Preface

A Commentary On Imam ‘Ali's Will To His Son Imam Hasan (as)

The Fourteen Attributes of Imam ‘Ali's Son

1) My Son, I recommend you to God-wariness

2) Fulfilment of God's Commands

3) Inhabit your Heart with God's Remembrance

4) Adherence to His Cord

5) Enliven Your Heart with Exhortation

6) Cause your heart to die through asceticism

7)  Strengthen Your Heart With Certainty

8) Illuminate your heart with Wisdom

9) Make your heart submissive with the remembrance of Death

10) Make your heart acknowledge its mortality

11) Cause your heart to perceive the calamities of this world

12) Warn your heart of the assault of time and the evil inconstancy of the nights and days

13) Present to your heart the reports of the past ones, and remember that you will soon become one of them

14) Therefore, set right your place of rest and do not sell your Hereafter for your world.

15) Do not talk about what you do not know or speak about what is not required of you.

16) Keep away from a path if you fear it will lead you astray, for holding back from the perplexity of misguidance is better than encountering terrifying events

17. Bid Others to do Good and Reject Evil

18) Become Learned in Religion

19) Habituate yourself to patient endurance in afflictions

20) Commit your self in all your affairs to your God, for you will thus be committing it to a secure Cave and a mighty Protector.

21. Be sincere in your asking from your Lord, for in His hand is the bestowal and refusal, and ask God frequently for the best.

22)  Understand my testament and do not disregard it, for indeed the best speech is that which is is beneficial.

23) Know that there is no good in knowledge that is not beneficial, and knowledge that is not worthy of acquisition is not beneficial

24) Contemplation of Past Nations and Their Actions

25) God Wariness And Knowledge

26) Everything is From Allah And Allah Will Return

27) Take the Prophet as your Guide and Islam as your Religion

28) The Perilous Road to Doomsday

29) Supplication and Its Importance

30) This World is only the path for the Hereafter, so remember Death frequently

31) Preserve Yourself from the Greedness of this World and remain Free

32) Silence and Moderation

33) The Delicate Tasks of a Man towards His Friend

34)  Kinds of Sustenance

35) Beware of who you consult with

36) The Last Three Advices of Imam ‘Ali’s Letter

In this book, the author first discusses what ethics essentially is, and
the views of various philosophers and schools of thought on it. After
explaining the defects of these philosophies, he presents the view of
Imam Ali [a] on ethics as derived from a lengthy treatise that he
composed.


Imam ‘Ali’s First Treatise On The Islamic Ethics And Education

10) Make your heart acknowledge its mortality
=============================================

<blockquote dir="rtl">
  <p>
وقرّره بالفناء""
  </p>
</blockquote>

Although a man may get involved in the remembrance of death, he may not
be serious; neither may he be convinced. In this case, this remembrance
will not be instructive. This is true in the case of those corrupted
people who verbally remember death, but deep inside they are not ready
to embrace death.

For this reason, after his previous command concerning making the heart
submissive, Imam ‘Ali emphasized that we should convince our hearts that
this world is not eternal. This very conviction makes man ready for the
voyage towards the Hereafter.

Imam, concerning this, has said, "Anybody who believes that one day
death will separate him from his friends, that he will be put in the
grave, that he will have to account the Day of Judgment for what he has
done, that the wealth here will not help him out; and that what he has
sent in advance will be of value, should shorten his desires and
lengthen the amount of his work."

This very stage of confession and conviction has made some wonder: How
is it possible for a man to believe in death and the exact accounting
for in the Doomsday and be happy at the same time?

<blockquote dir="rtl">
  <p>
"عَجِبتُ لِمَن ايقن بالموتِ كيفَ يَضْحكُ عَجِبتُ لِمَن ايقن بالحسابِ
كيفَ يَفْرَح"
  </p>
</blockquote>

“I wonder at one who is certain of death – how does he laugh? I wonder
at one who is certain of the reckoning – how is he joyful?”


