102 – ʿAbd Allāh narrated to us; he said: Muḥammad informed me that Shihāb ibn ʿAbbād related to him; he said: Ibn al-Sammāk told me:

One day ʿUmar ibn Dharr delivered an exhortation. A young man from Banū Tamīm began to cry out; his complexion changed, yet I noticed no tears streaming from his eyes. Then he collapsed in a faint. Later I saw him again in Ibn Dharr’s circle, weeping so intensely that I thought, “Any moment now his very soul will leave him.”

I reported this to ʿUmar ibn Dharr, and he said, “My brother, when the mind becomes agitated, the inward burning is lost; when that burning is lost, the tear dries up. But when the mind is steadfast, its owner understands the admonition, and—by Allah—it consumes him, so he grieves and weeps.”