Where butterflies have gone?

”Please don’t catch them you would hurt them, their wings would lose the color and beauty” I used to appeal like this to my siblings and friends in my childhood whenever I saw them in hunt for butterflies. I was fearful that the butterflies would fly away never to return back and I would lose the unending joy and pleasure which they provided with their beautiful and majestic presence. These small and fragile insects had such a great impact on me whenever I had the chance to see them.

I so much detested the hobby of all those who used to catch and preserve butterflies in their scrap books on the pretext of immortalizing them. This was a habit of possessiveness; people want to possess all beauty, all good things in life. Beauty and all good things are the pleasures that must be shared and not possessed.

Today, we find that this habitat is fast vanishing and we seldom see the beautiful and colorful sight of these delicate creatures. Where the butterflies have gone?, I haven’t seen them in years! Environmentalists tell us that this is now a global issue and we are losing these beautiful creatures very fast and each one of us has to protect “their” butterflies.

Protecting butterflies mean much more than merely protecting them. Butterflies are the symbol of beauty, civilization, love, life, environment, relationships, harmony and the wholeness of being. When each one of us saves our part of butterflies, then we actually had indulged in saving and serving all that which they symbolize.

Love is Alpha and Omega

Totally unconditional, for all, without any rhyme and reason, available not on demand but as a way of life, this is love for me. I have not to see who is who while I love; I have just to see that I do that. I have a very simple idea about love, it is something which does not need reciprocity, and it has nothing to do with sympathy, forgiveness and possessiveness. It is something without motives, without any measure of incentives or gratification. There is no give and take in love; it is just pure form of bliss.

Just visualize the mother and Infant, the love of mother is so translucent that without love we see nothing else, her caring, her nurturing, her dedication, her every effort and gesture in comforting the child are the prime example of love that we see without much notice. Then the other most unnoticed love is the love that God shows towards us. He loves us like our mothers or even more, totally unconditional, without any sort of incentive and motives. He loves all those who respond to his love and He also loves all those who are antagonist.

Everything in universe shows this unconditional love for everything (*). Just look at the trees they just share their riches with us without incentives, the sun, the moon, the beautiful twinkling stars, the cool morning breeze, the colorful spring, the warm winter afternoons, the roaring lakes in the beautiful valleys and the lush green landscapes, oh what a sight, they all give us so much without any demand. This all is just to remind us that nature shows us the way of love.

There is a legend that Cranes, the large and graceful long-legged birds, frequently carried small birds on their backs during the long migratory flights, especially when crossing over water while traveling between Northern Europe and Africa. This is another example of nature showing us the way of love.

So what is love: to me it is Alpha and Omega!


(*)Line inspired from Urooj Malik's post on Universality and Human Beings at http://unityinuniverse.blogspot.com

A Pearl

A mist rises somewhere from the heart and travels upstream, reaches to the windows of self and recollect itself, shines and gleams with the multitude colors of love, desire, bravery, pathos, longing, waiting, distress, melancholy, joy, excitement and hope. The mist now incubates and turns into a pearl in the shell of an eye. When any one from these colors reaches its optimum fullness the incubation ends and the pearl slides down from the lids and become a tear.

Some tears are shed when we are overpowered with agony, some when we are longing for loved ones, some are shed with grief, and there are some which are tears of joy and ecstasy. Some tears are termed as crocodile tears, though the term is vague as no such evidence is available on maligning these creatures with tear bashing.



There is an opinion that the greatest tears are those which are shed due to fear of God. I feel uncomfortable with this term as well. In fear everything dries up even the life giving blood, what to say of tears! God is all love and why fear him, do we fear our mother and father or do we love and respect them? When in times of deep love and remembrance of God tears come out, but these are not due to fear but due to unequivocal love and acute state of bliss.

Tear is the most precious liquid known to man but has a two prong effect; it can make or break a person. This treasure is needed for self insemination hence it is so much different than other precious treasures that one can impart to others. This fluid is for self watering and nourishment and should be preserved and used sparingly for cultivating the personality

Rashid Minhas- a biography

The book is the most moving biographical account of pilot officer Rashid Minhas Shaheed (1951-1971) Nishan-e-Haider. This is the first full biography of Rashid Minhas, written by the most stylist modern day writer of Pakistan, Khurram Ali Shafique and is a first publication of Al-Fattah Academy.

The book beautifully captures the formative years of Rashid Minhas , which are so important in understanding his personality and his ultimate decision that has made him the eternal hero, and then progresses like dramatic movie with lively characterization, beautiful narratives of places and exciting cadet life. This all builds up into one of the most sad climaxes with crashing of flight 166.

I personally loved the letters Rashid Minhas wrote to his younger brothers during his training days. These letters show genuineness and maturity of his ideas. He was an idealist but thoroughly practical person as well. The book sizes him on all aspects of his personality, his likes and dislikes, his favorite personalities, heroes, films, books and food.

The book is a great tribute to the sacrifice of this hero and his ideals and at the same time a lesson that life is not the name of mere surviving but life is living according to one’s ideals and if not possible then dying for these.

Myth of a Tree

Watch for a good few seconds and you will realize that tree is more than an object of serenity. It's a man, a complete and ideal man.

For me tree has been a symbol of genuineness and completeness of a man. I have always tried to look those qualities in human beings.

Look how it is Standing up tall and with roots firmly grounded showing the attachment with the realities and fundamentals and standing up in face of all odds and diversity facing and confronting without running away as there is no place to run from self.

