I'll Come back

T.S. Elliott is credited with saying ‘This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.’ I didn't understand that quote or why he named the poem ‘The Hollow Men’ until recently.

The reality, I have discovered, is that the truest pain, the truest hurt rips everything out of you. There is nothing poetic about that. There is nothing beautiful about the void, the desert that absolute suffering creates inside of you. There are times when the pain I feel is so immense that I want to rip my bones from my own body. I want to scream and sob for eternity, but nothing - absolutely nothing comes out. That is what he meant by despair. That is what he meant by the hollow men. And I am terrified of becoming one because my jaw feels broken, and my pain has blinded me. So I am desperately trying to find my voice, the voice that was taken from me, because I refuse to go gently, to go quietly into that good night.

I believe that there are hands out there searching for mine, no matter how broken mine might be. So I keep holding on, to hope, love, belief. Doesn't matter which one really, because I can’t see any of them. I still believe they are still out there. I believe those things will always save me. I believe that they, and I will continue to refuse to go quietly into the night, to rage against the dying light.

Remember every word I have said. That I will come back in time.

I will always come back.

Hassaan ibn Sinaan passed by a room and said, 

“When was this built?” 

Then he thought to himself and said, 

“Are you asking about something that is not your concern? 

I will punish myself by fasting for a year,” 

and 

he fasted that year.

It's like a journey to the top of the mountain 
We all begin from diffrent sides 
No two people can walk on exact same path
The tip of the mountain is same 
But my path and vision of the top 
Is diffrent from what you see
From where you stand
No one is wrong
Only the Ego to accept the other is too big
It blinds the imagination and thus rises the "I" 


- Unknown

Since few years, I've been wondering what my life is asking of me. I've completely  revolutionized the idea of my internal and external living. my thoughts has changed, even my focus is shifted from inwards to outward realities. Often i heard, If you're on the divine path, either you will travel inwardly or outwardly and now as i choose to be on outwardly path, quite different problems has overwhelm me. Much of it, was about those realities that i used to think only relates to human's psychological and spiritual aspects but as i grow into this pattern of life, i found out that nothing moves in separate of each other's realities and dependence.

Now you must be thinking, why am i sharing all this and as a matter of fact, its just a palaver in the domain of others life. well, i may again start writing but you'll certainly see a quite changed perspective relative to the older ones. So i thought to point this thing out, just for a flow of words.

Ciao. 

we are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. it is a happy chance if we, changing, continues to love a changed person. :) 

My heart sends greetings to those who read my blog. 

I am young and already screwing up my life. 

My ability to prioritize has greatly diminished recently – because I am temporarily in a perceptual world where I see all things horizontally or, rather, unarranged. I want to understand the value of “things” myself and then categorize them. Meanwhile, I have to surrender my ability to rank and order. And therefore, there may be no logical order in what I write in the next few posts. 

Why haven’t I been writing lately? Because the audience of Pakistani blogs (particularly this blog, anyway) are usually very young readers with impressionable minds. Most of what I experience is not suitable for sharing, especially when it is in a stage of development. I myself have a young, impressionable mind and – ah, the age-old problem of the writer! – I am often very possessive of what I write. A question would very often disturb me. I don’t have to know all the times why I feel a certain thing and why I write it. It just is. 

In the past few months, I have experienced previously unknown things. And I preferred not to write about them because even I did not understand them. It would not be fair to subject my readers with just a glimpse of the vast new world of experience that I have entered. After all, what means a universe’ worth to a person is just an arrangement of delightfully literate words to others. This is not to doubt the readers’ capability to understand, but my own inability to capture what I felt. I would be presenting only shallow pictures of what is a deep experience for me – and be adding nothing to the tasteful reader’s thoughts. I could write well, but could not pull the reader into… well… my world? What a cliché! 

So, i will write now. 

Agreements

The First Agreement: Be impeccable with your word.
The Second Agreement: Don’t take anything personally.
The Third Agreement: Don’t make assumptions.
The Fourth Agreement: Always do your best.

