“musaafir shab se chalte he~”

A friend of mine was generous enough to lend her ‘Islamic Studies’ reading pack, which she had got from her teacher who was a student of Shaykh Kamaluddin at LUMS a couple of years back. It is probably one of the best assortments of writings that I have ever laid my hands on. Feel blessed. Alhamdulillah.
Here I wish to refer to an excerpt in that pack from Imam Al Haddad’s book Knowledge and Wisdom, translated by Mostafa al-Badawi, entitled, ‘Structuring Time’. This excerpt further refers to a very moving excerpt from Imam al Ghazzali’s Bidaayat al Hidaaya (The Beginning of Guidance), which I want to share with the readers of this blog. I personally found it to be an extremely useful reminder. Imam al Ghazzali rahimahullah says,

You should not neglect your time or use it haphazardly; on the contrary, you should bring yourself to account, structure your litanies and other practices during each day and night, and assign to each period a fixed and specific function. This is how you bring out the spiritual blessing [baraka] in each period. But if you leave yourself adrift, aimlessly wandering as cattle do, not knowing how to occupy yourself at every moment, your time will be lost. It is nothing other than your life, and your life is a capital that you make use of to reach perpetual felicity in the proximity of God the Exalted. Each of your breaths is a priceless jewel, since each of them is irreplaceable and, once gone, can never be retrieved. Do not be like the deceived fools who are joyous because each day their wealth increases while their life shortens. What good is an increase in wealth when life grows ever shorter? Therefore, be joyous only for an increase in knowledge or in good works, for they are your two companions who will accompany you in your grave when your family, wealth, children, and friends stay behind.   

It is after reading such words of the pious predecessors that one feels how one has been wasting the jewels that were gifted to them by the Almighty Himself – the precious moments of our lives that are continually slipping away while we remain oblivious. Yet, we are those blessed people who can be happy (and thankful) about belonging to a tradition comprising elders like Imam al Ghazzali and his like – people who never fail to inspire and remind us of our duty in this world even when they are no more…
p.s. The complete verse in the title is “musaafir shab se chalte he~ jo jaana duur hota he” … I listened to it in some lecture by a religious scholar when dsicussing the importance of the afterlife. Unfortunately, I am unaware of who the poet is. If any of the readers have this info, please share it.