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 

 

                    Floating in Space - Mono-print - Printed at Miyagi Museum of Fine Arts Sendai, Japan.

The Doer and the Observer

Sometimes I wonder if I am still chasing after sensationalism in whatever I do.

Perhaps it is the old habit of striving for success—trying too hard to achieve some perfect goal, some extraordinary outcome that will shake the world. Looking back, I sometimes recognize in myself what the Vedanta tradition describes as attachment to the doer: the identification with the one who must accomplish something.

Perhaps the answer is not in doing more, but in becoming more attentive to the deed itself—to the process, the movement, the journey.

It can feel like swimming upstream, like the salmon returning to its birthplace to spawn, driven by some mysterious force toward the very struggle that may eventually consume it.

And then, occasionally, I catch myself.

I stop.

Something softens.

I begin to feel that perhaps I don't have to force the river to take me anywhere. There is a different kind of movement available—a smoother flowing feeling that I have come to call contentment within.

It is not an escape from life. It is more like a meditative state of consciousness, where the mind becomes quiet enough for one to notice a subtle shift into something deeper. A kind of spiritual absorption.

Nothing extraordinary happens.

And yet, something happens.

Today I spent several hours at a Malay fisherman's jetty working on a huge canvas, roughly twenty feet by eight feet, which I had actually begun almost twenty years ago at the Museum Gallery at USM.

The painting itself had already taken an unusual journey.

I had created its background by transferring oil paint from the surface of water onto the canvas. It was not an easy process. With the help of my friend Rashid, we made a shallow pool using a large tarp to contain the water. I poured different colors of oil paint onto the surface and allowed them to move freely.

Then, very carefully, we laid the enormous canvas gently across the surface of the water.

The paint clung to the canvas.

When we lifted it, the colors had transferred themselves in flowing patterns—almost cosmic, like a view into outer space.

It came out better than I had expected.

Perhaps that was the first lesson.

I had not actually painted the "space."

I had created the conditions and then allowed the paint to do what paint does.

There was a certain intelligence in the process that did not belong entirely to me.

Later I decided that the vast field of colors needed a human presence.

And life, as it often does, provided the opportunity.

A friend's four-year-old daughter came along, and I had her place her painted palms all over the canvas, alongside my own.

Those little hands became part of the painting.

The child who was four years old then is now almost twenty and preparing to go to college.

Twenty years can pass in the blink of an eye.

Today, another eight-year-old girl sat nearby with my large sketchpad, happily doing her own drawings while I worked.

My little protégé.

And strangely enough, I found myself struggling.

I was second-guessing myself.

What had initially been allowed to flow freely had suddenly become a lesson in effort.

There was the doer.

And there was me, the observer, watching the doer at work.

That distinction has become increasingly interesting to me.

A musician knows this feeling. There comes a moment when the musician is no longer calculating every note. Something deeper takes over. The right note arrives at precisely the right moment.

An artist sometimes experiences the same thing.

You know when something is right.

Not because someone has measured it or declared it successful, but because the work itself seems to come into alignment with something within you.

Perhaps this is what I have been searching for all these years.

Not the perfect painting.

Not the extraordinary achievement.

Not something that will shake the world.

Perhaps simply that moment when the artist becomes quiet enough for the work to reveal itself.

The doer wants to take credit.

The observer simply watches.

And somewhere between the two, if I am fortunate, the painting begins to breathe.

Maybe that is the real journey.

Not swimming harder against the current, but learning when to stop fighting the river.

To do the work.

To give it everything I have.

And then, somehow, to let go of the one who thinks he is doing it.

Wallahu Alam.

#TheDoerAndTheObserver #ArtAsMeditation #TheJourneyWithin #LettingGo #Consciousness #CreativeProcess #ArtAndLife #Flow #ContentmentWithin #TheArtistAsObserver #TwentyYearsLater #WallahuAlam 

A WITNESS TO HISTORY

 

                                                         And Who Would You Vote?

A WITNESS TO HISTORY

I have been watching the present storm surrounding the latest decision concerning former Prime Minister Najib Razak.

The King has granted a conditional pardon allowing Najib to serve the remainder of his prison sentence under house arrest until August 2028, subject to a RM50 million fine. The decision was made through the Federal Territories Pardons Board.

I am not a politician, nor do I have any desire to become one.

But I am a Malaysian citizen — and I was already here before Merdeka in 1957.

I have lived long enough to witness governments change, politicians rise and fall, promises being made and sometimes forgotten. I have also had my own encounters with politicians over the decades, some of which left a taste in my mouth that I have never quite forgotten.

So I cannot simply look away now.

I have no interest in telling anyone what they should think about this decision. The constitutional authority of the King, the rule of law, accountability and the continuing fight against corruption are all matters that deserve careful consideration. Even within the present government there are differing reactions to what has happened.

For me, however, there is a question larger than Najib Razak himself:

What does this moment tell us about the Malaysia we are building — and the Malaysia we will leave behind?

