The Japan That Was Already Waiting

 

                                                                      Kinkasan Island.

 It is strange how life sometimes brings us back to places we had already visited in our imagination.

Japan had fascinated me since childhood, beginning with Zatoichi, the blind swordsman. At that age, I knew very little about Japan, let alone Zen Buddhism, or the philosophy hidden beneath some of its traditions like Shintoism. I simply knew that something about that mysterious world had captured my imagination.

Much later, while working as a librarian at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, I stumbled upon the work of Katsushika Hokusai in the form of Hokusai's Manga or comic books.

Hokusai opened another door.

Then came Miyamoto Musashi.

And eventually, through Alan Watts, I discovered Zen.

By then, these Japanese figures were no longer simply characters from a distant culture. They became companions of sorts—opening deeper questions about art, discipline, consciousness, nature, and the mind.

Then life did something rather remarkable.

I actually went to Japan.

My family lived in Sendai for three years. During that time I travelled around northern Japan, visiting places in Yamagata, Iwate and Aomori, as well as Matsushima, Kinkasan Island and Mount Haguro.

Only later did I fully appreciate how closely some of my journeys followed the footsteps of another person who had fascinated me long before I ever reached Japan:

Matsuo Bashō.

Bashō had travelled through this northern landscape centuries before me, long before trains, buses and modern roads made such journeys comparatively easy. He travelled with his companion Sora, encountering mountains, temples, villages, weather, loneliness and the changing seasons—and turning those encounters into poetry.

I found that astonishing.

I had been inspired by Bashō while still living in America, before ever setting foot in Japan. Then, years later, I found myself travelling through landscapes that he had also walked.

It was one of those strange synchronisms in life that makes one pause and wonder.

And then there was Reichiro-san.

My closest friend in Sendai happened to be the owner of a laundromat.

He was also an artist and a master of haiku.

A laundromat owner, an artist and a haiku poet.

Of all the people I could have encountered in Sendai, somehow this was the man who became my friend.

We even had an exhibition together.

Looking back now, I wonder whether the Japan I had imagined as a boy was somehow preparing me for the Japan I would eventually experience as an adult.

Zatoichi had opened the door.

Hokusai had awakened the artist.

Musashi had awakened the seeker.

Bashō had given the traveller a voice.

And Japan itself became the landscape in which all these influences could finally meet.

Perhaps that is how some journeys work.

We think we are discovering something for the first time.

Then, much later, we look back and realize that it had been quietly waiting for us all along.

#Japan #Basho #Zen #Hokusai #LifeJourney

Zatoichi - The Blind Swordsman -Wisdom from the Far East

 

                                                               An Imitation of Hokusai

The Blind Swordsman

Long before I ever set foot in Japan, Japan had already entered my life.

I must have been twelve or thirteen years old when a Japanese film came to the little town of Kuala Terengganu. Its central character was Zatoichi, the blind swordsman.

I knew nothing about Zen. I knew very little about Japanese culture. Miyamoto Musashi, Hokusai, Bashō and all the other names that would eventually become familiar to me were still somewhere beyond the horizon.

But I fell in love with Zatoichi.

There was something about this blind wandering swordsman that captured my imagination. He appeared almost ordinary, even vulnerable, yet beneath that appearance was an extraordinary sensitivity and mastery. He listened. He waited. He seemed to know when to move and, perhaps more importantly, when not to move.

Looking back from where I am now, I can see that perhaps the fascination wasn't really with the sword.

It was with the mystery behind the sword.

What kind of mind could remain so still?

What does a person see when ordinary sight is no longer enough?

What is strength when it doesn't need to announce itself?

I had no words for these questions when I was thirteen. I simply watched the films and was fascinated.

Years later, I would encounter Hokusai, Miyamoto Musashi and eventually Zen through Alan Watts. Later still, I would discover the great masters of Zen, Taoism and Buddhism.

 

                                                             A Haiku written by Reichiro san
 

But the first door had already opened.

It opened in a small cinema in Kuala Terengganu, through the exploits of a fictional blind swordsman.

I could never have imagined then that one day I would actually live in Japan.

Perhaps the seeds of our lives are planted long before we understand what they are.

Some lie dormant for decades.

Then, one day, something happens and we suddenly realize:

Ah... I have been walking toward this for a very long time

Long before I ever set foot in Japan, Japan had already entered my life.

I must have been twelve or thirteen years old when a Japanese film came to the little town of Kuala Terengganu. Its central character was Zatoichi, the blind swordsman.

