وَمَا الْحَيٰوةُ الدُّنْيَۤا اِلاَّ مَتَاعُ الْغُرُور

[A mallet to the ghâfil head and a warning lesson]

O my wretched nafs, which seeks the world through sinking into ghaflah, seeing this life sweet and forgetting the âkhirah! Do you know what you resemble? An ostrich! It sees the hunter, cannot fly; it sticks its head in the sand so the hunter may not see it. Its huge body remains out. The hunter sees. Only, it closed its eyes in the sand and does not see.

O nafs, look at the following comparison and see: how restricting the view to the world transforms a precious pleasure into excruciating pain. For example, there are two men in this village (That is, in Barla). Ninety-nine out of a hundred of the friends of one of them have gone to Istanbul. They live nicely. Only one has remained here. He too will go there. Therefore, this man is longing for Istanbul; he thinks of it. He wants to meet with friends. When he is told “Go there”, he goes happily and joyfully. As for the second man, ninety-nine out of a hundred of his friends have gone from here. Some of them have disappeared. Some of them have been pushed in places where they neither see nor are seen. He supposes them to be scattered and ruined. As for this unfortunate man, he wants to find consolation with the friendship of a single guest in place of all of them. Through him, he wants to cover those excruciating pains of separation.

O, nafs! Foremost Habibullah1 , all your friends are on the other side of the grave. As for the one or two who remain here, they also go. Being frightened of death, fearing the grave, do not turn your head. Look bravely at the grave, and listen to what it desires. Smile manfully in death's face, see what it wants. Beware, do not resemble the second man by falling in ghaflah.

O, my nafs! Do not say, "The time has changed, age has altered, everyone has plunged into the world and performs ‘ibâdah to the life. Everyone is drunk with the struggle for livelihood." For death does not change. Separation does not transform into eternal union and does not alter. The impotence of mankind and the poverty of man do not change but increase. The journey of mankind does not cease but acquires speed.

Also, do not say, "I too am like everyone else." For everyone accompany you only until the door of the grave. As for the consolation of being together with everyone in the calamity, it is baseless on the other side of the grave. And do not suppose yourself to be free and independent. For if you look to this guest-house of the world with the eye of hikmah, you cannot see anything without order and purpose. How can you remain without order and purpose? The incidents pertaining to beings in the universe, the events like the earthquake, are not the playthings of random coincidence. For example, although you see the extremely well-ordered and embroidered shirts, which are clothed on the earth from the species of animals and plants, one over the other and one within the other, and their being adorned and equipped from head to foot with purposes and hikmahs,  and although you know that the earth is revolved and turned like a majdhûb Mawlawi with perfect order and within extremely exalted purposes, they show the grievous losses of all those stricken with the calamity to be without recompense and to have gone to dust and cast them into fearsome despair by supposing the globe of the earth’s events pertaining to life, which is soiled with death, like the earthquake, {Note: This was written in connection with the Izmir earthquake.} that resembles the earth’s shaking its shoulders due to the ma’nawî weight of the son of Âdam’s particularly some demeanours of the people of îmân with ghaflah — which it dislikes — to be without purpose and coincidental as an atheist published. They both make a great error and perpetrate a great dhulm. Indeed, such events are transforming the transient property of the people of îmân into the alms by the command of a Hakîm, Who is Rahîm, and making it permanent. And they are the kaffârah for their sins arising from kufr an-ni’mah. Just as a day will come, this subjugated earth will see the works of mankind, which are the adornment of its face, to be soiled with shirk and not to be offered shukr, and it will find them ugly. By the command of Al-Khâliq, it will wipe its whole face and cleanse it through a great earthquake. By the command of Allah, it will pour the people of shirk into Jahannam and say to the people of shukr, "Come on and enter Jannah!"