What Sufism says about love
Sufi writers do not treat love as one virtue among several. In the classical manuals it is where the path ends, and the earlier stations are described as preparation for it. What follows is eight concepts from the Sufi collection in this library, each with the source the tradition gives for it. They are not all in agreement: al-Qushayri records earlier masters arguing over whether the ordinary human word for love can honestly be used of God at all.
Love (mahabba) is the final station, beyond which all others are but stairs
Al-Qushayri puts love at the end of his survey of stations rather than in the middle of it. Repentance, patience, gratitude and trust are the groundwork; love is what the cleared heart is for.
Al-Risala al-Qushayriyya
If I worship God from fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; if I worship from hope of Paradise, exclude me; but if I worship God for God's own sake, do not withhold Your everlasting beauty
Rabia asks God to take away both of her reasons for worshipping, fear of punishment and hope of reward, so that whatever is left can be trusted. The prayer is built as a set of conditions on purpose.
Tadhkirat al-Awliya
Rabia ran through Basra carrying fire in one hand and water in the other, to burn Paradise and douse Hell, so people would love God for God alone
Attar records Rabia walking through eighth-century Basra with a torch in one hand and a bucket in the other, meaning to burn Paradise down and put Hell out. Her point was that people should love God when there is nothing left to gain and nothing left to fear.
Tadhkirat al-Awliya
The Valley of Love, where reason gives way to burning devotion
In the second of Attar's seven valleys the traveller's reasoning stops being enough. Attar does not call thinking bad; he ranks it below love, and describes love as a fire reason cannot pass through intact.
Mantiq al-Tayr (Conference of the Birds)
The moth that circles the candle and is finally consumed by it knows love that the moth who only speaks of the flame does not
Moths send scouts, one at a time, to find out what a flame is. The scout that watches from a distance can describe it accurately; the one that goes in cannot report back at all. Attar treats those as two different things rather than two degrees of the same thing.
Mantiq al-Tayr (Conference of the Birds)
Bayazid said he sought God for thirty years and found that God had sought him first
Thirty years of disciplined searching end with Bayazid saying the search was not his idea. The order is the whole content of the saying: effort is an answer to something, not the start of it.
Tadhkirat al-Awliya
Love is the bridge between you and everything
Rumi uses love for the thing that joins a person to everything else, not for a feeling aimed at chosen people. The claim is nearer to structure than to sentiment.
Diwan-e Shams-e Tabrizi
At the end of the path, worship becomes not duty but the lover's simple joy in the Beloved's presence
At the far end of the path, prayer and remembrance are said to stop feeling like obligation. Nothing has been dropped; the duty has turned into what the person wants anyway.
Al-Risala al-Qushayriyya and Rumi's Masnavi
Two things sit oddly together in this material. Love is the last station, reached after years of work, and it is also described as something already moving towards the seeker before any work began. The tradition mostly leaves that unresolved, and Rabia's prayer suggests why: the moment love is explained as a reward for effort, it becomes the transaction she was trying to burn down.