20. CONTEMPLATION IS THE REASON FOR SUCCESS AND ABANDONING IT IS THE REASON FOR CORRUPTION
I have thought about righteous people and evil people. I found that the reason behind righteousness is contemplation, and the reason behind evil is neglecting to contemplate.
A wise person contemplates and realises that there must be a Creator who needs to be obeyed. He contemplates the miracles (mu’jizat) of the Messenger and so surrenders to the true religion. So he looks into whatever brings him closer to Allah.
If he faces difficulty in memorising knowledge, he contemplates its fruits so it becomes easy for him to memorise it. The same is true if he faces difficulty in praying the night prayer. If he confronts something desirable, he contemplates the end result of following his desires, how the pleasurable moments go away, while shame remains. So it becomes easy for him to deflect his desires and to follow them.
And if he wants to take revenge, he remembers the reward of patience (sabr) and how an angry person regrets the actions he commits in the state of anger (ghadab). And he contemplates how short life is, so he takes advantage of life by gaining virtue, thus achieving his goals.
As for he who is oblivious, he is short-sighted.
Some of them contemplated the Creator and creation, but ended up denying Him and stopped contemplating. They also denied the Messengers and the religion they brought.
They only look at whatever is near to them without contemplating its beginning and ending. All they know about food is how to eat it; had they thought about its origin and how it preserves human bodies, they would have known the reality of things.
They never look at the outcome of lusts (shahawat) they fulfil, they only think about the immediate pleasures—causing them to be punished and disgraced.
Fulfilling lusts hastily often causes one to miss out on virtue and to gain shamefulness. This is all caused by not contemplating the future outcome of things, which is what the mind and intellect demands. Contemplation is praiseworthy, while chasing lusts is condemned.
We ask Allah to keep us astute and grant us insight in order to figure the end results, and to make us realise the reality of virtue and shame.
He is indeed able to do so.
(Source: al-Hafiz Abu’l-Faraj ibn al-jawzl [d. 597AH] “CAPTURED THOUGHTS being” a translation of his masterpiece ‘Sayd al-K hatir)
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