A Studio in San Francisco, an Earthquake, and a Sketchbook

                                     Where it all Happened.

3435 Army Street, San Francisco

The building was documented as an artist live/work complex with 36 live/work spaces. That supports your recollection of the location as an artists' studio building, although it doesn't establish your individual participation.

 

A Studio in San Francisco, an Earthquake, and a Sketchbook

October 1989 — A Memory Reawakened

Sometimes, all it takes is a photograph of an old building to open a door to the past.

Recently, I began looking into the history of the San Francisco Open Studios art exhibition of 1989. The reason was a forthcoming Penang Open Studio event, which prompted me to wonder whether my own experience in San Francisco might offer an interesting point of reference. Was the 1989 event among the first of its kind, and might there still be a record of my participation?

I was sharing a studio with an artist named Rory M. Mohr, who, as I recall, rented the premises in his name. Our studio was in the former Sears Roebuck building at the corner of Army Street and Mission Street, a building whose ground floor had been converted into an unemployment office.

I remember visitors coming through our studio, and I still have my sketchbook containing their names, addresses, and signatures, dated October 14 and 15, 1989. Unfortunately, the handwriting is often so tiny that deciphering it under poor lighting is quite a challenge. Nevertheless, the sketchbook remains a little time capsule of those two days.

San Francisco Open Studios had begun in 1975, so by 1989 the event was already an established part of the city's artistic life. My participation belonged to that continuing tradition, and now, thirty-seven years later, the prospect of an Open Studio event in Penang has brought those memories back to the surface.

But the building holds another memory, one far more dramatic than an art exhibition.

The Day the Earth Moved

At the time, I was working as a produce buyer for a company called Del Tomaso. My working hours were somewhat unusual. I would leave for work around midnight, drive my truck across the Bay, deliver and unload produce at a supermarket, and return home sometime in the late afternoon or evening.

On October 17, 1989, I had returned to the building and decided to lie down for a nap.

Then it happened.

The first thing I remember was a loud crack, like a gunshot. Another followed as the building began to shake. I later learned that the joints in the drywall had split under the strain.

Then came the incident with the hook.

Water pipes were suspended from the ceiling by metal hooks. As the building moved violently, the pipes began to undulate, and the hooks were shooting out of the ceiling.

One of them struck the concrete floor about a foot from where I stood, leaving a small crater.

I had paused beneath a doorway when the shaking began. At the time, it seemed a natural place to take refuge. Only afterwards did I realise that the doorway was merely a makeshift frame, not the substantial structure I had imagined it to be.

Had I not paused there, the falling hook might have struck me.

Yikes!

I was fortunate, to say the least.

Then came a sound I shall never forget: a tremendous roar, like a locomotive racing wildly towards the building.

The lights went out.

Silence.

A woman from the neighbouring premises came and stood beside me beneath the doorway. We remained there together as the building settled around us.

Then the lights went out.

Silence.

And from somewhere in another room came the cry of a child.

That cry, breaking the silence in the darkness, added an eerie quality to an already unsettling experience. For those few moments, we were left with our own thoughts and whatever sounds might emerge from the darkness.

A telephone rang.

The woman hurried away to answer it, then returned with an extraordinary account from her friend in Tokyo, Japan, who had been watching the World Series between San Francisco and Oakland on television.

According to her friend, the television coverage, which included aerial images from the Goodyear blimp covering the game, showed the damage to the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, where a section of the upper deck had collapsed onto the deck below.

While my neighbour's friend watched events unfold from the other side of the Pacific, we had experienced the earthquake from inside that building in San Francisco.

Two people, separated by an ocean, connected by a telephone call and an event neither could have anticipated.

Walking Through a Changed City

Eventually, I left the building and began walking towards Haight Street.

I remember making my way down Valencia Street towards Market Street. Car alarms were still screaming, and dogs were barking. The familiar city had become an unsettling place, its ordinary sounds transformed by the aftermath of the earthquake.

I was heading towards 191 Haight Street, where my late wife, Nancy, lived with my very close friend David Carlson and seven or eight other people.

Nancy is no longer with us, but memories of the life we shared continue to surface in the most unexpected ways.

At the time, I could not have imagined that, decades later, a photograph of my old studio building would bring the entire episode back to me.

I had originally been looking for a record of an art exhibition. Instead, I found myself remembering the work I did, the people I knew, the building in which I lived, and the day the earth moved beneath my feet.

And that is the curious nature of memory. We may set out looking for one thing and discover something else entirely.

The Sketchbook Remains

My old sketchbook still contains the names and signatures of people who visited the studio on October 14 and 15, 1989. Their handwriting may be difficult to decipher, and I may never identify every person who came through our door, but the record remains.

Perhaps that is enough.

An artist's sketchbook is more than a place for drawings. It can become an unintended archive of a life: a record of places visited, people encountered, and moments that might otherwise disappear.

Now, with a Penang Open Studio event on the horizon, I find myself looking back at San Francisco and the experience I had there in 1989.

I wonder what stories the participating artists in Penang will one day tell about their own beginnings, their studios, and the people who walked through their doors.

For my part, I have a building, a sketchbook, a falling hook, a woman answering a telephone, and a city full of car alarms and barking dogs.

And I have another story waiting to be told.

For after leaving the studio, I walked towards Haight Street, where Nancy and David were living.

But that, as they say, is another episode.

