Jack of all trades, Master of none - knowledge and the path of servanthood

1.      The nature of knowledge

All knowledge is contained

In the Ocean of the Lord,

And if perchance, I appear

To name different types of knowledge,

Know that it is merely because

I have taken a cup from the Ocean,

And man, in their foolishness,

Keep asking me,

“What are you talking about?!”

......................

Universities have deigned to separate knowledge between faculties - the faculties of medicine, physics, biology, history, law, social sciences, astronomy... and the list goes on and on. And further out into society, we are wont to divide between the physical and the spiritual, the material and the metaphysical.

I suppose it is part of the continuing specialization of mankind's knowledge, and the accepted rule that we cannot be a jack of all trades and a master of none. We must be a master of something. We have to master something...

Right?

The answer is blowing in the wind, as an ancient friend tells me...

Servanthood

To be a master 

Is to be a servant

To acquire knowledge

Is to dispossess yourself of yourself

To understand something

Is to become nothing,

Not even a leaf

Blowing in the wind,

A story with no beginning

With no known ending.

.................

Hehehe. Life is full of irony sometimes. 

Have a lovely day, sunshine. May your path take you to the honour of servanthood, an award granted to you that is higher than the highest PHDs available in the divided faculties of our limited human knowledge. For that little prize comes from the treasure trove of the Divine Presence itself.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

The New Year 1434 - Maal Hijra and the Tree of Choices

1434 at the Stronghold of Love

I laid siege on the Stronghold of Love for a whole year.

Then a Master of Love came out upon the high ramparts

And said, “You have wasted one long year besieging us,

When you could have gained entry with but one phrase…”

“And what is that phrase?”, I asked.

“In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.”

He replied and continued,

“So the year 1433 has passed you by,

And the year 1434 is coming near,

Will you shed another year of tears

And upon Love’s Gate to wilt and die,

Or will you now believe in the words

That your heart have often spoken

But your mind has long denied?”

……………………………….

In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful - or in Arabspeak, BismillahiRahmaniRahim, is possibly the most recognizable Muslim phrase in all the sultanates and kingdoms of the Muslim world, and even outside. But truth be told here, it is a collection of words that I am forever trying to tie my turban around... and  failing miserably.

As I gingerly make my way through this life, filling my barrel of deeds with both good and rotten apples of my own picking, the phrase BismillahiRahmaniRahim continues to expand in its breadth and scope. 

We do not know, if we shall live the full twelve months of this Islamic calendar year. Perhaps we may only see the sunrise of just one day of 1434. But that is not our worry, for our passing is predestined as our birth was. I think we need only to concern ourselves with picking more good apples and trying to avoid the rotten apples that life and fate may be growing in our Tree of Choices. That is all.

So come on, sunshine. Let's climb this Tree... in the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful - BismillahiRahmaniRahim!

Happy new year, my friends.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

Speak to Him... awake or in your nightly dream...

Break the Silence

Talk to Him,

Talk to Him However Way You Want to...

Through your Prayer,

Through Your huMan Tears and holy Hymn,

Break THe siLence,

And talk to HiM...

eVEN in your nightly Dreams...

For though your lips stay stubbornly silent,

Your Soul may yet find its ReAl appearance, 

And while you fall asleep like a Heathen

Your DreaM takes its path to Heaven.

............................

Life is about conversations about God and with God. And it is meant to be a two-way communications. A dialogue. And even if we are naughty and negligent in our prayers, does God turn away? Is our connection to Him severed?

So long as there is a single breath animating us, there is a link. For God is unlike us, whimsical and often arbitrary in our actions. "I am closer to you than your jugular vein", God expresses Himself clearly in the Holy Quran. Therefore, the only question is whether you are up to the task of accessing and filtering the information downloaded from the Divine Presence on a daily, second by microsecond basis. 

And this happens even in our sleep, as our spirit partially (and temporarily) relinquishes its worldly passport to find some divine sustenance from the Fountain of Knowledge. For this world is indeed a mere journey from our real home in the beautiful meadows of God's Divine Presence. And one day (and may such a day be blessed!), our worldly passport shall indeed expire and we will be invited home to the  place of honour as a weak servant in the Heavenly Court of God - Creator and Lord of all mankind.

This is something the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.s.) teaches his followers. This is not just a journey for the Muslims, this is a journey fated for all humanity. So let us be nice to everyone sharing our travel!

Uh oh... and lest I forget, here is wishing all my Hindu brothers and sisters a wonderful Deepavali!

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in  Islam

Love will show the Way

I am not Lost. I am in Love.

1.      I am not lost

God bless you and your family,

For God loves he who keeps faith

With those who appear lost.

But I am not lost, you see.

I am in love.

................................

The scenario of falling in love is sometimes closely connected with some lost or other. Lost of your reason... that's a pretty frequent story. Lost of your property... that is also a common malady of love. Lost of your senses... oh boy, can I write a novel about that. Lost of your kingdom... Lost of your freedom... Lost of your free time.. lost of perhaps many things which you once cherished and held dear.

A friend of mine who was recently married is a good example of this pandemic of lost. For I am seeing him becoming somehow different, coping with married life and the accessories of changes that comes with the 'I do'. We sometimes meet, and he regal me with his domestic arrangement and the fixings and repairs required in moving into a new house. But most of all, he talks a lot about his wife, fascinated by the behaviour and personality of his own Frau of the Haus. Like a jigsaw he has long puzzled over, everything in his life is finally fitting in now, just nicely. 

