Nautical or Botanical

'A traveler without observation is a bird without wings' ~ Sa'di

Its been a while since I've posted anything here. And I've been curiously indifferent to that. Altered states and all.

Actually what happened is anchors were pulled. Unmoored from the deep docks of my gravely engraved life-roles (wife, mother, begum sahiba and dutiful daughter-in-law), my galleon morphed into a spinnaker. I sped the seas and skimmed the waves. Sea spray sprinkled much needed minerals all over me and I absorbed them hungrily. I travelled, taught, explored, fasted, cooked, communed, retreated, and celebrated. A set of different life roles slipped over me effortlessly: teacher, connector, and yes, relationship roles like sister, daughter, mother (with kids on two continents that one's inescapable!), friend, mirror, partner in crime (shshsh...you know who you are!) - all different because of the speed and sleekness with which I sailed.

The deracination of travel is salutary. And I have not yet been able to process the unfurling of events. The sails keep puffing and billowing. Being and becoming have been clipping each other like racing dolphins weaving through the surf.

In my case, most of the travel I do is usually one of transplantation. The process oxygenates the very roots of my tenuous selfhood and remineralises the sensitive sheathes of sensory nerves.  My phototropic radar seems to pick up more 'signs' than before. Since the brain wasn't being drained by mandatory Domestos (there's 'mandatory' and 'incidental' - one can never quite escape 'incidental' Domestos), the synapses crackled and fizzed with input feeding into other planes of consciousness. Supra-nutrients like winter colours, crisp smells, the thrill of walking as opposed to being driven, the feel of cold air on the cheek, trading in ontologies with questing hearts, concentrations of willing and witnessing...all these particles have been seeping through osmotically.

And then added to this feast  was another bulge in the dimension of space-time,  a bubble of intimate family time, full of tropical azures and aquamarines, fragrant frangipanis, pungent prawns and perfumed pandan...time just being,  breathing, laughing and sharing. And a bad mattress... Sun salutations saved me!

The spinnaker has been reberthed. Time to wash the sea-salt off. The plant has been repotted. Time to let it settle. But I'm not quite sure which ship or plant has returned. Definition is defied.

SLAIN - Poem

Slain am I by this laser intention

that sliced in half a competing volition

a powerful coil ready to spring

from flesh to flesh and cling

regardless of circumspection

to realize desire’s possession.

Slain am I by this accurate arrow

that scooped up along the narrow

shaft the ego-desires pulsating

eager to form into a hackneyed painting

and pinned them deadly instead

into remembrance’s reed-bed.

Slain am I by the cloak embracing

velvet heavy desire’s shadow tracing

drawn back revealing a beam

of white gold light that streams

and floods and fills and kills

ego-Bacteria that would roam still.

Slain am I by the sledge-hammer mercy

affording Light the cutting courtesy

to shine light upon light and therefore

reveal the original melodic score

of the sibilant song of Alast

sung when this turning heart did burst.

Slain am I into wordlessness

bewildered by Truth’s wholeness

this lump of mouthy muscle stilled

in rose-garden awe and yet spilled

helplessly onto this pixel page

a scented postcard to Love’s sage.

(Ramadan, Brooklyn, 2013)

Ramadan Closing In

Ramadan is closing in. This year this month has sped by. For the first time in years I've been away from home base, though in homes away from home - how blessed am I? The pekoras and samosas have followed me, however, as I've tried to ensure my son gets his daily quotas of desi iftar fare. The open plan layout of the house we are in reeks of fried food for hours afterwards, uncorrected even by wafts of cloying incense. After years of resistance to the semiotic symbolism of food, I have yielded to the perceived reality that food frames culture (or culture frames food?) and that culinary culture is one hugely influential anchorage of religion. If savoury spicy treats help keep my boy connected to his Deen, then so be it!

Shorter days and clement weather of a southern hemisphere's winter have reduced Ramadan wipeouts. I felt for my UK friends - heatwaves and long 18 hour days. May the reward be commensurate with the difficulty! No Ramadan rage threatened here. The dry, high atmosphere introduced me to a new form of 'Ramadan brain': the suction cup effect where your grey matter feels like its dessicating and sticking to your skull interior.

