Repartee of the Wise

A group of disciples once complained to their Master about the difficulty of meditation and begged him for a quicker way to attain salvation. The Master replied, “Sure, there is an easier way to reach the Lord and this does not require to do much at all. Your only requirement is to remember to meditate with love and devotion for a few hours on the day before your death; this will guarantee that you will be saved forever.”

The disciples were delighted at this short-cut solution, but after a little while, it dawned upon them that there was no way for them to know when their moment of death would be. So they approached their Master and asked by which means would they know which day was, in fact, their last.

Their Master replied that they could never know and so to guarantee their salvation, they would have to treat each day as though it were their last. They would have to sit every day with love and devotion, just in case tomorrow was their last day.

The Sufi Master, while being gracious to all the disciples, could not conceal his preference for those who lived in the ‘world’ - the married, the merchants, the farmers - over those who lived in the monastery. When he was confronted about this he said, “Spirituality practised in the state of activity is incomparably superior to that practised in the state of withdrawal.”
_{Legacy of Love}