Ramadhaan 2022 - Day 2

Truly, a person who favours a current pleasure, whose effect will disturb his life and Hereafter, must be a person with no sense of sensibility. For how can a person favour such pleasures that are as temporary as a dream and as short as a good moment a person spends with a character visiting him in a dream, over an everlasting pleasure that is among the ultimate pleasures!

How could a person sell all that for such mortal lowly pleasures that come with pain and are also achieved with pain and whose result is nothing but pain! If the sensible thinks of pain vis-a-vis pleasure and harm vis-a-vis benefit when thinking of such desires, he would have been ashamed of himself and his sensibility; thus he will never pursue such desires or even waste his time busying himself with it, let alone favour them over “what no eye ever saw and no ear ever heard of and nor even thought of by any person.”

Indeed, Allāh Taʿālā, Most High, has purchased from the believers their lives in exchange for that which they will have in Paradise, and established this contract through His Messenger ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wasallam, the best of mankind whom He loves and favours the most over all other creation. Therefore, how could a sensible person neglect, waste or undermine a merchandise that the Lord of the heavens and the earth has purchased; whose price is to enjoy seeing His Noble Face and hear His Words in Paradise; not withstanding the great honour of such a contract for being established through His Messenger ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wasallam! How could a person waste this great blessing and settle for a mortal life! Truly, this is the greatest of all loss, which will become evident to such a person on the Day of Judgment when the scales of the pious are heavy and the scales of the losers are light.

— Heartfelt advice to a friend by Imām ʾIbn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah [Page 37]