I want to write something heart-wrenching beautiful. I want to write something that would crawl under the readers' skin and reduce their souls to shreds. I want to write with the longing that we dare not talk about, the suffering that we carefully tuck away between layers and layers of darkness and secrets. I want my words to dance on their wildest imagination; crack their hearts open so that new light can shine through. 




But I am just useless.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

- Steve Jobs

“When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off;

you become lame, abandoned by a fantasy...

People fancy they are enjoying themselves,

but they are really tearing out their wings

for the sake of an illusion.” 

― Rumi

Ya Allah! I'm unbearable. I did not pay my dues for being a human. You trusted me too much. O Allah! It were better that You had had my neck, than that I lived this long and loved You less. I love You with my soul, yet my body is thick with impurity, my mind clouded, my heart broken and cluttered. I am a hypocrite. I am a liar. I loved and feared too much, but travelled not with my feet in Your path. 

O Allah, You loved me too much! 

*Sigh!*

What could have caused your grip to weaken
that allowed creation to be?

How could a lover fall to his death
from the arms of infinite
strength?

How active you are in the mind sustaining such a great wall
that the sun can cast a frightening shadow
the world believes.

No one has ever really known sadness. No real God
would ever allow pain.

How then can a heart feel it is broken and in need
if we are held in the arms of infinite
compassion and
strength?

That mirror you (God) stand before --
we need to gaze into it also.

That name you called Beloved
as I fell from your lips --
I suffer

because I did not quite
hear it;

so tell me again dear One
so clear:

I am
you.

~

by: 'Hafiz'

Those given to Your love have no claims on life.

Having eyes for You only, they have long forgotten

themselves.

In the tavern where these single-minded ones drink

the whole wine cellar is emptied and no one

loses his manners

- (Abu Sa`id ibn Abi al-Khayr)

Go and be kind, for time is aware of kindness ..

The job of one who is trying to love Allah is to bring you to the watering hole and then let you get back safely to your homes ..

Poetry of Imam Shafi'i {RahmatuLahi Alayhi}

العِلم والذنوب قال الشافعي رحمه الله:
كتب حَكيمٌ الى حَكِيم: يا أخي قد أوتِيتَ عِلماً, فلا تُدَنّس عِلمَكَ بِظُلمة الذنوب, فتبقِى في الظلمة يومَ يَسْعَى أهلُ العِلم بنورِ عِلمِهم.

Knowledge and Sins

“A wise man wrote to another wise man: ‘O my brother, you have indeed been given knowledge, so do not pollute your knowledge with the darkness of sins – such that you remain in darkness on the Day that the people of knowledge speed forth with the light of their knowledge.’”

"It has been narrated that Caliph, Ali ibn abi Talib {Radi'Allahu Anhu} in the Iraqi city of Kufa saw a Jew walking with his chain maille {armor}.

He said to the man "That armor is mine, I did not give it away nor sell it!


The Jewish man said: It is my chain maille and in my hands!" They went to the Islamic judge, Qadi Shourayh ibn al-Harith, where Ali, then leader of the Muslims {Amir al-Mu'minin} told the story to Shourayh. The Jewish man kept saying that it was his own.


The judge then told Ali: "Do you have any proof for your claim, Amir al-Mu'minin?" to which Ali brought his son, Imam Al-Hassan {Radi'Allahu Anhu} to the stand for his testimony.


But the judge rejected this and said the testimony of a son for his father is not accepted in Islam. Ali protested at first against this, but the Jewish man won the court case because the accuser could not bring forth any proof according to the Shariah.


Source: " Imam Jalal Ad-Din as-Suyuti, Tarikh al-Khulafa."

Note: Imam Ali accepted the ruling and the Jewish man was so impressed at the fairness of the judgement, that he said " I bear witness that there is no god except Allah and I bear witness that Muhammad

Clean it up! 
What? Your act! 
Your online and your offline act! 
Please!

So you wonder why I am so vocal about cleanliness all of a sudden. Well I did my cleaning so I thought I could preach now. You can’t preach until practiced and I am done with my stuff. 

What are you up to?
Piling it up? 

