Rediscovering Death
By: Bashir Ahmad Dar
Khalil Gibran says and I quote,” People are the slaves of life and it is this slavery which fills their days with misery and distress and floods their nights with tears and anguish”. Life is miserable because we fill it with negative energy. Life is miserable because we make it so. This enslaving force has but one big enemy, death.
Life and death are two different entities and essentially opposite. If life is the coming together of elements, the death then is the disintegration of those elements. If life is the cumulation of atoms the death is the decummulation of those atoms. If life is the agreement, the death is the conflict in the agreement. One is loved and wanted the other is hated and dejected. One is chased and admired the other is banished and despised.
Much has been said and written on life but unfortunately proportionally less on death, although it is a mathematical certainty that death accompanies life everywhere. Even Quran, the holy book of Muslims, discusses the issue of death in several places, wherein it emphasises that death is inevitable, and that no matter how much people try to escape death, it will reach everyone. Death is the somber topic for most. Although it is an inevitable part of life.
This is the human nature that man talks of the things he likes and avoids things he hate. People avoid talking about death because there is some fear associated with it. Whenever people describe death, they describe it as our biggest enemy, the robber of all pleasures and joys, the painful terminator of all fruitions and gladness.
But I hold a different view of death. To me death is not as monstrous as it is more often described. I behold a different picture of death, altogether a different one. To me death is the termination of all woes and worries, ills and evils, traumas and tension, sobs and sorrows and sniffles and snuffles.
No sick remains sick after death and no pain remains pain after death. It is the beloved balm of Gilead and an eternal cure of incurable. It is stoppage of fugacious bread and butter and breathing of eternal breeze. It is the dusk and dawn at the same time. It is sleep and rise together. It is the departure and the arrival simultaneously.
It is hi and bye concurrently. It is bidding bye and receiving welcome together. It is breaking of bond between soul and body and setting free from cages of mortal being and flying in the boundless space of heavens. It is losing the illusion and discovering the truth.
More importantly, it is the union of lover and beloved, the creation and the Creator. It is the gateway of meeting the Lord and experience His countless bounties. It is from being ignorant to become possessor of secrets of all existence and non existence. It from being slave to fear to conquer it with pride.
It is to leave transient earthy home and lie permanently in the earth’s chest under your Lord’s care.
Death is an eternal solace to torment grief. It is the time of receiving divine returns for your arduous toil. It is the time to reap what we sow. It is the end of severe solitude and painful lonesomeness and find the divine company of your real companion.
But those of us who have spent the greater part of their existence on earth doing willful activities and are carried along on the current of modern civilization and forgotten-or so we tell our selves, in the words of Gibran, the philosophy of that beautiful and simple life of purity and spiritual cleanliness, those of us who are richer in material wealth and poor in spiritual wealth know nothing of the solace the company of Lord offers. Walking ghosts of greed would never know what it is like to be the children Contentment. Slaves of appetite are hard to satisfy except by a handful of dust over them.
Now that death offers us a safe passage to meet our eternal companion we should prepare ourselves well in advance to meet Him. We should take along the things our beloved host likes. After all, does it suit a man to meet his beloved empty handed.
So we should be clear about the things we need to equip ourselves with and those things depend upon the likes and dislikes of our beloved. Most of us know it all but just to remind ourselves I am writing those things here.
Our merciful and most faithful companion, our beloved, our Lord, likes our IMAN and MAARIFAH i.e., firm belief and knowledge about Him. He likes our IKHLAAS and TAQWA, i.e., piety and mindfulness. He likes our TAWAKUL and YAKIN i.e., trust and certainly in Him.
He loves our Gratitude and Patience, i.e., SHUKR and SABR in every situation. He likes our Hubb (love) and yearning (SHAWQ) for Him. He loves our services to mankind and sacrifice for good. He appreciates the hijrah (migration) of our nafs from Amara to Mutmiyanah. He loves to see His attributes of kindness and generosity in his Adam’s progeny. He likes pure intentions and sober souls. In fact, He loves to see the members of Ashraf ul Makhlookat justifying their title.
We should always bow our will before Allah’s. We should always be state of ISTIGAFAR because death can be sudden. How sudden it can be was revealed to me when I lost my father on a very minatory night of 18th February this year at around 1:00 am. Just 15 minutes before he was looking perfectly fine, talking and smiling as normal. At 12:45 am he went to washroom, made ablution, came back after almost 10 minutes, seated himself comfortably, fell unconscious suddenly with a brief shrudder of a second or two ,turned pale in face, eyes gazing at unseen for few more seconds before closing them forever. My father was dead. His soul had departed and I joined the clan of orphans. Inna lillah wa inna ilaihi rajeoon. There is no escape from the angel of death. He will find you even in the dark depths of sea. Better is to make preparations in advance and the best time to start preparation is now, because yesterday is gone and tomorrow is not promising.
Before I close the write up, let me make it clear to one and all that this write up should not miss lead anyone to infer that I am in favour of embracing death to life or that I want death more than life. No, I don’t mean that. I am completely against choosing death to life. I am against terminating life intentionally by the way of suicide because the creator of deaths and births has forbidden us to terminate life deliberately.
Suicide is considered a cardinal sin in Islam. Muslims believe those who have committed suicide to be forbidden from entering Paradise. “And do not kill yourselves,” declares Quran and it is obnoxious to go against the will and word of your beloved.
(The author is a teacher by profession)
