English book · Love of God

Why be Oblivious of Death?

English book, p. 322

By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

WHY BE OBLIVIOUS OF DEATH? People are busy fulfilling the demands of this world, being forgetful of death. Forgetfulness of death is forgetfulness of the Hereafter, ignoring which we face eternal deprivation. Thinking about how near we all are to death and how seldom we think about it, I recalled a young student, who was not prepared for the forthcoming exams. His parents reminded him daily about the exams. They would sternly say: “If you fail in the exams, your future will be ruined and you will not be able to achieve anything.” This reminder by the parents was so effective that he shut himself up in his room and started preparing in earnest for the exams. In this incident, I saw the parallel in how people are oblivious of death. Their obliviousness of death is because of their being oblivious of the Hereafter. All men and women are engaged in fulfilling the demands of this world. All the time they think of the harm and losses of this world. This is why the concept of death is not alive in their active memory. Had their minds been focused daily on the situation they would face after death, they would have paid serious attention to the most serious issue of being made to appear in the court of God. Then they would never be oblivious or ignorant of death. They would become far more serious about death, even more serious than the young student had become about his exams. The general condition of people is that they give a great deal of thought to their lives before death, but they do not

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