Even when it is standing alone it does not show loneliness as the branches are like extended arms waiting to welcome the world, without any measure of discrimination on any count. This posture is lively and adamant that it offers unlimited friendship to the world for peaceful coexistence.

High flying birds sits and enjoy their nestling on high branches and at the same time the crawling creatures also crawl and climb at top, that shows tree's companionship can elevate those also to the heights who on their own could have never reached there.

Tree's leaves provide shade in the simmering heat like protecting all those who look forward to their friends and guardians and moments of distress.

Flowers are like beautiful thoughts and speech engaging others with pleasantries and good company.

Fruits are those meaningful acts that benefits others and the only benefit that tree derives from its fruits is the satisfaction that people know and remember tree by its fruit. So are our righteous or otherwise acts with which we are known at large.

The nature has so miraculously designed it that it contains all blue-prints of a complete person that gives everything that it has without seeking any reward and taking back as little as possible.

A Perpetual Love Affair

I am greatly fascinated by her; I simply love her sight and all places and abodes where ever she resides is like a sacred sanctuary to me. My love affair started with her at my adolescence, she was so young and beautiful than, she has maintained her youth and majesty and grown even prettier. To her overwhelming and startling beauty, grace has been added. Her acquaintance is like a treasure to me an insurmountable treasure that she fosters.

Her feel, her contours, the scent of her smell all combined makes her the most ravishing, most exotic and highly desirable. Her beauty is not just skin deep she has added other dimensions to her serenity , her exalted beauty transcends all known barriers of time and space. She coexists with me despite various differences of opinions and sometimes with even divergent and opposite views.

What ever I hide from myself I see in her and whatever others hide from me I discover all in her, she is like a mirror to me, a mirror that see's within and also without, I call her my BOOK.

Book talks to me and I frequently indulge in conversation with her. During reading, I often, start reading into her which makes me the co-author of the Book. I have always maintained that Book is written by three writers, one who pen's the script, second the character which is being scripted, third is the reader who is not a passive but an active author of book, as book evolves with the participation of reader, it grows outside and also inside the reader, a most astonishing and rare phenomenon something incomparable with other things but only equal to that miraculous human spirit.

Dichotomy

It was early morning, and I am an early riser, I rise with the sun, when the first rays of sun light knocks at my window.

The window of my bedroom overlooks the lawn and as I glanced at the lawn, the grass was shinning with the morning dew and it looked as if the twinkling stars after waking for whole night were lying at grass blinking their eyes.

There was someone in the lawn. His back was at me and he was holding small garden scissor and was busy in trimming the withered leaves. He was fully immersed in this activity and was completely oblivious of the surroundings. His mannerisms were very cultivated and civilized and he was handling plants very professionally. His each gesture looked in complete harmony with his wholeness. He was breathing and inhaling the freshness of the morning aroma and was looking relaxed.

Then he started talking to the plants, he was whispering something to Ixoras and I felt they responded by swinging the beautiful orange/yellow flowers, at that moment morning breeze was not strong enough to have made them sway. I felt the plants were over vehemently responding to him.

Then he sat on his hunches and very delicately touched the leaves, on a closer look I found he was cleaning them. I Gleaned very intensely from my window on to the leaves and was amazed to find that the leaves were rapidly changing their color, I could not believe my eyes but the sepia of leaves were turning from emerald to viridian. What he was telling to the plants, which made them blush and filled there veins with energy? It must be something very interesting and uplifting as there visual appearance was transcribing the illuminated self of being, vibrant, fulfilled, self sufficient and joyous.

This was the time when he turned and our eyes met and I was starring at myself, there was nobody in the lawn and Ixoras were silent and still. That moment in time it dawned on me that it was a message for me, what I have been neglecting lately.
In the so called busyness of life owing to work and other self centered activities, I was ignoring and compromising on my relationships. Having no time for family, friends and close relatives, who so much look forward to have quality time with me! The relationships need watering, cleaning, preparations and nurturing like plants. If we do not care than this beautiful garden can very quickly convert into a field of weeds.

I pondered for a while a sat down to write my reflections!

Khurram Ali Shafique

Khurram Ali Shafique’s “Shakespeare according to Iqbal” is an intriguing episode in finding ground breaking connection in the Nezami-Rumi-Shakespeare-Iqbal quartet . A mystery, thicker than Dan Brown’s Da-Vinci Code.

The following connections are extremely fascinating:

1)Tempest’s Nine conflicts and gulshan e raaz e jadeed’s nine questions.

2)Tempest’s seven major conflicts and Nezami’s Haft Paykar.

3)Tempest’s seven major conflicts and Iqbal’s seven couplets on Shakespeare.

4)Tempest’s five later conflicts and Nizami’s quintet.

All this seems very mesmerizing. Some critics say that the character of Prospero was Shakespeare personified, then the drowning of his books resembles with drowning/burning of books of Rumi.( in the book WAY OF LOVE it is narrated that books were drowned in a well).

Look at the following passage from Nezami Ghanjavi:

“Divine command on the day of creation did not produce anything more charming than language, do not consider those who have this gift, ever to be dead: they are like fish, having lowered themselves just beneath the surface of speech: they shall reappear sooner than you utter their names…..” what a paragraph !

