"This is an age when you should keep silent and retire from the world, the time to be silent and stay at home.”

Attar names Sufyan al-Thawri – a jurist, ascetic, wanderer of the inward path – the "Commander of the Faithful.” One of the most striking features of his life is his continual flight from city to city, hiding himself. He was no rebel, nor did he ever openly defy political authority. Yet he was acutely aware of the catastrophic consequences of proximity to power and of how such closeness could lead to the ruin of the self. It was not only power and fame that he sought to escape. Even poverty and an austere asceticism could become sources of deviation. With an almost frantic urgency, he called out to people, "commanding” them to seek refuge in the serenity of their own homes. From what was he fleeing, and in what was he seeking refuge? More importantly, what did he hope to find in this solitude? Sufis practiced retreat (khalwa) both to protect themselves from the harm of others and to protect others from the harm they themselves might cause. Yet the true aim of retreat – solitude – is precisely what can never be fully realized, for one who withdraws properly is never alone: God becomes the companion.

Sufyan was born roughly 80 years after the passing of the Prophet Muhammad. Despite whatever political turmoil may have marked the era, to the modern mind it represents one of the high points of a newly expanding faith – an age in which the religious sciences flourished.

In this intellectually vibrant age – outwardly modest and marked by relative social, economic and material simplicity – Sufyan called on his contemporaries to retreat into their homes and embrace seclusion. What does this say to us, whose lives have verged on a kind of absurdity, eyes fixed on small screens rather than on one another’s faces, choosing the solitude of an online world at home over the warmth of human company? Today the "house” is not merely a physical space but the recovery of an inner refuge.

We not only consume the resources of this world carelessly, as if they were endless, but also squander our one true asset – time – as if it were expendable. In the blink of an eye, scrolling carries us to places we never knew existed. Yet in that same instant, we ourselves almost cease to exist. Oftentimes, one needs a phenomenologist to awaken us with the sharp refrain: "Look, simply look at the world that’s presenting itself to you!” This is what the Sufis have been saying all along: Be present! The Sufi notion of ibn al-waqt, "the son of the moment,” points to this very state: To be fully present and to do what the moment requires of you. Yet in our time, the meanings have been quietly reversed: Presence is understood as immersion in social life, while staying at home has become a strangely passive "activity.”

When Sufyan said, "I do not consider a person to be any better than the hole that he runs to and hides in,” he was likely pointing to the one who withdraws from the clamor of distraction so as to be fully present. In his understanding, seclusion at home did not negate presence. It opened the space for it. And though Sufis were often reproached as passive or unwilling to work, to marry or even to remain in one place, their only true motive was to be wholly present. To be faithful to the moment and to what it asked of them, they embraced solitude, for amid the distractions of the world, one cannot truly remain in the presence of God.

It is also reported that Sufyan said, "I do not know of anything sounder for the people of this age than sleep.” Such sayings attributed to him may be understood as the unfolding of a single, simple insight: beware of heedlessness, so much so that even sleep is better than a state of heedlessness. It may be helpful to recall how Ibn al-Arabi approached this issue.

Ibn al-Arabi frequently cites the hadith, "People are asleep; when they die, they awaken,” not only to indicate the transient nature of the world but also to reveal its true nature. In this sense, people are "asleep” in the metaphorical meaning of the term, for they have severed their ties with what surrounds them; no one is fully present. Yet Ibn al-Arabi also regards sleep as a form of awakening, since it serves as a passage to another realm, though only temporarily. In this perspective, the opposition between "asleep” and "awake” evolves into a premise where sleep is understood as a kind of awakening. He maintains that, like the prophets and the friends of God, some attain wakefulness even in this life: They are the ones who see the world as it truly is and live in abiding presence.

It is known that Ibn al-Arabi practiced spiritual retreats, some of which proved illuminating, to put it broadly. Yet he came to see that solitude, as a method in itself, was ultimately doomed to fail. In the Sufi retreat, one withdraws from the world to deepen one’s bond with the Divine. It is a kind of hiatus in which the mind and the heart are cleared so that the Real may dwell within them. Hence, Ibn al-Arabi maintains that no emptiness exists in the universe.

It is therefore a matter of how this apparent emptiness – metaphorically, life itself – is to be filled. Sufyan’s call for a shelter was no exaggeration, since in the turmoil of existence, everyone stands in need of refuge. The Sufi perspective reconfigures our understanding by inverting ordinary concepts and opening them onto a more comprehensive vision. In our age, more than ever, we need to hear Sufyan’s call to pause and reflect on the course of our lives. Distractions may have assumed new guises, yet the need to recognize and resist them has not. Whether in the solitude of the home or in the midst of the world, all is well so long as neither becomes a veil over the eye and the heart.