The Celever King | Parallel Truth to Death

There was a country long time ago where the people would change a king every year. The person who would become the king had to agree to a contract that he would be sent to an island after his one year of being a king.

One king finished his term and it was time for him to go to the island and live there. The people dressed him up in expensive clothes and put him on an elephant and took him around the cities to say goodbye to all the people. This was the moment of sadness for all the kings who ruled for one year. After saying farewell, the people took the king with a boat to the remote island and left him there.

On their way back, they discovered a ship that had sunk just recently. They saw a young man who survived by holding on to a floating piece of wood. As they needed a new king, they picked up the young man and took him to their country. They requested him to be a king for a year. First he refused but later he agreed to be a king. People told him about all the rules and regulations and that how he will be sent to an island after one year.

After three (3) days of being a king, he asked the ministers if they could show him the island where all the other kings were sent. They agreed and took him to the island. The island was covered with thick jungles and sounds of vicious animals were heard coming out of them. The king went little bit inside to check. Soon he discovered the dead bodies of all the past kings. He understood that as soon as they were left in the island, the animals came and killed them.

The king went back to the country and collected 100 strong workers. He took them to the island and instructed them to clean the jungle, remove all the deadly animals and cut down all the excess trees. He would visit the island every month to see how the work was progressing. In the first month, all the animals were removed and many trees were cut down. In the second month, the whole island was cleaned out. The king then told the workers to plant gardens in various parts of the island. He also took with himself useful animals like chickens, ducks, birds, goats, cows etc. In the third month, he ordered the workers to build big houses and docking stations for ships. Over the months, the island turned into a beautiful place.

The young king would wear simple clothes and spend very little from his earnings as a king. He sent all the earnings to the island for storage. When nine (9) months passed like this, the king called the ministers and told them:

“I know that I have to go the island after one year, but I would like to go there right now.” But the ministers didn’t agree to this and said that he has to wait for another three (3) months to complete the year.

Three months passed and now it was a full year. The people dressed up the young king and put him on an elephant to take him around the country to say goodbye to others. However, this king is unusually happy to leave the kingdom.

People asked him, “All the other kings would cry at this moment and why are you laughing?”

He replied, “Don’t you know what the wise people say? They say that when you came to this world as a baby, you were crying and everyone was smiling. Live such a life that when you are dying, you will be smiling and everyone around you will be crying. I have lived that life. While all the other kings were lost into the luxuries of the kingdom, I always thought about the future and planned for it. I turned the deadly island into a beautiful abode for me where I can stay peacefully.”

 The moral lesson from this story is about how we should live our life. The life of this world is to prepare for the life hereafter. In this life, we shouldn’t get lost into the deceiving and attractive things of this world and forget about what is to come in the afterlife. Rather, even if we are kings, we should live a simple life like our beloved Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and save all our enjoyments for the hereafter. May Almighty God make it easy for us. Amin

References:
Death: a beautiful gift for a believer

Dho ‘l-Nun, A Saint | His Saying

The great muslim writer Fariduddin Attar believes that the words of the Saints are profitable even to those who cannot put them into practice, inasmuch as they strengthen aspiration and destroy self-conceit.

The Great Jonaid (or Al-Jonaid) of Baghdad, (may Allah be pleased with him) said, “Their sayings are one of the armies of Almighty God whereby He confirms and reinforces the disciple, if his heart be dejected.”

The Imam Yusof Hamadhani advised some people, who asked him what they should do when
the Saints had passed away from the earth, to read eight pages of their Sayings every day. Attar felt that it was incumbent upon him to supply this desideratum. And this was one of his motives in writing the Tadhkiratul Awliya' (Memoirs of Saints)

1.
One of the great saints mentioned in this book is Dho ‘l-Nun al-Mesri Abu ‘l-Faiz Thauban ibn Ebrahim al-Mesri. Also called Dho ‘l-Nun,he was born at Ekhmim in Upper Egypt c. 180 (796), studied under various teachers and travelled extensively in Arabia and Syria.

In 214 (829) he was arrested on a charge of heresy and sent to Baghdad to prison, but after examination he was released on the caliph’s orders to return to Cairo, where he died in 246 AH (861 CE); his tombstone has been preserved. A legendary figure as alchemist and thaumaturge, he is supposed to have known the secret of the
Egyptian hieroglyphs. A number of poems and short treatises are attributed to him, but these are for the most part apocryphal.

2.
Dho ‘l-Nun related as follows:
For thirty years I called men to repent, but only one person came to the court of God in due obedience. The circumstances were these.
One day a prince with his retinue passed by me by the door of the mosque. I spoke these words:“No one is more foolish than the weakling who tangles with the strong.”
“What words are these?” demanded the prince.
“Man is a weakling, yet he tangles with God who is strong,” I said.
The young prince grew pale. He arose and departed.
Next day he returned.
“What is the way to God?” he asked.
“There is a little way, and there is a greater way,” I answered. “Which of the two do you want? If you desire the little way, abandon the world and the lusts of
the flesh and give up sinning. If you want the great way,abandon everything but God, and empty your heart of all things.”
“By Allah, I will choose only the greater way,” said the prince.
The next day he put on the woollen robe, and entered the mystic way. In due course he became a saint.

3.
One day Dho ‘l-Nun’s companions came to him and found him weeping.
“Why are you weeping?” they asked.
“Last night when I was prostrating in prayer,” he replied, “my eyes closed in sleep. I saw the Lord, and He said to me, ‘O Abu ‘l-Faiz, I created all creatures and they separated into ten parts.
I offered the material world to them; nine of those ten parts turned their faces to the material world. One part remained over.
That one part divided also into ten parts. I offered Paradise to them; nine parts turned their faces to Paradise. One part remained over.
That one part split likewise into ten parts. I brought Hell before them; all fled and were scattered for fear of Hell.
Only one part remained over, those who had not been lured by the material world, nor inclined after Paradise, neither were afraid of Hell. I said to them, “My servants, you looked not upon the material world, you inclined not after Paradise, you were not afraid of Hell. What do you seek?”
All raised their heads and cried, “Thou knowest best what we desire.”

