FOR THOSE WHO WOULD RIDE

For more than 20 years now, my hero comes back to his village every year from where he now lives with his family in Canada. The poorer ones of the village, and a couple of neighbouring villages, wait for his arrival every year. He does not have too much time for the family, for he must attend to the sickness and deaths and marriages and squabbles of these, his favoured ones. He gives time. He gives companionship. He gives friendly banter. He gives money. The amounts do not matter; the giving matters.

They touch him for it if a crumbling wall needs to be repaired, if a buffalo needs medical attention, if a child needs to be wed, for illness, for celebration, for death; for anything. He does not judge character; he feels their need. Someone in the family once reproached him, “Why do you give them money, do you know that half of them blow it up on country liquor or a fix of poppy husk?”

His answer is a revelation, “You do not know the pain of their craving.”

What he gives them may just be keeping someone from stealing his wife’s modest jewellery, or keeping someone’s daughter in school, or giving a little respite from craving and despair. He is absolutely against substance abuse; he has been there and back in years long gone by. He feels their pain.

Oh, how we like to ride the high horse of morality! How many of us have ever paused to think, where would the supercilious arrogance of the upright be were it not for the grovelling supplication of the sinners?

We sit in judgement over the ‘sinners’, and ours is probably the bigger sin, for have they not been destined by fate to sin, the same fate that seems to have made us 'virtuous'? They probably carry the burden on behalf of the virtuous!

Everything is in balance in the Perfection of Allah’s world. We must gather the courage to bless the sinners, for they may carry our burden of sin. And the sufferers, for god only knows whose burden of suffering they carry.

One who has fallen from grace has the options of realization, of atonement, of making amends. The upright have to choose between forgiveness and incarceration, sensitivity and indifference, warmth and cold, love and hatred, saving and condemning.

The choice they make determines whether they remain 'right', or fall into 'wrong' themselves! Like the hero of the tale, the blessed ones would be empathetic rather than judgemental.

Let us not be not frugal in investing in forgiveness, we do not know when we may have to redeem our investment. Let us desist from feeding the fires of grudge, hate, scorn or contempt. They only kill the warmth inside and make us colder than the object of our disdain. It shows on our countenance. We are here to practise compassion, not pity; to free ourselves from the yoke of hatred, soar with the birds in the heavens by forgiving and letting go!

The sinner has the chance to redeem and rise, the upright can only fall. Be aware!

WHERE THERE IS DARKNESS

An anecdote, again often attributed to that legend of Turkish wit and wisdom, Mullah Nasruddin, goes something like this; the Mullah was found keenly examining the ground in the glow of a street lamp late one night. A passerby asked him what he was looking for. “Oh,” said the Mullah, “I lost a silver coin!”

The friendly man joined in the search. After a while of fruitless effort, he asked the Mullah whether he remembered a little specifically where about he could have dropped the coin.

“In the compound of my hut,” Nasruddin was quick to reply!

Aghast, the friend asked the Mullah incredulously why he was wasting time looking there for something that he had lost elsewhere!

“Because, my friend, my hut is dark, and this place has light.”

Again, I maintain that Mullah Nasruddin was a wise person, and not likely to utter words in vain.
(See post ‘Praise The Moon’, December 2013)

Was the wise man trying to demonstrate so simply the humility required to perceive and accept the darkness inside us, and turn to Him who is the source of all light?

Do we need to stop living in the blind shadows of our egos, and step out to search for the treasures in the Light?

Are we stumbling around in the dark, so full of our own losses and gains that we do not venture out into the light that hides nothing?

May the good Lord give us the courage to free our souls enchained in the miserable abysses of our ambitions, desires and treacherous machinations, and let them soar towards the light that banishes all forms of Darkness!

May we turn our backs upon the dark and dreary, and fly towards Him who shines, Who leads as a kindly light!

May we surrender to the Light rather than cling to the darkness; till the Light and we are one, the darkness is banished, and we glow with His luminescence.

PRESERVATION

There are no coincidences.

Someone comes up and says, "I read your Shivratri post..."

A workshop on art and cultural heritage drilled these words into one's being; preservation, conservation, restoration. (See ‘You Don’t Need Love’, October 2013)

The Creator, The Preserver and The Destroyer work in tandem, and all existence is a continuous process of birth and death and rebirth of mind, body, spirit, intellect, morale, understanding, caring, will, good, evil, and every other idea. The three of them depend upon each other for their being.

Which brings one to thoughts about Preservation.

So many times, one stands face to face with situations where one would rather shut it all out and close one’s eyes, if it were so simple to just stop breathing. At other times, one would willingly shed every drop of blood or smother every thought that penetrates just to overcome that which threatens.

