This, then, illustrates the openness and spaciousness of the heart of the believer (1) who gives charity, and the constriction and confinement of the miser’s heart.

Another cause is courage. The courageous person has an open heart, an expansive spirit, and inward spaciousness. The coward has the most constricted and confined heart of all people. He has no happiness or joy, no pleasure or bliss, except of the kind enjoyed by beasts (2). As for the spirit’s joy, pleasure, bliss, and delight, every coward is deprived of them, as is every miser and everyone who turns away from Allah, neglects His remembrance, is ignorant of Him and His names, attributes, and religion, and whose heart is attached to something other than Him, Most High.

Indeed, in the grave (3), this bliss and joy become gardens (4) and a paradise, while that constriction and confinement turn into torment and imprisonment. A servant’s condition in the grave thus mirrors the heart’s condition within the breast, whether in bliss or torment, imprisonment or freedom (5). No weight should be given to the openness of one person’s heart (6) due to a passing circumstance (7), or to the constriction of another’s due to a passing circumstance, for such circumstances disappear when their causes disappear. What matters is the quality established in the heart that determines its openness or confinement. That is the measure, and Allah is the One whose help is sought.