First Warning by Badiuzzaman Said Nursi Regarding Prayers
Five Warnings by Badiuzzaman Said Nursi Regarding Prayers
First Warning by Badiuzzaman Said Nursi Regarding Prayers
In this part of our work, we will quote from Nursi's 21st Word by simplifying some of it and making explanations. In this work, Nursi addresses his own soul. We will also address our own souls and talk to them. We would like you to listen by accepting your souls as the addressees. We are starting to quote from that work hoping that it will cure our spiritual illnesses:
One time, a man great in age, physique, and rank said to me: “The prayers are fine, but to perform them every single day five times is excessive. Since they never end, it becomes wearying.”
A long time after the man said these words, I listened to my soul and I heard it say exactly the same things. I looked at it and saw that with the ear of laziness, it was receiving the same lesson from Satan. Then I understood that those words were as though said in the name of all evil-commanding souls, or else they had been prompted. So I said: “Since my soul commands to evil, one who does not reform his own soul cannot reform others. In which case, I shall begin with my own soul.”
I said: O soul! Listen to five ‘Warnings’ in response to those words which you uttered in compounded ignorance, on the couch of idleness, in the slumber of heedlessness.
FIRST WARNING
O my wretched soul! Is your life eternal, I wonder? Have you any incontrovertible document showing that you will live to next year, or even to tomorrow? What causes you boredom is that you fancy you shall live for ever. You complain as though you will remain in this world to enjoy yourself for ever. If you had understood that your life is brief and that it is departing fruitlessly, it surely would not cause you boredom, but excite a real eagerness and agreeable pleasure to spend one hour out of the twenty-four on a fine, agreeable, easy, and merciful act of service which is a means of gaining the true happiness of eternal life.
That is, the reason why man gets tired of performing prayers is his thought that he is eternal and immortal. Man thinks he will stay in the world for a million years or more and thinks that he will perform prayers every day for a million of years and becomes tired of it. In fact, the real pleasure for those who know God Almighty is in prayer; it would not be difficult for them to perform prayers hundreds of millions of years let alone one million year.
The treatment for this thought lies here: First of all, a person needs to think that he will die one day and depart this world. Man does not have a guarantee that he will live until tomorrow. You might die before watching the end of this video. Your friends might find your dead body in the place where you are sitting.
Man needs to understand that he is ephemeral and mortal first. The secret lies here. What bores man about performing prayers is the fact that he thinks he is immortal. If he knew that he has no guarantee that he will live until tomorrow, he would definitely allocate 1 hour of the 24-hour day to prayers.
Then, o my soul who does not like praying and o he who does not perform prayers! Think of this: 350.000 people die in the world every day. That is about 15.000 people every hour and about 250 people every minute. That is, before this minute ends, 250 people will die. Probably, none of those 250 people knows that they will die now. Some of them are working; others are sleeping; they are making plans but they have only a few seconds left to live in this world. O my soul and my friend! What if we are among those 250 people? Think of this fact, repent before it is too late and start performing prayers!..
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