Chapter VI: Love, Longing, Contentment
(11) Jesus Christ also said : The world lies behind you and you take seat thereon. Therein the kings and women stand as stumbling blocks against you. Don't dispute with the kins regarding this world, as they will not stand in your way if you give up connection with hem and their affairs. Save yourselves from women with fastings and prayers. He also said : The world searches for the people and the people search for the world. The world searches for one who searches for the next world till his provision does not become complete for him. The next world searches for one who searches for the world till his death.
Thereafter it catches his neck and climbs upon him. He also said :
God created nothing so obnoxious than the world. He did not look at it on the day He created it.
(15) It has been reported that Hazrat Solaiman was roaming in air and birds were giving him shade and men and Jin were on his right and left sides. He met a hermit of Banu Israil on the way and the hermit said to him : O son of David, the Almighty God has given you reign and power. At this, Solaiman said : One Tasbih (praise of God) in the book of deeds of a believer is more superior than my reign, as what has been given to the son of David will end but Tasbih will remain, (16) The Prophet said :
Excessive wealth has kept you forgetful. The son of Adam says :
My wealth, my wealth. Have you got any other wealth than what you have eaten and ended, what you have put on and got old, what you have given in charity and remained lasting ?
(17) The Prophet said : He who has got no abode takes the world as his abode. He who has got no wisdom makes enmity for it. He who has got no power of doing justice, coverts it. He who has got no sure faith makes efforts for it. (18) He said : He who gets up at dawn with the world as his object of thought is not
156 The Book of Destructive evils Voj-in
God-fearjng in any matter. God gives him four conducts in his mind — (1) such anxiety as has got no end, (2) such engagement as has got no limit, (3) such poverty as can never make him rich. (4)
and such hope which has got no end.
(19) Hazrat Abu Hurairah reported : The Prophet said to me :
O Abu Hurairah, shall I show you what obnoxious things are there in this world ? I said : O Prophet of God, show me. Then he caught my hand and took me to a valley of Madina and showed me a place full of carcasses, stools and urine, rotten clothes and bones and hides. He said : O Abu Hurairah, there were in their heads greed like you greed and hopes like you hopes, but to-day those are with the rotten remains and those will be consumed by earth after some days. AH these are of the world. If you can weep at the sad plight of the world, then weep. Then we began to weep.