My introduction into the Sufi tradition through my Teacher and Friend the lat Cik Gu Yusif Ali was an eye opener and a corner stone in my life in the spiritual sense. Our long conversations into the early morning hours by the Food Court on Perak Road facing the City Stadium led me into the deeper realms of the religion of Islam. I was allowed to raise my doubts and shared my inner feelings towards thoughts and ideas about beliefs and faith without being frowned upon eyebrows raised and I found some answers that was acceptable by my limited mind. Cik Gu's daughter Ayu or nani Rohayu works for Bernama is a reporter living in New York at the present moment Through her strong and endeavouring personality she is able to run her own Malaysian Restaurant in Queens New York called Mamak's Place. From the Face Book articles she has been uploading it looks like she is doing very well for herself. She has Cikgu Yusof's passion in life.
I was introduced the great works of the Muslim Sufi Saints like The great Sheikh Kadir Al Jilani whose Sufi experiences were recorded and has become one of the most studied works in the Muslim world; I made him my spiritual guide. His thoughts, his practices, his Way became my focal point at the time and one of his greatest works is called The Secret of Secrets. From these thoughts i became acquainted with the understanding of who I am or more precisely where i have arrive at in my spiritual journey. I became a practicng Muslim day and nights sitting in deep meditation with Zikhrullah or the invocation of the 99 Beautiful Names of Allah (attributes). I had many deep reflections upon my relationship to Allah and I received knowledge from many different sources that I had not realized were out there written by great minds like the Turki teacher Ahmad Hulusi whose thoughts and ideas takes Islam into a whole new realm of understanding at least for me. Hulusi uses the term Muhammad's Allahn not just any Allah as understood by the Muslim masses around the world but specifically Muhammad's Allah; I like the idea.
It is all to be found on the Internet if one is so incline to reach out and expand the knowledge of one's spiritual self in relation to the Whole...the All... the One. The search for a Universal Consciousness begins right where I am at and this is the moment that this Collective Spirit is manifesting itself through my individual mind via my fingertips tapping on to the keyboard; Consciousness expanding collectively. I stop my apologizing for the way I am making these bombastic statements like I know everything, but at the present moment in time I am merely reflecting what transpires through my mind and the wish to share it with my readers. Anything and everything I can mention on the subject has been and will continue on to be told in one form or another but it is my intention to share my personal journey as I journey towards the 'Lord of Power' as Ibni Arabi or Averroes the Andalusian once wrote. The journey takes a lifetime and layers of veils to be removed before one approaches the citadel of the Lord or the Arsh of Allah. My effort is the the process of shedding my mind generated knowledge through the undertansding of my state or position or station in life, how near or how far I am from my journey's end. In the process thus far too have gone through many forms of metamorphosis, physically, mentally, emotionally and last but not least ,spiritually; I have evolved.
I have learned to get less side tracked by 'rroadside attractions' and getting shoved off the path by the unpredictability of life. Rich poor, starving or gluttoned out, I am learning to not take it too personally with the aid of the matra: and this too will pass...or by the reminder of J.Krishnamurti's secret to life...I do not mind what happens. It is not as simple as it sounds but bit by bit little by little and breath by breath I have learned to assimilate these teachings into my daily practice in life. But as i still am riding the Sunryu Suzuki Roshi's Zen train, I am still searching for 'that buffalo'. I ams till working on the question posted by my Rinzai Zen Roshi Dennis or Junpo Kelly at the Kanzeon ZenYoga center in Corte Madeira, California; What is the Imperturbable Mind!! JUnpo Kelly is the Abbot of the Hollow Bones Zen Center in the United States, a Zen community he had founded. (look him up, what a character!)
Health Update on Junpo
Monday, July 15, 2013
Dear Sangha,
On Friday, July 12th, Roshi had a small stent placed in one of his coronary arteries due to a 75% blockage. The artery is the LAD and is one of the major blood suppliers to the heart muscle. This artery, unfortunately, is also known as “The Widow Maker.” He is doing wonderfully now and although a bit fatigued, feels great.
From the Mondo Zen
I have written about my brief encounter with Dennis Kelly some where earlier in the Blogging and if one is interested to know more of the man just Google Hollow Bones Zen. Dennis opened the world of Zen Buddhism to me by setting in motion events that had significant impacts in my life while living in the San Francisco and Mairn County area of California sometime in 1983. It was his choice of opening a Zendo on the West Coast insatead of the Eastcoast that ook me to California and my whole life was changed I took a leap off the lilly pad into the pond of Zen Buddhism; and I dove to the bottom where it took me to the mountains of the Big Sur, Monterey, California where i did saveral Sesshins or seven days sitting meditation at the Zen Mountain Center later on. Circustances and events in my life has buffetted my from one phase onto the next in my journey most of which I had no control over nor were they preplanned.
My life spent at the San Francisco Zen Center, specifcally at the Green Dragon, or Green Gulch Farm Zen Community was another critical turning point on my journey of self discovery. Here I met some of the greatest minds each and everyone on their own journeys of healing their own splintered souls. Poets, writers, healers, lawyers and doctors among them those who heeded the call for a retreat from the Rat Race life back then. I feasted upon all the available texts and Buddhist scriptures made available at the Center and sat and discussed before great men like the Revrand Thich Naht Hahn, the small Vietnamese Monk who did the 'Freedom March in Washingto DC alongside Dc. Martin Luther King. Tay as he was fondly called elected me his 'Bell master' during his lectures as punishment for my dispruptive tnedencies like ringing the Big Boncho bell during a Vipassan meditation retreat was in progress inside the Zendo or Meditaiton Hall.
One of my practice instructor was Edward Espe Brown the Tassajjara Cook Book author and Greens Restaurant Chef in San Francisco. Ed taught a fe of us the song Ruddy Toot Toot to the Moon which I used in my Blogging profile. He did this one evening while we were walking towards the Pelican Inn located at Muir Beach for a few drinks. We were jumoing the fence as the Zen school would call it and it usually happens after a Seshin. Ed Brown settled my predicanment of being a Muslim and bowing to a wooden ideol on the Zendo Altar. During one of our Mondo Talks or the student teacher one on one hash it out sessions, he said to me, " It is all illusions, if you think you are bowing to something then you are, if not then there nothing you are bowint to, but to join a club you have to abide by the rules and rituals; the price you pay for knowledge."
Another great mind I encountered whil at the Zen Center was the late Abbot of the Minnesotta Zen center, the late Dainin Katagiri Roshi.
Jikai Dainin Katagiri, aka Hojo-san Katagiri, was a Sōtō Zen roshi and the founding abbot of Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he served from 1972 until his death from cancer in 1990. I had many sittings with the Roshi and on one of our face to face meetings he told me, " You must always remember your original intention, why are you here? And just continue as you are."
I am writing and will continue on writing because I feel blessed to have met and sat with these great men and many more along the road and what they had imparted to me in the forms of advice and lessons, in the forms of chastisements and rebukes, I will always cherish as markers, cornerstones and duide posts on the map of my journey in this life; they too brought me here. I am indebted to these people and events in my life to share what is worth sharing from the expereinces, and in doing so it helps me to continue on researching my life and sieve through the layers of changes that i had gone through to get to where I am on this spiritual journey. It is my hope that if by chance i am able to inspire one or two my children through this dicourse, I have done my share towards the propagtion of knowledge in this age of information in its spiritual form; one man's experiment with faith and religions.
No comments:
Post a Comment