That most delicious gift of Ramadan, the fleecy blanket of inner silence, has also been gratefully received. At times the white noise percolates and penetrates the precariously porous and amorphous presence of consciousness - and peppers my vocabulary with purple passages (so who cares?) - but the sheer weight of the fast makes it easy to relocate the mute button on the inner monologue function. Can it really be so simple a matter of blood sugar? That its dilution beings inner peace? There's a hadith that alludes to this (sic., 'Shaytan flows through the sons of Adam as blood flows through his veins")... Or is it the special grace that comes from the sacralized intention of the fast ('Fasting is for Me and I am its reward'  - hadith qudsi)? After all, of all the obligatory ritual obligations due from a Muslim, fasting is the most invisible. Allah alone knows whether you are fulfilling its tenets or not.

The remembrance of God heightens, as with each breath conscious awareness of one's inner state increases. In Ramadan it becomes easier to give up and give in as one notices the degree of dependency one has on means - food, water, indulging desires, loose talk. Its quite humbling to see what a hold habits have on us. One evening, during some frisky dinner time banter, I got my hands slapped for wittering on in what really amounted to gossip, the type of gossip where irrelevant news about someone amounts to frivolous talk, even though no malice had been intended. What had been the purpose of my verbal drivel? Was I conscious of every word? No. Blood sugar had begun to rise once again and those satanic impulses started slithering around in me too. Shudder!

Ramadan is commonly thought of by Muslims as the month par excellence to devote to the Qur'an. Our Noble Book gets a thorough dusting as tradition encourages us to read a juz' a day. For me, quality over quantity is my preference - I can bask for hours in commentary and etymology, entering into an imaginarium of endless and deepening delight. The beauty and majesty of the Word of God once again thrills me with its multi-dimensionality, speaking in time, beyond time, allegorically, emphatically. All signs point to the one underlying truth: la ilaha illa'llah - there is no god but Allah. And it is the fast that enables us see this Oneness better than at any other time of the year. Day after day the ego-self's hold is weakened as a new strength starts to beam through. The soul's light starts to illuminate our beingness, and states of grace descend, moments of deep tranquillity stretching in all directions through one's innermost.

The last ten nights - according to an Islamic tradition offering us freedom from the fires of hell - coincide with the Night of Determination, or Destiny, or Power, the Laylat ul-Qadr. We are protected from knowing exactly which night it might have been that the Qur'an in its entirety was revealed to our beloved prophet Muhammad (S), merely that it is one of the odd numbered. Because of various traditions, the Shi'as prefer one of the earlier odd nights, the Sunnis preferring one of the latter ones. Those who would hedge bets try to observe them all. Regardless, the importance of this night is indicated in the chapter in the Qur'an by the same name, in which it is declared that it is 'better than a a thousand months'. One night...better than a thousand months?! However unfathomable, who isn't going to want to try to witness this event? The moment in time it alludes to is a deep and unending mystery.

The traditions of night vigil practised by Muslims in different ways helps push us out of our comfort zone. Even if it is but a portion of the night, the baraka of Ramadan ensures a benefit is gained. In Karachi those fortunate to belong to distinct communities have ready made opportunities to gather and pray together, whether to read 10 raka'at, or 100, whether to recite 99 Names of God or the 1000 of the incrementally intoxicating beautiful litany of Jawshan al-Kabir.

Already stripped and polished by the fast, staying up in prayer and contemplation loosens the subtle rust on the heart's mirror. Our sense of time is ruptured, and small portals into timelessness start to shiver into the landscape of consciousness. Through fasting of the senses, we can taste the feast of what lies beyond the limitations of these senses, an infinite, expanding universe that encapsulates time and space, precedes it and follows it and rolls it all up in its Presence.

