Lessons from Nahjul Balagha [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Sermons
Sermon
228

SERMON 228

Advice about fear of Allah, and
an account of those who remain apprehensive of death and
adopt abstemiousness

Certainly, fear of
Allah is the key to guidance, provision for the next world,
freedom from every slavery and deliverance from all ruin. With its
help the seeker succeeds and he who makes for safety escapes and
achieves his aims.

Perform (good) acts
while such acts are being raised (in value), repentance can be of
benefit, prayer can be heard, conditions are peaceful and the pens
(of the two angels) are in motion (to record the actions). Hasten
towards (virtuous) actions before the change of age (to oldness),
lingering illness or snatching death (overtakes you). Certainly,
death will end your enjoyments, mar your pleasures and remove your
objectives. It is an unwanted visitor, an invincible adversary and
an unaccounting killer. Its ropes have entrapped you, its evils
have surrounded you, its arrowheads have aimed at you, its sway
over you is great, its oppression on you is continuous and the
chance of its missing you is remote.

Very soon you will be
overwhelmed with the gloom of its shades, the severity of its
illness, the darkness of its distresses, the nonsense utterances
of its pangs, the grief of its destruction, the darkness of its
encompassment and the unwholesomeness of its taste. It will seem
as if it has come to you all of a sudden, silenced those who were
whispering to you, separated your group, destroyed your doings,
devastated your houses and altered your successors to distribute
your estate among the chief relatives, who did not give you any
benefit, or the grieved near ones who could not protect (you), or
those rejoicers who did not lament (you).

Therefore, it is upon
you to strive, make effort, equip yourself, get ready and provide
yourself from the place of provision. And let not the life of this
world deceive you as it deceived those before you among the past
people and by-gone periods -- those who extracted its milk,
benefited from its neglectfulness, passed a long time and turned
its new things into old (by living long). Their abodes turned into
graves and their wealth into inheritable estate. They do not know
who came to them (at their graves); do not pay heed to those who
weep over them, and do not respond to those who call them.
Therefore, beware of this world as it is treacherous, deceitful
and cheating, it gives and takes back, covers with clothes and
uncovers. Its pleasure does not last, its hardship does not end
and its calamity does not stop.

A part of the same
sermon about ascetics

They are from among
the people of this world but are not its people, because they
remain in it as though they do not belong to it. They act herein
on what they observe and hasten here in (to avoid) what they fear.
Their bodies move among the people of the next world. They see
that the people of this world attach importance to the death of
their bodies but they themselves attach more importance to the
death of the hearts of those who are living.