CHAPTER 2CENSURE OF THIS WORLD AND EXHORTATIONS TO REJECT WORLDLINESS
2.1
ʿAlī said: This world begins in weariness and ends in death. You are accountable for what is lawful in it and punishable for what is unlawful. The healthy are safe and the ailing remorseful. The wealthy are seduced and the poor grieve. It escapes those who try to catch it and comes willingly to those who ignore it. It blinds those who look at it with longing and instructs those who view it with perception.
How excellent is the man who performs good deeds and undertakes acts of purity, who earns something he can set aside and avoids what he is warned against, who sets a goal for himself and guards his store, who overcomes his desires and gives the lie to his wishes, who makes forbearance the steed of his salvation and piety the provision for his passing!
2.2
ʿAlī said: This world is a place of perishing and weariness, of vicissitudes and instruction:
Perishing is this—Fate stands stretching his bow, loading his arrows. His arrows do not miss and their wounds do not heal. He strikes the young with old age, the healthy with illness, and the living with death. He is a drinker whose thirst is never quenched; an eater who is never satiated.
Weariness is this—A man gathers food he will not eat, and builds edifices he will not inhabit. He leaves this world to go to God, with no edifice to take with him, no property to carry.
Its vicissitudes are these—The world gladdens the deprived and deprives the glad. Between the two is only a pleasure that has ceased or a misfortune that has arrived.
Its lessons are these—A man is about to see his aspirations fulfilled when they are severed by the ending of his life. No aspiration is attained, and no aspirer attains.
God be praised! How deceiving are the pleasures of this world! How parching its drink! How scorching its shade! It is as though what existed in this world never did, and what is about to be already is. None who arrives is turned away and none who leaves can return.
Truly, the hereafter is a place everlasting, a place of permanence, whether paradise or hellfire. God’s elect attain paradise in the hereafter through patience, and realize their aspirations through good deeds. They become companions of God in his abode, abiding there as kings forever.
2.3
ʿAlī said: This world is a place of barren deceptions and ephemeral embellishments. It is a fast-disappearing shade and a keeling support. It destroys whomsoever wants more of it, and harms any who try to benefit from it. How many place their trust in it, depend upon it! But it oppresses them with its bonds, binds them with its tethers, overcomes them with its strangling rope, and enmeshes them in its cords.
2.4
ʿAlī said: The world has turned away and declared its farewell. The hereafter is approaching and has almost arrived. Today is the day of training and tomorrow is the race.
2.5
ʿAlī said: Blessed are the people who reject worldliness, who place their desires in the hereafter. They take God’s earth as bed, its dust as bedding, its water as perfume, the book as garment, and prayer as robe. They sever all bonds with the world just as the Messiah, the son of Mary did.
2.6
A man said to ʿAlī, Describe this world to us, and he replied:
What can I say about a place in which the healthy fall ill and the sick are remorseful, where the poor grieve and the wealthy are seduced, where one is held accountable for what is lawful and where unlawful things lead to the fire?
2.7
ʿAlī said: You will die, be resurrected after death, made to stand trial for your deeds, and rewarded or punished for them. Do not let this worldly life seduce you! Truly, the world is girded with calamities. It is known for its impending destruction and characterized by deception. Everything in it moves toward an inexorable end. It passes through the hands of people, turn by turn. Its condition is never stable and its residents never safe from harm. The very moment they wallow in luxuries and pleasures, calamity and deception beset them. Its conditions change and its times vary. Life in it is detestable and luxury in it fleeting. Truly, its people are targets: The world strikes them with its arrows, shattering them with mortal blows. Each person’s death is destined, his share of the world allotted.
2.8
ʿAlī said: This world is an abode of transience that leads to an abode of permanence. People in it are of two types: one sells his soul and thereby destroys it; the other buys his soul and thereby frees it.
2.9
ʿAlī wrote to Salmān al-Fārisī: This world is like a snake—she is soft to the touch, but her venom is lethal. The foolish lad rushes toward her, and the intelligent man is wary of her. Turn away from her attractions, for she will be with you only a short time. Shrug off her cares, for you will soon be leaving her. When you are most comfortable in her, beware of her most. For every time the dweller joyfully relaxes in her, an adversity forcefully removes him from her. Go in peace.