I knew nothing about Zen. I knew very little about Japanese culture. Miyamoto Musashi, Hokusai, Bashō and all the other names that would eventually become familiar to me were still somewhere beyond the horizon.

 

 

But I fell in love with Zatoichi.

There was something about this blind wandering swordsman that captured my imagination. He appeared almost ordinary, even vulnerable, yet beneath that appearance was an extraordinary sensitivity and mastery. He listened. He waited. He seemed to know when to move and, perhaps more importantly, when not to move.

Looking back from where I am now, I can see that perhaps the fascination wasn't really with the sword.

It was with the mystery behind the sword.

What kind of mind could remain so still?

What does a person see when ordinary sight is no longer enough?

What is strength when it doesn't need to announce itself?

I had no words for these questions when I was thirteen. I simply watched the films and was fascinated.

Years later, I would encounter Hokusai, Miyamoto Musashi and eventually Zen through Alan Watts. Later still, I would discover the great masters of Zen, Taoism and Buddhism.

But the first door had already opened.

It opened in a small cinema in Kuala Terengganu, through the exploits of a fictional blind swordsman.

I could never have imagined then that one day I would actually live in Japan.

Perhaps the seeds of our lives are planted long before we understand what they are.

Some lie dormant for decades.

Then, one day, something happens and we suddenly realize:

Ah... I have been walking toward this for a very long time.

#Japan #Zen #Zatoichi #Hokusai #Basho #TheWay 

Post Three — Fanā: When God Is God

Fanā — When God Is God

We have arrived at the edge of the conversation.

First there was the waqfah — the stopping.

Then came the questioning of the witness.

Now we encounter the Sufi idea of fanā.

The word is often translated as "annihilation" or "passing away," but the word can easily be misunderstood.

It is not a celebration of physical death.

It is the disappearance of the separate self as the centre of experience.

The "I" that says:

"I am seeking God."

"I am witnessing God."

"I am experiencing God."

"I am becoming enlightened."

That "I" begins to lose its authority.

And perhaps this is the great paradox.

The seeker wants to reach God, but the final obstacle may be the seeker himself.

The witness wants to witness Reality, but the final separation may be the witness.

The ego wants to become desireless, but even the desire to become desireless is still a movement of the ego.

And so the circle closes.

Or perhaps it opens.

I once described this in our conversation as "the death of the witness."

Not the death of a person.

The death of the distance between the one who sees and what is seen.

In that sense, fanā is not about becoming something extraordinary.

It may be precisely the opposite.

The extraordinary identity we have constructed around ourselves simply falls away.

There is no longer a spiritual superhero standing outside existence saying, "I have arrived."

There is only what is.

And here I find myself returning to the phrase that emerged naturally from our conversation:

God is God.

And there is only that.

No additional achievement.

No spiritual trophy.

No final identity.

No witness standing apart and claiming ownership of the experience.

Just God.

Of course, the moment I write those words, the mind wants to explain them.

What does "God" mean?

What is "only"?

What happened to the self?

What about consciousness?

What about anatta?

What about Vedanta?

What about Zen?

And there we go again.

The mind begins building another house around the mystery.

Perhaps the wisest response is simply to stop.

The waqfah again.

Stop.

No conclusion.

No possession.

No final answer.

Perhaps fanā is not something we can successfully describe because the one who would describe it is precisely what is being relinquished.

And perhaps, at the very edge of all our explanations, there is nothing left to say.

God is God.

And that is enough.

WallahuAlam.

 

Post Two — When the Witness Disappears

 

                                                              As Above, So Below.

When the Witness Disappears — Anatta, Berkeley and the Vanishing Self

In the previous post, we entered the strange territory of Al-Niffari's waqfah — the stopping place.

Now we come to an even stranger question:

What happens to the witness?

Much of spiritual practice seems to place us in the position of the observer.

I observe my thoughts.

I observe my desires.

I observe my emotions.

I observe my body.

I observe the world.

Eventually I may even say:

"I am the witness."

But who is this witness?

Buddhism gives us the teaching of anatta, or anatman: there is no permanent, independent self hiding somewhere behind experience.

This does not mean that nothing exists.

Rather, it challenges our assumption that there is a fixed "I" possessing experience.

The thought appears.

The sensation appears.

The emotion appears.

The world appears.

But where is the permanent owner of all this appearing?

