Do not measure it on the scale of today and tomorrow
Eternal, incessantly struggling, ever young is life!
Create your own world if you claim to be among the living
The secret of Adam and the object of Kun fikan is life
Ask the mountain digger for the reality of life
The canal of milk, the axe, the heavy rock is life
In slavery it is choked to a mere trickling brook
And in freedom like the boundless ocean is life
It is manifested by its power of subduing
Though concealed in a body of dust is life
You have emerged from the existence’ ocean like a bubble
In this losing battle your examination is life [1]
Selfhood
This is also referred as Khudi, Ego, or Self.
This flow of breath is like a sword,
Selfhood is its sharpness;
Selfhood is the secret of life;
It is the world’s awakening,
Selfhood is solitary, absorbed,
An ocean enclosed in a drop;
It shines in light and in darkness,
Existent in, but away from, thee and me.
The dawn of life behind it, eternity before,
It has no frontiers before, no frontiers behind.
Afloat on the river of time,
Bearing the buffets of the waves,
Changing the course of its quest,
Shifting its glance from time to time;
For it a hill is a grain of sand,
Mountains are shattered by its blows;
A journey is its beginning and end,
And this is the secret of its being.
It is the moon’s beam, the spark in the flint,
Colourless itself, though infused with colours,
No concern has it with the calculus of space,
With linear time’s limits, with the finitude of life.
It manifested itself in man’s essence of dust,
After an eternity of a strife to be born.
It is in thy heart that Selfhood has an abode,
As heaven has its abode in the cornea of thy eye [2]
Faqr
Iqbal, brought about a wonderful metamorphosis and sought to invest this word with attributes more in harmony with the ideological background of Islam. Faqr, in Iqbal, does not signify only an attitude of detachment, selflessness and indifference to worldly life, which are all negative in nature. Iqbal’s Faqr is through and through positive. A faqir or qalandar in Iqbal is not only indifferent to vicissitudes of material life; he is a man of strong will, who has a moral stake in the social and political life of the people around him, motivated by the love for the ideal of moral and spiritual regeneration of mankind. In the attainment of this ideal, he is ready to sacrifice everything. [3]
Nationalism
Country, is the biggest among these new gods!
What is its shirt is the shroud of Deen
This idol which is the product of the new civilization
Is the plunderer of the structure of the Holy Prophet's Deen
Your arm is enforced with the strength of the Divine Unity
You are the followers of Mustafa, your country is Islam
You should show the old panorama to the world
O Mustafa’s follower! You should destroy this idol
The limitation to country results in destruction
Live like the fish in the ocean free from country
Renouncing the country is the way of the God’s Beloved
You should also testify to the Prophethood’s Truth by similar action
In political parlance country is something different
In Prophet’s command country is something different
The antagonism among world’s nations is created by this alone
Subjugation as the goal of commerce is created by this alone
Politics have become bereft of sincerity is by this alone
The destruction of the home of the weak is by this alone
God’s creation is unjustly divided among nations by it
The Islamic concept of nationality is uprooted by it [4]
Love
Iqbal has used the term Ishq for extreme love with God or the Islamic prophet Muhammad.[5]
^ This is explained in detail by Prof. Yousaf Saleem Chishti in his commentaries on Iqbal. He spent about thirteen years in his company (1925–1938), learning his ideas.