Chapter Three: Five Instructions
Here are five instructions to be carried out, not recited: each of them an action with a time, a place, and a sign by which you know it.
One: Sit as Someone Passing Through
Bring the first fact back to mind: that you are in a hall and not in a house, and that you are not to lean on the brightness of the outside at the cost of the inside. And this bringing to mind has a definite shape in the Prophet's words:
«كنْ في الدنيا كأنَّك غريبٌ أو عابرُ سبيل»
Be in this world as though you were a stranger, or someone passing through on a journey.
What to do: look at what is around you once a day the way a traveller looks at his luggage at a station. You are not asked to hate your belongings, only not to build on them.
Two: Take What Is Allowed as Provisions for the Road
Take of the hall's pleasures and its furnishing the measure you have been given leave to take, using it to help you carry the trust of servanthood and obey your Lord, without crossing over into what you were barred from, and without drowning in a comfort that distracts. Provisions are measured against the road, not against the appetite.
«ما لي وللدنيا! ما أنا في الدنيا إلا كراكبٍ استظلَّ تحتَ شجرةٍ ثمَّ راحَ وتركَها»
What have I to do with this world? I am in this world only like a rider who shaded himself under a tree, then moved on and left it.
What to do: each month choose one door of comfort and cut it back by choice and not because you have to, so you learn that you own the tool and it does not own you.
The calculator
One candidate uses the calculator where it belongs and saves himself minutes he can write in. Another turns its buttons over, admires its screen, and works out what he is not being asked about, until he looks at the paper and finds a question no calculator helps with.
So it is with money and standing and time: tools that have a place in the answer and places they do not enter. The quick-witted man is the one who knows where the tool is used and where it is set aside, not the one who carried it into every line.
Three: Take Account of Yourself Before the Paper Is Taken
The balance between gratitude and endurance does not stand on intention alone, but on a short review in which you ask yourself: which paper was I holding today, and how did I answer it?
«حاسِبوا أنفسَكم قبلَ أن تُحاسَبوا، وتَزيَّنوا للعَرضِ الأكبر، وإنَّما يخِفُّ الحسابُ يومَ القيامةِ على مَن حاسبَ نفسَه في الدنيا»
Call yourselves to account before you are called to account; and make ready for the great presentation. The reckoning on the Day of Rising will be light only for the one who called himself to account in this world.
What to do: two minutes before sleep, one line for the blessings and one line for the hardships, and a verdict on your answer to each.
Four: Do It Well Rather Than Do More
The scale does not weigh a deed by how many times it was done, but by how good and deep and sincere it is; and acceptance rests on two conditions: complete sincerity for the face of God, and complete following of the guidance of the Prophet ﷺ. And the text speaks of the quality of the deed, not of its number:
أَيُّكُمْ أَحْسَنُ عَمَلًۭا
which of you is best in conduct
«إنَّما الأعمالُ بالنيّاتِ، وإنَّما لكلِّ امرئٍ ما نوى»
Deeds are judged by the intentions behind them, and every person will have only what he intended.
What to do: take one deed you repeat every day without being present in it, and put your presence in it right for a whole week before you add a new deed.
Five: Choose Between Them When They Clash
Hours will come to you in which the time will not hold both questions, and you will have to choose. No one is tested in choosing while he is at ease; the test comes in a tight hour: an appointment crowding an appointment, a gain crowding a trust, sleep crowding a night prayer. That is where the direction of the heart is known. And revelation has set out which way to lean, plainly and past all confusion:
مَن كَانَ يُرِيدُ حَرْثَ ٱلْءَاخِرَةِ نَزِدْ لَهُۥ فِى حَرْثِهِۦ ۖ وَمَن كَانَ يُرِيدُ حَرْثَ ٱلدُّنْيَا نُؤْتِهِۦ مِنْهَا وَمَا لَهُۥ فِى ٱلْءَاخِرَةِ مِن نَّصِيبٍ
Whoso desireth the harvest of the Hereafter, We give him increase in its harvest. And whoso desireth the harvest of the world, We give him thereof, and he hath no portion in the Hereafter.
Whoever aimed by his work at the harvest of the hereafter is given more of it, and whoever aimed at the harvest of this world is given some of it and has no share in the hereafter. This is the balance you choose by when times and intentions crowd one another.
«الدنيا سِجنُ المؤمن، وجنّةُ الكافر»
This world is a prison for the believer and a garden for the one who denies.
There is nothing in this description to spoil your living; it is a measuring of the ceiling: whoever knows that the ceiling of the hall is low does not jump inside it, and whoever thought it was the last house spent his life decorating a wall that will be knocked down.
«الكيِّسُ مَن دانَ نفسَه وعمِلَ لما بعدَ الموت، والعاجزُ مَن أتبعَ نفسَه هواها وتمنّى على الله»
The shrewd person is the one who calls himself to account and works for what comes after death; and the helpless one is he who lets his own cravings lead him and then counts on God for the rest.
So the shrewd man is the one who took account of himself and worked, and the helpless man is the one who left his soul to what it wanted and then called that hope.
These five instructions are not stations to be claimed; they are small repeated actions, and the man who does them knows them by their effect and not by how he feels about them. The proof that an instruction has come down from the head to the hand is that it shows on an ordinary day, not on a day of resolve.
The last ten minutes
The invigilator announces: ten minutes. And the whole hall changes in a moment: the lamps and the seats and the windows are left alone, and the heads bend down over the paper. Nobody looks at his neighbour's desk. Everyone suddenly knows what matters.
In the greater hall the ten minutes are not announced. The paper is taken with no warning, and the difference between two men is this: one of them was writing as though the announcement had already been made, and the other was waiting to be told.
«يتبعُ الميّتَ ثلاثةٌ، فيرجعُ اثنانِ ويبقى معه واحد: يتبعُه أهلُه ومالُه وعملُه، فيرجعُ أهلُه ومالُه ويبقى عملُه»
Three things follow the dead person: his family, his wealth and his deeds. Two of them come back, and one stays with him: his family and his wealth return, and his deeds remain.
Your family and your money and your deeds follow you; two go back and one stays. That is why all the tools were permitted, and yet the man leaving the hall carries nothing with him but what he wrote. And what he wrote may go on being written after him:
«إذا ماتَ الإنسانُ انقطعَ عنه عملُه إلا من ثلاثة: إلا من صدقةٍ جارية، أو علمٍ يُنتفَعُ به، أو ولدٍ صالحٍ يدعو له»
When a person dies, his deeds come to an end except for three: an ongoing charity, knowledge people benefit from, or an upright child who prays for him.