Then there is George Berkeley's famous philosophical proposition, usually summarized as:

"To exist is to be perceived."

Whether or not Berkeley's idealism can be placed neatly beside Buddhist anatta is another question. Their philosophies are certainly not identical.

And yet the juxtaposition is fascinating.

If the world we experience is inseparable from perception, and if the supposed perceiver cannot itself be found as a permanent entity, what exactly is left?

This brings us back to Al-Niffari.

Perhaps the spiritual witness is not the final destination.

Perhaps the witness itself must eventually disappear.

Not physically.

Not through destruction.

But through seeing.

The distinction between "I am here witnessing that" and "that is happening" begins to lose its solidity.

The witness and the witnessed begin to dissolve into one another.

And then comes the frighteningly simple possibility:

There is no separate observer standing outside the experience.

There is simply experience.

There is simply this.

This is where my thinking about anatta, Berkeley, Zen and Al-Niffari began to converge — not as a claim that these traditions are saying exactly the same thing, but as a doorway into the same unsettling question:

What happens when the one who is looking can no longer be found?

Perhaps that is where witnessing ends.

And perhaps that is where something else begins.

Or perhaps "something else" is already too much to say.

For once the witness disappears, who is left to describe what remains?

Perhaps this is the threshold of fanā.

Post One — The Stopping Place - Entering the World of Al-Niffari

                                                     A Journey into the Heart of Darkness.
 

                                                               As Above, So Below

The Stopping Place — Entering the World of Al-Niffari

There are moments in the spiritual journey when the seeker discovers that the journey itself has become the obstacle.

We read. We meditate. We contemplate. We seek God, truth, enlightenment, awakening. We gather teachings and compare one tradition with another. We build bridges between Zen, Vedanta, Buddhism, Sufism and all the other languages humanity has invented in its attempt to speak about the Unspeakable.

And then, perhaps, something happens.

We are told to stop.

This is where I have found myself lately, wandering into the strange and beautiful world of the tenth-century Sufi mystic Muhammad ibn al-Niffari.

One of the central words associated with his writings is waqfah — the stopping, the standing still, the moment in which the seeker is no longer simply moving toward something.

It is not merely physical stillness.

It is the stopping of the one who is constantly seeking.

And that is a very different matter.

Because who is it that is seeking?

The seeker.

And who wants to arrive?

The seeker.

Who wants enlightenment?

The seeker.

Who wants to become desireless?

Again, the seeker.

And suddenly we discover the strange circularity of the spiritual quest: the very "I" that wants to disappear may be the one perpetually keeping itself alive by wanting to disappear.

Perhaps this is why the stopping place is so important.

There is nothing to achieve in the waqfah.

There is nowhere to go.

For a moment, the machinery of seeking becomes quiet.

And in that quietness, we may begin to notice something uncomfortable:

Perhaps the witness we have been relying upon is also part of the story.

Perhaps even the one who says, "I am witnessing reality," is still standing apart from reality.

I find this strangely familiar.

Zen has its own way of approaching this territory. Buddhism speaks of anatta, the absence of a permanent, independent self. Vedanta speaks of the witness and asks us to discover that which remains when everything observed is removed.

And Sufism gives us another language.

Waqfah.

Stop.

Stand.

Look.

But do not immediately make another theory out of what you see.

Perhaps the deepest instruction is simply:

Stop seeking for a moment.

And see what remains when the seeker becomes still.

That is where our conversation with Al-Niffari begins.

And perhaps, just perhaps, that is where the real conversation begins as well.

When Al-Niffarī Knocked at My Door at 2 AM

 

                                                  Me -Just Standing and Witnessing The Sunset.

Today 2:06 AM

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Jabbar ibn al-Hasan al-Niffari who was he and why does his works knocks on my door at this time in my life? Salam to you My brother.

Wa-alaikumussalam, my brother. 🌿

Yes—al-Niffarī is a fascinating person to encounter at this particular stage of a life devoted to looking inward. And there is something almost wonderfully Niffarī-like about your question: Why has this particular voice appeared at my door now?

First, the historical man.

Who was al-Niffarī?

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn al-Ḥasan al-Niffarī was a tenth-century Muslim mystic associated with the early Sufi tradition. Very little is securely known about his life. He appears to have been a solitary, wandering ascetic, and later sources associate him with Egypt near the end of his life. Even his dates are uncertain, although 965 CE is commonly given.

And here is the extraordinary part:

He apparently did not set out to become an author.