ʿAlī said, censuring the world:
2.10.1
Be wary of this deceiving, dishonest world. She appears in her jeweled ornaments, seduces with her deceptions, deceives with her false hopes, and adorns herself for her suitors. She is like a shining bride—eyes following her, souls enamored of her, hearts yearning for her—a bride who will kill every one of her husbands. The new husband does not take heed from the preceding one; the later one is not driven away by her evil marks on the earlier one. Even the intelligent do not benefit from their experiences with her. Hearts cannot but love her. Souls cannot but greedily guard her.
Two types of people seek her:
The first is a seeker who has won her and is totally taken in by her; he forgets to gather provisions from her in preparation for his departure from her. He resides in her for a short time, until he is bereft of her then slips away. When he is happiest in her, death comes to him. His regret is great, his loss heavy, his misfortune immense. The anguished convulsions of death and the remorseful pangs of loss together bear down upon him—the horror of what descends upon him is beyond words.
The other seeker has been wrested from her before he achieves his desire; he is separated from her with only his heedlessness and remorse to accompany him. He neither obtains what he sought from her, nor achieves in her what he had hoped.
Both seekers depart from this world without provisions and arrive in the hereafter unprepared.
2.10.2
Be wary of this world, utterly, absolutely wary. For she is like a snake—soft to the touch, but her venom is lethal. Turn away from her attractions, for she will be with you for only a short while. Shrug off her cares, for you will soon leave her.
When you are most comfortable with her, beware of her the most. For each time her companion contentedly relaxes with her, an adversity forcefully removes him from her. Each time he is joyful at her kind ministrations, she rebuffs him, choking him. Each time she stretches her leg over him, she follows by turning her waist away from him. This world’s happiness deceives, her benefit harms. Her caresses are trailed by misfortunes and her life is followed by death. Her joys are mixed with grief, and your final sorrow in her will be a state of debility. Look at her with the eye of one who rejects worldliness, who is about to be separated from her. Do not look at her with the eye of a companion or lover.
Know, you, that she terrorizes the calm and serene, and afflicts the joyful and secure. The part of her that has turned away does not return, and the part that is coming cannot be known or guarded against. Her hopes are false, her wishes untrue, her pureness turbid. Man is constantly threatened by danger in this world: a good thing ceasing or a calamity arriving, a destructive catastrophe or a final death. She has made his life murky, if he would only understand. She has informed him about herself, if he would only listen.
Even if her creator had not warned us about her, or described her by analogies, or commanded disinterest in her and dislike of her, her own calamities and disasters should have awoken the sleeping, restrained the oppressors, and opened the eyes of the learned. But her base condition is all the more clear when censure of her has come directly from God, and signs and warnings about her have proceeded from him. She has no value or weight with God. From what has been recounted to us, God hates her the most of all his creation. He has not looked at her since he created her.
2.10.3
This world, including all her treasures and the keys to her, were presented to our prophet, without reducing his share of the hereafter one wit, and still he refused to accept her. He knew God hated her, so he too hated her. He knew that God considered her of little worth, so he too considered her of little worth. He did not raise what God had lowered, nor did he aggrandize what God had belittled.
If nothing else were to apprise you of her lowliness in God’s eyes, consider this: God made her too low for her virtues to be the reward for the obedient, or for her punishment to be the penalty for the disobedient.
Another indication of her lowliness is that God has by consideration and choice turned her away from his intimates and devotees, and presented her instead to his enemies as a test and a trial. He raised Muḥammad above her lowliness, when he tied a tight belt around his waist from hunger.7
He protected his intimate and confidant Moses from her when Moses became so thin that the greenness of the plants he ate showed through the skin of his stomach. The day he took refuge in the shade, he did not ask God for anything except for some food, because he was exhausted by hunger.8 It is reported that God said to him: If you see wealth approaching, say this is advance punishment for a sin, and if you see poverty approaching, say welcome, garment of the pious!
The Spirit and Word, Jesus, son of Mary, said: My food is hunger, my garment fear of God, my clothing rough wool, my mount my own two feet, my night-lamp the moon, my heating in winter the rays of the sun, my fruit what the earth has grown for grazing animals. I go to sleep owning nothing, yet no-one is wealthier than I am.
