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Zam Zam Water
Spring 1999
This article entitled "Zam Zam Water" was written by Sheikh Din Muhammad Abdullah al-Dayemi in November, 1998 after his memorable trip to make Umrah in Mecca.  The centuries-old legend of the Zam Zam well and the lessons of the tale reflect the same desperation and longing that ravages our hearts and minds today. When will we stop running from distraction to distraction? And when will we start running towards the Truth?
     From the Tawrah (Torah) as well as the Qur`an, our history has passed down a great legend that tells of a time long ago when Hazrati Hagar, the second wife of Hazrat Ibrahim (Abraham [as]), was sent with her newborn child, Isma'il (Ishmael), to live in a far off land. Her supplies included a goatskin of water. After suffering much hardship, the goatskin ran dry just as she arrived between two hills - one called Safa and the other called Marwah (names of stones). These hills lie adjacent to the site of what is now the Kaaba, the holy house of worship, in the Grand Mosque at Mecca. It is the same site where the great Prophet Adam (as) built the first house of worship at the beginning of humanity.
     By the time Hagar arrived on those grounds countless years later, they were desolate, hot and barren. Barely anything can grow there. At least nothing that I saw. The desert heat beats down mercilessly, and if you didn't know that you were on earth, you might think that you were on the moon with its endless sand, barren landscapes, craggy hills and jagged mountains.
     So picture dear Hagar holding her precious child. She's running low on provisions, there's no water left, and she doesn't know what to do. Out of desperation, she places the infant down on the dry desert sand and starts running frantically back and forth between the two hills of Safa and Marwah. She is out of her mind worrying where her relief is going to come from. Where can she find water for her baby Isma'il? She cries out to God/ Allah, pleading and begging for help.
     After running back and forth several times, she returned to the spot where the infant lay. As the child lay crying and kicking his feet, a fresh spring of water sprang up from the very spot underneath the little Prophet Isma`il's (as) feet; so much water that Hagar would have to ask it to stop. "Zam Zam," she cried out. "Stop. Stop."
     This well became the site of their homestead. The venerable Prophet Ibrahim (as) would revive and reestablish the house of prayer there. The site is where the first adhan (call to prayer) would be sounded. The well also became the site of a great marketplace. In fact, it became the most important place in the whole region. And now for millions, the same site, the Zam Zam well, has become the ground, a sacred precinct, that is the most important place on earth - the Holy Kaaba in Mecca.
     Pilgrimage is one of the five fundamental pillars of Islam. As part of the ceremonial rites of pilgrimage for both the Hajj (major pilgrimage) as well as for Umrah (the minor pilgrimage), the hajji (pilgrim) must re-enact this story. The pilgrim tries to gather great internal meaning from it. It is one matter for the story to simply remain a story - a literal, somewhat questionable, phenomenal, legendary story about some unknown people from such a long time ago that they appear as mythological figures. However, it's an entirely different matter altogether to follow those footsteps yourself, as you pace back and forth attempting to merge with the history, the mood, the meaning and the spiritual reality of the story.
     As the hajji first stands on the hill of Safa facing the long corridor that will reach to the hill of Marwah, the pilgrim prays for forgiveness. The hajji attempts to place him or herself into the state of what it must have been like for a mother who had laid down her infant. The mother's sole concern was the welfare of her baby. In desperation, she took off running to the opposite hill to find sustenance, to preserve life. A feeling of madness and desperation starts as you first ask for Allah's forgiveness, as well as humbly request Allah to "complete us as we were in the beginning . . . make us pure again as it was in the beginning." Then you take off running down the corridor towards the next hill. It is far enough away that as you're walking quickly and then start running, you feel yourself become agitated and out of breath. You can merge yourself into the mood of the experience, the jogging called in Arabic sa'y, that Hagar performed running madly to protect her child.
     As you are running back and forth between these two places, it can start to feel really crazy. Picture it. What an absurd ritual, running simultaneously with thousands and thousands of people back and forth between two desert hills! But isn't that the way it is in real life when we run from illusion to illusion? We run from one thing to another out of desperation. Even better yet, our own prayers are for relief as we get out of breath running from one place to another. We run from left to right and right to left, and up and down and down and up, and in and out and out and in. We run between the duality of you and me, and day and night and wrong and right. We run back and forth between the dimensions of all of our illusions, desperately pleading with God.
We run away from that which we feel we can't control or that which we aren't sure will take care of us. We run to that which we cling to as real, the appearance of things, that which we think is ours, that which we think we know, own, control or deserve. We run back and forth between hills that appear out of nowhere, in the middle of the desert of our minds of material and worldly life, trying to ascribe meaning and importance to things as we search and search, and plead and plead for satisfying sustenance. Humanity acts desperately and runs and runs and runs. What's at stake in this game? The infant's innocence that lays there, unmarred, unblemished, unsinned. Meanwhile we're running back and forth until we get tired, which is exactly what happened to Hazrati Hagar. She became too tired to run any longer.
