2018

There were 39 posts published in 2018 (this is page 3 of 4).

After the Sufis

“Oh come! In whatever guise you appear, I know you!”

Oh Lord, without me you are a pauper.
You cannot find your own feet unless my lips brush them.
Oh Lord you would have no presence
If I were not here to reveal you to yourself.
What can you know without my eyes, my gentle fingers to divine your form?
I lead you Lord through the darkness of your hidden chambers and
In the dazzle of your sudden sunlight I am your guide.
O Lord, I give you your creation
In the moment that I, a man, destroy, disrupt, defile…
In the moment that I extinguish I make plain
The wonder of your works.
O Lord, without my belief in you, you would be nothing!
I’m the hound whose homeless master becomes through my worship a hero.
Be thankful for my diligence
In unmasking you O Lord!
In taking these many coloured beads and finding the thread
That makes of them a garland for your worship.
You placed baubles at my feet. I made sense of them.
You gave me worthless clay.
I fashioned it into an idol of you.
Do not be angry at my idolatry!
Only through it can you ever know your form.
I gave you yourself
I am your eyes, your fingers
Through which you can caress your creation.
Do not undervalue my gifts.

They are your own.

Mob violence in India

“He looked like a terrorist!” How a drive in rural India ended in a mob attack and a lynching

These stories of mob lynchings (this one in Reuters) are so depressing. I’m beginning to feel that there is something more going on than simply panic against child abductors.

I was just remembering a paragraph in Saki (HH Munri) story “Filboid Studge” (1912)
” There are thousands of respectable middle-class men who, if you found them unexpectedly in a Turkish bath, would explain in all sincerity that a doctor had ordered them to take Turkish baths; if you told them in return that you went there because you liked it, they would stare in pained wonder at the frivolity of your motive. In the same way, whenever a massacre of Armenians is reported from Asia Minor, every one assumes that it has been carried out “under orders” from somewhere or another; no one seems to think that there are people who might like to kill their neighbours now and then.”

That’s typical Saki. But it would be truer to say that this is a reaction of village people who have been left out of India’s boom. They see rich hi-tech workers from Hyderabad in their shiny new red SUV and something snaps inside them. Perhaps the story they tell themselves is that they are confronting child abductors, but unconsciously they are acting from a deep sense of grievance. All of these lynchings have been of outsiders. In the south, the victims have usually been northerners or people from the cities. In a case near Tiruvannamalai in TN, a 63 year old north Indian woman was killed after having been seen giving sweets to children. Probably the children themselves were pestering her for sweets or school pens.

Whenever there is a bandh (a strike) or any kind of civil unrest in India, the first thing you do is get off the streets, because if you are not a local, or are from the wrong community, you automatically become a potential target. If something unexpected happens, like the death of a well-known politician, the streets empty in an instant, because everyone is afraid.

Is India such a “primitive” country? It isn’t the only place subject to mob violence. In America, people become similarly afraid of each other after every national disaster. Every man for himself. Civilization is all too fragile.

Rubaiyat of Sarmad

Lately I’ve been reading a translation of Sarmad by Paul Smith, who seems to have translated almost the whole body of Persian language Sufi poetry into English – tons of material. Paul Smith is a disciple of the 20th century spiritual teacher Meher Baba, whose center near Ahmednagar in Maharashtra I’ve visited. Interestingly the small town of Ahmednagar is also the place where emperor Aurangzeb (or Alamgir) died. Aurangzeb was responsible for Sarmad’s execution; a year or so after he had his elder brother and rival to the throne Darah Shikoh killed. Dara Shikoh, like Sarmad, was also a sufi and a composer of poems. He is also known for translating the Upanishads. A great man but a poor leader of men, unfortunately.

I don’t much care for Paul Smith’s translations, unfortunately, at least not his rubaiyat of Sarmad. He attempts to follow the traditional rubaiyat format of rhyming the first, second and fourth line, as Edward Fitzgerald did more successful with Omar Khayyam back in the 19th century. But whereas Fitzgerald employed blank verse, Smith’s translations are almost like prose, except for the rhyme at the end of the line. This convention doesn’t work very well, in my opinion.

