This excellent and playful sign comes from the Facebook page for Katharsis. Depending on my mood I could either be in the Nietzschian camp or the Kantian. I suppose like many contemporaries who spend time contemplating such aphoristic attempts to capture the 'Truth', I suffer from the post-modern malaise of too much relativity. The whole thing is delightfully resolved in the do-be-do-be-do though! That captures the binary oscillation of life, with rhythm, humour and style. What more could a person seeking to strike the balance between being and becoming wish for?
Sublime! Love the title of your blog! It would be an excellent title for a book. Insh'Allah! Looking forward to future posts! With peace, light and joy, Abdul Hadi
ReplyDeleteThank you Abdul Hadi for your kind encouragement!
DeleteIs it a coincidence that we are called human “beings” and not human “doings”? I see “being” as our deepest self, the divinity within us. Eckhart Tolle, in The Power of Now, states:
ReplyDeleteBeing can be felt as the ever-present I am that is beyond name and form. To feel and thus to know that you are and to abide in that deeply rooted state is enlightenment, is the truth that Jesus says will make you free. (page 89)
I see “ doing” as striving (as on our Sufi path) to know and understand this deepest part of yourself, and hence, to know God. The Prophet had said: “He who knows himself knows His Lord.” When we are in a state of being, we are not striving. We have arrived. We are in harmony with God’s will and understand His presence within us. Of course, we only get glimpses of this in our daily life.
With love,
Seema Ahmad
Lovely Seema! I agree. Tempted to deconstruct your last paragraph a bit though! For now I'd just like to elucidate that 'being' can and does indeed involve striving. Its not necessarily an either/or situation, the way being passive or active might be. In 'being' the striving or action that devolves from that state is effortless, as opposed to calculated and conscious. Energy is simply directed. Plus let us not discount 'barakah', the grace or blessing surrounding us which being in that state enables us to taste and witness.
DeleteAnd I don't know about you, but I'm not satisfied with mere glimpses of this. I want to see/feel this all the time!