The Four Parables

After deciding on what I thought as a permanent hiatus 2 years ago, my path again crossed with an opportunity to kickstart whatever I was doing before; giving small talks here and there. The chance was not a major one and a small one is good enough for me to gauge my audience. The audiences ,where I left them 2 years ago, was a fragmented group and will desperately clings to any personality that shone. The word personality doesn't coincidentally originated from the word persona, or mask. Today's age of extraversion, and the appeal of character no longer seems attractive to the mob. Sensing the change in air, I decided to stop.

And so, when I was offered to give a brief talk after the night recital session, I accepted. Maybe it was a good time for people like me, who has nothing to offer physically. I thought that by presenting in parables and metaphors, it might be able to pique the listeners' attention and get them to thinking. But, of course I have failed. It has nothing to do with the people's fault though. They are educated to automatically register everything that's new as false and to treat the new knowledge with hostility. They stubbornly cling to dogma without knowing even dogmas have to evolve and grow, enriched by personal understanding and experiences. This is our education and the herds automatically cringed to the shepherd's whip has no fault at all. From their eyes, at least.

I have made myself a habit to write a transcript whenever I marched to give petty talks or even deep conversations with friends so I can revise and apologise to them if I convey rubbish to them. And, so here are the raw transcript for the little speech I have blatantly failed to give.

The thesis is simple; the fact that something so resourceful and pedagogical such as the Companion's stories sounds so dull and cliche to us arises from a psychological phenomenon. Saying that our apathy is a psychological phenomenon doesn't prove that the end point of humanity is atheism and nihilism; the correct term is decadence. The inability for the modern man to view the world in a sacral and pedagogical way is a proof of a galactic decadence. That the expansion of the universal is an expansion of substance, no longer of spirit. 

THE TRANSCRIPT

"I’m here to talk about the Companions of the Prophet. But I will not be talking about their lives and deaths, their remarkable feats or any aspect of it; I will be talking instead about why our responses regarding these stories are so abysmal and mild.

For the record, I am not here to judge or give verdicts to you, or to say that it is our blackened or dying qalb which results to these apathy towards the magnificent Prophet’s blesses companions. Those are the duties of a cleric and a jurist and I am not one of them. I am here to share about why this catastrophe is happening and ways to revive the spirit.

1. The River Parable

Imagine a great river, extending from the gargantuan mountains yonder to the delta. The source of the river, which surely started as a modest spring or a rain reservoir is so pure. The water is so pure and unobstructed you can directly drink from it, with no doubt at all. But, as the river extends its blessed fingers to the valley and the delta below, sediments are collected. At the delta, the very end of the river, the silts are so thick that the current and flow becomes sluggish. As Nature will always compensate for imbalance, more flow and current is needed to clear the slit away.

The river is the parable of our history as a species. When Islam is revealed to mankind, it is neither deflated nor inflated. It was what it was, perfect and pure. And we called something as perfect is something that is neither excessive nor deficient. We say that a dish is superb not because the salt is too much or too less, it is just right. It is in a golden mean ratio.

But as history progressed, the context changed. We meet new obstructions, new events that changed the entire landscape. Every form of religion or political establishments at its start is at its equilibrium. But, context of the age forced them to adapt a more rigorous stance. Historian called it as the aggressive-compensating effect. For an instance, Buddhism started as a peaceful doctrine. Its entire doctrine is all about world-withdrawing and tolerance. But, what we saw today, in Myanmar and in Sri Lanka, is the compensated effect of Buddhism. When Buddhism is in stress or under pressure, under the more superior Ayuthia or Hindu kingdom, it recoils. The people eventually come to a conclusion, that they need a bigger, stronger, harsher and more vocal way to restore the balance.

Our call for the more bigger, funnier, more moving, and more gregarious is actually a manifestation of an inner dissatisfaction and upset. We are upset and feel dissatisfied because the facts in the Companion’s story are fixed and immanent, while our wants and needs are forever changing.

2. The Lover Parable

So how can we reverse this effect summoning for superlatives? The answer is always in watching two people in love. Two people, with different gender, different background and different personalities are able to reconcile in a peaceful marriage establishments. Why two different entities can be in such united motion and want?