Thinking some rainy day will give you a chance to clean it up? Ha!
Brilliant you are to think rain but chance? 
You won’t get any. We wont ever get a clean slate but you can get clean inside and outside, online and offline, on street off street, it is all up to you.

i wish i could get the vigor back to write on. but it so seems it is fading. owing to the time maybe... or maybe the pea brains that never fail to amuse me, but in some way it is going away. i m less willing to blog and more willing to watch and laugh..

Umm Aban, daughter of al-Wazi ibn Zari narrated that her grandfather Zari al-Abdi, who was a member of the deputation of Abd al-Qays, said, 

“When we came to Madina, we raced to be first to dismount and kiss the hand and foot of Allah’s Messenger……”

- (Narrated by Abu Dawud, Book of Adab)

Alive

I'm going to live in a world where the oceans are flying inside my mind, where waterfalls are flowing down my back, where I'm bleeding forth river after river of magic. There, I'm going to sleep inside the wings of my lover, drink from the land of glittery shadows, and dream with my eyes wide open. I am never going to look back on the footprints I leave on the puddles, rather form new ones eons ahead in time. I will not take breaths that will promise me death, rather I will take breaths that have already and will continue to promise me life in whatever setting possible. I will not cover my heart with my hand. Instead, I will open my palm to capture the raindrops from the oceanic skies. And when I think, when I spread my veins to grasp even the most complex of beings, I will hold on to the branch wholeheartedly, only letting go when my heart compels me to. I will not listen to everyone around me, but I will take into account the thoughts of everyone within me. In the end of it all, I will not just love, I will not just hate, I will not just be happy, sad, frustrated, angry. In the end of it all, when I have finally felt it all and, consequently, felt nothing at all, I will not just be living. In the end of it all, I will be alive. I will be alive.

Mind

A collection of thoughts mimics every choice. A fleeting moment, a simple chance. There is only one line that streams across the mind. I never wanted this. I never wanted this. I never. Wanted. This. But it happened. And it is happening. And it will happen. The thoughts only reverberate through the most emotional of beings. Or so it is known. Never is one able to achieve his or her purpose--at least not fully. And so it is known. Life is only a fleeting reminder of the choices made in the past, every ill-begotten day of the present, every deep anticipation of the future. All a simple lie, caught inside the folds of the world's only truth-sayers. The mind believes this not, only varying its patterns so as to think away from these perceptions. However, what shall occur has happened, and what will happen is replaying scene by scene, stroke by stroke, deep inside these simple...minds.

It’s like a dead end you’ve come to. A wall, with the fingerprints of the dead, with the screams still etched on each brick. And you touch the fissures, wishing you could feel it, wishing you could rub against the hot, hot surface. Wishing you could be caressed by each anguished cry…and you feel it, you feel it inside your mouth. When you want it so deep, so inside yourself, so absolutely into your soul, you feel like nothing will let you go. And you reach toward it, reach to touch it and to wrench every desire out of it, until nothing else is dripping but her filthy blood, a white spread on a vermilion tablecloth. And you touch, and you suck it in, and you taste it within the farthest reaches of your mind, and you think, you cannot think, you cannot form a coherent thought so as to wonder what is happening to you. This taste, this strength, this hate, this deep, deep hatred that is taking over everything in your body. You’ve yearned for it, you’ve wanted it, and now, now when you have it, you feel like running from it, but you do not for your feet just walk towards it, and your soul is carved into it and you stay. You stay and you bleed and you feel what it can, and only it can, give to you. And you revel in it. You absolutely bask in it, in what it makes you feel, in the different types of hatred it shows you, in all the ways it breaks you over and over again. And you cannot stop anything with it anymore, you cannot stop it, you do not want to stop it, and it will not stop; it will only take over, delve into you so deep, so utterly within you, that it merges, and you merge with it, and it becomes one inside of you and you become nothing inside of it..

"Even if man does not see, God sees."

~ Afrikan Proverb

"I hated every minute of training, but I said, Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion." 

- Muhammad Ali

Bringer of wine, pass around the cup and be lavish!
for love that seemed easy at first turned out to be full of struggle.

Ah, the blood flooding into our hearts
when the breeze spread the fragrance of her braid…

At the master’s command, soak your prayer-mat with purple wine.
Every traveller knows the road and the customs of the journey.

At camp, in the caravan of the fair one, how can I rest?
Each moment the bell cries, ’Load the camels!’

