Drought

All I do these days is pick up a novel, read the first few pages, chuck it by the side of my bed. I'd then feel guilty, reach under my bed for either Rumi, Keats, Ginsberg or the Rubaiyat (whichever I grab first) and read a poem or two. I'm a disgrace. I've left much too many books half-read. Way too many. When will this spell of disinterest end?

"It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value. "

                                                                                                         ~The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde~


Frustrations that paralyzes you is poison.
It breeds self-contempt that lasts too long every time it plagues you.


All this. It makes one question one's realities.
Why torture yourself?
Why conform?


The collective norm is an infinite cruelty.

Raya - I digress.

I take back what I said about Raya here in Melbourne being downright dull. It's FANTASTIC. I particularly enjoyed the Salah Raya at Flagstaff Garden. The food you get at open houses are fantastic too. Never too crowded because people come and go so a crowd never really builds up in one house at a time, which suits me perfect. I thoroughly enjoyed myself today. Today deserves a smiley :) There.

So, Eid Mubarak ! to all my loved ones. I apologize for all my imperfections.

Deliverance from Error note 1

"This is the practice of dim-witted men who know the truth by men, and not men by the truth. The intelligent man, on the contrary, follows the advice of the Master of the Intelligent, Ali –God be pleased with him!– where he says: "Do not know the truth by men, but rather, know the truth and you will know its adherents."


"However, assuming that they are found only in the writings of the philosophers, if what is said is reasonable in itself and corroborated by apodeictic proof and not contrary to the Qur'an and the Sunna, then why should it be shunned and rejected? If we were to open this door and aim at forgoing every truth which had been first formulated by the mind of one in error, we would have to forgo much of what is true. We would have to give up a lot of the verses of the Qur'an and the traditions of the Apostle and the recitals of our pious forebears and the sayings of the sages and the sufis."        

"Thus they always know the truth by men, not men by truth – which is the ne plus ultra of error! This, then, is the evil due to total rejection of the philosophers' ethical teaching"


"The second evil is that due to total acceptance of their ethical teaching. For one who studies their books, such as that of  "The Brethren of Purity" and others, and sees the prophetic maxims and sufi sayings they interspersed with their own utterances, often approves of their writings and accepts them and forms a good opinion of them. Thereupon he may readily accept their errors mixed up with those borrowed truths because of a good opinion acquired about what he has seen and approved. That is a way of luring men into error."


"...the close proximity of the true to the false does not make the true false, as it does not make the false true."

                                                                                             ~ Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali ~ 

This puts my mind at ease. All this while, when I read books and found some sort of serendipitous truth or wisdom from writings, I find myself conflicted. I know that what I've found is beautiful and true but since the author is, to quote al-Ghazali, 'in error' I reluctantly reject them. It breeds self-contempt too because it makes me feel as if I'm adhering to teachings of those who do not see the truth. I know now that it's not that they do not see, they do, they simply do not realize it. Of course, I state this with careful reservation. It is not a universal application to be used carelessly. I also know that my judgement of what is true and what is not is very restricted for someone so un-learned like me. I understand that.

We must learn to know men by the truth, not the truth by men and be aware of the second evil.

Orchids

When furious, do something that requires attention. e.g. grab a pencil and draw some damned orchids. I call this my 'Fuck you orchids'. Since taking seni for SPM, I've a love-hate relationship with orchids. I'd paint this but I've only discovered that I've got watercolour but not a single paintbrush. It's ridiculous.

Rainbow in my window II

Ah, you dreadful beauty. You drain me.

I love my canon S95.

The Crying Imam.

I will cry to Thee, and cry to Thee, and cry to Thee, until the milk of Thy kindness boils up.

                                                                                                         ~Rumi~

Terawikh tonight took longer than previous nights. There's a new imam today. Not a Malay man, somebody foreign. Somebody who's native tongue is the Arabic language. All this is nothing remarkable but something happened tonight. Instead of reciting the dua Terawikh after we were done, the imam decided to recite the dua after rukuk of the third rakaat of salah Witir.

Maybe it's becauce he understood every word of the dua, or perhaps there was something else altogether but the imam cried his heart out. His poem, song-like recital of the dua faltered a little when he started choking up. Then he started sobbing and there was a strain of silence punctuated by sobs from the men's side of the jamaah. It wasn't long before some of the women started crying too.

I don't know what it was but I thought that there's a kind of beauty in the Imam's fervent tears. He had a personal apocalypse in front of the whole jamaah. I don't think he was ashamed, just filled with an overwhelming longing.

I thought, 'Am I in the face of beauty?' Forgive my sappiness.

Because I was suddenly reminded of something I've read in a book on Sufism. I'm a little frustrated that I can't remember whrere I read it. It might've been from this yellowed, crumbling, moth-eaten book titled 'Some Aspects of Sufism as understood and practiced among the Malays' by Syed Naquib al-Attas. Translated by Shirle Gordon. I share the book with my friend Adila so it's not with me right now but I'm quite sure I read about it from this book.

Something about the state in which a man suffers from a heartache for which there is no cure. A longing for God. I found this excerpt of an interview that describes this state:

The great Sufi poet Rumi said, "I will cry to Thee, and cry to Thee, and cry to Thee, until the milk of Thy kindness boils up." He is expressing what is most precious for the Sufi: the longing for God. The Sufi knows that it is this longing that offers the most direct route to the Beloved, to God.

Deep within the heart there is the primal pain of longing, the cry of the soul separated from its source. This pain comes from the memory of when we were together with God, what the Sufis call "the sweetness that was before honey or bee." At special moments in our life we can be given a taste of this union, a taste of divine remembrance. It is so unbelievably sweet and intoxicating. And it awakens the knowing, latent in the soul, of being together with God. This is what ignites the longing, the fire within the heart that begins to burn as a heartache.

In any love affair, you long for the one you love. You wait for the telephone call. You wait for the letter. You wait for your lover to come home. In a love affair with God the feeling is the same, but amplified. You long and you wait. You wait for the moment when the Beloved suddenly appears in your heart, when you feel the tender touch of your Beloved.

Even though I did not cry for I felt unworthy of shedding such pure tears. I didn't understand what is said in the dua, who was I to cry as he did? All I'm sure of is that I was, in the face of beauty. Hopefully the rest of Ramadhan will be equally beautiful.