Bewilderment - Poem

I'm such a cheat. In the sense of the blogging ideal of stream of consciousness. In the sense of the promise of 'nowness' that these fora put out. For sometimes I post poems I've written a while ago, even years ago. Whatever their merit, these poems seem to want an airing, and so I let them, unjudged by any poetocracy. But here's something that wrote itself today. Sometimes I wish I could just stay silent. The Sufis teach not to blab about everything going on inside, to let it well and fill until it spills. The blabbing can even work against you, diminishing the gift. Maybe this poem, then, is spillage. I checked my pulse: in the spirit of 'wa amma bi ni'mati rabbika fahaddith' (And your Lord's blessings proclaim) I'm sharing it.

Sometimes, when you are caught, stuck - of course its all a perceived state - you feel suffocated. No one's throttling you of course. Even as you do your pranayama, within a few minutes of having disappeared into your breath, the stuckness reasserts. A diligent 360 degree perusal leaves you in utter bewilderment. The stuckness looms magnificent. You are crushed by the awesomeness of your total inability and incapacity. Majestic marvelousness! No matter which way you approach it, no matter what you throw at it, no matter how much attar of Oud and Rose, sometimes, the only way to be with it is to be IN it. Just be in it... and die.

Bewilderment

Bewilderment

a sacrament

to the lotus-petals

waiting in ivory

for permission

to unfurl from

cornered rigid

oxygen-free no-space

between a rock and a hard place

eyes wide blind

Die before you die

implode the geode

of the marooned ‘me’

disappearing dissolving

until yielding

the scent of satori

rises blossoming

a harmonic tonic

of saffron gold

luminous ionic

a chronicle foretold.

 

To Be A Sufi

To be a Sufi means to yearn for Allah more than anything else

To be a Sufi means to despair of your self while having utter hope of Allah

To be a Sufi means to seek communion with the Beloved, secretly and outwardly, here, there and everywhere

To be a Sufi means to see with the eye of tawhid – to see the One behind multiplicity

To be a Sufi means to be utterly humble on the carpet of worship and strive for perfect adab in transactions

To be a Sufi means to know you possess nothing material – you’re merely a guardian

To be a Sufi means to claim no ownership of the immaterial qualities of noble character, but to see them as reflections of Divinity

To be a Sufi means that one cannot live without bathing in Allah’s pleasure and can only live by floating along the river of His baraka

To be a Sufi means to be in this world but not be owned by it

To be a Sufi means to celebrate calamities as opportunities

To be a Sufi means to accept windfalls cautiously

To be a Sufi means to love others on the same path for they are brothers in aspiration – who knows upon whom Allah bestows arrival?

To be a Sufi is to tolerate and love all others – Allah’s creation, not yours!

To be a Sufi means never to judge by outward appearance alone, or even at all

To be a Sufi means to automatically reach for Allah in constriction or expansion

To be a Sufi means to feel the overflow of Allah’s love in ease or difficulty

To be a Sufi means to know - and seek -  that meaning is expressed in form and has its due courtesy

To be a Sufi means to see through appearances – things are often not what they seem

To be a Sufi is to strive for the best in conduct, speech and transaction

To be a Sufi means to take of this world its gifts and fruits without succumbing to its temptations

To be a Sufi is to adore Beauty and to see the beautiful in what others think ugly

To be a Sufi is to leave things better than when you found them

To be a Sufi is to have a heart constantly overflowing with glorification and praise of Allah

To be a Sufi is not to see oneself but to know the self in its fujur and taqwa

To be a Sufi is to tread lightly on this earth without taking more than your allotted share

To be a Sufi is to have a whirling heart in constant contact with its Creator

To be a Sufi is to prefer others over yourself

To be a Sufi is to honour your true self

To be a Sufi is to never let the weed of idols take root in the garden of your heart

To be a Sufi is to role-play without typecasting yourself

To be a Sufi is to always make du’a your first port of call for change

To be a Sufi is to be dynamic, not static

To be a Sufi is to distinguish impulses of Divine inspiration from impulses of one’s own illusion

To be a Sufi is to be free and abandoned in heart while sober and firm in the outer

To be a Sufi is to suffer moments of forgetfulness as one suffers from the consequences of major sins

