VISIT TO THE GRAVEYARD
Once people saw Bahlool sitting between graves at a graveyard. They joked with him saying: "Oh Bahlool! You are still alive, why do you have to remain seated here between the dead?"
"I prefer to sit with such people because they keep me away from pride and negligence of my moral duties, and are the cause of good advice to me" replied Bahlool. And once Bahlool was returning from a visit to the grave-yard, some people asked him:
"Wherefrom do you come. Oh Bahlool?" "I am coming back from a visit of those people who have already descended under the earth", he replied.
"Have you talked and asked them anything?” those people asked. "Yes! I asked them when were they to move away from their present station and they told me that they were awaiting your arrival there. They will move when you also arrive there", replied Bahlool.
That graveyard is the final place we all have to go to one day Is the moral lesson given by Bahlool. Therefore wise is the one who remains always thoughtful and prepared for this ultimate destination.
"I also advise you to remember death and to lessen your heedlessness towards it. Why should you be heedless of Him Who is not heedless of you? Why expect from him (i.e., the angel of death) who will not give you time? The dead whom you have been watching suffice as preachers. They were carried to their graves, not riding themselves, and were placed in them but not of their own accord. It seems as if they never lived in this world and as if the next world had always been their abode. They have made lonely the place where they were living, and are now living where they used to feel lonely. They remained busy about what they had to leave, and did not care for where they were to go. Now they cannot remove themselves from evil, nor add to their virtues they were attached to the world and it deceived them. They trusted it and it overturned them." (Nahjul Balaghah; sermon 188)
Taken from the book “The Moral Stories (Part 2)”
Author: Ahmed .H. Sheriff
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