joseph (Yusuf) is woven from two great isolations he suffered against his will. The well is a moment of utter abandonment, stripped of every human support; the prison, by contrast, becomes a moral refuge — Joseph, choosing prison over a life of comfort that invites him to sin, prays: “My Lord, prison is more to my liking than that to which they invite me.” (Yusuf, 12:33) Even in prison, he does not withdraw into his own distress, but calls those around him to the oneness of God: “Are separate lords better, or Allah, the One, the Prevailing?” (Yusuf, 12:39)

The loneliness of modern man is, more often than not, emotional rather than physical — being misunderstood amid crowds, an inner emptiness despite visible success at work. Joseph’s story shows that none of one’s outward circumstances — well, prison, palace — need determine one’s moral and spiritual bearings.

6.2. Noah: Bearing Responsibility, Not the Outcome

Noah, in the Qur’an’s own account, faces rejection and mockery over the course of a long mission of proclamation; as he himself puts it, he called his people “night and day.” (Nuh, 71:5) At the level of contemplation, this story can offer a powerful counterexample to the modern performance culture’s assumption that “every effort must produce an immediately measurable result”: the value of a task may also be measured by the direction and effort it carries, not solely by its visible outcome. This is the point at which tawakkul is completed by patience — a person does what is theirs to do, without claiming the outcome as their own possession.

7. A Practical Synthesis: Small Circles of ʿUzlah in Daily Life

The theoretical framework above only becomes functional when reduced to small, repeatable steps in daily life. Some of the practices below rest directly on scriptural sources (dhikr, prayer); others are modern applications suggested by this essay’s comparative reading above — the two should not be confused with one another:

Windows of digital fasting — in keeping with Cal Newport’s suggestion, disconnecting entirely from notifications at set times of day (on waking, and before sleep). (A modern suggestion.)
Brief moments of reflection — a few minutes each day spent quietly contemplating a verse, an element of nature, or an event. (A modern suggestion.)
Dhikr and prayer — filling the idle moments of the daily flow (traffic, waiting, chores) with the tongue’s and heart’s remembrance of God: “Verily, in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest.” (al-Ra’d, 13:28) A warning from Ibn ‘Ata’ Allah al-Iskandari is instructive here: “Do not abandon remembrance because you do not feel the presence of your heart in it; for heedlessness in the absence of remembrance is more dangerous than heedlessness in remembrance itself.”¹³
A tawakkul/dichotomy exercise — each evening, writing down separately what was and was not within one’s control that day, and directing one’s anxiety only toward the former. (A modern suggestion.)
A gratitude log — noting three concrete blessings each day, turning one’s attention from lack to sufficiency. This is a modern practice suggested by this essay on the basis of the Qur’an’s emphasis on gratitude (Ibrahim, 14:7) — the verse itself does not prescribe keeping such a journal.
A weekly simplification — reviewing one’s possessions, notifications, and commitments, and shedding those acquired merely for display. (A modern suggestion.)

8. Conclusion: Ceasing to Chase the Shadow

Zuhd, ʿuzlah, and tawakkul, while a distinctive creation of the Islamic tradition, may also be read as the Islamic-language expression of a wider family of approaches that address a shared human problem within different conceptual and metaphysical frameworks. The Stoic dichotomia, Jung’s confrontation with the shadow, the Buddhist teaching of non-attachment, and the discipline of attention in digital minimalism — resting though they do on different ontological foundations — appear to converge on a similar diagnosis: outward accumulation does not, for most people, produce lasting satisfaction.

The shadow-simile Hatim al-Asamm articulated centuries ago summarizes this shared diagnosis most eloquently: the bounty of the world is a shadow that wearies the one who chases it, yet arrives of its own accord to the one who turns away. The tragedy of modern man is that, in chasing the shadow, he forgets the true source — the point of orientation in which the heart finds its stillness. Liberation lies not in rejecting the shadow outright, but in turning one’s back on it and orienting toward that true source:

أَلَا بِذِكْرِ اللَّهِ تَطْمَئِنُّ الْقُلُوبُ

“Verily, in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest.” (al-Ra’d, 13:28)

Bibliography

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al-Bayhaqi, Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn al-Husayn. Shu’ab al-Iman.

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Epictetus. Enchiridion. Various translations.

al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid Muhammad. Ihya’ ’Ulum al-Din. Various translations.

Ibn ‘Ata’ Allah al-Iskandari. al-Hikam al-’Ata’iyyah.

Jung, Carl Gustav. Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959.

Jung, Carl Gustav. The Undiscovered Self. Trans. R.F.C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Various translations.

Newport, Cal. Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2019.

Rahula, Walpola. What the Buddha Taught. New York: Grove Press, 1974.

Rumi, Jalal al-Din. Masnavi, Book I. Various critical editions (Nicholson, Gölpınarlı).

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium). Various translations.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Ānātman/Anattā (Non-self).”

al-Tirmidhi, Muhammad ibn ’Isa. Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Kitab al-Zuhd.

TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi (Encyclopedia of Islam, Turkiye Diyanet Foundation), “ʿUzlah” entry. Istanbul: TDV Publications.

TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi, “ʿUzlah” entry. ↩
al-Ghazali, Ihya’ ’Ulum al-Din, “Kitab al-Zuhd.” ↩
The saying attributed to Hatim al-Asamm is transmitted with variant wording — “the world is like your shadow” and “your provision is like your shadow” both appear in different reports; see Abu Nu’aym al-Isfahani, Hilyat al-Awliya. ↩
The saying “the love of the world is the root of every sin” is transmitted in mursal form from Hasan al-Basri; some scholars accept its chain as hasan, while others note the absence of any sound chain reaching the Prophet. al-Bayhaqi’s Shu’ab al-Iman is, by its nature, a work that also collects weak or mursal reports for exhortatory purposes. ↩
Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı, Kur’an Yolu, commentary on Surat al-Takathur. ↩
Epictetus, Enchiridion, ch. 1. ↩
The practice referred to in modern scholarship as praemeditatio malorum, found in the writings of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. ↩
Jung, Aion and The Undiscovered Self. ↩
See “The Treasure at Home: From Sanai, Attar, and Rumi to Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist”. ↩
Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, chapters on “Dukkha” and “Attachment.” ↩
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on “Ānātman/Anattā” notes that “not-self” may be a more accurate rendering of the doctrine than “no-self.” ↩
Newport, Digital Minimalism. ↩
Ibn ‘Ata’ Allah al-Iskandari, al-Hikam al-’Ata’iyyah. ↩