Lessons from Nahjul Balagha [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

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Sermon
219

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.