Why the past Sufis such as Jalaludin al-Rumi, Beyazid al-Bustami and Rabiatul Adawiyah frequently described God as a lover? The answer is, the love of our life, is the unexpected, the unknown, the alien, the other, but in the right time and in the right moment, everything so fit together. Therefore, we need to see in the right way.

3. The Single Ray Parable

The story of Umar and the story of us, Uthman and us and Ali and us. The dichotomy of them and us prevents us from deeper introspection regarding the connection between we and them.

There are a whole lot interpretations regarding “From Allah we hailed, and to Him we returned”. I’ll offer the shortest yet the more complex interpretation; that there is only a single ray but when it touched the surface, it refracted or reflected to thousands of ray. We must realize that both we and them has actually lived the same human experience. The framework is there but interpreted in many patterns, suiting to the current context. We must introspect ourselves to search the grains of lives of the Companion inside ourselves. Human experience is essentially collective, as all of us inherited the same Earth, faced tribulations and we either vanquished or prevailed. The problem with our world is we seek answer too far outside of ourselves, while it is always there within us.

4. Two Stories Intertwined

I’ll end today’s sharing by giving you another parable. The Zen Buddhists always practice this to gain a hold in themselves, that’s why they are famous with their tranquility and relaxed. I would like to emphasize the quote “Every diamond belongs to the Muslim”.

The story goes that a student asked his Zen master, what is the secret to enlightenment. It’s a great question and a great answer is expected especially from one so adept in the ways of the Zen, but the answer is shockingly simple. The master answered, “When I eat, I eat. When I sleep, I sleep”

Now, the answer is totally unrelated and even can be considered as nonsensical. The question and answer shares no relation whatsoever. But, the two unrelated conversation make sense, if it have a planner or a storyteller. It turn out that the reason for the master to answer like that is, man are so burdened by thousands of things while they sleep and eat; they end up to feel no enlightenment at all.

The same goes to our story and the Companion’s stories. We are separated by thousands of years, share no lineage at all but we are connected by the storyteller, the planner-our God. An author can connect two unrelated story, so thus the perfect God can connect two personas from unrelated situations together. What connects the two unrelated events? All of us are His creation."

 ANALYSIS

As mentioned above, the central theme of the speech is of decadence and its effect on the psychology of man. The seeming contradiction is, if what is natural is good and the apathy and desacralisation is natural, then is  apathy unavoidable or even “good”?

What is natural stands for the organic lifespan of creations, from the galaxy to the minute ants. An old or dying organism's organ will naturally atrophies suiting to its nature to rush to an end. Atrophy represents a change of state between the fresh and the stale, the new and the old and what is changing is not eternal.

To explore this further require an elaborate and complex explanation on the immortality of soul. Whether the soul we meant is an immaterial identity of self or just an embodiment of eternal cycle of organism's experience, the word points to the unchangeable and the immutable. The experience of man i.e its archetypes is not the subject, but the law itself.The concepts of law, soul and God represents eternality while the organism itself is ephemeral.

The theme of decadence is an image born from the consciousness who excelled in purging itself from the paradisiac uruboric state. Uroboric state, symbolized by the mandala or round-shaped, possesses no start nor end, representing a state above time. The primitives, or our paradisiac ancestor lives in such state and again replicated by the presentness of the Greeks. The emancipation of self from the uroboros produce a new perspective of depth and distance. As elaborated before, depth and distance give birth to the sense of time and running-out-of-time. 

Again the apparent contradiction arises. Are we to follow the Stoic principle of living “according to nature” which now seemingly to rub with the far precipices of nihilism, or to fight against the current or to march forward to defeat the nature itself? Let us reconcile this paradox by first affirming that the theme of decadence is natural and the sense of apathy and inertia is indeed a by-product and trait of People of the Delta. Let us, now hold that Nature itself possesses a purpose, and its purpose is to reach the end.

The purpose of Nature is indeed, from a macro point of view, is to end itself physically suiting to our theme of decandence, either by the Big Crunch phenomenon or others. The purpose of Man, too can be viewed from both macro and micro aspects. The purpose of Man in the scope of macrocosm is to play its role as a part of the whole Nature, and thus will end itself by death and decomposition. But, as Man too possesses soul, and soul resembles more to God than nature in its term of eternality, Man’s true purpose is to cultivate his soul according to the eternal law, that which to live in virtue. Stoicism make a small mistake by making the axiom “living according to nature” understood by the others as general i.e from a materialistic or external view. If the writing of the Stoics are to be investigated, it is not hard for one to notice that the true aim of Stoicism, the elaborated meaning of “living according to nature” is to live according to virtue.

