Why should one love hunger, sickness and death?

Shri Anil asked: Swami! Could You please explain the following conversation between Prophet Mohammad and a devotee?

Prophet Mohammad asked Abu Dhar Al Gifariy, “What do you love in the world?” Abu Dhar replied, “I love three things in the world (a) hunger (b) sickness and (c) death. The Prophet, may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, asked Abu why he loved these three. Abu Dhar replied, “I love hunger because it softens my heart. I love sickness because it lessens my sin. And I love death because it makes me meet my Lord.”

Swami replied: The essence of this conversation is that one should not worry about difficulties and problems in life. If one introspects carefully, one finds that difficulties are more beneficial than happy incidents in life. During difficulties, one’s mind is very active. The person gets deeply attached to God and is devoid of the most damaging ego. During happy incidents, one is self-satisfied and gets very lazy.

The person gets overwhelmed by ego, neglects God and goes far from God. Thinking about death brings to mind the inevitable punishments in hell after death, making the soul alert about avoiding sin in life. If you see the life histories of great devotees, you will find that their lives were always filled with terrible difficulties. It is only due to those difficulties that the devotees became very dynamic in the path of devotion and attained the full grace of God. Even death has a positive angle since imagining hell and one’s future birth after death makes the soul think about God.

A true saint likes difficulties and miseries because they always bring the soul closer and closer to God. Happiness always inflates the ego and takes the soul farther from God, whereas misery brings the soul closer to God. The realised soul always prays to God, inviting miseries which are the punishments for his own bad deeds done in the past. When the soul faces the miseries, as early as possible, they do not gather much interest and grow. Thus, one does not have to unnecessarily face additional misery. Kuntī asked God for more and more difficulties, so that the devotion that she had developed in the past, due to the many difficulties faced by her, would continue to develop further!

Shri Datta Swami
www.universal-spirituality[.]org