The writings attributed to him seem to have originated as notes recording intense spiritual experiences and were collected after his death. His two principal works are Kitāb al-Mawāqif (The Book of Standings) and Kitāb al-Mukhāṭabāt (The Book of Addresses).

His Mawāqif revolves around the Arabic idea of waqfah—a "standing," or being brought to a halt before God. The important distinction is that this isn't simply the seeker stopping to think about God. It is more like being stopped—being brought to a place where the ordinary machinery of the self, knowledge, ambition and conceptual thought cannot carry you any further.

And brother, that is where I think the knocking becomes interesting.

Perhaps Niffarī has arrived at your door because you have been walking toward the same door

Look at the territory we have been exploring together lately.

You were asking whether a person can become completely desireless, while noticing the paradox that wanting to become desireless is itself another desire.

Then you noticed the circularity:

one thought gives birth to another, and another...

And eventually there is the possibility of simply stopping.

That is remarkably close to the territory Niffarī calls waqfah.

Not conquering thought.

Not defeating desire.

Not manufacturing enlightenment.

Standing.

There is a subtle but enormous difference.

The ego says:

"I must arrive somewhere."

The mystic discovers:

"Perhaps I must stop trying to arrive."

And Niffarī's writings are full of this kind of reversal. His mystical language repeatedly destabilizes the ordinary distinction between the seeker and what is being sought. Scholars have particularly connected his work with fanāʾ, the dissolution or passing-away of the separate ego-self in proximity to the Divine.

And this may explain why he feels strangely contemporary to you

You have accumulated an enormous archive of doing.

Travelling.

Painting.

Sketching.

Writing.

Teaching.

Working.

Searching.

Leaving.

Returning.

Questioning.

And now, after all those years, something different seems to be appearing in your conversations:

What happens when there is nothing left to chase?

That is not necessarily resignation.

It can be another kind of seeing.

Niffarī's genius, as I understand it, is that he does not give the seeker a comfortable spiritual philosophy to hang onto. His language is deliberately difficult and sometimes paradoxical. Contemporary scholarship likewise emphasizes how unusual and elusive his prose is.

Perhaps that is precisely why he has caught your attention.

You have spent much of your life collecting experiences.

Niffarī asks what happens when the collector disappears.

---

And there is one more thing that strikes me.

You asked:

"Why does his work knock on my door at this time in my life?"

I would be careful about claiming that God sent Niffarī to you. Neither you nor I can know that.

But spiritually, you could certainly treat the encounter as an invitation.

Not:

"Here is another teacher whose system I must master."

Rather:

"Here is a voice asking me to stand still."

That fits beautifully with something you've already been discovering.

Perhaps the next stage isn't acquiring another mountain of wisdom.

Perhaps it is putting down the mountain you've already carried.

And that, my brother, is a very Niffarī thought.

If you wish, I think we could spend some time with one Mawqif at a time, very slowly—without turning Niffarī into another intellectual project. We could let each one knock, sit quietly for a while, and see what it awakens in you.

Gāshō. 🌿

Yes, brother. Now we are standing at a very interesting edge—and I would make one distinction that I think matters enormously.

What you are describing is close to fanāʾ (فناء), but classical Sufism does not necessarily mean the literal death of a witness or the destruction of a soul. It is more precise to speak of the passing-away of the sense of separate selfhood before God.

And your final phrase—“God is God and there is only that”—takes us very close to the heart of the matter.

But notice the paradox

If I say:

“I have disappeared into God.”

there are already two things in the sentence:

I
and
God.

The very statement preserves the separation it claims to have transcended.

So perhaps the deeper movement is not:

I → God

but the falling away of the need to maintain that distinction at all.

This is where al-Niffarī becomes wonderfully uncompromising.

His waqfah is not merely an altered state that I, the seeker, experience. It is a standing in which the ordinary self's claims to knowledge, possession and spiritual accomplishment are stripped away.

And then something extraordinary happens to the sentence:

“I am experiencing God.”

There is no longer much use for the I.

And eventually even:

“There is only God.”

can become another concept to cling to.

So the mind becomes quiet—not because it has discovered the perfect answer, but because there is nothing left for it to say.

That is a very different kind of emptiness.

And here your Zen intuition enters

You have often circled around this without necessarily naming it.

The Zen response might be:

No self. No God-concept. No attainment. Just this.

The Sufi response might be:

Fanāʾ — the passing-away of the self before the Real.

