Chapter IV: Poverty and Renunciation
Whenever you turn your mind from the pleasures of self, you will then turn away from living forever in the world. Your hopes will then be short as the pleasures of the world are but short-lived. For this reason, when they were ordered to fight in the way of God, they cried out : O our Lord, we have been ordered to fight. If you give us a short time, it will be good. God says : say, the wealth of this world is very insignificant. At this time, those who renounced the world were recognised from those who were hypocrites. The former loved God and hence they stood like a solid rock in the way of God and wished to have the status of martyrs. Even Khalid-bin-Walid who died in his home said : I have played many times with my life, fought many battles to be a martyr, but to my ill luck I was not fovoured with martyrdom. Now I am dying aged like an ordinary man. When he died, eight hundred worunds were found in his body. Such was the condition of faith of the truthful.
The hypocrites who fled from the battle field met with the following revelation : The death from which you flee away will surely overtake you. They preferred life to martyrodom, preferred a bad thing instead of a good one, misguidance in place of guidance.
They did not make profit in their profession nor did they find guidance. As to those who did divine service with sincere mind, God purchased from them their lives and properties in exchange of Paradise. They received good news of everlasting happiness in exchange of their sacrifice of happiness of 20 or 30 years.
These are the meanings of world renunciation. The saint Wais Kami said : When a person of world renunciation comes out in search of something renunciation goes out from him. He also said : The meaning of renunciation is to give up search for something. He hinted at the search for livelihood. One expert in Hadis said : To work accoridng to one's free will is world.
Renunciation is to follow knowledge and Prophet's Sunnah. The first duty of world-renunciation is to turn away from what is not usefufnn the next world. The saint Hasan Basri said : When a world renunciator sees anybody, he says to him : You are better than myself. One sage said : Renunciation means to search for •lawful things. The saint Eusof-bin-Asbat said : He who is forbearing in sorrows and difficulties, gives up the coveted things and eats lawful food adopts the basis of renunciation.
Thus there are different sayings of different sages. But the saint
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180 THE BOOK OF CONSTRUCTIVE VIRTUES Vol-IV