This is what I occupy myself with instead of worrying about citizenship laws, impending wars and other troubles. Sarmad would feel right at home I think, or not at home:
“Until your last breath
This world won’t be your friend.”
I feel a need to write some sort of manual about how to spiritually survive the current dark age. It would be full of quotations from Lao Tzu, Ashtavakra, Sarmad… Lao Tzu was probably the most practical survivalist. His teachings provided the philosophical basis of Chinese martial arts, but he also showed people how to stay out of harm’s way. In T’ang dynasty China, many a disgraced courtier would find asylum by adopting a new life far from the emperor in the forests and mountains south of modern day Xian. Even today, folks who are disgruntled with modern day China and want to lead a simpler lifestyle are reportedly finding refuge in these same mountains. There have been a couple of films about these modern day hermits. However, the spiritual survival about which the sufis and vedantins (and Lao Tsu himself) speak is more important than merely living out one’s days.

O Sarmad!
Shorten your complaint.
Of two choices, take one.
Either surrender your body
To the will of your friend
Or offer
to sacrifice your soul.

At the time of his death, he was perfectly ready. He “looked straight into his executioner’s eyes, and spoke the following words:

Come
o come, I implore you!
In whatever guise you come
I know you well.

Aurangzeb, on the other hand, lived almost to the age of 90, but did not know peace. He had on his conscience the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men. From his deathbed he wrote:

I know not who I am, where I shall go, or what will happen to this sinner full of sins. . . . My years have gone by profitless. God has been in my heart, yet my darkened eyes have not recognized his light. . . . There is no hope for me in the future. The fever is gone, but only the skin is left. … I have greatly sinned, and know not what torments await me. . . . May the peace of God be upon you.

Keyboards and pointing devices

I was just reading a review of the Logitech G710+ mechanical gaming keyboard. I was given this as a gift some time ago by my son when he bought for himself a still more expensive keyboard. In general I’m quite happy with the keyboard, though I can’t say that the typing experience is amazingly better than my other keyboards. I think I might agree with one reviewer who said the keys are just a shade too close together. Perhaps keyboards should be tailor made for the user, based on expert evaluation.

I also have a cheap Rapoo bluetooth keyboard, for example, which I bought once in India for usage with an Android tablet, but which can be used for any of my devices. In some ways this keyboard feels a little bit easier to use, despite its small size. The only trouble with bluetooth is that it is not 100% dependable. I keep the Rapoo next to the Logitech. For night use, when my spouse is sleeping, the Rapoo is a bit quieter than the Logitech, though then there is the disadvantage that the keys are not lit.

The keys, are if anything, a little more generously sized on the Rapoo, though the keyboard itself is so much smaller. There is no number pad on the Rapoo. Since I never use those number keys, it is an advantage for me that the number pad is absent: the wrist is closer to the mouse or trackball.

By and large, I think my typing experience on the Rapoo is better than that of the Logitech. An irony, since the Rapoo is so much smaller and cheaper.

Fortunately, on account of my desk setup, I can shove the G710+ to the back whenever I feel like using the Rapoo. And whenever the Rapoo decides it isn’t going to work, or I feel like I would like to use the G710+, it’s available as usual.

Recently I bought a Logitech M570 trackball, even though I have a good Logitech mouse. I’ve actually always liked trackballs, just as I’ve always hated trackpads. With a trackball, the hand does not need to travel around the desk, which I think is easier, and the actual surface under the pointing device is unimportant. Our glass topped coffee tables, for example, are fine. There’s also an advantage if one is using a laptop on a portable knee tray, for example, or an airline’s tray, in that less room is necessary. The only thing is that it is more important that a trackball be well designed and engineered than for a mouse. Logitech’s M570 fills that bill, and has been tested by many users. My history with trackpads is that these too must be well-engineered, and I have never been able to afford the high end laptops such as Apple products, that presumably are equipped with better trackpads. I possess a Logitech keyboard – trackpad combo which is the most horrible device that I ever purchased from Logitech. I use it for our media pc, but even for that comparatively light use, it is ill-suited.

