The Ideal of Living for Others

“Going to the four corners of the world in the name of dialogue, restoring broken relations between countries, constantly generating such plans, and developing tactics is very important in terms of preventing possible conflicts, wars, and disorders. The most important means of struggling against conflict and discord is education. That is, you will bring up perfect individuals in terms of human values and universal values, values such as peace, tolerance, and dialogue. Not only will they know a few languages, but they will have expertise in different sciences. At the same time, they will be cultivated with human values and virtues, full of the ideal of living for others.”¹⁾

“… a person’s constantly living selflessly with a feeling of living for others, always spelling God’s Name, and spending one’s day and night with concern for saving humanity is a Prophetic attribute. When people are divided into certain categories in the next world, those who keep striving for the sake of religion, faith, God, the Qur’an, and humanity will, God willing, be resurrected together with the Prophets. For this reason, it is necessary to target high horizons, and always run after the ideal of living for others by leaving aside the feeling of living for oneself.”²⁾

“People who have devoted to the ideal of living for others in the true sense must run after great projects and plans. They must have plans and projects even for the generations to come hundred years later. Given that God has endowed human with abilities that go further beyond narrowness of physical dimensions, individuals must know to use these very well and not debilitate their abilities and capacities by condemning themselves to a narrow cage. In addition, they must never be abstemious about the work and activities they carry out on the righteous path and suffice with what they did, but seek different ways of opening to the four corners of the world at every phase.”³⁾

“Unfortunately, in the last period of the Ottoman State, staying in a palace and indulging in pleasures paralyzed the rulers. It has been a disaster for us to live in pompous houses, to build a second or third house to live in, even to erect buildings for children and grandchildren, to think about the grooms and brides, in short, to have the passion of living and abandon the ideal of the ideal of living for others.”⁴⁾

“The same case is for those devoted people of today who have been weaving their lives in the direction of the ideal of the ideal of living for others. Indeed, today’s people too have been loaded with the vital mission that we may modify with the phrase ‘inheritors of the Prophetic creed.’ The contemporary inheritors of the earth may be considered as the inheritors of the Prophetic creed.”⁵⁾

Other Languages

¹⁾

M. Fethullah Gülen, Yenilenme Cehdi (Kırık Testi-12), İstanbul: Nil Yayınları, 2013, pp. 42–43.

²⁾

M. Fethullah Gülen, Buhranlı Günler ve Ümit Atlasımız (Kırık Testi-14), İstanbul: Nil Yayınları, 2015, p. 202.

³⁾

M. Fethullah Gülen, Dert Musikisi (Kırık Testi-16), New Jersey: Süreyya Yayınları, 2019, p. 33.

⁴⁾

M. Fethullah Gülen, İstikamet Çizgisi (Kırık Testi-17), New Jersey: Süreyya Yayınları, 2020, p. 16.

⁵⁾

M. Fethullah Gülen, Prizma-1, İstanbul: Nil Yayınları, 2011, p. 196.