Chapter IX: Meditation
(2) Virtues: Think first of the obligatory duties, how you have performed them, how you have saved them from mutilation, how you have compensated them by optional duties. Think whether your eyes, tongue and ears have performed their respective duties faithfully and justly.
(3) Destructive vice: Think over the internal destructive vices and guilts such as passion, anger, miserliness, pride, show, hatred, jealousy, idleness, procrastination, greed for wealth, honour, name and fame. Think of eradicating them from the soil of mind and the different modes of their eradication. If you think that you are free from pride and vain-glory, take for examination one bundle of fruits on the head and go to market as was done by the early Muslims. If you cannot, you have not acquired the virtue of modesty and shun pride. If you think that you have conquered anger, then talk for testing it with such a man in such a way as will arouse his anger and then see whether you can appease your anger. Thus you can examine whether you have eradicated all the evils within yourself. If you find pride in your self, you are a fool. Do you think yourself great? He who is great to Allah is great. After death it will be known who is great and who is small. If you find in yourself greed for food, think in this way. It is the path of beasts. If there is perfection in the greed for food and satisfaction in passions, it would have been included in
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the attributes of angels. In this way think about all other guilts within yourself and the ways of eradicate them from the soil of mind.
(4) Virtues of salvation: Then think whether you have acquired the virtues of salvation and whether there is any want of any of these virtues within yourself. There are ten basic virtues of salvation - (1) Repentance, (2) Patience in dangers and difficulties (3) Gratefulness for gifts, (4) Fear, (5) Hope, (6) Renunciation of the world, (7) Sincerity, (8) Truthfulness, (9) Love for God (10) Modesty. Think, how far you have proceeded to acquire these virtues and what is wanting in you.
These are the various modes of thinking. By these methods, you will try to acquire knowledge which will attract you towards trie Beloved and save you from the vices of destruction and adorn you with the virtues of salvation. Think of the Quranic verses when you read them. One verse read with due thought is better than reading the whole Quran. Think of the following Hadis of the Prophet: The Holy Spirit breathed unto my spirit - Love whom you like to love, but you shall have to separate from him. Live as long as you wish but you shall have to die. Do what you wish, but you will be given its recompense. This Hadis is an epitome of many thoughts and a sufficient food for reflection.