A letter on crying
The late Agha Sayyid Ahmad Karbalai wrote a letter in response to one of his students who asked him for an instruction on how to bring about an internal state in order to cry. He wrote, “Have you ever heard of anyone teaching a mother whose child passed away how to cry? Or have you heard of people imitating a mother whose child has passed away?”
Indeed, if someone who has no pain wishes to cry, he will be confused as to how to do so. This is because he has not gone through pain ; his child has not passed away. We must go through hardship so that we can truly comprehend the phrase, ‘I am seated next to the one who sits with me’ [hadith qudsi]. This is why, as the late Mirza Jawad Agha said, the friends [awliyā] of Allah would start preparing themselves from the night of the first of Rajab so that they are able to understand the grandeur of the night of Qadr in the month of Ramadhan.
Ayatullah Ahmad Karbalai
