Ya-Sin · Makki · ayah 55 of 83

Ya-Sin 36:55

إِنَّ أَصْحَـٰبَ ٱلْجَنَّةِ ٱلْيَوْمَ فِى شُغُلٍ فَـٰكِهُونَ

“Indeed the companions of Paradise, that Day, will be amused in [joyful] occupation -”

Saheeh International

Essence

The people of the Garden are not idle; they are busy the way a child absorbed in play is busy, and never tired.

A reflection

Not an eternity of lying around

A common worry about Paradise, said aloud by teenagers and thought quietly by adults, is that it sounds boring. Endless lounging, nothing to do, for ever. If the picture is a holiday that never ends, most of us know how the second week of a holiday feels.

This ayah describes the people of the Garden in a surprising way. They are fī shughul: occupied, busy, taken up with something. Not idle.

The commentators are careful about what kind of busyness this is. One concise commentary says it is not an occupation in which they tire, because there is no toil in the Garden. Another commentator defines shughl precisely. It is the affair that holds a person's attention away from everything else, because it matters to them more than anything. It can be the absorption of complete joy or of complete grief; here it is joy.

And the word is left indefinite. That, he explains, is to magnify it: as if it were an occupation whose essence cannot be grasped. Another commentator exclaims: what an occupation, an occupation beyond description.

That is the truer picture. Paradise is not the absence of activity. It is activity without fatigue, absorption without strain. The lexicons say the root means the opposite of being empty-handed: a person whose hands and mind are taken up.

The worry about boredom assumes that delight runs out. The ayah describes delight that fills the attention so completely there is no room left for boredom to enter.

So if you have ever feared that Paradise would be dull, notice how the Quran itself answers. Busy. Absorbed. Delighted. For ever, and never tired.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.