So I guess it is good to lose something sometimes. Because my friend, in his 42nd year, has gone and lost his heart to a girl, and with it his solitude and loneliness. 

Alhamdulillah.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

True Love Illuminates Truly - love, avalanches, floods and the whirling dervishes

1.      Tenacious

Yea, I may be tenacious,

But it is easy tenacity when you

Are carried by a mighty flood

Roaring down the side

Of a high mountain!

..........................................

Love affects different people differently. For some, love is all about falling down the side of a hill or mountain like a flood or an avalanche. So you get bruised, beaten and broken. Then you climb that mountain again. For others, love can make them whirl. No bruises or broken bones here, just the drawing of light-threads through the blandness of the cosmos, as even your shadow illuminates the gloomiest corner of the human experience. For true love illuminates truly... 

This is my first ever sketch with white ink on black paper. I hope you like it.

Have a lovely Sunday, sunshine.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

His Indifference - Freedom, what a poison chalice you may turn out to be!

His Indifference

Oh love,

Do not leave me this way.

In the shadows of Your disapproval,

In the well of my sorrow as

You turn away and You say,

“Do as you will!”

Oh love,

Do not leave me to my ignorance,

Do not leave me to my folly,

Do you not leave me in

The drought of uncaring,

In the famine of unknowing,

As You turn away and You say,

“Do as you wish!”

Am I not your weak servant?

Am I not your beloved creature

That you shaped and formed

And in a time long ago

You blew into the clay form

Of my Ancestor, Adam

The Spirit?

Oh love,

I ask you in the name of that Spirit…

To not leave me in the heartless desert of

“Do as you will!” and “Do as you wish!”

Or even worse still… “Do whatever you want!”

………………………..

The Age of Enlightenment passed me by. The French Revolution leaves me cold. The frozen rebuke makes me wilt at the thought of choice. Have I, dear friend, grown old?

Or less hasty? When we were young, we were so damn obsessed with growing older. Why... we cannot grow older fast enough. Not that we ever anticipated that growing older will inevitably make us one day, actually old. 

And now that I am here, at the cusp of my 43rd year of life come 2013, I am not so hasty. I want to savour life. Like a fine wine swirling in my wine glass. And one of the things which comes with age is a bit (more) of circumspection and aforethought... 

"I wanna do this, God. What do You think? Good idea?"

"I rather not do this, o' Creator of the World(s). Are You with me?"

"I am just gonna flip a coin on this... What say You, o' He Who Plans the Best?"

"Just another slice of apple pie... Too much, o' Most Benevolent One?"

But whether God approves or disapproves, you sometimes just do it anyway. Yet it is not His disapproval that I am ultimately worried about. But His indifference. That finally, after the millionth time I ignore His gentle counsel voiced through the guidance of the Prophet and the Holy Quran, through the whisper of my very own conscience, God finally gives up on me and declares, "Do whatever you want!" 

Ah, freedom, what a poison chalice you may turn out to be! May God never leave us to the devices of our own choices...

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

The Cartographer and the Map of the Human Spirit

Map of the Human Spirit

I am the hermit on the peak,

I am the monk in the cellar,

I am the priest in the temple,

I am the voice of everyone and no one,

I am the preacher on the soapbox,

I am the merchant in the market,

I am the judge, I am the jury,

I am the son of Adam, I am the daughter of Eve,

I am the sign of the times,

I am a universe all of my own, 

I am both made and unmade,

A thoughtful creation in

My Lord's imagination,

I am the minstrel for the stars,

I am a little servant of the servants,

In me you will find wickedness,

In me you will find virtues,

I am me, and I am also you,

The bear after the honey,

The knight after the dragon,

The alchemist after the philosopher's stone,

I am how my Lord made me,

And my quest is what my Lord makes it to be,

I am the Cartographer, 

Drawing the Map of the Human Spirit.

...........................................

Anyone, indeed everyone can be whatever and whomever they desire to be - a scientist, a doctor, an artist, a cook, a housewife, a househusband, a preacher, a teacher, a mountaineer, a farmer... anything really. 

But above all this worldly ambition, they must learn of themselves - as some would call it the human spirit or the soul. It is not a choice really, for whatever we may be doing, we are all Cartographers of the Human Spirit, and in our daily deeds and conversations, slowly but with deliberate certainty, we map and chart out the seas and rivers, the hills and meadows, the high mountains and gentle valleys of our humanity.

But lo, how sad and limited is the vision of those who do not see that our mortal landmarks all lead to the heavenly seas and rivers, the holy hills and meadows and the divine mountains and valleys of the Life Hereafter. 

The Virtue of Adam and the Beauty of Eve manifest in the mirror of reality which we call our lives, which is not Reality itself, but a brief transient reflection of God's Own Reality, as how He Desires for us to contemplate and understand.

So I am greatly indebted to God for the richness of this world, and the infinite richness promised unto the kindly and compassionate of Mankind. You know... your kind mother, your gentle father, your thoughtful neighbour, your brothers and sisters united in the worship of the One God.

This is a little ray of light of the Light of Muhammad (s.a.w.s.), Seal of the Prophets.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way