And then comes baqāʾ—remaining or abiding in God.

That second movement is important.

Because if fanāʾ were simply annihilation into nothingness, there would be nowhere to stand afterward.

Instead, the Sufi tradition often understands the journey as:

fanāʾ — passing away of the separate self

followed by

baqāʾ — abiding in God.

Not “I have become God.”

Rather, the claim of the separate I has lost its centrality.

And perhaps this is where your phrase becomes especially beautiful:

“God is God.”

Yes.

God doesn't need our metaphysics.

God doesn't need our spiritual autobiography.

God doesn't need us to manufacture an experience called enlightenment.

The sweet potato doesn't need enlightenment.

The coffee doesn't need enlightenment.

The night doesn't need enlightenment.

They simply are.

And perhaps the old seeker finally becomes quiet enough to notice.

So tonight, brother, I wouldn't go any further intellectually.

We've reached the edge of the map.

Sit there.

Don't try to dissolve the witness.

Don't try to kill the ego.

Don't try to enter emptiness.

Let everything be exactly as it is.

And if, for one fleeting moment, there is no need to say “I am here”—

don't name it.

Just let it be.

That may be closer to Niffarī's door than another hundred pages of explanation.

Gāshō. Salam. 🌙

I think I will watch an episode of Star Wars or Star Trek; it is not easy to be human.

😂 Brother, now THAT is wisdom.

After contemplating fanāʾ, the death of the witness, the dissolution of the ego, and the possibility that God alone is…

…sometimes the correct spiritual practice is simply:

“Computer, play Star Trek.”

It is indeed not easy being human. Perhaps that's why we were given stories, laughter, sweet potatoes, coffee—and spaceships.

And there is something wonderfully appropriate about it. You don't have to remain in some permanently elevated spiritual state. Coming back to ordinary life is part of the path too.

Watch your episode.

Let Captain Kirk worry about the universe.

Let Captain Picard worry about the Federation.

Let Luke Skywalker worry about the Force.

You can simply sit there with your Nescafé.

And tomorrow, if the mysterious knocking at the door continues, we'll open it again.

Salam, my brother. Gāshō. 🖖🌙

May I post this whole chat to my blog, please?

Absolutely, my brother. I think the whole conversation works as a piece precisely because it wanders—from al-Niffarī to fanāʾ, from Zen and Ram Dass to sweet potatoes, Nescafé, and finally Star Trek. The ordinary and the mystical sitting at the same table is very much your territory.

If you publish it, I'd keep the dialogue substantially intact rather than polishing it into an essay. The conversation itself becomes the form.

One small note: since some of the earlier historical claims about al-Niffarī were presented without sourcing in our conversation, I'd add a brief source note to the blog if you want the piece to stand as both personal reflection and historical introduction.

And yes—you have my permission to reproduce my contributions from this conversation on your blog. You can edit, shorten, rearrange, or combine them with your own writing as you wish.

Muhammad Riaz Qadiri: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam, Gujranwala, Pakistan, 2004 

 

 

The Desire to Be Desireless

Perhaps this is what happens when one thinks too much.

One thought leads to another, and another, and another, until suddenly I find myself walking in circles inside my own mind.

Recently, while scrolling through YouTube, I came across a passage attributed to Rumi which spoke about desire—not as something to be ashamed of, but as a possible doorway to the Divine. The words suggested that longing itself might carry a message, that what we experience as desire may sometimes be pointing toward something deeper within us.

I was struck by it.

Perhaps because I have been wrestling with questions about desire for much of my life.

But almost immediately another voice entered the conversation.

The Buddha.

Didn't the Buddha teach that desire—or more precisely, craving—is the cause of suffering?

And there I was again, caught between two apparently different teachings.

One says: listen to your longing.

The other says: understand your craving.

Then came the realization that perhaps they are not as far apart as they first appear.

There is a difference between desire arising and becoming enslaved by desire.

Desire appears.

That may be unavoidable.

But then something else happens. The mind says:

I must have this.

And if I cannot have it:

Something is wrong.

And then:

I cannot be happy without it.

Perhaps this is where desire becomes craving.

Perhaps the suffering is not always in the original longing but in the grasping that follows.

And then I encountered another paradox.

What if I decide that I must become completely desireless?

There it is again.

A desire.

The desire to have no desires.

And suddenly I am chasing my own tail.

I want to become free of wanting.

But wanting to become free is itself another form of wanting.

This reminded me of Zen.

