Books : Purification of the Heart

Someone once asked A'isha, the Prophet's wife, about the most wondrous thing she observed about the Prophet [ pbuh ]. She said, " Everything about him was wondrous. But when the veiling of the night came, and when every lover went to his lover, he went to be with God. " The Prophet [ pbuh ] stood at night in prayer, remembering his Lord until his ankles swelled up and tears dripped from his beard. The Prophet [ pbuh ] said,

" Death is closer to any of you than the strap on your sandals. "

Somewhere on earth there is a door reserved for each soul, and one day each of us will walk through that door never to return to this life again. Where that door is and when we will walk through it are unknowns that we must live with. Upon death, suddenly all of this-  this whole world and all its charms and occupations-  will become as if it were all a dream :

And you will think that you tarried [ on earth ] only for a short while [ QURAN, 17 : 52 ]


Even those who are spiritually blind will see in the new world order of existence the ultimate truth about God and our purpose as His creation. And as we climb out of our graves for the mighty Gathering in the Hereafter, it would seem to us that we had stayed in our graves for only  a day or part of a day, as the Quran states.
When one is confronted with eternity, this world will seem like the most ephemeral of existences. This once overwhelmingly alluring life will be of no value to anyone.


It serve the soul to be actively aware that the door to death awaits each human  being and that it can open at any time. For this reason, the Imam says that we must keep the spectacle of death before our eyes and realize its proximity.




Excerpt from 'Purification of the Heart'
[ signs, symptoms, and cures of the spiritual disease of the heart ]
Translation and commentary of Imam al- Maulid's  MATHARAT al QULUB
by Hamza Yusuf Hanson


..........' a bloody good read', I must agree for most of us, heedless creatures, there is, creeping heedlessly on the face of this earth, rummaging  here and there,  pilling and hoarding unceasingly.


Related article in the blog:
Of Life, Dying, Death and Life after Death
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/2011/09/f-dying-death-and-life-after-death.html