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Conclusion

 

 

Whatever is suffered for God is good. It is sweet even if apparently bitter, for it makes you taste the pleasure of supplicating and praying to Him. Ibn Sam‘un73 says: “Every speech unconcerned with Him is idle talk.”

I am journeying to the Hereafter. I have so many sins that even several lifetimes would not be enough to ask forgiveness for them. Thus I entrust this task to my book. Alas! How pitiful, regrettable, and deplorable that I wasted my life, health, and youth in sin and rebellion for harmful, transient desires and fancies. What is left to my old age and ill health are sin and pain. With this heavy burden, dark face, and diseased heart I approach the door of the grave for an eternal separation from the transient world. How humiliated I will be when my Lord orders: “Drive all hypocrites to the Fire!”

 

O God! There is no shelter and refuge save

the door of Your Compassion.

O God! Your rebellious servant has come

acknowledging his sins, and he prays to You.

If You forgive him, this is what You love to do;

if You repel him, who else will have mercy on him?74

O God! I regret my sins and repent of them;

I am ashamed of my evil words and deeds.

Pour blessings into my heart from the world of holiness

so that fancies may be removed from my heart.

I ask You to open the door of Mercy

with the call of Mawlana:

O God! Repeatedly I call O God, O God!

And utter things for God on Your way.

O God! Guide me to the way leading to You;

I am astray, looking for the right way.

O God! I am not worthy of the highest floor of Paradise,

nor do I have strength to bear Hellfire.

Enable me to feel repentant of my sins

and ask forgiveness for them, and forgive me,

for You are the Forgiver of sins, however great they are.

 

To conclude:

 

  • There are as many doors opened toward God as there are parts of the (Book of the) Universe and its pages, and as many as there are compounds.
  • The inner existence is superior to the outer existence in all aspects of life, consciousness, and perfection.
  • Your unique facial features distinguish you from everyone else, although all faces have the same parts and structure. This shows that the Maker is infinitely independent and Wise and has absolute free choice.
  • You are a conscious work of art made with wisdom, one indicating the Maker’s Attributes.
  • The One Who created you created the universe and its contents, for whatever is in you also exists in it.
  • You are a restricted being, having a restricted body, lifetime, and power. So, do not waste your life on transient things.
  • The carnal self mistakenly thinks that it is excluded from the sphere of the manifestations of Destiny and Divine Attributes.
  • One who gives light and existence and makes existence necessary must have these qualities, or else how could he give them?
  • What a human soul desires most is permanence and perpetuity.
  • Associating partners with God in a veiled form, due to human egotism, gradually turns into associating material causes as partners with God.
  • Humanity was created to open and unveil (the treasuries of Divine Names and Attributes), be a luminous sign (guiding to God), receive and reflect (Divine manifestations), be a light-giving moon reflecting the Eternal Power, and be a mirror for the manifestations of Eternal Beauty.
  • If you please your Creator by abstaining from sins, obeying His commands, and doing righteous deeds, you also will please the created.
  • The Necessarily Existent Being does not resemble the contingent in His Essence, qualities, or acts.
  • A lion’s teeth and claws show that it is expected to tear, a melon’s delight shows that it is for eating, and human potential shows that humanity is to worship God.
  • Small animals are more intelligent and sophisticated in structure, and subtler in art, than large ones.
  • All-encompassing provision does not exclude specific, individual provision.
  • Most human beings do not give the proper respect due to the observed Book of the Universe and the glorious book of the Qur’an when it is recited and heard.
  • At the times of daily prayers, imagine the Muslim world as a mosque, with Mecca being the mihrab and the Ka‘ba as the mihrab’s central point. This mosque, in which generations pray, is continuously filled with and emptied of successive generations.
  • Leave today with honor and dignity what will leave you tomorrow.
  • Modern civilization values corrupting hypocrisy, show, and fame.
  • When coming together to forge a sound unity, a community of women can acquire firm manliness, while a weak unity of men becomes woman-like.
  • Divine Unity is one of the clearest proofs of Muhammad’s Prophethood.
  • The Divine Lordship’s decoration, perfection, beautiful spectacles, and majesty, as well as the Divinity’s splendor, require observers to observe them in amazement.
  • Just as the correspondence and similarities among things point to the Maker’s Oneness and Unity, so do their orderly and purposeful dissimilarities and distinctions indicate that the Maker is All-Wise and has absolute Will, doing whatever He wishes.
  • Men and women are the most unjust of all beings.
  • Through His Power’s perfection, God subjugated all particles and compounds to His laws and commands of creation.
  • Inertia and motionlessness, inactivity and non-change mean a kind of death or non-existence for a contingent thing, for its life and survival depend on activity and constant renewal.
  • God makes Himself known through His creatures and art, and loved through His Mercy, bounties, and provisions.
  • Whatever is suffered for God is good, for it makes you taste the pleasure of supplicating and praying to Him.
  • A supplication.

 

Said Nursi

73 Abu al-Husayn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Isma‘il or Sam‘un (913-97) was a Muslim ascetic from Baghdad renowned for his wisdom and wise sayings. (Tr.)

74 Attributed to Ibrahim ibn Adham. (Tr.)