Some things are personal

Last night I sat before my computer and thought about summing up the last few days in my life. And realized again that some things are better stated in a personal notebook, rather than online in social media or my blog. I have one of those very nice Moleskine notebooks where I often do that. There’s the additional advantage that a notebook is a distraction-free environment. I’m less likely to turn my attention to the latest news or notice a story somewhere that I cannot not read immediately.

On the  personal canvas of a paper notebook i can ask myself questions that I’m not so willing to share with the world yet. I can give accounts about real people that I would not want them ever to see. I can make remarks that might land me in trouble, with one person or another, if posted online – and the danger of that serves as a natural inhibitor.

The only trouble is, that when there are a variety of different media to choose from, it’s not always apparent what is the best place to express one’s thoughts. Usually, when I sit at my table, I don’t always know whether what I’m about to write will be suitable for sharing, or with whom.

In our family we also have a closed group on a social messaging app, where we often post photos, messages or links.  I abandoned mainstream channels like Facebook and Twitter a few years ago, but recently went back to using alternative federated social media, so this provides another alternative for writing.

Yet with regard to these deliberations about how to express my thoughts, there’s actually nothing new under my sun. I’ve thought through all this before. I just have a hard time assimilating my decisions. I’m like a one-person creaky old committee that can’t make up its mind and, when it does, can’t implement its own decisions. But the answer is, and remains: use my blog as a basis for all of these journal entries; then decide what to share, where. Some entries can be shared with alternative social media; some with friends and family; some can be placed in my blog but kept completely private.

So if I’m clever, I will act according to my own best practices, and use the framework of my WordPress blog, publishing some things, marking others as private, and sharing some posts with friends.

The base layer

When we strip away memories, dreams, fantasies, plans for the future, and stop defining ourselves by our values, our opinions and beliefs, and all the rest, do we confront our humanity or an empty shell, because actually those are the qualities that make us human – just as if you go on peeling the onion, eventually there’s nothing left?

When I sit down to “meditate” or when other people are trying to focus on their breathing or a mantra or a special quality, I just sit and don’t attempt to do anything in particular. Usually after a while the mind grows quiet – at least as quiet as when I was trying to achieve something. I don’t usually go to that place that someone calls “la-la-land” – “a pleasant place in which you can spend years”, as a friend describes it.

Probably the first persons who learned meditation were hunters. They had to keep their body still, remain as vigilant and ready for action as a cat that is ready to pounce. But a better analogy for meditation in the animal who has to remain attentive to danger, rather than the one who is focused on the prey. You can startle a cat while she is in the act of concentrating on her prey, but it is hard to startle a fly on the wall. He has multiple eyes and lives in a time dimension that is faster than ours.

When I read books about spirituality I find it more satisfying to go to the sufis, the bhaktas, the devotees, even though I share nothing with their practice. I can no longer read Krishnamurti for example, even if my experience is in closer accord with his, and nothing from Buddhism. I think it is because the divinity of the devotee gets closer to raw existence than any simple and straight description of raw existence could actually be.

But in my own writing I don’t want to prettify reality with fine metaphors, hawk illusions, or anything else. I’m only trying to come to terms with my experience. Sometimes I write instead in my notebook. It doesn’t really matter. In any case, once you begin to touch on the important things, there is nothing really personal. It isn’t about “my” experience, because I’m trying to strip away the person – the persona. The word we use to describe ourselves actually comes from the word that the Greeks used to describe the masks that covered the actors in their plays. The characters were identified with the masks. We are all playing our character very well. Below the mask there are other things lurking – secret desires, things we don’t want to talk about, hidden hurts, and all that. But this is not what I mean. These are just another mask for a reality that is also deeper than these. That’s the interesting place.

So I ask again what’s there, beneath the dreams, plans, fantasies, ideas about what we are? Anything or nothing at all? A kernel? A kernel of the kernel, as Ibn Arabi called it? A something that can only be described in negative terms? Most people don’t want to go there. Even if everything else in our lives depends on it. Just as, as someone has said, we go through life averting our eyes from the sun, though its energy is the source of all life in our world.

These are just thoughts. It doesn’t matter who reads them or if nobody reads them, or if they are erased tomorrow. They are as trivial as everything else that’s written here and tomorrow I will have forgotten that I expressed them, or repeat some variation of them, forgetting that I’ve already broached these subjects previously.