     Don't we find ourselves running that "same course" back and forth like Hagar between the polarity of our illusions, from this stone to that stone, hoping and wishing that all of our personal dreams would come true, that our personal desires would be fulfilled, until we are too tired to run any longer? By the way, thank God that not all of our personal desires are fulfilled. We've often heard it said, "Thank God for answered prayers," but I say rather, "Thank God more for unanswered prayers," because who knows what we would have done to ourselves as we run around thinking that we know what we really want.
     As we tire of running, we have a chance to start learning about spiritual reliance. In the beginning we might simply regard it as fate or destiny. Or if the fatigue of fruitless worldly and ego pursuits is great enough, we may even start to experience "surrender" since we can no longer run, and we cannot produce the well of sustenance by our own effort and our own regards. We find ourselves walking the razor's edge of the fine line between giving up and actually letting go. So Hagar walked back to the infant, who represents the station of submission and total dependence. An infant is totally dependent, totally let go, completely innocent, pure, open and vulnerable. At the feet of that infant the water was flowing.
     In the corridor between Safa and Marwah you can feel the urgency of the people running back and forth. Their feet pound against the pavement as if to say "Allah, Allah, Allah!" After running from one hill you get to the other side. But it is not the other side that you sought, and you realize it. Then you turn and run back to the other side. But it's not the other side that you sought either! You might realize that there is not somewhere other than here which is better. As in life, wherever you have traveled on the journey between the two points of your longing, you have brought the condition of yourself along. You cannot simply run away from nor run to the actual degree of your nearness or separation from God and peace, the actual degree of your ease or pain, or the actual degree of your serenity or conflict.
     The lesson in re-enacting this highly emotional story, running back and forth and following the footsteps of Hagar, is for us to realize that the source, the sustenance and the destination of our dependence can only be on one thing. That Oneness is not located in the duality of the illusions of this temporal, material world. This world is only a way station. It is a passing-through point. Neither Reality nor we started with this world, nor will we end with this world. I am not simply conjecturing about what was before or what comes after, for the Truth is that anything we seek in this world in the meantime disappears before us. At the same time, isn't it interesting how we all spiritually end up re-seeking our own innocence. We all end up wanting to find the fountain, the endless well.
     As with the idea of the spiritual Zam Zam well, the literal Zam Zam spring in Mecca has proven to be an endless well. The Kaaba and Zam Zam well are in the center of the haram (protected) district that can now hold hundreds of thousands of pilgrims under one roof. Everyone is welcome to drink endlessly their fill of this water. It never runs out, and the pressure never drops. I spoke with an engineer who is a water specialist, and he said the unique thing about the well is that if you quit pumping water, it will maintain its own level. It doesn't create a flood plain. Yet when you start pumping water out of this well, it stays perpetually full. This is the miracle of Zam Zam.
The well is a symbol of an unconditional, endless source of ease, refreshment and spontaneity, because it is spontaneously flowing forward completely in balance - no more, no less. It demonstrates the endless source of sustenance that came from Allah on High to refresh Hagar and Isma'il (as). Now they are both buried there beside the Kaaba, alhamdulillah!
     As a part of the rites of the pilgrimage today, after the hajji completes the seven circumambulations of the Kaaba and their prayer at the Maqam al-Ibrahim (Station of Abraham), they drink Zam Zam water. When they complete the running back and forth between Safa and Marwah, they drink their fill. Now that the well has been discovered, the water is everywhere. So even as people are running back and forth, there is Zam Zam water along the way. There is endless water. People come with their jugs and carts and trucks and fill them up with the water. And the holy well just keeps producing. Nobody knows the worldly source of the water, but the endless supply miraculously appears in a place that looks barren.
     The fountain of life, the well of true sustenance exists within us even though our place might appear to be barren. It comes from our Source. Our return to the Source by drinking from the well is directly connected to the return of our innocence. The return to our innocence comes about by the degree to which we can stop the crazy running back and forth between meaningless illusions and let go and rely upon the sustenance that was provided for us in this life. We drink the Zam Zam water to remember. Our practice is one of Remembrance - Dhikrullah . In this act of Remembrance we accept that the water is healing for us, that we might be filled with that which we long for.
     I brought a container of water back from the Zam Zam well. I thought that it would be good for us to each take a drink of the water and bring ourselves into the mood of true reliance upon the endless well of God. What is reliance upon the source that provides the sustenance? It is the return to innocence with convicted belief and complete faith that our dependency relies upon Allah the One. No one likes to be called "dependent" in the Western world, but the Truth is we are actually all ultimately dependent on the permission of Allah even for life itself.
     When the appointed time comes for us to go from this world, it doesn't matter any longer how many times we ran back and forth between our illusions, schemes and desires. Our number is up, right? We've seen it even in the recent deaths of near ones in the Community. It's true, as well, that when the appointed time comes for us to be alive, even if we wish we were dead, life cannot simply be called off.
     Zam Zam water is the refreshment of understanding as we return to the well which is our source, our innocence and our healing. Drinking of it is the remembrance of our submission to Allah. Amin!