Yes,  one  second  on  the  way of  love,  knowledge,  and  pleasure  of  the  Truly Enduring One is like a year, otherwise a year is a second. A single second, even, on His way  is  immortal and  many years. A  hundred  years  of the people of neglect looking  to  this  world  are  like  a  single  second.  There  is  the  famous  saying:  “A moment’s separation lasts a year, and a year’s union passes in an instant.” I say the complete opposite to this: a moment’s union for God’s sake within the bounds of the Eternal One of Glory’s pleasure is a window  opening onto not a year’s union, but permanent union. While not one year but perhaps a  thousand spent in heedlessness and misguidance pass in an instant. There is a saying more famous that confirms this: “With enemies the broad earth is like a small cup, while with friends a needle’s eye becomes a broad arena.”1

An explicit meaning of the first well-known saying above is this: since union with transitory beings is transient, however long it lasts it seems brief. A year of such union is as fleeting as a second; it is an illusion, a dream, causing regret and sorrow. Since the human heart desires immortality, it can receive in one year’s union only the tiniest pleasure within a fraction of a second, and a moment’s separation is like not one  year  but  many.  For  the  arena  of  separation  is  broad.  If  only  for  a  second, separation inflicts years of destruction on the heart, since it yearns for eternity. For it bodes of innumerable separations. As for physical and lowly loves, for them the past and future are filled with separations.

While on the subject, we say this: O man! Do you want to make your brief and

useless life immortal, long, beneficial, and fruitful? Since such a wish is demanded by humanity,  spend your life on the way of the Truly Enduring One. For everything turned to that Eternal One receives the manifestation of immortalit y.

Since everyone fervently desires long life and yearns for immortality; and since there is a means of transforming this fleeting life into perpetual life and it is possible to make it lengthy; for sure anyone who has not lost his humanity will seek out the means and try to convert the possibility into reality and will act accordingly. Yes, the means is this: work for God’s sake, meet with others for God’s sake, labour for God’s

sake; act within the bounds of “For God, for God’s sake, on account of God.2  Then all the moments of your life will be turned into years. Alluding to this truth, verses of the Qur’an state that a single night such as the  Night of Power is the equivalent of a thousand months, that is, around eighty years.

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1  See, Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Mudkhish, i, 385; al-‘Ajluni, Kashf al-Khafa’, ii, 246.

2  See, Tirmidhi, Sunna, 15; Abu Da’ud, Qiyama, 60; Musnad, iii, 438, 440.