Seadet-i Ebediyye - Endless Bliss Fifth Fascicle

of Allâhu ta’âlâ and the heart should be in constant remembrance
of Him. The tongue and the heart should not be let loose,
wandering idly. It should be known very well that once that
moment has been wasted away, an entire world sacrificed will not
suffice to bring it back. Remembrance managed among unaware
people will yield plenty of thawâb. Resûlullah ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi
wa sallam’ stated: “A person who makes dhikr of Allâhu ta’âlâ
when he is among unaware people is like a young green tree
among dried-up trees, a living person among the dead, one of the
heroes fighting like lions amidst cowards fleeing from the
battlefield.” Once he stated: “If a person says the following prayer
as he goes out shopping two million thawâbs will be recorded in his
name: Lâ ilâha il-l-Allah, wahdehu lâ sherîka leh, la hul mulk-u wa
la hul hamd-u, yuhyî wa yumît, wa huwa hay yun lâ yamût, bi yadihil-khayr,
wa huwa ’alâ kulli shay’in qadîr.” [As in this hadîth-isherîf,
quantitative values attached to the amounts and numbers of
thawâbs and sins, to celestial measures and distances, to timelengths
in the Hereafter, to the creation of the world, and to the
number of creatures mentioned in various hadîth-i-sherîfs, are not
intended for precision in the numbers and amounts, but for their
greatness. For instance, when a person eventually sees another
person whom he has been looking for laboriously for a long time,
he may exclaim, “Oh, I’ve found you after the tenth attempt!”
Junayd Baghdâdî ‘quddisa sirruh’ stated: “There is many a person
in the market place who is more valuable than people sitting in a
ring of sôfîs.” At another time he stated: “I know a kind of person
who performs three hundred rak’ats of namâz and says thirty
thousand tasbîhs daily in the market place.” Some scholars said,
afterwards, that the person alluded to was Junayd Baghdâdî
himself. In short, there is always plenty of thawâb for people who
engage in worldly occupations for the purpose of keeping their
faith and acts of worship intact. Those who work only to earn
money and hoard worldlies will be deprived of that thawâb. In fact,
such people’s hearts are continuously in their shops, although
physically they are in the mosque, performing namâz. Their
thoughts constantly wander.
5– Fondness for worldly occupation should be avoided. For
instance, we should not be the earliest shopper and the latest to
leave the market place. We should not make hazardous and longdistance
journeys. We should not embark on sea [or air] voyages
for the sheer purpose of earning worldlies. Mu’âz bin Jabal ‘radiy-
Allâhu ’anh’, (d. of plague, 18 [639 A.D],) one of the blessed
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