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