Or consider Solomon, son of David, and the kingdom bestowed upon him. He fed his family the finest wheat, while he himself ate bread made from coarse barley. When night fell, he would put on a coat of rough hair, shackle his hand to his neck, and spend the hours until morning weeping, saying, «O lord, I have sinned»9—«if you do not forgive me, if you do not have mercy on me, I will surely be lost.»10 «There is no god but you, exalted above all else—I am surely a transgressor!»11
These, the prophets of God, his chosen and select, distanced themselves from the world, and rejected of her what God urged them to reject. They hated what he hated and considered lowly what he considered lowly.
The pious learned from their example and followed in their footsteps. They focused their reflection and benefited from exemplary lessons. In their short time, they forbore from acquiring ephemeral worldly goods for which they would be held accountable. Not looking at her outward appearance, they pondered her bitter end, and so her redolent gifts failed to tempt them. Their souls steadfastly cleaved to patience. They considered the world carrion, lawful only in desperate situations. They ate only as much as would keep them breathing and keep the soul in the body. They considered the world a carcass of such overpowering stench that a passerby would hold his nose. They consumed little, and because of her stench they refrained from filling their stomachs. They wondered at those who gorged themselves on her meat, rejoicing at their share.
2.10.4
My brothers, by God, for the one who does well by his soul and takes care of it sincerely, this world is now and will always be smellier than a carcass and more detestable than carrion. Only the one who has grown up in a tannery full of untreated hides is not conscious of its stench; its smell does not pain him as it would a passerby or a person who has just come in and sat down. Suffice it for an intelligent man to recognize her for what she is: the fact that when a man dies leaving behind a powerful kingdom, he wishes he had lived as an ordinary, anonymous person; or that when he dies sound and healthy, he wishes that he had been afflicted with chronic illness instead. Suffice this as proof of her shame and despicable nature.
By God, if the world were such that whosoever wanted something from her found it, his hand just taking it without seeking it out, without fatigue, or trouble, or weariness, or travel, or striving; except that for whatever he took of her, he would have to pay God’s dues, offer gratitude, and be held accountable—even then it would be incumbent upon an intelligent man to take from her only his basic needs, his daily food, apprehensive of being asked about it, for fear of the accounting, and in dread of falling short in gratitude. How much more so for the one who, in seeking her, has to bear the pain of bowing his neck, of lowering his cheek to the dirt, of crushing toil, of separation from loved ones, and of grave dangers—all the while not knowing whether the end will bring success or failure!
2.10.5
The world consists of three days: the day that has passed, taking all that was in it, never to return; the day you are in now, which you must take advantage of; and the day which offers no security since you could die in it. Yesterday is a wise teacher and today is a friend about to take leave. As for tomorrow, all you can do is hope. If yesterday is beyond you, its wisdom nevertheless remains with you. If today has given you comfort by its arrival, it was long absent from you and will soon leave, so take provisions from it and bid it a fond farewell.
Place your trust in good deeds and beware of being deceived by false hopes. Do not let today bring on the cares of tomorrow. Let today’s cares suffice; tomorrow will bring its own worries. If you add the cares of tomorrow to today’s burden, you will increase your grief and tiredness, and pointlessly strive to gather something today to last you for many days, days that you may not have. Your grief will be great, your work doubled, and your fatigue considerable. Your resolve to do good deeds will be weakened by false hope. If you were to empty your heart of false hope, it would urge you once again to perform good deeds. Your false hope in today has hurt you in two ways: you have put off doing good deeds because of it, and your cares and grief have increased from it. Do you not see that the world is but an hour between two others? An hour that has passed, an hour that remains, and an hour in which you live? In the past and future hours, you find neither pleasure in luxury, nor pain in hardship. Regard the past hour and the one in which you live now as visiting guests. The departing guest has gone, blaming you. The one who is with you now is testing you. Your kindness to the resident guest will wash away your ungraciousness to the departed one. Make up for your ill treatment of the departed guest by pleasing the one who follows. Let not the testimony of both come against you, for together they will destroy you.
2.10.6
If a dead man in his grave were told: Choose: You can leave for your children—for whom you cared above all else—everything in this world, every last bit of its wealth. Or you can have back one day of your life to spend performing good deeds for your soul’s salvation. He would choose the one day to make up for his evil deeds over the legacy of all the world’s riches bequeathed to his children. What prevents you, O deceived one, O powerless one, O shameful one, from performing good deeds now, when you still have time, before your end is upon you? Why is the man in the grave quicker to recognize the value of what you have in your hands than you? Will you not strive to remove your yoke, to break your bonds, and to protect your soul from a fire guarded by harsh, rough angels?
