Zad al Talibin keeps me Smiling

"Anyone who reads them (the hadiths) and memorizes them is illuminated, and anyone who listens to them and studies them is delighted." -- Shaykh Ashiq Ilahi al Bulandsherhri in the intro to Zad al-Talibin.

After listening to several explanations by shaykh hussain of ahadith in this book, "Zad al-Talibin" (Provisions for the Seekers), i figured I should buy it and started reading it. Man it has been a blast. I've gotten through like 6 ahadith in memorization (they're very very short, but PACKED with meaning), and have read many more. That statement above is absolutely correct -- the one who memorizes it is illuminated. I actually feel a spiritual lift. They're having lay-offs at work, and everybody is depressed (AH my job is ok), but i'm walking around with a huge smile on my face because of the noor in these ahadith, while everybody else is looking quite gloomy (with good reason). What a rush.

Here's the book (in my friend's bookstore ;-):
http://albalagh.net/bookstore/?action=view&item=1016

Each hadith has a short explanation in the book, but shaykh hussain abdul sattar has an approx 1 hour explanation on each one. Here's shaykh hussain's explanations:
http://sacredlearning.org/classrooms/hadith/zad_talibin/index.htm

I wish i could freely type in arabic, I'd LOVE to quote what i've memorized so far, seriously, what an "eman rush"! (Ustadh Muhammad AlShareef)... here's a translation of one of them that are on my mind right now:

4. "Calmness and patient deliberation is from Allah and haste is from Satan."

And here's shaykh hussain's commentary on it:
http://sacredlearning.org/audio/hadith/zad_talibin/hadith_4.mp3

Where this book came from:
So there are 6 popular books of sahih hadith -- sahih bukhari, muslim, tirmidhi, abu dawood, etc. For various reasons, a scholar later wrote a book with a collection of ahadith that is a subset of what was contained in there of around 4000 ahadith. This was called "Masabih al-sunnah", then another scholar wrote "Mishkat al masaabih" and also added like 1500 ahadith -- this is a VERY popular book especially in indo-pak madrassas. Then like 140 years ago Shaykh Ashiq Ilahi wrote this book from Mishkat -- and he especially made it so intro madrassa students can benefit, and also organized it so taht it would help them learn arabic -- starting with the ahadith with the easiest grammatical constructs. Now Mufti AbdulRahman ibn Yusuf translated it -- and man it's an AWESOME translation.

Alhamdulillah, knowledge is TRUELY a light.