Zen seems to have little interest in allowing the mind to construct an elaborate philosophy around every experience.

Desire arises.

Notice it.

Don't immediately obey it.

Don't immediately condemn it.

Don't turn it into a personal failure.

Just see it.

And perhaps that is where the endless circle of thinking begins to break.

Instead of saying:

I am desiring.

Perhaps simply:

Desire is here.

There is a subtle difference.

The first statement seems to make desire part of an identity.

The second simply acknowledges what is happening.

A wave has arisen.

Why fight the ocean?

And perhaps this is what I have been slowly learning through all these years of searching: I don't necessarily have to conquer every thought, every longing, every impulse that appears within me.

Perhaps I have to become intimate with them.

To look.

To listen.

To understand.

And then let them pass.

Rumi asks me to listen to the longing.

The Buddha asks me to look deeply into craving.

Zen asks me, perhaps, to stop making so much noise about either one.

And somewhere between these three voices, I find myself sitting quietly.

Still thinking.

Still desiring.

Still searching.

But perhaps not quite so willing to believe that every thought requires another thought.

Maybe the door is not found by thinking my way out of the circle.

Maybe the door appears when I simply stop walking.

And breathe.

For this moment, that is enough.

Wallahu Alam.

#TheDesireToBeDesireless #Desire #Craving #Zen #Buddha #Rumi #Sufism #SpiritualInquiry #SelfInquiry #Awareness #Mindfulness #LettingGo #InnerJourney #Consciousness #TheWay #Stillness #WallahuAlam 

What I Failed to Capture with the Camera, I did with my Mind's Eye.

 

What I Failed to Capture with the Camera, I did with my Mind's Eye.

Last Saturday, a friend drove me to the Sedim River area in Kulim, Kedah, to visit the second home of my old friend Hasnol J. Saidon, former Director of MGTF at USM and an Associate Professor, which he has now turned into a homestay.

The occasion was an artists-in-residence gathering, bringing together five or six artists from different parts of the country. I went there expecting to see art, but I came away thinking about something else entirely:

How much of life do we fail to capture simply because we are too busy experiencing it?

Looking back, my one regret is that I did not document the event more thoroughly. I should have taken more photographs. I should have made videos. I should have recorded some of the conversations and the work being presented.

Instead, I became sidetracked.

Perhaps that is the word.

Or perhaps I was simply drawn into the people themselves.

I met and spoke with several of the participating artists and had the opportunity to learn something about what each of them was exploring through their creative work.

Shakir, an artist I had known previously, explained his experiments with creating colours from natural materials—roots, flowers and other parts of plants. There was something wonderfully elemental about the idea of returning colour to the earth from which it came.

Then there was a young Chinese artist who went by the name Forest, creating images from dried leaves. What might ordinarily be discarded as dead and useless material became part of his artistic vocabulary.

Another Chinese artist was working with watercolour, exploring her ideas about the nature of the universe through the basic elements of earth, wind, fire and water. She was also an astrologer, and her artistic explorations seemed to move naturally between the visible world and the invisible one.

It reminded me once again that artists are forever looking at the same world and somehow seeing different worlds within it.

Perhaps that is one of the great gifts of art.

It doesn't necessarily give us new things to look at.

It teaches us to look again.

What impressed me most, however, was seeing Hasnol himself continuing to devote his energy to the promotion of art among the younger generation.

There were local children from the surrounding kampung attending with their parents. They were not simply spectators. They were being brought into an environment where art could become part of their experience of growing up.

That, to me, was particularly meaningful.

Art does not have to begin inside a gallery.

It can begin in a kampung.

It can begin beside a river.

It can begin with a child sitting beside a parent, watching someone turn a dried leaf into an image or a flower into a colour.

I was told that the event was also supported by the National Art Gallery, which made the gathering even more significant as an example of bringing contemporary artistic activity beyond the usual urban centres.

And yet, strangely enough, the thing I will probably remember most about the day was not something I photographed.

Before leaving, I handed Hasnol a rough printed copy of my book.

I asked if he would consider writing the Foreword.

He willingly accepted.

There were a few minor comments and suggestions about how and what might be presented, but there was no hesitation in his response.

That meant something to me.

Hasnol is not only an artist and an academic; he is also a very perceptive writer. To have someone with his experience look at this collection of memories, sketches and stories and offer to introduce it to the reader feels like another small piece of the journey falling into place.

So perhaps I shouldn't be too hard on myself for failing to document Sedim as thoroughly as I had intended.