Virtue itself is an ordered and systematical classification of behavior, ennobled by both experience and culture and thus transcended when it can be extrapolated as truth in the long run. Virtue is a force of Order, it classifies and educates man and at extreme polarity with Nature. Nature, from the point of view of a humble man, consists of atoms and chaos and the perception of an ordered Nature paradoxically arisen after an intense erudition. Therefore, the therapy of virtue prescibed by the Stoic and the Nature from a primal vantage is at opposite with each other. Therefore, we can safely deduced that virtue transcends Nature.

The paradox between Nature and apathy discussed in this writing thus can be reconciled by affirming oneself that mechanism involved in appreciating the Companion’s and other religious apparatus is a virtue, as according to the Stoic’s definition, that virtue is an aspect that itself,in essence, is good. The fact that we are in an extremely-conscious modern era must not let ourselves to forget that religion too is one of the creative process sparked inside Man’s progress of consciousness. The debate whether it will remains only as a museum relict or still relevant to be practised must be discussed among scholars and philosophers. Religion, at its truest form, produces the best in Man and therefore must be considered as an inherent virtue.

Therefore by resolving the attitude of (true) religious appreciation as a Virtue, one can say that even the course of Nature slowly ferries to the end, Man must strive for something larger than Nature itself, for the sake of his immortality, as a spiritual or a soulful creation.

*The post was edited on the Pride of Kent, in the journey from Dover to Calais, between the Dover Straits

**The transcript was written a day before the speech, which was a 12^th October 2016.

***The painting in the post is Monet's "Morning on the Seine near Giverny"

Sisyphus' Whisperings

Life is about a rebellion. For, there is no one can deny that the end of every life, no matter how grandiose or how accursed his life is, there is only void and death in the end of the day. One cruel day and all life’s work will be unraveled. This shocking revelation is indeed catastrophic to the contemplating human, as we are the only ones who has been bestowed the gift and curse to actually feel that we are dying. Certain people who are more sensitive has succumbed to the fainting ticking inside their heads and decided to end their life. It is due to this terrible end that makes man so lonely and forsaken. For, he knew that everything he fought for, everything that he assimilates as a part of him is just an illusion. Man is forsaken because we can feel close proximity but to never experience unity. Dark and terrible matters, equal in their celestial size and power yet opposite in essence, like the star and the black hole. Even those two different polarities are able to become one in substance but we who have chosen life companions of lovers and friends, deep inside we knew that on the deathbed we are utterly alone.

For this, does man has any reason at all to rise from the bed? Does man has the exact meaning of what is life at all? For, what is the use of all this toil and suffering for one unknown day, we’ll just collapse like sick cows and be gone. And the happiness we seek, promised in the holy document, is yet in pursuit but still unseen by the naked eye. What supplies comfort and joy today might be the most problematic and suffocating tomorrow. Adjectives can no longer attract us, words are just empty and other people are as unbearable to us as our self to us.

Thus, the only reason for man to continue in his misery is by rebellion. Let us ponder upon the crooning of Camus, “One must believe that Sisyphus is happy...” Sisyphus, accursed forever to roll a large boulder to the top of the hill only to be thrown under again and again for eternity. This are the true archetype of man. He knew that if he toiled at the beginning of the day, he will only found himself at the botton again, body straining and aching. But, this is the law of Nature, his punishment and his bane. What are choices left for him? He decided to, while day by day he rolled the boulder upwards, he will smiled and willed him to not succumb to the most lethal of the Gods’ curse; loath upon the fate of himself.  He will not give the satisfaction to the envious Gods with his despair and moroseness. This tiny space of comfort alone, constantly disappearing from the eternal agony is the only thing that he can control and possessed. It is the gift of choice the Gods bestowed upon him and he will make good use of it. Systems by systems will come and impose its orders and rules to us, but we shall obey and bend our knees to none.