2.11
ʿAlī said: O people! Look at the world with the eyes of those who have little interest in her and detest her. Man was not created to spend his time in play, nor given reprieve to speak nonsense. The world he finds so beautiful is no substitute for the hereafter he finds so ugly. The vile stuff he gains from the world is no replacement for a share of the hereafter. The part of the world which turns away and leaves does not return, and there is no guarantee that the part which appears to be coming will arrive. Take heed! Notice the turning away of what has turned away, and the coming of what has come. It is as though what is never was, and what is coming has already occurred.
2.12
ʿAlī said: Look at the world with the eyes of those who have little interest in her. She will, by God, very soon displace her tenant, and afflict the complacent and secure. The part of her which turns away and leaves does not return, and the part of her which appears to be coming does not always arrive, such that it can be guaranteed. Her happiness is mixed with grief, and the last stage of your life in her is spent in growing weakness and incapacity. Do not be deceived by the abundance of her wonders, for she will only accompany you for a short while.
May God have mercy on the person who reflects and takes heed; who, taking heed, recognizes the turning away of what turns away, and the coming of what comes. In a short while, it will be as though this world never was, and as though the hereafter has already occurred. All that will come is at hand!
ʿAlī said: I counsel you, servants of God, to be conscious of him; and to seize the opportunity—as often as you are able—to perform deeds in obedience to him in your remaining days. To miss such an opportunity will bring great pain when you die. I counsel you to reject the world which will reject you despite your dislike of leaving her, and cause your decay despite your wish for renewal. You and she are like a band of travelers who, traversing a path, seem already to have crossed it, who, heading for a mountain, seem already to have reached it. How very likely it is that someone who runs toward a goal will soon attain it! How very likely it is that the life of someone alive today will not continue beyond it! For behind him is an assiduous seeker who drives him forward in the world until he makes him leave her.
Do not compete for the world or her glories. Do not be taken by her beauty or shaken by her injuries and sorrows. For her might and pride will be cut off, her beauty and delights will cease, and her injuries and sorrows will end. Each period of time in her will conclude. Each living being in her will perish.
Does the evidence of earlier peoples and the example of your forefathers not alert and enlighten you? If you would only understand! Have you not seen that those among you who pass away do not return? And that you, their remaining heirs, will not remain forever? As God Almighty has said: «It is forbidden to the village that we have destroyed—they will not return.» And the Almighty said: «Every soul will taste death. Indeed, you will be given your fair recompense on judgment day: One who has been snatched away from hellfire and given entry to paradise will have won. This worldly life is but a cargo of deception.»12
Do you not see the people of this world, evening and morn, in disparate states? A dead man lamented, another man consoled; one felled and afflicted, one who visits the sick, and another who gives up the ghost; a seeker sought by death, and a heedless man who goes not unheeded. Those who remain among us follow upon the traces of those who have passed.
To God belongs all praise, «lord of the seven heavens and lord of the great throne,»13 who remains when all else perishes. All creatures find refuge in God and all things return to him.
2.14
ʿAlī said:
2.14.1
I warn you of the world, sweet and green, surrounded by delights, inspiring awe with her trifles, beloved for her favors, furnished with hopes, ornamented by deceit. Her joys do not remain and her calamities cannot be secured against. Deceiver, harmer, trickster, departer, vanisher, perisher, gorger, devourer! When she fulfills the wish of those who desire her and are happy with her, she never fails to become as God has said: «like water that we have sent down from the sky; the plants of the earth mix with it; then they become dry and crushed, scattered by the winds. God is able to do all things.»14 What is more, when a man finds gladness in the world, it is always followed by tears. When he derives joy from her in his belly, he is always injured by her in his back. A raindrop of her ease does not gently caress him without a cloudburst of her calamities pouring down upon him. If she is in good spirits towards him in the morning, she will change for the worse in the evening. If one part of her becomes sweet and sugary for him, another becomes bitter and sickens him. If he dons a garment of her prosperity in hope, her catastrophes oppress him with fatigue. A man does not spend the evening under the wing of security without waking up in the belly of fear. Deceiver, everything in her is deceit. Perisher, all in her will perish. The only good thing among the supplies she offers is piety. Whosoever gathers a little of her wants more, then she destroys him. Whosoever gathers more of her will lose that abundance, and it will soon dissipate.