Horrid darkness – dread - the sucking vortex -
what can light-weights strolling the shore ever know of our state?

In the end, my work brought me nothing but a bad reputation -
and yet, how its power endures, known to the faithful.

Hafiz, if you want the beloved near, draw near yourself,
let go of the world when you come to her, surrendering all.

-

Hafiz Shirazi

As long as you have a contented heart, then you and one who owns everything are equal and the same.” -Imam al-Shafi

Be like a tall tree with high aims; if a stone is thrown at it, it simply lets its fruits drop..

Hassan Bin Thabit (Ra) poetry praising our beloved Prophet (Peace be upon him)

wa ahsano minka lam tara qatto ayni
wa akmalo minka lam talidin nisa'oo
khuliqta mubarra'an min kulley aibin
ka annaka qad khuliqta kama tasha'oo

trans
English:
My eyes have never seen more beautiful/complete than You
The women have not given birth to a more perfect than You
You have been created free from any defects
As if You were created as You wished

Urdu:
Meri aankh ne tujhse zyada khubsurat shakhs nahi dekha
Tujhse zyada sahibe jamal kabhi kisi aurat ne nahi jana
Aap har 'aib se is tarah paak aur saaf hai
Jaise aap apni marzi aur pasand se paida hue hain

"Oh Allah make us realise our faults, but don't make us a lesson for others."

- Imam al Sharani

Ay chehra-e zeba-e tu rashk-e butan-e azari;
Har chand wasfat mikunam dar husn-az-aan zebatari.
Aafaq ra gar deedah am mehr-e butan warzeedah am;
Bisyar khuban deedah am lekin tu cheez-e degari.
Man tu shudam, tu man shudi, man tan shudam, tu jan shudi;
Taakas nagoyad baad azeen man deegaram tu deegari.
Khusrau ghareeb ast-o gada uftadah dar shehr-e shuma;
Baashad ki az behr-e khuda, su-e ghareeban bangari.

trans:
O you whose beautiful face is the envy of the idols of Azar
(Abraham's father and famous idol maker);
You remain superior to my praise.
All over the world have I traveled;
many a maiden’s love have I tasted;
Many a beauty-star have I seen; but you are something unique.
I have become you, and you me; I have become the body,
you the soul; So that none hereafter may say
that “I am someone and you someone else.”
Khusro a beggar, a stranger has come wandering to your town;
For the sake of god, have pity on this beggar
and do not turn him away from your door.

by Amir Khusro ! :)

When you love someone for the sake of Allah, you want the best for them. It might not be what they exactly want, but it. ’s what they exactly need because you want to be in paradise together.

اللهُمَّ لا سَهْلَ إلا مَا جَعَلتَهُ سَهْلا وَ أنتَ تَجْعَلُ الحزْنَ إذا شِئْتَ سَهْلا

Allahumma la sahla illa ma ja’altahu sahla, wa anta taj-alul hazna idha shi’ta sahla

Meaning: Allah. There is nothing easy except what You make easy, and You make the difficult easy if it be Your Will.

I looked at all friends, and did not find a better friend than safeguarding the tongue. I thought about all dresses, but did not find a better dress than piety. I thought about all types of wealth, but did not find a better wealth than contentment in little. I thought of all types of good deeds, but did not find a better deed than offering good advice. I looked at all types of sustenance, but did not find a better sustenance than patience.

- Omar bin Al-Khattab

Oh Holy Prophet, would that your dog was called Jami
You would call for your dog and I would come running.

- Mawlana Jami

Happy Eid e Mawlid Day! :)

‘Even though you’re not equipped,
keep searching:
equipment isn’t necessary on the way to the Lord.
Whoever you see engaged in search,
become her friend and cast your head in front of her,
for choosing to be a neighbour of seekers,
you become one yourself;
protected by conquerors,
you will yourself learn to conquer.
If an ant seeks the rank of Solomon,
don’t smile contemptuously upon its quest.
Everything you possess of skill, and wealth and handicraft,
wasn’t it first merely a thought and a quest?’
(Masnavi, 3.1445-1449, trans. Shaykh Kabir Helminski)