To be a Sufi is to pierce the veils of existence with the sword of insight

To be a Sufi is to overflow with compassion for creation without attachment to results or expectations

To be a Sufi is to be oblivious of one’s high qualities and achievements while painfully aware of one’s defects and failures

To be a Sufi is to know that ‘being’ a Sufi is a lie

To be a Sufi is to welcome censure and correction

To be a Sufi is to be committed in the service of Allah

To be a Sufi means to recognize your shaykh as the mirror of your higher self, your potential and not to resist his reflection

To be a Sufi is to joyfully accept your outer limitations while inwardly bathing in limitlessness

To be a Sufi is to know and accept that the world of the Unseen is vaster, broader and greater than the seen

To be a Sufi is to keep the company of Angels

To be a Sufi is to live a life of love

To be a Sufi is to live and die in grace



©Muna H. Bilgrami 2007

Jangled and tingled into harmony

by Azerbaijani artist Rashad Alakbarov

A blog by definition requires regular input - a daily web log. If not daily then intermittently. At least that's the general idea.

I find I've been unable to pay it much attention these days as so much has been going on - visitors, family reunited, daughter's high school graduation, work projects, research, not to mention battening down the hatches as bomb blasts wreak their domino effects on life in the city by the sea. Outer explosions do seem to trigger inner implosions; not so much of depression, but of sharp edged sobriety.

Perhaps if I had more than 6 followers I would feel more obliged to share my creative juices. I'm not convinced there is much interest out there in what I have to say - which is fine, because my real motivation in maintaining this blog is simply to say it regardless. The sharing is a compulsion. And I don't try to labour the posts. There's a stackload of blogposts titled and waiting to be written. When they come they write themselves quite swiftly. She's good that way, my muse.

But I haven't been able to get to the saying space much of late. Haven't even wanted to. Been too busy processing stuff and figuring things out. Observing. The multiple strands of life have been busily weaving  themselves into Kaffir Kalash braids. Vying tides swell the salty sea of existence into peaks and troughs.Like the coloured perspex pieces in Rashad Alakbarov's genius artwork, disparate shaped pieces float in seemingly random, asymmetrical order, unrelated to each other, but when light from a further vantage point is shone through them, the puzzle is resolved.

Lots of silence and emptying out has therefore been needed. So many noises and voices have been competing, half of them outside, half of them inside. There's a veritable cacophony going on in the inner menagerie. I've lost count of all the creatures and characters. And right now they are not sorting themselves out into coherent, separate narratives, but barking at each other with snarls and growls, grunts and squeals, rattles and chirps.

So jangled is where I'm at. And that's ok. I am witnessing the being jangled. I am curious about when the interior strings may cohere into a  baroque symphony, or when the timpani and brass might suddenly go fortissimo like the canon blast in Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. Meanwhile I will enjoy the occasional and clear tingle from a triangle being percussed. They provide the punctuation in the slowly aggregating dissonance. Some light relief. A sonorous soprano sound signifying simplicity (the alliteration is accidental!) that will soon manifest.

Fa idha faraghta f'ansab, wa ila rabbika f'arghab. 

So when your work is done, turn to devotion, And make your Lord your sole quest.  

[94:7-8] trans: Tarif Khalidi

Being & Belonging

I belong nowhere, therefore I belong everywhere. Smatterings of chattering in several languages help me shape-shift at will. I have a saffron-clad Swami to thank for learning as a child the taste of the company of the enlightened. I have the awliya' (awakened beings) of Islam to thank for compass-points on this journey. My heart is a light-detector - it works brilliantly if I keep it tarnish-free. So many relationships have helped me learn this art: my father (he is my 'country'), my mother, my grandmother, my husband, my kids, my siblings, my precious friends, the shayukh & the fuqara, strangers on a plane, the blind beggar two streets away, my saintly helpmates, my cat Sushi. Above all, the irresistible gravity of the soul's light is pulling, inviting me to fall...into oblivion's bliss.*

So much human endeavour is fraught with and fueled by the search for belonging and the need to belong. Books, films, poems, songs, art, buildings… thousands of items reek of this quest. We are all busy fulfilling this impulse and its sister impulse: the need to express this belonging.