4.

These words uttered by Dho 'l-Nun reminds us and inspires us that we must not forget to Choose God. The Hell whose existence frightens the believers... to abstain from the forbidden things and the Heaven whose existence encourages the believers... to follow the commandments of God, are already things worth being grateful to our Lord. Every time these are mentioned we are reminded of our duties and responsibilities to our Lord and inspires us to pray and remember Him. Yet, we must not also forget that these may also tempt us... to such point we pray and follow the Commandments in great hope that paradise may be rewarded to us... and we abstain from forbidden things that we may not be thrown to the Hell.
Better than that, we must pray, follow the commandments, and abstain from forbidden things just for his sake, nothing more.

May God be pleased with Dho 'l-Nun.

And praise and thanks to God, the Creator of all the worlds for giving us these glad tidings, these consciousness, and these thoughts.


Reference:
Tadhkiratul Awliya' - Fariruddin Attar
Futu Al Ghaib - Hadrat Abdul Qadir Al-Jilani

To Choose God

While I was in my adolescent years, I unintentionally met this man whose wisdom is vast and deeper than most people can ever guess.
“Imagine you were already there in the Hereafter. After your good deeds were counted and your sins forgiven by your Lord, you were to be given huge rewards – that is, to enter paradise and spend all in it as you may wish and live in it for eternity.”He started. “You were already brought near the gate of the blessed paradise from which immense light(nuwr) comes out. And while you were standing there, you could smell the sweetest fruits, and the most delicious foods. And you could hear the chanting of the most beautiful maidens, …waiting for you.”
I was taken for a moment by the imagination as he was describing it. I could not help but smiled back at him.
“Would you accept such reward?” He asked.
“Of course,” I answered after a thought.”yes.”
“If I were to answer the same question,” He focused his gaze at me. “My answer would be ‘no’.”
“Why?” I wondered loudly.
“Because I don’t want to live in paradise forever. I want to live with My Lord beside me. I want to live right beside Him, really close to Him. If I were to visit a beloved king in his palace, I will not only stay in the sala of the palace, but enter to the hallway and into his room.”
All these years, this conversation kept ringing around in the realm of my understanding. It simply gives us a realization of the identity of the created world whenever we encounter this situation, or even just hear or read about such.

Someone in the ecstasy of Love towards his Lord was running in the streets. On his right hand, he was holding a torch of flame and on the other, a basket full of water.
“O noble one!” asked the people in that village. “Why are you doing this?”
“I am going to put out the fire in Hell with this water and burn the paradise with this fire in my torch.” He shouted in reply. “Because people are now worshipping their Lord in fear of the punishment in Hell and in excessive desire to get the rewards and to enter paradise in the Hereafter. And not because of Love towards Him.”

The mark of lovers is high aspiration. They strive only for the Beloved. In order to reach Him, they must turn their gaze away from everything in the created universe, even to paradise.

According to Sam’ani in his “Rawh Al-Arwah”:
“Time, space, entities, traces, vestiges, shapes, existent things, and objects of knowledge must be erased completely from in front of you. If any of these clings to your skirt, the name of freedom will not stick to you, you can never be a true servant of God.”

Love, then, means to be free of everything in the created world, every thing, and to choose God. It is to serve God, nothing else. Human beings alone were created such that they can love God in His infinite, all-comprehensive reality, embracing the attitudes of both beauty and majesty, gentleness and severity. When they focus on God by realizing tawhid, they escape the limitation of possessing certain attributes rather than others.

Again, according to Sam’ani, God addresses his creatures like this:
“O accursed one, are you proud of fire? You belong to fire and fire belongs to you. O Korah, are you proud of treasure? You belong to your treasures and they belong to you. O Pharaoh, are you proud of the Nile? You belong to the Nile and the Nile belongs to you! O you who declare my unity (tawhid), are you proud of Me? You belong to Me and I belong to you.”

If human beings are to aspire to God, they need to be able to differentiate between God and all else. The key to human love and perfection is a discerning heart, one that sees God in the midst of the confusing multiplicity of creation. Adam, our common father, provides the model for lovers.
The root of every business is the discernment of value. The Sultan of Adam’s aspiration sat on the horse of his majestic state. Then it rode into the Garden to measure its worth. There is difference of opinions as to whether or not a person can buy what he has not seen. But all agree that you cannot judge the value of something without having seen it.

Sam’ani relates about Adam as follows:
“’O Adam, what is entering paradise worth to you?” The Lord asked.
“Adam replied, ‘ For someone who fears hell, paradise is worth a thousand lives. But for someone who fears You, paradise is not worth a grain.” Hence the wisdom in taking Adam to paradise was to make manifest his aspiration.’ “

When Adam saw that paradise had no value, he decided to leave. But God had given it to him as his own domain. The only way to get out quickly was to break God’s commandment.

“By God the Tremendous! They placed the worth of paradise on Adam’s palm. THERE WAS NO BRIDE MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN PARADISE among all the existent things, it had such a beautiful face and such perfect adornment! But ruling power of Adam’s aspiration entered from the world of the Unseen Jealousy. He weighed the worth of paradise with his hand and its value in the scales. Paradise began to shout, ‘I can not put up with this brazen man!’
“O noble youth! If tomorrow you go up to paradise and you look at it from the corner of your heart’s eye, in truth, IN TRUTH, you will have fallen short of Adam’s aspiration. Something that your father sold for one grain of wheat – why would you want to settle down there?”