CHAPTER 3

COUNSEL

3.1

ʿAlī said:

3.1.1

You have been created by God’s power and are ruled by his might. You will be placed in the grave and turn to dry bones. Every one of you will be resurrected alone and held accountable for your deeds.

May God have mercy on the man who, having sinned, confesses. Fearful of punishment in the hereafter, he performs good deeds. Dreading it, he hastens to the straight path. Having been given a long life, he takes heed. Warned, he is driven back from error. Answering, he comes back to God. When he wavers, he repents. When he emulates, he takes good people as an example. He hastens to seek knowledge. He flees from error and is saved. He gives away entire treasures. He purifies his heart. He prepares for the return, gathering provisions for his day of departure when he will set forth on his path, for his moment of need and for his time of want. He assembles supplies beforehand to take to his final abode.

Prime your souls while your bodies are sound. Think: Do people fresh and youthful wait for anything but the humbling ravages of age? People of glowing health for anything but the hard blows of sickness? People still on earth for anything but the arrival of sudden annihilation? And the drawing nigh of death? And the approach of the passing? And the looming closeness of the end? And the piercing moans? And the sweating brow? And the dilating nostrils? And the insomnia of anxiety? And the snuffing out of the last spark of life? And the pain of burning grief? And the choke of the death rattle?

Servants of God! You, and all things with you in this world, are on the path of those who have gone before—people who lived longer than you, who were stronger in battle, and had more prosperous homes and longer lasting monuments. After a long run of power, their voices have become extinguished, their bodies decayed, their homes emptied, their monuments effaced. In exchange for fortified palaces and lavish thrones and cushions, they have been given rocks and stones propped up in the crushing shelter of dug out graves. Ruination has revealed the annihilation of their palaces, and dust has covered their towering edifices.

3.1.2

The grave is at hand. Its resident is like a stranger. He is with those who live together in one domicile and yet are lonely, who stay in one locale yet are too preoccupied to be concerned about each other. They have neither the comfort of a prosperous home, nor do they associate as neighbors and brothers. All this, despite their physical closeness and the proximity of their dwellings.

How could there be association between them, when decay has crushed them, and stones and earth have eaten them up? When after being alive, they have become dead bodies? After having had fresh life, they are now dry bones? Their loved ones are shocked by their death, a death that has sent them to live in the dust, departed, never to return. Woe! Woe! «No indeed, it is but a word that he speaks, while behind them is a barrier till the day they are resurrected.»22

It is as though you have arrived at their destination: At the place of decay, solitary in the abode of the dead. It is as though you have already been yielded as collateral to that bed, and that depository has already enveloped you. How do you think it will be with you, when all affairs reach their end? When the contents of graves are scattered forth?²³ When «what is in people’s breasts is reaped»?²⁴ When you are made to stand in front of the mighty judge for your hearts to be reaped? Hearts will flutter from their dread of punishment for past sins. Veils and curtains will be rent. Faults and secrets will be revealed. In that place, each soul will be recompensed for what it has presented.25 God says: «He will recompense evil with its like, and good with good.»²⁶

Take advantage of your days of health before the arrival of days of illness, of youth before the onset of old age. Hasten to repent before the time of regret. Do not let this respite prompt you to ride the back of lasting heedlessness, for the end of your life will destroy your hopes. The passing days are charged with disrupting your time span and with separating you from loved ones.

Hasten to repent—may God have mercy on you!—before the arrival of the calamity. Outpace your fellow men in preparation for that disappearance from which there is no return. Seek help in traveling the great distance through a sustained fear of God’s punishment.

How many a heedless person was complacent in his heedlessness, making excuses in his time of respite, hoping long hopes, building strong edifices? The approaching end of his lifespan truncated his long hopes. His death took him by surprise, severing his desires. After having might, power, honor, and standing, he became pawned to his destructive deeds. He left and will not return. He regretted but to no avail. He was reduced to misery by the things he accumulated in his day—and which another enjoyed on the morrow—and he became mortgaged to the earnings of his hands, distracted even from wife and children. What he left behind did not benefit him even a date pit’s worth. He found no path of escape.

Servants of God! Why do you race through the winding dunes from the first fall of night? Where will you flee, when death is here, stalking you, snatching up one person after another, not pitying the weak, nor having mercy on the noble? The recurring alternation of day and night urges on your lifespan and drives it forward inexorably. What is to come is at hand. After that, you will see the wonder of wonders. Make ready your answer for the day of reckoning and make plenty of preparations for the day of return.

May God protect us by aiding us to obey him. May he help us to do what will bring us closer to him. We come from him, and we belong to him.

3.2

God has decreed your life spans. He has given you instruction through parables. He has clothed you in splendid garments. He has elevated your mode of living. He has graced you with perfect favors. He has come to you with convincing arguments. He has bestowed on you gifts of happiness and ease. So tuck up your garments and make haste! The reckoning will begird you, and the recompense for your deeds is pledged.

3.3

Hardened hearts cannot absorb their full share of God’s mercy. Distracted by worldly pleasures, they ignore their better judgment. They race in the wrong track, as though someone else were implicated.

3.4

Be conscious of God. Roll up your sleeves and apply yourselves. Strip yourself of worldly connections. Accelerate your pace. Speed up your preparations in your time of respite. Be fearful. Ponder the return to the refuge, the end result of patience, and the final homecoming. Surely God suffices as avenger and giver of victory. Surely the garden suffices as reward and gift. Surely the fire suffices as punishment and chastisement. Surely the book of God suffices as interlocutor and adversary.

3.5

May God have mercy on the man who wears the garment of grief and dons the robe of fear. Who, being a man of conviction, divests himself of doubt and patiently awaits the approaching end of his life on earth. Mindful of this end, his heart shines forth as a lamp of guidance. With its light, he brings the far close, and finds difficulties easier to bear. He escapes from the grip of blindness and from association with the dead, and becomes himself a key for the door of guidance and a lock for the door of perdition. He seeks to open the door of guidance as scholars have done, plunging into its sea and venturing through its depths. Its paths and beacons shine bright for him. Grasping the sturdiest of handles, taking refuge in the strongest of mountains, he removes misfortunes, elucidates ambiguities, repulses calamities, and guides others through the wilderness. He pursues every repository of good, seeking it wherever it may be found.