Nahjul Balagha [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

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SERMON 219


Amir al-mu'minin recited the verse

Engage (your) vying in exuberance, until ye come to
the graves. (1) (Qur'an, 102:1-2)

Then he said:

How distant (from achievement) is their aim, how
neglectful are these visitors and how difficult is the affair. They have not taken lessons
from things which are full of lessons, but they took them from far off places. Do they
boast on the dead bodies of their fore-fathers, or do they regard the number of dead
persons as a ground for feeling boastful of their number? They want to revive the bodies
that have become spiritless and the movements that have ceased. They are more entitled to
be a source of lesson than a source of pride. They are more suitable for being a source of
humility than of honour.

They looked at them with weak-sighted eyes and
descended into the hollow of ignorance. If they had asked about them from the dilapidated
houses and empty courtyards, they would have said that they went into the earth in the
state of misguidance and you too are heading ignorantly towards them. You trample their
skulls, want to raise constructions on their corpses, you graze what they have left and
live in houses which they have vacated. The days (that lie) between them and you are also
bemoaning you and reciting elegies over you.

They are your fore-runners in reaching the goal and
have arrived at the watering places before you. They had positions of honour and plenty of
pride. They were rulers and holders of positions. Now they have gone into the interstice
where earth covers them from above and is eating their flesh and drinking their blood.
They lie in the hollows of their graves lifeless, no more growing, and hidden, not to be
found. The approach of dangers does not frighten them, and the adversity of circumstances
does not grieve them. They do not mind earthquakes, nor do they pay heed to thunders. They
are gone and not expected back. They are existent but unseen. They were united but are now
dispersed. They were friendly and are now separated.

Their accounts are unknown and their houses are
silent, not because of length of time or distance of place, but because they have been
made to drink the cup (of death) which has changed their speech into dumbness, their
hearing into deafness and their movements into stillness. It seems as though they are
fallen in slumber. They are neighbours not feeling affection for each other, or friends
who do not meet each other. The bonds of their knowing each other have been worn out and
the connections of their friendship have been cut asunder. Everyone of them is therefore
alone although they are a group, and they are strangers, even though friends. They are
unaware of morning after a night and of evening after a day. The night or the day when
they departed has become ever existent for them. (2) They
found the dangers of their placed of stay more serious than they had apprehended, and they
witnessed that its signs were greater than they had guessed. The two objectives (namely
paradise and hell) have been stretched for them upto a point beyond the reach of fear or
hope. Had they been able to speak they would have become dumb to describe what they
witnessed or saw.

Even though their traces have been wiped out and
their news has stopped (circulating), eyes are capable of drawing a lesson, as they looked
at them, ears of intelligence heard them and they spoke without uttering words. So, they
said that handsome faces have been destroyed and delicate bodies have been smeared with
earth. We have put on a worn-out shroud. The narrowness of the grave has overwhelmed us
and strangeness has spread among us. Our silent abodes have been ruined. The beauty of our
bodies has disappeared. Our known features have become hateful. Our stay in the places of
strangeness has become long. We do not get relief from pain, nor widening from narrowness.

Now. if you portray them in your mind, or if the
curtains concealing them are removed from them for you, in this state when their ears have
lost their power and turned deaf, their eyes have been filled with dust and sunk down,
their tongues which were very active have been cut into pieces, their hearts which were
ever wakeful have become motionless in their chests, in every limb of theirs a peculiar
decay has occurred which has deformed it, and has paved the way for calamity towards it,
all these lie powerless, with no hand to help them and no heart to grieve over them,
(then) you would certainly notice the grief of (their) hearts and the dirt of (their)
eyes.

Every trouble of theirs is such that its position
does not change and the distress does not clear away. How many a prestigious body and
amazing beauty the earth has swallowed, although when in the world he enjoyed abundant
pleasures and was nurtured in honour. He clung to enjoyments (even) in the hour of grief.
If distress befell him he sought refuge in consolation (derived) through the pleasures of
life and playing and games. He was laughing at the world while the world was laughing at
him because of his life full of forgetfulness. Then time trampled him like thorns, the
days weakened his energy and death began to look at him from near. Then he was overtaken
by a grief which he had never felt, and ailments appeared in place of the health he had
previously possessed.

He then turned to that with which the physician had
made him familiar, namely suppressing the hot (diseases) with cold (medicines) and curing
the cold with hot doses, but the cold things did nothing save aggravate the hot ailments,
while the hot ones did nothing except increasing the coldness, nor did he acquire
temperateness in his constitution but rather every ailment of his increased till his
physicians became helpless, his attendants grew loathsome and his own people felt
disgusted from describing his disease, avoided answering those who enquired about him and
quarrelled in front of him about the serious news which they were concealing from him.
Thus, someone would say "his condition is what it is" and would console them
with hopes of his recovery, while another one would advocate patience on missing him,
recalling to them the calamities that had befallen the earlier generations. In this state
when he was getting ready to depart from the world and leave his beloved ones, such a
serious choking overtook him that his senses became bewildered and the dampness of his
tongue dried up. Now, there was many an important question whose reply he knew about he
could not utter it, and many a voice that was painful for his heart that he heard but
remained (unmoved) as though he was deaf the voice of either and elder whom he used to
respect or of a younger whom he used to caress. The pangs of death are too hideous to be
covered by description or to be appreciated by the hearts of the people in this world.
(1).
The genesis of the descending of this verse is that the tribes of Banu Abd Manaf and Banu
Sahm began to boast against each other over the abundance of their wealth and the number
of their tribesmen, and in order to prove they had a greater number each one began to
include their dead as well, whereupon this verse was revealed to the effect that abundance
of riches and majority in numbers has made you so forgetful that you count the dead also
with the living. This verse is also taken to mean that abundance of riches and progeny has
made you forgetful till you reached the graves, but the utterance of Amir al-mu'minin
supports the first meaning.
(2).
This means that for him he who dies in the day it is always day whereas for him who dies
in the night the darkness of night never dispels, because they are at a place where there
is no turning of the moon and the sun and no rotation of the nights and the days. The same
meaning has been expressed by a poet like this:
There is sure to be a day without a
night,
Or a night that would come without
a day.

.

Forward to Sermon 220.

Back to Sermon 218.

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