348 – ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Abī Maryam narrated to me, from Dāwūd ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Muslim al-Ḥanafī, who said: One of the sages used to remark in his counsel:

“At every turn you encounter the dunya (worldly life) masked and in disguise. Yet once it settles in the dwellings of the doomed it casts off its veil and exposes itself. The people of righteous action then set it before their eyes as a model; they study it for lessons and sever their hearts from all that is consigned to it, reflecting on the vicissitudes of fate. Such are those who have given the dunya its true worth. In it they are a folk of fatigue and toil: they have melted their bodies away and parched their livers from fear that what befell earlier generations should befall them—those whom the dunya pitched its tents among, only to scorch them with the very calamities by which they themselves became a warning and a tale for those who came after.

Thus these people converse privately with the Almighty, humble and submissive, imploring Him, seeking refuge in Him from the evil with which the dunya breaks in upon its votaries, and begging Him for rescue from it. No act of obedience ever seems excessive to offer Him, even were they to die standing on their heels in perpetual worship; nor does any sin against Him appear trifling, even though throughout their lives they have turned away from the dunya. The ākhirah (Hereafter) has filled their hearts, so they find for themselves no rest in this world.

They are the ones whose hearts are bound to the love of their Lord’s description of the Abode of Permanence. From that description they have grasped what the imagination can reach, whereupon their hearts have flitted aloft and their sight has turned from all else. Their life in the dunya is embittered; their share of it, in their own reckoning, curtailed. They look upon it with an eye of dread, and when the ākhirah is mentioned in their presence, ⦗161⦘ longing surges forth and reason is swept away.

He used to say: ‘The dunya is a goblet of stupor that has slain its drinkers while they yet live—so they became blind though they see, deaf though they hear, and mute though they speak.’

He used to say: ‘Would that the dunya had never been created for them, and would that, once it was created, I had not been created!’

He used to say: ‘It fells us, yet we trust in it; it shows us how it changes, yet we conceal that from ourselves. Marvellous indeed—most marvellous!—is one who turns away from you while you crave him, and marvellous indeed—most marvellous!—is one who detests you while you love him.’

Abū Jaʿfar al-Qurashī, may Allah have mercy on him, recited to me:

O sleeper who feels secure,
whose eye throughout the ages lies closed,
Rouse that eye—for it only dreams
on empty fancies it has composed.
Let not this life beguile you
with a world that seems serene;
After its truce there surely comes
a day of bitter spleen.

Abū Jaʿfar also recited:

Beware the dunya and its sport—
how many a righteous man it ruined when it toyed!
Between its joy and its anguish
is but the span of a man who rises, then is void.
O you who deck a realm of decay
and hold it up as an endless abode,
How many a brother of yours was snatched away—
a shooting star that flashed, then slowed and glowed no more.