Life Death and Beyond

Awareness of death makes a person more serious about the affairs of life. It leads him to engage in constant introspection and self-reform. Death very clearly tells a person that although ostensibly his present is in his control, his future definitely is not. Awareness of death makes us take our future in the life after death much more seriously. It leads us to spend our short time on this planet wisely, in a manner that will benefit us in the eternal life after death, instead of wasting our life in chasing sense-pleasures. Destroyer of Attachments The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said: “Remember death much because it demolishes all desires.” (Sunan Ibn Majah 4258). It means that if someone remembers the reality of death with full seriousness, his life’s focus will change completely. His life will now become Hereafter-oriented, in place of worldly-oriented. A worshipper of the world is engaged at every moment in seeking to earn what are conventionally thought of as the profits of this world. He derives great pleasure from this obsession. He thinks that his constant busy-ness will bring him the worldly glories that he hankers after. But if he is a seeker of truth and comes to know that he is going to face a day, sooner or later, when he will have to leave behind all his worldly wealth, he will lose his interest in this preoccupation. He will witness a new awakening. He will realize that if the