In this month of Ramadan, let me bring you daily to the world of my current translation–a book entitled In the Presence of the Beloved on the subtleties of supplication [du'a']:
“Have mercy on me when I am thrown on the deathbed, my friends trying to calm down my restlessness; do a favor to me when I am laid stretched on the naked floor for the religious washing, my neighbors performing the necessary functions; move with compassion when I am carried to the graveyard, my kith and kin accompanying my funeral; be with me when I am put into the grave, alone and abandoned; take piety on me in that new abode where I will be a forsaken miserable, because continuously I did not cultivate friendship with any one other than You.”
The reason behind man’s negligence of the hereafter
Because of the instincts God has endowed in him, man knows his material needs and resorts to material ways and physical means to meet them and seeks the help of his fellow human beings. Instinctively, man knows hunger, thirst, sexual urge, housing need, and his other material or worldly needs and endeavors to address them. As such, he will be attached and affectionate to the means that meet such needs of his and provide him such enjoyments as well as to those who help him in this regard and lessen his pains and sufferings. Usually, it is also the reason behind a person’s fondness and affection to his spouse, offspring, friends, and relatives, and in general to all who in one or another share his life. However, man’s attachment to material or worldly affairs distracts his attention to spiritual matters and makes him heedless of them. On one hand, he supposes that his needs are limited to these material or worldly needs, and on the other, he assumes that his needs can be met through the same means and individuals he is attached with. Yet, he is unaware of the fact that the needs he is usually acquainted with is but a small portion of his total needs—needs which are related not only to the temporary life in this world. He does not know that his primordial needs are something else—needs which are related to the eternal domain of the hereafter. He imagines that the individuals he is familiar with in this world will always be with him. He must bear in mind, however, that a time will certainly come when all of them will leave us alone.
More or less, we are all attached to worldly affairs, physical pleasures, and things or persons that provide for our needs. We always miss them and in general, our mind is preoccupied with material or worldly matters. It must be noted, however, that this world is but temporary and not permanent. A time will come when we have to leave this transient abode. Now, we must think of the eternal abode and know whether we have certain needs in that world or not. If we have needs in our eternal life, through which ways they can be met? Are our needs in that world the same with our needs in this world? When man leaves this world, will man be needful of food, clothing and other material needs just as there was a time when some people imagined so and used to bury their dead ones with some foods and other amenities of life with the notion that they will need these amenities one day?
It is clear that the next world is different with this world. The prophets (‘a) came to inform man that his needs in that world are different from the worldly needs. Here, his needs are something else. Worldly things there are of no benefit to him and he cannot even bring them there. A time will come when all friends, kith and kin of a person will leave him alone. They cannot help him even if they want to. On the day when he has to leave this world in his deathbed, he must ignore what he is attached to, leave the assets he accumulated and be separated with friends and nearest of kin he is attached to. In this state, if man is not attached to anything or anybody else, enormous grief and sorrow will engulf him from which he will have no way of escape.
At that moment, his bodily limbs and faculties will cease to function one after the other and finally his soul will separate from his body. The soul will witness events after death: The friends and relatives of the deceased will take his corpse to the cemetery. They will dig a grave for him and bury him. Finally, they will return home after an hour. Then he will be left alone in the grave—grave which is described by Imām as-Sajjād (‘a) in this manner:
“[Woe unto me] if now I am passed on in my present state to a grave that I have not prepared for my repose and I did not line with good deeds for my drowse. And why would I not weep for I have no knowledge of my fate and I observe my self deceiving itself, and my days are fading away, and the wings of death have flapped close by; so why wouldn’t I cry? I cry for surrendering my life, I cry because of the darkness of my grave, I cry because of the narrowness of my hole [laḥad].”
A whole life of sweat and toil to accumulate wealth, building mansions, providing amenities in life, and familiarity with others will all come to an end from then on. He must be totally alone. How long will this state last? It is very long and can never be compared to the frame of time in this world. In this long period which he must spend in the purgatory [barzakh] and then the Resurrection and hereafter, his assets will be of no avail to him. What he must do? What he can do?
(Just bear with typographical errors and other nuisances you may notice as these lines are yet to be polished. I post as soon as I finish translating them.)