In holy Quran one Sura (Chapter) starts with “Noon wal Kalm” mystics have referred “noon “to fish and “Kalm” to knowledge, language and power. In ancient symbol’s and modern abstract arts fish stands for sustainable life.

This is a diminutive volume but a Book that will usher a new approach to understanding collective ego, the book is published by Iqbal Academy Pakistan.

What is Sufism?

There are as many views and definitions about Sufism as there are the commentators, so I take this history into perspective and offer my understanding to this term Sufism. The beauty of this term allows the bystanders to see outward and explore the visual abundance of Sufism and likewise it also allows the indulger to see inward and reflect the hidden manifestations.

To me Sufism is the meeting point of body and spiritual desires. This is the point where lust converts into love, desires becomes generosity, envy becomes sympathy, anger becomes compassion and body becomes as important as soul, matter becomes as holy as spirit, physical world seems as sacred as metaphysical believes. Each person, each life, everything in this temporal biosphere becomes my responsibility as vicegerent and I become responsible and accountable for all that is around. This is my understanding of Sufism, without any brand, any dogma and of course any silsila.

The Undivided Wholeness of All Things

To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
--WILLIAM BLAKE


The physicist David Bohm and his idea of a Holographic universe has fascinated me for years and I refer him as a SUFI SCIENTIST. His Book WHOLENESS AND IMPLICATE ORDER, I read as sacred text. Since I do not have a scientific academic background but the fascination provides ample motivation to striving and enduring.
Most interesting of his idea is about wholeness. As everything in the cosmos is made out of seamless holographic fabric of implicate order, Bohm believes it is meaningless to view the universe as composed of parts, as it is to view different geysers in a fountain as separate from the water out of which they flow. Everything in the universe is part of a continuum.

He also believes that dividing the universe up into living and non living things also has no meaning. Animate and inanimate matters are inseparably interwoven and life too is enfolded throughout the totality of the universe. Even a rock is in same way alive, for life and intelligence are present not only in matter but in energy, space and time.

The idea that consciousness and life and indeed all things are ensembles enfolded throughout the universe has an equally dazzling flip side. Just as every portion of the hologram contains the image of the whole or a single DNA possess he complete blueprint of a person, every portion of the universe enfolds whole. This means that if we knew how to access it we could find the Andromeda galaxy in the thumbnail of our left hand. Every cell in our body enfolds the entire cosmos, so does every leaf, every raindrop and every dust mote.

PS: this is inspired from David Bohm’s “Wholeness and Implicate Order” and Michael Talbots “The Holographic Universe”

Woman of Substance

Today is international Day for Women, and a perfect time to remember our Woman of substance Parveen Shakir(1952-1994) a poetess of extreme caliber, style, passion and talent. A woman petite and fragile in looks but like a rock in her principle stands towards life and the values she stood for. Living in a society where women were still fighting for their basic rights, her femininity was not a limiting factor when it came to express her point of view in poetry or prose. She was popular both with critics and public because of ingenuity of her words and the skill that tuned the right chords.

Her poetics works Khushboo(Fragrance)
Sudburg(Marsh Marigold)
Khudkalami(Monologue)
Inkar(Refusal) is a journey of a young idealist girl to a woman of substance.

ADVICE TO A FRIEND
by Parveen Shakir

Listen, Girl, These moments are clouds:
You let them Pass and they are gone .
Soak up their moist touch .
Get drenched .
Don’t waste a single drop.
Listen, Downpours don’t remember streets ,
And sunshine Can’t read Road signs

The First Rain

Pehli Barish (The First Rain) is an incredible poetic work of one of Urdu’s most popular and eminent poet Nasir Kazmi (1925-1972). Pehli Barish was published posthumously in 1975, although it was completed in 1972 before his death, but Nasir Kazmi was reluctant to its publication then, as he was of the view that his readers were not yet ready for this experiment which was new in form and content.

In Pehli Barish we see Nasir Kazmi in a new and completely different mode, much more mysterious and symbolic. The poems of Pahli Barish which consists of 24 Gazals (poems) and 219 Ashaar(couplets) are in form of a complete story line. Each Couplet and Poem though complete in itself is also part of a bigger picture that leads to a complete story. Pehli Barish is a journey, a search of a friend, a lover, a home, a paradise that is found, lost and regained. More this is a search of Self, which the poet finally discovers after losing everything but the remembrance of God brings peace, solace and ultimate realization that this journey was an experience and it has to end one day, but it ended finally after the true companion was found.

This is metaphorically very rich Book, although very simple as you read along but this simplicity leads you nowhere if the metaphors are not understood. These metaphors are from mythology, religion, literature, and human evolution and are beautifully and artistically vulcanized by the poet and thus he presents one of the most beautiful collages of poetic excellence that breath and pulsates like an organ.

The first rains that this grand poem brought is still drizzling somewhere inside my unconsciousness and soaking the untouched, unattended and unreached myths and realities of my being,The First Rain, to me means a Search. A Search after receiving the bliss from the first drop of rain that created Life and recognition of Life.

A Life of One's Own

Marion Milner (1900-1998), was a British author and psychoanalyst, and a pioneer of introspective journaling. At the age of 26 she began to keep a diary, this was because it slowly became clear to her that, her life was not as it ought to be, although from external point of view it was going very well, since she was earning her living in interesting work, having a full leisure life and plenty of friends. The book ‘A Life of One’s Own’ grew out of this seven years diary and this amply exhibits what journaling and dairy writing do. Following are excerpts from this book which was first published in 1934.