Belonging is like a pendulum. It sweeps along an arc that is marked by many shades and textures that render each process of identification unique. Sometimes the markers that stick out are to do with place: the country of birth or childhood or chosen country of residence. Sometimes they are to do with profession: public service, creative arts, medicine etc. Other times they are to do with social constructs: class, tribe; or religious affiliation, or disability, or personality traits, or... The mind boggles at all the DNA permutations of how we envision our belonging.

As someone who has had her sense of belonging challenged by a peripatetic upbringing and lifestyle, I’ve been forced to look beyond static markers. Increasingly as I grow older, the signposts of belonging are becoming unmoored from time and place and circumstance. Even as the markers become more rarified – to do with beliefs, outlooks, affinities, self-deconstruction – they are still morphing ahead into undefined, fluid zones where the markers almost cease to have any form or relevance.

The Qur’an tells us ‘inna lillah wa inna ilayhi raj’iun’ —‘Surely we are Allah's and unto Him we return.' Often the only time we invoke this verse is when someone we know dies. Then it’s like, ‘Ah yes, there was nothing permanent or possessed about this life at all…’, and we sigh wistfully as the  hollowness of a life attached is revealed for the mirage it is. We keep forgetting, so we keep needing to remember.

When I read this verse I am reminded that we are more connected to the Unseen – the ‘alam al-ghayb – than we like to admit or realize. There’s a practical veiling of our consciousness that falls into place – a necessary one for without it likely as not we would unravel and lie there in a pulsating heap of cells, electrical impulses, whimsical fancies and viscera. The power of sight greedily gobbles up the chiaroscuro of waking life to persuade us that everything around us is real and huge and is filling us and our lives to bursting point. And this illusion is shored up further by the conditioned consciousness, individual and shared – all those neural pathways etched and grooved with commonly held truths and facts and factoids about our lives. But the blind lead the way in showing us that an immense world exists that cannot be ‘seen’. Through their other senses – often sharpened beyond the norm – they become more adept at perceiving nuances in tone, alterations in the vibrational energy of a room, maybe more prescient even.

When the power of insight starts to develop we can start to bridge the link between the Seen and the Unseen.  Not everything that we can feel has a form. Not every marker of identity can define us fully. We need to belong, but equally, we need to escape the confines of that belongingness.  We can begin to sense that belonging is not a goal with fixed goalposts. Through refinement of our inner senses we can tap into subtle resources that will begin to reveal to us a deeper awareness of belonging and identity. That can only come through switching off the outer senses. Quietening the mind. Turning inward. Becoming silent. Still. Plumbing the depths of invocation to a zone where no sound is recognized, though indeed a sound may be emitting. 

The Qur’an indicates the methodology or refining the inner senses in numerous places and ways: through reflection (tafakkur), through witnessing (tashahhud), through intellecting (ta’aqqul), and above all through remembering (tadhakkur).  ‘Ala bi dhikri’llah tatma’in al-qulub'  – ‘Is it not by the remembrance of Allah hearts are assured and made tranquil?’ This is the supreme technique to reach inner peace: remembrance of Source, of the One and Only Being. 

This by implication means abandoning attachment to any idea of belonging, certainly to any place or time, and more importantly, to the sway of the egotized self. Such invocation leads to an emptying of the small ‘self’, a stripping, a denuding of those illusory veils that enable us to play our part in the theatre of life. With the self made transparent, the soul’s light cannot but shine through.  If that itmi’nan is located – that reassurance, tranquility and peacefulness – then we return to Source as the Qur’an describes, ‘ya ayyatuha’n-nafsal-mutma’innah, irja’i ila rabbika radiyatan, mardiyyah’ – ‘Oh soul that is in inner peace, return to your Lord, pleased and well-pleasing.’

*After I had submitted this paragraph as a background story for IMOW, I was inspired to write the rest of this blog entry. Click here to find out more about this cool project International Museum of Muslim Women