Man has problems because he thinks he has the answer to all his problems. A problem exists because it presupposes the existence of a solution, like life exists because it presupposes death.

No, this is not about the meandering paths of math and logic and science which reach a destination that already exists. This is about webs that entangle soul and spirit, where the solution lies in giving in to the problem; where the experience of and immersion in the problem is itself the solution; where problems come not with solutions but with lessons; where mine is not mine, and you are not you. Behold! The beauty of the web!

Preservation. The Destroyer demonstrates how fragile is the creation of the Creator, and the Preserver shows how strong it is. Now one understands why all the chanters repeat the names given to The Preserver in different incarnations. The creator does his job, and who would pray for destruction? Therefore, the most prayed-to god is The Preserver.

Yet they are all one; One; incomplete without each other, the only purpose of their existence being to give meaning to the being of the others. Together, they give meaning to the world.

Torture, rape, oppression and greed will always co-exist with god and truth and beauty and laughter. Good and evil will always depend upon each other for their identity. People will always pay more heed to what they think is more important.

Zeina Glo will always advocate floating above and away from the ill feelings asking not, “Why me?”, but being prepared to face it with “Why not me!”

Every parent wants utopia for his child; the utopia is here and now, if one can smile and accept the perfection of this world.

For a few seconds one is in awe of the beauty of a flower; expand that moment to encompass life.

Someone went to the Golden Temple, paid obeisance, and dissolved when his forehead touched the marble floor. Think of the whole world as that temple of gold, and dissolve wherever you are.

Each one has closets full of anger, fear, dislike, distrust, grudges and ill-feelings stored oh-so-carefully, complete with naphthalene balls and fresh newspaper laid out. Good things like holding hands or feeling the need for each other are consigned to the dust. Let us invert this; throw out the muck we have collected over the years and tilt the scales in favour of the things that make us glow from inside.

Glow, from deep within.

DEMOLITION

He Destroys!!

So much of life is a buildup of one’s Identity; as a father, as a child, as a boss, as an employee, athlete, achiever, soldier, administrator, owner, giver, negotiator, arbitrator, professional, preacher, spouse, lover and millions of other buttons that define one’s identity.

Lifetimes are spent in collecting, displaying and believing hordes of documents and learning degrees and riches and wealth and property and information that support the buildup of this great I-dentity; all trying to give definition to a soap bubble in the air, whose only identity actually is oneness with It All.

The Bubble wears garbs of religion, riches, wisdom, intellect, strength and skill. Could that possibly be why someone coined the word ‘garbage’?

The built-up apparition is visible mostly to the Bubble itself. It usually fills the Bubble with a degree of arrogance; the arrogance of the achiever, of the wealthy, of the knowledgeable, of the strong, of the powerful, of the pious, of the charitable, of the preachers and practitioners of love and giving and care, of the self-estimation of superiority in any such sphere and the resultant contempt for other bubbles.

Ah, the constant need to be doing and making and collecting and achieving! The derision towards one who would stand idle and wonder!

Indeed, wondrous are the ways of God! The breeze of arrogance carries the Bubble farther and farther away from mother earth, terra firma, reality, life and death, God himself.

Then?

A little prick, a gentle swish, one of the countless small obstacles that the most grandiose plans always overlook - health, timing, age, secrets, mood, nature, anything - and the Bubble bursts. Whither the trappings of wealth, power, piety, and strength? Where the wisdom, skill or achievements? One ‘wrong’ circumstance, and the I-I-dentity stands naked before the world, open to ridicule and contempt.

The end?

No! The Builder demolishes, only to build anew! The Bubble loses identity, and is faced with a chance to build afresh; with arrogance or without, with deception or without, with contempt or without, with the One or without. Witnesses to the Demolition also face the same choices; to sympathize or to hold in contempt, to forgive or to condemn, to look back in despair or to look forward with hope.

Fear not, little bubble! This time round, we will leave the external trappings alone. We shall fill ourselves from the inside with love and god and thanks and wonder and caring and tolerance and forgiveness and remembrance and serenity and delight. The Surgeon wielded the knife with great love and care, only the malignant tissue was removed; in time, what remains will be restored to good health and the fading scars will remind one not of the cancer that was inside but of the Master who operated.

When the bubble bursts this time, it may exude a fragrance that enchants.

Demolition; it brings us face to face with the illusion of reality. Must we die to see the truth? Can we not die before Death finally takes us away, and greet each new day as a rebirth, a second chance, a wondrous gift? Can we get so used to this death in life that we welcome it as surrender and dissolution? One.

Mitti.