“When I first began, at the end of each day, to go through what had happened and pick out what seemed best to me, I had quite unexpected results. Before I began this experiment, when I had drifted through life unquestioningly, I had measured my life in terms of circumstances. I had thought I was happy when I was having what was generally considered ‘a good time’. But when I began to try and balance up each day’s happiness I had found that there were certain moments which had a special quality of their own, a quality which seemed to be almost independent of what was going on around me, since they occurred sometimes on the most trivial occasions. They stood out because of a feeling of happiness which was far beyond what I had ordinarily meant by ‘enjoying myself’, and because of this they tended to oust all other concerns in my daily record.”

“By keeping a diary of what made me happy I had discovered that happiness came when I was most widely aware. So I had finally come to the conclusion that my task was to become more and more aware, more and more understanding with an understanding that was not at all the same thing as intellectual comprehension. I had come to realize that it was not, after all, a question of a life of consciousness as against a life of natural impulse; for without consciousness, for me at least, there was no freedom of natural expression, but only a clash of haphazardly acquired conventions and welter of opposing and misunderstood ideals. Without understanding I was at the mercy of blind habit; with understanding, I could develop my own rules for living and find out which of the conflicting exhortations of a changing civilization was appropriate to my needs.”

No More Horizons

A lonely tree of hope
Swaying but standing tall,
Stretching its arm
extending embrace,
In a spring that is ripe for pruning past,
cultivating the future,
The vanished birds are re-appearing,
Coming back and singing the forgotten songs,
Wind whispering and echoing symphonies of glorious mysteries,
Leaves fluttering and shining with
drops of morning dew,
They gleaming like a tear on beloved's cheek,
That washes away all the mistrust and all the misdeeds.

Why Not the Best?

Colin Wilson (1931) is a prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction. In 1956 at the age of 24 he wrote his first non-fictional work The Outsider, which was both praised and highly criticized. The work examines and explores the psyche of the social outsider and his effect on society and society’s effect on him through the works and lives of various artists including Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, T.S.Elliot, Earnest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Vincent Van Gogh, Friedrick Nietzsche and Fydor Dostoevsky. In the final chapter of this Book he justifies his belief that Western Philosophy is afflicted with a heedless pessimistic fallacy.

Three years later in an Autobiographical note he wrote an interesting insight about the ultimate question that lies behind the Outsider, which is now part of his book Religion and the Rebel:

“How can man extend his range of consciousness? I believe that human beings experience a range of mental states which is as narrow as the middle three notes of a piano keyboard. I believe that the possible range of mental state is as wide as the whole piano keyboard, and the man’s sole aim and business is to extend his range from usual three or four notes to the whole keyboard. The men I dealt with in the Outsider had one thing in common: an instinctive knowledge that their range could be extended, and a nagging dissatisfaction with the range of their everyday experience.”

The Question which each one of us is confronted with, consciously and unconsciously is: Why not the best?

A Shameless Worship of Heroes

Will Durant (1885-1981) author of critically acclaimed eleven–volume master piece The Story of Civilization and The Story of Philosophy wrote some independent inspiring articles which were published posthumously in a smart volume The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time in 2002. Following excerpts are from a classic article A Shameless Worship of Heroes:

“Of the many ideals which in youth gave a meaning and radiance missing from the chilly perspective of middle age, one at least has remained with me as bright and satisfying as ever before-the shameless worship of heroes. I say shameless, for I know how unfashionable it is now to acknowledge in life or history any genius loftier than ourselves.

Why should we stand reverent before waterfalls and mountaintops, or summer moon on a quite sea, and not before the highest miracle of all: a man who is both great and good? So many of us are mere talents, clever children in the play of life, that when genius stands in our presence we can only bow down before it as an act of God, a continuance of creation. Such men are the very life-blood of history, to which politics and industry are but frames and bones.

No, the real history of man is not in prices and wages, nor in elections and battles, nor in the even tenor of common man; it is the lasting contributions made by geniuses to the sum of human civilization and culture. The history of France is not, if one may say it with all courtesy, the history of the French people; the history of those nameless men and women who tilled the soil, cobbled the shoes, cut the cloth, and peddled the goods(for these things has been done everywhere and always)- the history of France is the record of her exceptional men and women, her inventors, scientist, statesmen, poets, artists, musicians, philosophers, and saints, and of the additions which they made to the technology and wisdom, the artistry and decency, of their people and mankind. “

For us Muhammad Ali Jinnah is one such hero.

It's the Spectator that Art Really Mirrors

The last post mentioned 13 Books that changed the way America is, wanted to list out 13 such books for Pakistan, which will do in some later post. This post is about those thirteen that influenced me.

Oscar Wilde in the preface of Picture of Dorian Gray speaks about art, some pickings from that would be interesting before I list out books.”The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal artist is art’s aim. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are cultivated. For these there is hope. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril. Those who read symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”

MY THIRTEEN
01-KHUTBAT (Sermons’) by A.A.Mududi
A foremost book about pillars of Islam, and a very precise and logical narrations of these tenants.

02-APOLOGY by Plato
Details of trial and sentence of Socrates. “ I must tell you the truth-the result of my mission was first this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that some inferior men were really wiser and better”

03-IBLIS O ADAM (Devil and Adam) by G.A.Perwez
Origin and Geneses paradoxes understood in light of Quran and modern empirical knowledge.