To be continued…

---

Hashtags

#SanFrancisco #SanFranciscoOpenStudios #OpenStudios #LomaPrietaEarthquake #October1989 #ArtistsLife #ArtistSketchbook #LifeMemories #VisualMemoir #NancyAndMe #DavidCarlson #PenangArt #PenangOpenStudio #ArtAndMemory #TheWanderingArtist

The Imperturbable Mind - Fudōshin, the Empty Mirror, and the Circle of Life

 

The Imperturbable Mind

Fudōshin, the Empty Mirror, and the Circle of Life

Salam and Gasho.

This morning, while contemplating the Japanese concept of Fudōshin — the “immovable” or “imperturbable mind” — I suddenly remembered a question once asked of me by my first Zen teacher, Junpo Dennis Kelly:

“What is the Imperturbable Mind?”

I never felt that I had adequately answered him.

Perhaps I wasn't supposed to.

The question remained with me for years, like a kōan carried quietly somewhere inside.

And now, after all these years, the word Fudōshin seems to have brought that old question back to the surface.

So what is Fudōshin?

The literal meaning is something like “unmoving mind” or “immovable heart-mind.” But it does not mean becoming emotionally frozen, insensitive, or incapable of being disturbed.

Rather, it suggests a mind that does not become possessed by whatever arises within it.

Fear may arise.

Anger may arise.

Desire may arise.

Confusion may arise.

But the mind does not have to become their servant.

Perhaps the simplest image is that of an empty mirror.

The mirror reflects whatever appears before it.

A beautiful face appears — it reflects.

An ugly face appears — it reflects.

Sunrise appears — it reflects.

A storm appears — it reflects.

The mirror does not cling to the beautiful image or reject the ugly one. And when the image disappears, it does not try to hold onto it.

It simply reflects what is.

But there is an important subtlety here.

The mirror does not have to try to be empty.

It doesn't say:

“I must now become an imperturbable mirror.”

That would already be another disturbance.

It simply reflects.

And perhaps that is where Fudōshin and the “Imperturbable Mind” begin to meet.

 

 

---

Musashi and the Mind in the Face of Death

This becomes especially interesting when we consider Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary Japanese swordsman.

Imagine standing opposite an opponent, katana in hand, both knowing that the next movement may determine everything.

What happens to the mind?

Suddenly it begins its endless commentary:

What is he going to do?

Will I be fast enough?

What if I lose?

I must win.

I must not be afraid.

What if he attacks from the left?

And now there are two opponents:

the person standing before you, and the turbulence taking place inside your own mind.

Perhaps this is what makes Fudōshin so important to the warrior.

The enemy is not necessarily the mind itself.

The enemy is becoming entangled in the movements of the mind.

Fear appears — see it.

Thought appears — see it.

The opponent moves — see it.

There is no need for an internal committee meeting before responding!

The trained swordsman has cultivated a mind capable of seeing and responding without being trapped by excessive thought.

The sword may move.

The feet may move.

The opponent may move.

Everything may move.

Yet something remains still.

That is the paradox of Fudōshin.

The mind is not still because nothing is happening.

It is still because it is not grasping, resisting, or becoming lost in what is happening.

 

 

---

Then My Teacher's Question Returned

And this brought me back to Junpo's question:

“What is the Imperturbable Mind?”

Perhaps, when I was younger, I thought I had to discover an answer.

Maybe I needed to become calm enough, disciplined enough, spiritual enough to finally understand it.

But perhaps that was already the misunderstanding.

If I say:

“I must become imperturbable,”

I have created another “I” whose job is to defend itself from disturbance.

And then something rather absurd happens.

I become disturbed by the possibility of being disturbed!

Perhaps the kōan was never asking me for a philosophical definition.

Perhaps it was asking me to look directly.

What happens when fear arises?

What happens when desire arises?

What happens when anger arises?

What happens when the mind becomes confused?

Can I see these things without immediately becoming them?

And then another question appears:

Who is the one who is watching?

There it is again.

The kōan.

---

The Empty Mirror

Perhaps the answer is not to become a mind that can never be disturbed.

Perhaps it is to become like an empty mirror.

The mirror doesn't suppress what appears.

It doesn't argue with it.

It doesn't cling to it.

It doesn't say:

“This image is good; I want to keep it.”

or

“This image is bad; I must get rid of it.”

It simply reflects.

And when the image is gone, the mirror does not mourn its absence.

Perhaps this is what Fudōshin points toward:

not the absence of movement, but the absence of unnecessary attachment to movement.

And perhaps the deepest form of this realization is when there is no longer a separate “me” standing behind the mirror saying:

“Look how well I am reflecting.”

There is simply seeing.

There is simply what is.

 

---

And Then We Come Home

But there is another lesson here that I find strangely comforting.

Fudōshin does not mean escaping ordinary life.

It does not mean becoming some solemn spiritual statue sitting permanently beneath a Bodhi tree.

The mirror reflects the sunrise.

It also reflects the rain.

It reflects the beautiful.

It reflects the ridiculous.

It reflects the sacred and the mundane.

And suddenly, after all this discussion about Musashi, Zen, Fudōshin, the witness, consciousness and the empty mirror...

I have to go to the toilet.

Such is life.

😂

Perhaps that is the final lesson.

Back home in the Circle of Life, dancing in the wind and wondering if there is a toilet nearby.

No problem.

No grand spiritual conclusion required.

The wind blows.

The body moves.

The mind thinks.

The mirror reflects.

Life happens.

Such Is.

And perhaps that is enough.

Gasho.

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.

                                          A Haiku by Reichiro san written on my mono - print.
 

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.

                                                   The Immovable Mind in action.
 

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.

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