The first distracts from the truth without opposing it, such as thoughts and worries concerning worldly attachments and the desires of the soul.

The second opposes the truth and turns people away from it, such as false opinions and ruinous desires involving disbelief, hypocrisy, religious innovations, and the like. Indeed, the heart was created only for the remembrance of Allah; anything else is not its proper place.

He then mentions, secondly, its negative attribute, saying, “Without a vessel.” He means: when you place it without a vessel, you waste it, having no vessel with you—just as you might say, “I attended the gathering without an inkwell.” Thus, the phrase describes the state of the one placing it, not of the thing being placed. And Allah knows best.

The explanation of this statement—and Allah knows best—is that he is saying: when you put your heart where it does not belong, it becomes occupied with falsehood, and you have no vessel in which the truth may be placed and into which remembrance and knowledge, which are the heart’s due, may descend. Your heart is therefore wasted: you have wasted it in two ways, although these amount to the same thing. You have placed it where it does not belong, and you have no vessel to contain the truth that it ought to receive.

It is like saying of a king who has turned to amusement: “If he occupies himself with something other than his kingdom, while there is no one in the kingdom to govern it, he is a king who has lost his way.” Here, however, the vessel is the heart itself. This is because nothing else can take the heart’s place in receiving what must be placed within it:

“No bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another.”