04-MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING by Victor Frankl
“Ultimately man should not ask what meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.”

05-RAAKH (Ashes’) by Mustansar Hussain Tarar
A novel classically deals with the history of Pakistan, often considered as controversial but ground breaking.

06-BEING AND NOTHINGNESS by Jean Paul Sartre
“Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away… To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.”

07-THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHTS IN ISLAM by Allama Iqbal
The seven lectures that are key to our understanding of Islam and the world around us: Past, Present and Future.

08-KAFILA E HIJAZ (The Caravan of Arabia) by Nasim Hijazi
A historical fiction, written in most admirable and lucid prose portraying early rise of Islamic polity, economy and education system.

09-LES MISERABLES by Victor Hugo
“Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”

10-RAJA GIDH (King Vulture) by Bano Qudsia
An Urdu novel emphasizing that sins not only degrade and destroy the sinner morally but also corrupts his genes and travels to next generation.

11-SIDDAHRATA by Hermann Hesse
“When someone is seeking… it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything… because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.”

12-PLEASURES OF PHILOSOPHY by Will Durant
“To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves.”

13-GERMINAL by Emile Zola
“He simply wanted to go down the mine again, to suffer and to struggle; “

Life in Transcription

Books are my passion, when I was at the 6th KIBF (Karachi International Book Fair) which concluded recently, it was just like finding oneself among friends, companions, teachers and guides.

It is often said that books change our perception, our way of thinking, our world view and hence the world around us. A book which is to be published in mid January 2010 “Promised Land: Thirteen Books” by Jay Parini is about those Thirteen Books that changed the way America is forever and helped to create the nation that it is.

Books are life and wisdom in transcription. The following passage from one of my favorite French Novelist Marcel Proust brilliantly describes what a Book means:

“In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.”

Life trilogy-Views of a Biologist, a Psychologist and a Sufi

A biologist says that Life is evolutionary exuberance; it is what happens when expanding populations of sensing, active organisms knock up against each other and work things out. Life is animals at play. It is a marvel of inventions for cooling and warming, collecting and dispersing, eating and evading, wooing and deceiving.

A psychologist says that Life means to contribute to the whole. Individuals are bound by a triple tie-to the earth on which one must live, to the human species with which one must interact, and to a sex. From these ties derive the three categories of problems of life.

A Sufi says that the point of Life is not to get anywhere; it is to notice that you are, in the moment of creation. The point of life is therefore to create-who and what you are and then to experience it.

When we look around we see Life much more according to the biologist’s view-eating, evading, wooing and deceiving and less according to Sufi's view of creating and procreating. Why?

The Curve of Memory

Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984)

Today is his 25th Death Anniversary

He was the man and the poet that captivated my imagination all my youth. His poetry casted a spell and showed me the path in utter serenity of love for humanity. Faiz not only raised Urdu poetry to new heights of perception and eloquence but also filled it with the sensibilities of human touch. As it is said there is no final view of things in Faiz; he is supremely aware of man’s vulnerability and yet he believes in the possibility of happiness.

LOVE’S CAPTIVES

Wearing necklaces of the hangman’s noose
The singers kept on singing
Tinkling the ankle-bells of their fetters
The dancers merrily jigged their dance.
We in neither one group, nor the other
Stood by the roadside
Watching enviously
And wept silent tears.
On returning home
The erstwhile red flowers
Had turned deathly pale
And where there was once a heart
Now there was only pain.
Round our necks hallucinations of a noose
And on our feet the dance of chains.
Then one day came Love
And like the others haltered and enchained
Dragged us into the same caravan

Translated by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Loneliness and two great Poets

FAIZ AHMED FAIZ (1911-1984)

Loneliness

There is someone at the door, dear heart!
Nay, there is none
Or might be a wanderer
He will go hence, plodding his weary way.
Night is done
And evaporates in thin air the starry mist.
In palaces quiver the sleeping lamps
Hanging by their chains of gold.
The solitary paths are sunk in despair
And the unfriendly dust
Has obliterated the foot prints
Fill the cups and drink to the lees
The bitter wine of loneliness.
Lock up your slumbers less doors, dear heart!
For, now no one will ever ever come here.

The above poem translated by Daud Kamal and is taken from his book “Selected Poems of Faiz in English”. On 20th November 2009 is Faiz’s 25th Death Anniversary.

ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)

Now Close the Windows

Now close the windows and hush all the fields:
If the trees must, let them silently toss;
No bird is singing now, and if there is,
Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,
It will be long ere the earliest bird:
So close the windows and not hear the wind,
But see all wind-stirred.

The Whisper of Evening Wind

A Poem

The crimson of the morning sun
Melts in the gold by the day
Me immersed in my wayward thoughts
You in your toiling day

Dawn to dusk
We wither and wither and sway
Counting the tasks
Beyond the grasps far and away

The gold of the dissolving day
Turning crimson to vanishing nay
Evening wind whispering slowly
Thou have lost another day

Transformation:Good to Bad

Philip Zimbardo is Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. His famous ground breaking work Stanford Prison Experiment now has been published in a very detailed a researched volume titled THE LUCIFER EFFECT. His research is based on the notion that Certain circumstances makes people bad and evil and he conducts a mock prison, to check his thesis, and the results are startling. Following is a passage from Chapter ONE of his book:

“The Lucifer Effect is my attempt to understand the process of transformation at work when good or ordinary people do bad or evil things. We will deal with the fundamental question ‘What makes the people go wrong?’ But instead of resorting to a traditional religious dualism of good versus evil, of wholesome nature versus corrupting nature, we will look at the real people engaged in life’s daily tasks, enmeshed in doing their jobs, surviving within a turbulent crucible of human nature. We will seek to understand the nature of their character transformations when they are faced with powerful situational forces.