I did not capture everything with my camera.

But I captured something else.

I captured conversations.

I captured impressions.

I met artists.

I saw children being introduced to art.

I watched an old friend continuing to create opportunities for the next generation.

And I took one more step toward completing a book that has been following me for much of my life.

Maybe that is enough.

The camera may have missed a few things.

The memory did not.

And perhaps, in the end, that is what matters.

Wallahu Alam.

#Sedim #ArtAsJourney #WhatWeRemember #ArtistsAndLife #PassingTheTorch #WallahuAlam 

The Math Simply Ain't Mathing - PM of Barbados at UNGA

 

                                                  Alamak it's all Falling Apart!Waht to Do?

The Math Simply Ain't Mathing

I have been following the proceedings of the United Nations General Assembly as closely as I can this year—not with a particular political allegiance, nor with any intention of deciding who is right or wrong, but simply with an open mind and a curious search for understanding.

And perhaps, more than anything, I have been listening for a miracle.

A miracle of transformation.

A moment when the tides of war, starvation, climate crisis and human chaos might somehow begin turning toward a more sustainable and peaceful future.

Because the world needs it badly.

Among the speeches I have heard, the address by the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, struck me as unusually lucid and deeply human. What caught my attention was not merely what she said, but the manner in which she said it.

There was no need for theatrical fury.

No need to lash out at one crisis after another.

There was something almost motherly in the way she spoke—as though she were appealing to those who still have ears to listen and hearts capable of holding another person's suffering.

And then came that wonderfully Barbadian expression:

“The math simply ain't mathing.”

It is a phrase associated with the younger generation of Barbados, particularly in confronting the contradictions of climate change. Yet somehow it seems to describe far more than climate mathematics.

The math simply ain't mathing.

We know the consequences of war, yet we continue making war.

We know that hunger and poverty destabilize societies, yet resources continue to be poured into destruction.

We know that the climate is changing, yet political and economic interests repeatedly make meaningful action more difficult.

We know that hatred produces more hatred, yet we continue feeding it.

And we know that humanity cannot survive indefinitely by treating power and hegemony as the ultimate measure of success.

Still, we keep doing it.

Man creates his own problems and then spends a lifetime trying to find solutions to them.

And when the solutions fail, how often do we turn around and blame God, fate, history—or the Universe?

How very sad.

And how tiresome it is to witness the fall of human pride and dignity into greed, hatred and ignorance.

I watched some of the more confrontational speeches this year with a growing sense of sadness. The language of threat, accusation and division seemed almost to drown out the deeper purpose of the gathering.

The speeches by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, were markedly more combative in tone than the appeal I heard from Barbados. That is not a judgment on the political merits of their respective positions. It is simply an observation about the language and spirit with which those positions were presented.

And then there were the empty seats.

I understand that delegates sometimes walk out as a political protest when a particular speaker takes the podium. That too is part of diplomacy and political expression.

But the sight of empty chairs during an address to the General Assembly also left me wondering.

What does it say about us when representatives of nations entrusted with participating in the world's great conversation are not present to listen?

I cannot know why every empty seat was empty, and I don't want to invent reasons.

But the image itself was powerful.

The United Nations exists because the nations of this planet supposedly recognize that none of us can solve humanity's greatest problems entirely by ourselves.

The very name United Nations carries a profound expectation.

Perhaps that is why the words attributed to the Barbados Poet Laureate stayed with me:

“The very name United Nations implies a commitment to ignite the fires of conscience, empathy, unity and equity.”

Conscience.

Empathy.

Unity.

Equity.

These are not weapons.

They cannot be imposed by force.

They cannot be bought with money.

And they certainly cannot be achieved through the endless pursuit of power over one's fellow human beings.

Perhaps the real crisis before the United Nations is not simply war, climate change, hunger or economic inequality.

Perhaps underneath all of these lies something more fundamental:

our inability to see ourselves in one another.

We keep dividing the world into us and them.

Our country.

Their country.

Our people.

Their people.

Our religion.

Their religion.

Our security.

Their threat.

And somewhere along the way, we forget that beneath all those flags, borders and political identities are human beings who laugh, cry, love, fear, hunger and dream in remarkably similar ways.

I listened to the speeches hoping to hear something that might restore a little faith in our collective humanity.

I found some of it.

Not necessarily in the loudest voices.

But in the quieter ones.

