The Perfection of Wisdom -- کمال حکمت

Advice to His Son al-Hassan ibn Ali (PBUH) He wrote him When He encamped at Al-hadirin on His Way Back from Siffin: From the father who is (shortly) to die, who acknowledges the hardships of times, who has turned away from life, who has submitted himself to the (calamities of) time, who realizes the evils of the world, who is living in the abodes of the dead and is due to depart from them any day. to the son who yearns for what is not to be achieved, who is treading the path of those who have died, who is the victim of ailments, who is entangled in the (worries of the ) days, who is a target of hardships, a slave of the world, a trader of its deception, a debtor of wishes, a prisoner of mortality, an ally of worries, a neighbor of griefs, a victim of distresses who has been overpowered by desires and a successor of the dead. Now (you should know that) what I have learned from the turning away of this world from me, the onslaught of time over me and the advancing of the next world towards me is enough to prevent me from remembering anyone except my soul and from thinking beyond myself. But when I confined myself to my own worries, leaving aside the worries of others, my intelligence saved me and protected me from my own desires. It clarified to me my affairs and led me to seriousness wherein there was no trickery and truth which was not tarnished by falsehood.

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Letter 31
Advice to His Son al-Hassan ibn Ali (PBUH) He wrote him When He encamped at Al-hadirin on His Way Back from Siffin: From the father who is (shortly) to die, who acknowledges the hardships of times, who has turned away from life, who has submitted himself to the (calamities of) time, who realizes the evils of the world, who is living in the abodes of the dead and is due to depart from them any day. to the son who yearns for what is not to be achieved, who is treading the path of those who have died, who is the victim of ailments, who is entangled in the (worries of the ) days, who is a target of hardships, a slave of the world, a trader of its deception, a debtor of wishes, a prisoner of mortality, an ally of worries, a neighbor of griefs, a victim of distresses who has been overpowered by desires and a successor of the dead. Now (you should know that) what I have learned from the turning away of this world from me, the onslaught of time over me and the advancing of the next world towards me is enough to prevent me from remembering anyone except my soul and from thinking beyond myself. But when I confined myself to my own worries, leaving aside the worries of others, my intelligence saved me and protected me from my own desires. It clarified to me my affairs and led me to seriousness wherein there was no trickery and truth which was not tarnished by falsehood. Here, I found you a part of myself, rather I found you my whole, so much so that if anything befell you, it was as though it befell me, and if death came to you, it was as though it came to me. Consequently, your affairs meant to me what my own matters meant to me. So, I have written this piece of advice (to you) as an instrument of seeking help, whether I remain alive or cease to exist. I admonish you to fear Allah, O my child, to abide by His commands, to fill your heart with His remembrance and to cling to hope from Him. No regard is more reliable than the regard between you and Allah provided you take hold of it. Enliven your heart with preaching, kill it by renunciation, energize it with firm belief, enlighten it with wisdom, humiliate it by recalling death, make it believe in mortality, make it see the misfortunes of this world, make it fear the authority of the time and the severity of some changes during the nights and the days. Place before it the events of past peoples, recall to it what befell those who were before you and walk among their cities and ruins, then see what they did and from what they have gone away, where they have gone and stayed. You will find that they departed from (their) friends and remained in loneliness. Shortly, you, too, will be like one of them. Therefore, plan for your place of stay and do not sell your next life for this one. Give up discussing what you do not know and speaking about what does not concern you. Keep off the track from which you fear to go astray because refraining (from moving) when there is fear of straying. is better than embarking on dangers. Ask others to do good; you will thus be among the doers of goodness. Discourage others from evil deeds with your own actions as well as speech and keep off, to the best of your ability, from whoever commits it. Struggle for Allah as is His due, and the reviling of a reviler should not deter you in matters relevant to Allah. Leap into dangers for the sake of what is right wherever it may be. Acquire insight into religious law. Habituate yourself to endure hardships since the best trait of character is endurance in matters of righteousness. In all your affairs, resign yourself to your Lord because you will thus be resigning yourself to a secure shelter and a strong protector. You should ask only from your Lord because in His hand is all the giving and depriving. Seek goodness (from Allah) as much as you can. Understand my advice and do not turn away from it because the best saying is that which benefits. Be informed that there is no good in that knowledge which is futile, and if knowledge is not implemented, then its acquisition is not justified. O my child! When
I noticed that I was of goodly age and noticed that I was increasing in weakness, I hastened with regard to my will to you and wrote down salient points lest death should overtook me before I divulged to you what I have in my heart, or lest my wit should be affected just as my body has been, or the forces of passionsovertake you or the mischiefs of the world making you like a stubborn camel. Certainly, the heart of a young man is like an uncultivated land. It accepts whatever is strewn on it. So, I hastened to mold you properly before your heart hardened and your mind became occupied, so that you might be ready to accept through your intelligence the results of the experience of others and be saved from going through these experiences yourself. In this way, you will avoid the hardship of seeking them and the difficulties of experimenting. Thus, you are getting to know what we had experienced and even those things are becoming clear to you which we might have missed. O my child! Even though I have not reached the age which those before me have, yet I looked into their behavior and thought over events of their lives. I walked among their ruins till I was like one of them. In fact, it is as though by virtue of their affairs that have become known to me, I have lived with them from the very first to the very last. I have, therefore, been able to discern the impure from the clean and benefit from harm. I have selected for you the choicest of those matters and collected for you their good points and have kept away from you their useless points. Since I feel for your affairs as a living father should, I aim at giving you guidance. I thought it should be at a time when you are advancing in age and new to the state of the world, possessing upright intention and a clean heart and that I should, being with the teaching of the Book of Allah, to Whom belong Might and Majesty and its interpretation, the laws and commandments of Islam, its lawful matters and unlawful ones and that I should not go beyond these for you. Then I feared lest you should get confused as other people had been confused on account of their passions and (different) views. Therefore, in spite of disliking the thought of warning you, I thought it better for me to make this issue strong rather than leave you in a status where I do not regard you safe from falling into destruction. I hoped that Allah will help you in your straight forwardness and guide you in your resoluteness. Consequently, I wrote this piece of my will for you. Be informed, O my child, that what I love the most for you is that you adopt my will to fear Allah, to confine yourself to what Allah has made obligatory on you, to follow the actions of your forefathers and the virtuous people of your household. These did not fall short in seeing for themselves what you will see for yourself, and they did about their affairs as you will like to think (about your own affairs). Thereafter, their thinking led them to discharge the obligations which they came to know and to desist from what they were not required to do. If your heart does not accept this without acquiring knowledge as they acquired it, then your search should first be by way ofunderstanding and learning, not by falling into doubts or getting entangled in quarrels. Before you probe into this, you should begin by seeking your Lord’s help, turning to Him for competence and keeping aloof from everything that throws you into doubt or flings you towards misguidance. When you have made sure that your heart is clean and humble and your thoughts have come together, and once you have only a reflection about this matter..., it is then that you will see what I have explained to you. If you have not been able to achieve what you will like to have, that peace of observation and thinking then be informed that you are only stamping the ground like a blind she-camel and falling into darkness while a seeker of religion should not grope in the dark, nor should he create confusion. It is better to avoid this.