She afflicts with loss those who trust her, fells those who put confidence in her, and tricks the trickmaster. She reduces grandees to abjectness, turns high-spirited men into nervous beggars, and flings crowned heads into the dirt.
Her rule swings from one to another. Her life is murky, her water brackish, her sweetness bitter, her food poisonous, her subsistence decayed, her fruits sour. Those living in her are targets for death, the healthy are targets for sickness, and the protected are targets for cruelty. Her kingdom will be snatched away, the mighty will be brought down, guests will be ill-treated, and protégés looted. All this—and afterward the anguished pangs and deep sighs of death, the dread of the overlook into the terrors of hell, and the summoning before the judge, «so that he recompense those who did evil with what they did, and those who performed good deeds with good.»15
2.14.2
Do you not reside in the dwellings of those who lived before you? They were longer lived than you, had longer lasting monuments than you, were more numerous than you, had more abundant armies than you, and were more obstinate than you in opposing the truth. They worshiped the world devotedly and gave her complete precedence, then departed from her in humiliation. Have you heard tell that the world offered to let their souls go for a ransom? Or passed them over among those she destroyed? No, indeed! She weakened them with calamities, shook them with troubles, and killed them by slitting their throats. She gave strength to the blows of death that fell on them.
You have seen the world’s disavowal of those who kowtowed to her, of those who gave her precedence and took comfort in her, when they separated from her eternally, departing to their final end. Did she supply them with anything other than wickedness, give them a residence other than a narrow home, give them light other than a murky gloom, or take them to anywhere but the fire? Do you give this precedence? Is this what you covet? Or take comfort from? God says: «As for those who prefer this worldly life and its ornaments, we will recompense their deeds in her; they will not be given a deficient measure. They are the ones for whom there is naught in the hereafter save the fire. All that they wrought will be in vain, and all they did will be of no value.»16 What a terrible abode for those who do not accuse her, are not wary of her. When she turns toward you, remember the speed with which she will turn away, how close her end, and how weak her compass.
Has the world not torn you to pieces just as she tore those who came before you? And did she not tear them to pieces just as she tore those who came before them—generation upon generation, community upon community, age upon age, descendant upon descendant? She is not ashamed of dishonor, does not cease to afflict, nor shy away from deception.
You should know—and you do know—that you will leave the world. She is, as God has described, nothing «but sport and diversion, beautiful ornaments, a cause for boasting among you, and rivalry for the most wealth and offspring.»17
Take warning from those who built on every height a monument for their amusement, who built for themselves mighty castles, hoping to live forever,18 and those «who said: is anyone mightier than us?»19
2.14.3
Take warning from your brothers whom you have seen die. They were borne to their graves, but cannot be called riders. They were given places to alight, but cannot be called guests. They were given tombs as coverings, earth as shrouds, and dried bones as neighbors, neighbors who do not answer the one who calls out to them, who do not protect from harm, who do not benefit from the laments chanted for them, who do not recognize bad or good, who do not give any more false testimony. If they get rain they do not rejoice. If they have drought they do not despair. They are all together, yet each one is alone. They are neighbors, yet distant from one another. They are in the same assembly, yet no-one visits them, nor do they visit anyone—mature leaders whose enmities have dissipated, rash youths whose hatreds have disappeared. Their blows are no longer feared. Their protection is no longer sought. They are as those who never were. And as God has said: «Those are their abodes, uninhabited after them except for a short time. We, yes we, will inherit.»20
2.14.4
The world’s claim is weak, her drink murky, and the path to her waterhole thick with mud. She is deception personified, her ashwood spears are ready to strike, and any support she provides is unsteady. Her silk robes dazzle, and her beauty amazes. But she kills the one who seeks excess of her, and prostrates the one who would benefit from her, by the unavoidable cessation of her pleasures, by her destructive desires, and by imprisoning whomsoever would break loose from her grip. She traps him with her snares, her arrows aimed at him, capturing him with paltry favors, teasing with trivial gifts, every night of his existence and all the days of his life.
Then the rope of death trusses him up and its cords strangle him, leading him in paroxysms to a narrow bed and a fearful place of return, to the company of the lifeless, to the witnessing of his new home, and the recompense for his deeds.
Then time shuts up his ears and he dies. He will not return. He will have to pay—his neck bound with the twine of sins he has earned, all traces accounted for in time for the verdict. «He who bears the burden of evil deeds has indeed failed.»21