Let’s begin with a definition of evil. Mine is simple, psychologically based one: Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy innocent others—or using one’s authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behalf. In short ,it is knowing better but doing worse.”

Most of us hide behind egocentric biases that generate the illusions that we are special. Theses self serving protective shields allow us to believe that each of us is above average on any test of integrity. Too often we look at the stars through the thick lens of personal invulnerability when we should also look down to the slippery slope beneath our feet. Such egocentric biases are more commonly found in societies that foster independent orientations, such as Euro-American cultures, and less so in collectivist-oriented societies, such as Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

The Goal of Existence

The divergent opinion gives fillip to achieving new possibilities and exposes us towards the dimensions that are writ with variety and choices. The goal of existence is worship and worship is spiritual, temporal and spatial exuberance.

Worship is not ONLY a prayer performed in a mosque, a church, a temple, a synagogue etc….or in a lonely solitude of a home; it’s also not only a remembrance of the Beloved in dire times or in moments of fulfillment and bliss. Worship is loving the family, nation, and all forms of Life.

Worship is standing on a shore of a deep blue sea and admiring the beauty of a sunset, watching in awe the twinkling little stars, feeling the soft gentle and cool morning breeze and praising its sublimity, feeling insignificant but tall amid the majesty of the magnificent mountains.

Worship is respect for all and sundry, WORSHIP is finding the Grace of Creator through His Creation, touching the benevolence of Creator by holding a hand in need…

Evil and error are not forms of reality

There such things as "sick souls"--souls that are unsound, evil,
are perverse-as opposed to "souls" that are "healthy"?

This was the question raised by BENEDETTO CROCE (1866-1954) an Italian Critic, Philosopher and best known author of Aesthetics of Twentieth century. He has some interesting insights about goodness and evil. Following is a passage from his book THE CONDUCT OF LIFE:

Evil and error are not "forms of reality," as people sometimes doggedly
assert, but nothing more nor less than the transition from one form of
reality to another, and from one form of the Spirit to another of its
forms--the Spirit, in its effort to attain the higher coming to regard
the lower as irrational, erroneous, evil. We have evidence of this in
the fact that wrong-doing is always attended by a consciousness of doing
wrong, by an effort, that is--it may be a faint one--to overcome evil;
and this effort constitutes the true definition of "good." In accepting
this point of view we are in no danger of slipping into a crass
optimism, or worse still, into brute determinism; for here we are
denying the reality of evil by making it implicit in the good, an
aspect, therefore, a constituent, of the good, as eternal as the good
itself; and the process we affirm is a process of liberation, of
freedom

An unlimited idea of freedom

“How much more there is to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there’s a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!”

This is from a book JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL written by the bestselling author Richard Bach. The simple story and the numerous beautiful photographs of seagulls that captivated me all my childhood and I learned a lesson or two about life and Meaning of Life from it.

The story is about a seagull and the decision it makes about his life, following is the most powerful passage of the book and the one around which the story revolves:

“Each of us is in truth an idea of the Great gull, an unlimited idea of freedom, and precision flying is a step towards expressing our real nature. Everything that limits us we have to put aside. That’s why all this high-speed practice, and low speed, and aerobatics…” “Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see. Break the chains of your thoughts, and you break the chains of your body, too…”

Every individual is an Experiment

This is part II of previous post WHY WE LIVE. This I have recollected from my journal but unfortunately I just lost the reference, but never the less the argument is there:

Every individual is an experiment on part of nature, a throw into the unknown; his only vocation should be to allow this throw to work itself out in his inner most being. Humanity is not something complete that must be maintained and protected, but a distant goal towards which we were marching. Moreover because darkness and light resides within each of us, becoming conscious of our own evil is our only hope in a world where our capacity for destruction is weighed against the soul’s capacity for compassion and regeneration.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Why We Live

The greatest Sufi Master Sheikh Muhammad Mohiuddin Ibn ul Arabi (1165-1240) commonly known as Ibn Arabi said "meaning of Life is nothing but Life itself". In my journal where I write reminisces I wrote following after reading a Book “Good and Evil” by Richard Taylor. The following point of view so effectively resonates with greatest Sufi master’s remarks, but then Sheikhs remarks are always elusive. This is one point of view; I would come up with others’ also, as this remark always fascinated me to look for its all possible dimensions and meanings.


The point of any living thing's life is, evidently, nothing but life itself. If the builders of a great and flourishing ancient civilization could somehow return now to see archaeologists unearthing the trivial remnants of what they had once accomplished with such effort-see the fragments of pots and vases, a few broken statues, and such token of another age and greatness-they could indeed ask themselves what the point it all was, if this is all it finally came to. Yet, it did not seem so to them then, for it was just the building, and not what was finally built, that gave their life meaning. This is surely the way to look at all of life-at one's own life, and each day and moment it contains; of the life of a nation; of the species; of the life of the world; and of everything that breathes. Even the glow worms, whose cycles of existence over the millions of years seem so pointless when looked at by us, will seem entirely different to us if we can somehow try to view from within. Their endless activity, which gets nowhere, is just what it is their will to purse. This is its whole justification and meaning. Nor would it be any salvation to the birds that span the globe every year back and forth, to have a home made for them in a cage with plenty of food and protection, so that they would not have to migrate any more. It would be their condemnation, for it is the doing that counts for them, and not what they hope to win by it. You no sooner drew your first breath than you responded to the will that was in you to live. You no more ask whether it will be worthwhile, or whether anything of significance will come of it, than the worm and the birds. The point of living is simply to be living, in the manner that it is your nature to be living.