Death is certain but I shall tell you when the eternal is; it is now and then. As Blake puts it, “Close the doors of perception, and you will find eternity”. To be liberated from the pains and cycles of world is to retreat within and without, the only space we have the control. Stress and trials from the Nature is the decree of God, for what is life without its skirmishes and battle? Our life is of the colors red and grey. There will always be deaths to be mourned, battles to be lost and lessons to be learned. God only judge us from the choices that we made, for the consequences of the action is utterly not of our domain. There is no action of Good that is not-good, for the perceiving of the good and evil is only to product of separating us from the natural courses and rendering the mournful events happened to us as “separate and exclusive”, that is by looking of only now and here. But God’s omniscient is complete and eternal. 

But, just like the Nature which operates under immaculate celestial laws commands no excess and superfluity, so does the action of man must be under agreeable homeostasis. For, how can the sojourn to enlightenment can be achieved if the vehicle is sickly and weak? This journey is no place for the weak-hearted and meek herds, indeed there are only two types of man in this world; the strong-willed and the quitters. Both of them subjected under the Sisyphean rules, but the strong-willed are constantly in motion, nothing can stop him except God when He put the entire chains of cause and effects to arrest. There are always answers and more questions in this life, if we are to open our eyes wider. For those who quit, no matter how posh and pomp their robes are, no matter how sweet their chants to the phantasy high heavens, they will never find repose.

Indeed the world runs on a never ending cycle, but the cycles moved towards the telos, the source. There is nothing new under the sun, for the consciousness of men is one historically. The wake of humankind with the descent of Adam signalled the filial age of Man. And, now we are approaching old age, the delta where the old man too is as naïve and helpless as the toddler.

Thus, to be rebellious is to be passionate, and to be passionate is to go against the current. For it is not illogical for the man who possess anything, who waltzed himself into everything and who is born with a silver spoon and the rest of the entire treasure under sky’s firmament in his mouth to be called as passionate. Passionate is the language of the unrequited, the paradoxical and the damned. Just like our forefather Sisyphus, them who are passionate know that death is certain but with the power of God, everything is possible. This is indeed the exact definition of faith! To declare our mortality to high heavens yet to move so gracefully and without any frowns and fear, this is faith. To know that our time is running thin, but to cultivate this world so prosperous and bountiful! To know that love never exists in this world, there is only in-becoming of love, yet he kissed his wife dearly and treats her suits to her position as the queen of his heart! Faith is not about anticipation and grovelling about tomorrow, but to make today as their eternal. Abu Hurairah himself said that the world is of three seconds, one that has passed, one we are experiencing now and another which is uncertain for us to have it.

Faith is about being stoic and to not ask for petty things in order to demonstrate faith, he rather use his works and toils as his true demonstration of faith. To be sufficient of today, qanaah or carpe diem or any other axioms you want to apply; that is faith. And all of this requires immense passion for we are going against the river in order to trace the Origin.  And to go against the current is to be at wrong with everything.

Blessed are the man who is born either too-early or too-late. Blessed are the man who is born in the wrong time, in the wrong family, the wrong society, the wrong realm and the wrong world.  For, it is only the people who are wrong who will ask the right question. Why should the men who (thinks they) are right bother with speculations and investigation?  It is the man who find himself at wrong, to find himself as the antithesis for everything the society uphold and lived for, it is he who will be the knight of faith and passion. No one can understand him, not even his lover or his mother. No one understand Abraham, even Sarah, for why the old man must slaughter his own son who he waited diligently years by years? Who can ever understand it is the voice of God within that asks him to prove his faith? Or how he ever knows that the voice is from God himself? But, he did it anyway for he is certain that his sufferings and agony is certain but with God everything is possible. He believed that he will get Ishmael in this life time, in one way or another for no God nor benevolent spirits of the earth wish for such filicide.

Blessed the man who are thrown away from the huddles of the herd, to be so alone and cold that he can be inspired and challenged to create a fire, Prometheus of his age and time. Behold, of the outliers. Behold, the whispering of Sisyphus.He has whispered to us that to live is to rebel and to rebel is to have passion. And to be passionate is to go against the current, and to do such is to be so wrong with everything. Now, we must believe that we too, are happy.

*Sisyphus is a mythological figure who was condemned to roll a boulder uphill eternally only to start all over again. Many writers, such as Albert Camus championed the myth as the archetype of absurdism and others as an archetype of nihilism. From my humble point of view, Camus' absurdism and Nietzsche's nihilism contains shards of truth as there can never be purposes, truths or any other absolute qualities in this relative world. 

**Pictures credit to Titian (Sisyphus)