Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
Question: What is the Rumi verse that mentions, “A hundred regrets for lost opportunities”?
Answer: In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
The Prophet has said truly
that no one who has passed away from this world
feels sorrow, regret, or disappointment because of dying
but rather feels a hundred regrets for lost opportunities,
saying to himself, “Why didn’t I keep death in mind–
death which is the storehouse of every good fortune and
provision;
why, through seeing double, did I make the object of my life’s
attention
those fantasies that vanished at that fated hour?”
The grief of the dead isn’t because of death;
no, it’s because they focused on phenomenal forms
and didn’t perceive that these are only the foam,
moved and fed by the Sea.
~ ~ ~ ~
– Mathnawi VI: 1450-1455
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
“Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance”
Threshold Books, 1996