You go through life building your castles, each of these beginning to fade into time as the next is begun; yet it would be a condemnation, and one that would in no way be redeemed were you able to gaze upon the things you have done, even if these were beautiful and absolutely permanent, as they never are. What counts is that you should be able to begin a new task, a new castle, a new bubble. It counts only because it is there to be done and you have the will to do it.

COMING UP OTHER POINTS OF VIEW SOON.

When Life is Bitter

THE GREATEST MINDS AND IDEAS OF ALL TIME is compilation of Will Durant’s essays, compiled and edited by John Little. Following is a beautiful passage from this book on LIFE, RELATIONSHIPS and BOOKS which is worth reading and remembering:

This, then, is our Odyssey of books. Here is another world, containing the selected excellence of a hundred generations; not quite so fair and vital as this actual world of nature and human enterprise, but abounding nevertheless in unsuspected wisdom and beauty unexplored. Life is better than literature, friendship is sweeter than philosophy, and children reach into our hearts with profounder music than comes from any symphony, but even so these living delights offer no derogation to the modest and secondary pleasures of our books.

When life is bitter, or friendship slips away, or perhaps our children leave us for their own haunts and homes, we shall come and sit at the table with Shakespeare and Goethe, and laugh at the world of Rabelais, and see its autumn loveliness with John Keats. For these are friends who give us only their best, who never answers back and always wait our call. When we have walked with them awhile, and listened humbly to their speech, we shall be healed of our infirmities, and know the peace that comes of understanding.

Relationship is Existence

I have been keeping a journal for a long time, sometimes writing my reminisces, poetry, sketches of people whom I meet-drawing and writing about them, writing some words again and again without any reason or rhyme and noting lines and passages from the books which inspires during their reading. Following are two notes from my reading of J.KRISHNAMURTI, from whom I learned that truth is pathless territory and one cannot approach it by any path!

RELATIONSHIPS
Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself. Without relationship you are not; to be is to be related; to be related is existence. You exist only in relationship; otherwise you do not exist; existence has no meaning. It is not because you think you are that you come into existence. You exist because you are related; and it is the lack of understanding of relationship that causes conflict.

MEDITATION
Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life-perhaps the greatest and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody. That is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealously, if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation.

If there is magic

LOREN EISELEY (1907-1977) naturalist, philosopher, poet was the man who showed us, how to love nature, not as a bystander or the observer but as a part of it, as one that is observed. How to love, even the small and insignificant, the big and the mighty, all as friends, nobody in this natural park was an enemy , as all were contributing towards a single and most sacred path, the path of Life, and protecting its uninterrupted glorious cycle.

LOREN EISELEY wrote several books, THE IMMENSE JOURNEY, THE FIREMAMENT OF TIME, THE NIGHT COUNTRY and THE LOST NOTE BOOKS are my most cherished treasure. I would like to share a passage from THE IMMENSE JOURNEY, Chapter, Flow of the River:

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. Its least stir even, as now in a rain pond on a flat roof opposite my office, is enough to bring me searching to the window. A wind ripple may be translating itself into life. I have a constant feeling that some time I may witness that momentous miracle on a city roof, see life vertiably and suddenly boiling out of a heap of rusted pipes and old telivision aerials. I marvel at how a sudden water beetle has come and is submarining there in a spatter of green algae. Thin vapors, rust, wet tar and sun are alembic remarkably like the mind; they throw off odorous shadows that threaten to take real shape when no one is looking.



Onec in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole enos, the enos that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort. The mind has sunk away into its beginings among old roots and the obscure tricklings and moving that stir inanimate things.



No utilitarian philosophy explains a snow crystal, no doctrine of use or disuse. Water has merely leapt out of vapor and thin nothingness in the night sky to array itself in form. There is no logical reason for existence of a snowflake any more than there is for evolution. it is an apparition from that mysterious shadow world beyond nature, that final world which contains-if anything contains-the explanation of men and catsish and green leaves.

Equality in Diversity

M.Scott Peck , the psychiatrist, the legendary author of THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED also wrote a very significant book IN SEARCH OF STONES, which is sub-titled as "A pilgrimage of Faith, Reason and Discovery"



The Book is a complete reflection on spirituality, faith and inner quest. Here I would like to share a passage from this Book's Chapter PEACE:



We are all equal in sight of God. Beyond that, however, we are utterly unequal. we have different gifts and liabilities, different genes, different languages and cultures, different values and styles and thinking, different personal histories, different levels of competence, and so on, and so on. Indeed might be properly labeled "the unequal species." What most distinguishes us from all the creatures is our extraordinary diversity and the variability of our behavior. Equal? Just in the the moral sphere alone we range from the horribly demonic to the gloriously angelic.



The false notion of our equality propels us into the pretense of pseudo-community, and when the pretense fails, as it must for any intimacy or authenticity, then it propels us to attemt to achieve equality by force: the force of gentle persuasion followed by less and less gentle persuasion. We totally misinterpret our task. Society's task is not to establish equality. It is to develop systems that deal humanely with our unequality-systems that, within reason, celebrate and encourage diversity.