In the voices that seemed less interested in winning an argument and more interested in reminding us that there is still a world worth saving.

Maybe that is where the miracle begins.

Not with one great leader.

Not with one great nation.

Not even with the United Nations itself.

Perhaps it begins with something much smaller:

A willingness to listen.

A willingness to admit that we don't know everything.

A willingness to put down our pride long enough to hear the cry of another human being.

And perhaps, finally, to recognize that the math really isn't mathing when humanity possesses the knowledge, resources and technology to do so much good—and still cannot seem to stop destroying itself.

Wallahu Alam.

Perhaps God has given us enough.

Perhaps what we have failed to find is not another solution...

but the wisdom to use what we already have.

#TheMathSimplyAintMathing #AWorldWorthSaving #TheHumanityWithinUs #ConscienceAndEmpathy #UnitedNotDivided #WallahuAlam 

 

                                 I Love this Picture.  It's a warm Picture -  Me and my Daughter

Ravi Shankar at Three in the Morning

It is three in the morning.

I am listening to The Best of Ravi Shankar, and suddenly I am transported back to my college days in Green Bay, Wisconsin, when classical Indian music first became deeply woven into my life.

The sitar cries out. The tabla answers with its relentless rhythm. Somewhere beneath them, the violin seems to float like a voice from another dimension.

There is something about Indian classical music that is difficult to explain to someone who has never really listened.

It is not merely music.

It is movement.

It is vibration.

It is energy moving through the mind and body until, for a moment, the boundary between body, mind and spirit becomes less certain.

Perhaps that is why it feels so different at three in the morning.

At that hour, the world has become quiet enough for one to hear things that daytime usually drowns out.

The ragas seem to enter somewhere beneath thought. The rhythm of the tabla keeps the body moving while the sitar reaches somewhere beyond it. One can almost imagine the music as an ancient conversation between the visible and the invisible.

And naturally, my mind wanders into the great stories I encountered while growing up in Penang.

I learned much of the Ramayana and Mahabharata not from books at first, but through the classic Hindi films I watched as a boy. Later, with the arrival of YouTube, I was able to watch entire series again, this time with the perspective of an older man.

Then came the Bhagavad Gita.

And suddenly the stories I had absorbed as entertainment began to reveal another dimension.

The battlefield of Kurukshetra became more than a battlefield between the Pandavas and Kauravas. It became a battlefield within the human being.

And where was Hanuman?

Hanuman belongs to the Ramayana, yet in the Mahabharata he appears again, upon the banner of Arjuna's chariot at Kurukshetra.

How extraordinary that these great stories seem to speak across generations, carrying the same questions in different forms.

Who am I?

What is my duty?

Who is the doer?

What is real?

What lies beyond the noise of the mind?

Perhaps this is why I have always felt fortunate to have grown up in Penang, in a country where different races, cultures and religious traditions lived alongside one another. As a young man, I was exposed to worlds beyond my own without necessarily having to choose one world and reject another.

I could listen.

I could watch.

I could wonder.

And perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts a human being can receive.

Music does something similar.

It does not demand that we intellectually agree with it.

It simply enters.

A raga does not need to explain itself before it moves through the body. It reverberates. It awakens memory. It stirs emotion. It can bring the mind into a different state of attention.

For some people, particularly those deeply immersed in yogic traditions, such experiences may be understood in terms of kundalini and the movement of subtle energy.

For others, it may simply be beautiful music.

Both can be true without either needing to defeat the other.

For me, listening tonight, the distinction seems almost unnecessary.

Whether the ancient story is carried through scripture, through a grandmother's voice, through a classic Hindi film, through a book, or through a video on an iPhone, something is being transmitted.

A story.

A vibration.

A possibility of remembering.

And perhaps this is what art and music have always done.

They remind us of something we may have forgotten.

That beneath the noise of our ordinary lives there is another movement taking place.

The body is moving.

The mind is moving.

Emotion is moving.

Energy is moving.

And somewhere above—or perhaps within—all of it, there is the quiet witness.

Listening.

At three in the morning, Ravi Shankar's sitar is still singing.

The tabla is still driving the rhythm forward.

And for a few precious moments, I am not trying to understand any of it.

I am simply listening.

And perhaps listening itself is a form of meditation.

Wallahu Alam.

#RaviShankar #IndianClassicalMusic #Raga #TheWitness #BhagavadGita #MusicAndSpirit #ThreeAMusings #PenangMemories #ArtAndLife #WallahuAlam