Diminutive Volume, Immense Book-2

ON THE MEANING OF LIFE

In the fall of 1930, historian , philosopher and author of The Story of Civilization, Will Durant (1885-1981) found himself outside his New York home, raking leaves. A well dressed man approached Durant and told him in quite tone that, unless the revered teacher could give him a valid reason not to, he intended to kill himself. Durant offered the stranger several quick reasons to live, and the man turned and left, never to be seen again.

Haunted by his encounter with the despondent stranger, Durant contacted 100 liminaries in arts, politics, religion and sciences, challenging them to respond to the fundamental question:
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE?
Out of the hundred only few replied and they included; Theodore Dreiser, H.L.Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, John Erskine, Charles A. Beard, John Cowper Powys, M.K.Ghandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mary E.Woolley, Bertrand Russell, Count Hermann Keyserling and George Bernard Shaw.

Despite their uniqueness as individuals and the very different lives they led a consistent thread runs through their viewpoints, revealing a commonality among humans beings who not only seek meaning in life but who actually achieve it.

The book ends under a note “A personal Confession” by the author:

“This then, I should say is the road to significance: join a whole, ands work for it with all your body and mind. The meaning of life lies in the chances it gives us to produce, or to contribute to, something greater than ourselves. It needs not be a family; that, so to speak, is the direct and broadest road which Nature in her blind wisdom has provided for even the simplest soul. It may be any group that can call out all the latent nobility of the individual, and give him a cause to work for that shall not be shattered by his death. It may be some revolutionary association which a man or a woman gives devotion unstintingly. It may occasionally be some work of beauty that absorbs the soul in its making, and becomes boon to many generations. But in every case it must, if it will give a life meaning, lift the individual out of himself, and make him a cooperating part of a vaster scheme. The secret of significance and content is to have a task which consumes all one’s energies, and makes human life a little richer than before”

Diminutive Volume, Immense Book-1

THE JOURNEY TO THE EAST



This trivial volume of less then hundred pages is an immense book, written by one of the finest fiction writer Hermann Hesse (1877-1963). This work first published in 1956, is one of best from this Nobel Laureate. Hermann Hesse was born in Claw to missionary parents and remains one of the great literary figures of the German-speaking world. His novels such as Glass Bead Game, Steppenwolf, Siddartha and Demain won him a place among leading contemporary writers' and thinkers'.



The Journey to the East, is an allegorical novel in which the narrator travels through Time and Space in search of the ultimate Truth. This pilgrimage to the East is symbolic of a state of mind, and, although the journey is across an imaginary land, it also embraces Europe, and takes place in the twentieth century but in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as well. The people who have been part of the League are include both real and fictitious-Plato, Pythagoras, Don Quixote and Baudelaire.



The Novel opens with following passage:



"As it has been my destiny to take part in a great experience, and having had the good fortune to belong to the League and allowed to share in that unique journey, the wonder of which blazed like a meteor and afterwards sank into oblivion-even falling into disrepute-I have now decided to attemt a short description of this incredible journey. No man since the days of Hugo and mad Roland has ventured upon such a journey, until our own remarkable times; the troubled, confused, yet so fruitful period following the Great War."

ENFOLDING AND UNFOLDING

Why things have to wait, like they wait. Why they wait for a time to unleash and reveal, what they reveal. The mysterious ways of nature in which it enfolds at times and on an apt occasion unfolds that. Whatever our aspirations or desires might be, however strong our actions and thoughts might be. The appropriateness of unfolding is beyond energy of our actions, thoughts and plans. But this shouldn't be discouraging, as we lack the comprehension of the complete picture that is elusive. The phenomenon of revealing is like sprouting a plant out of seed. We can sow a seed, but then have to wait for those things some visible and others invisible, that are beyond our control to work together and play there role and help us to see the seed taking the shape that it takes.
This is a lesson from nature, that individual endeavors how great they might be need the collective efforts to be useful. This is why the growth of individuals is also dependent on many other factors, outside that individual. All these are invisible hands of God, manifested in form of our parents, teachers, books, friends, siblings and peers.

Waiting is the ageing process of things to find the best possible, from the available and when that is achieved it pairs up with our efforts and reveal, what they reveal.



The space between two words is also classic example of collective effort and waiting. No word is legible unless there is waiting (space between them) and pairing from the next unknown word that comes to compliment and complete an idea, an expression and an action.

ABC of Anger, Beauty and Compassion

According to a tradition of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) :

Allah, the Exalted, is beautiful, and He loves beauty.



What is Beauty?

Beauty in aesthetics means a balance.When we achieve Balance things look, feel and reflect Beauty. Our actions, thoughts, reactions, desires and speech are beautiful when it retains Balance.
Things become un-balanced when we are not compassionate, we are angry or violent. We become angry and violent when we are fearful, lonely and not empowered. A little compassion, a little detachment, a little benevolence, a little grace, a little show of kindness can work miracles and can bring equilibrium and poise in a situation that has become disproportionate, ugly and un balanced.



When we find somebody in need of a help to Balance his Life, his affairs, his attitude, we must provide that little orientation that balances, so they become beautiful.



Allah the Exalted is Beautiful and Loves Beauty, so we must
also act as the Beloved acts.


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