I have spent a lifetime observing this country as an artist, a traveller and, above all, as a citizen.

Perhaps that is my only role today:

To remain awake.
To observe.
To remember.
And to bear witness.

History will eventually make its own judgment.

For now, I am simply watching.

Wallahu Alam.

#Malaysia #Merdeka #ApoleticalWitness #RuleOfLaw #History #MalaysianCitizen #BearWitness

 

 

THE ROAD HOME

I woke at a quarter to five this morning from a delightful dream.

I had been visiting two villages. The first is already becoming a blur, as dreams so often do, but the second remains surprisingly vivid.

I was cycling from one place to another with a small group of boys.

There was something wonderful about being on a bicycle again. For a moment I was a child once more, simply riding along without anywhere particularly important to be. No car. No timetable. No destination that needed to be conquered. Just the road, the boys, and the quiet pleasure of moving.

Then I realized that I was visiting the relatives of a close friend who had passed away.

I saw him only briefly.

He smiled at me—and then he was gone.

The house was a Malay kampung house, the kind where many members of a family might live together under one roof. There was a feeling of life, family and community about the place.

At one point in the dream I was doing some kind of yoga stretching exercise. As I moved, I discovered that there were sewing needles stuck into my trousers, arranged in fine straight lines.

I carefully removed them.

There were more.

I removed those too.

This happened several times until eventually I handed the needles to a young woman and said:

"Your house is clean now."

I woke with a strange sense of spiritual exhilaration.

What made the dream particularly interesting was what happened later.

Evening came, and we got back on our bicycles and cycled happily back to the first house.

There was no difficulty finding the way.

No getting lost.

No anxiety about getting home.

That caught my attention because in many of my dreams, getting home is precisely where the trouble begins.

This time, I simply found my way home.

---

Perhaps the dream came at an interesting moment in my waking life.

Over the past few days, things have changed with my children. One has changed jobs, while another has changed the location of her work. As a consequence, I find myself at home much more than before.

The morning routine has changed.

I no longer have to send one child to work every morning, while the other now has the car to get her own work done.

And suddenly, there I am.

At home.

With time.

More time than I have been accustomed to having.

It is an interesting thing, having time.

One might imagine it would automatically be a blessing. Sometimes it is. At other times it becomes a rather dangerous invitation to boredom, procrastination and endless scrolling.

And so I have been listening to podcasts.

Quite a lot of them.

Lately, many have been about artificial intelligence and what some people describe as the "End of Time," human extinction, or the possibility of something called "Super AI" eventually becoming beyond our ability to control.

I listen.

I think.

I listen some more.

And somewhere along the way, one thought keeps coming back to me:

What a bloody waste.

Humanity has been given such an extraordinary gift.

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we have ever received.

And yet here we are, potentially turning it into another instrument for greed, hatred, ignorance and the pursuit of power.

It isn't really AI that bothers me most.

It is us.

We have repeatedly demonstrated that our ability to create powerful tools can advance much faster than our wisdom about how to use them.

Fire was a gift.

The wheel was a gift.

Electricity was a gift.

The Internet was a gift.

And now artificial intelligence has arrived.

What will we do with this one?

That question has been haunting me.

And then another question follows:

What can an insignificant old man like me possibly contribute to any of this?

The answer, I am beginning to understand, is probably:

Not very much.

And perhaps that is perfectly alright.

I am not going to solve the future of artificial intelligence from my little corner of the world.

I am not going to predict whether humanity will flourish, destroy itself, or somehow stumble into a future none of us can presently imagine.

What I can do is observe.

I can question.

I can resist jumping to conclusions.

I can try to distinguish between a genuine warning and somebody selling fear for clicks.

I can listen without automatically believing.

I can remain curious without becoming consumed.

Perhaps what I have been searching for is not an answer but balance.

There is a great temptation in these extraordinary times to swing between extremes.

Everything is wonderful.

Everything is terrible.

AI will save humanity.

AI will destroy humanity.

The future is glorious.

The future is doomed.

Perhaps the wiser position is simply:

I don't know.

But I am paying attention.

---

This morning, while I was thinking about all this, the Azan broke gently into the early morning air.

A short shower had just passed.

Perhaps the rain had settled some of the haze outside.

For a moment, everything became very simple.

The sky.

The rain.

The call to prayer.

The quietness of the morning.

And that strange dream about bicycles, children, an old friend, sewing needles and finding my way home.

Maybe there is a connection.

Maybe there isn't.

WallahuAlam.

But I keep thinking about those needles.

They were hidden until I moved.

And when I found them, I didn't panic.

I simply removed them carefully, one by one.

Perhaps that is how we should approach some of the frightening things we encounter in the world today.

Don't swallow everything.

Don't reject everything.

Stretch a little.

Look carefully.

Remove what doesn't belong.

Keep what is useful.

And then continue down the road.

There is no need to know exactly where the road ends.

For now, it is enough to take the next step.

Or, perhaps after this morning's dream:

the next ride.

And when evening comes, may we still know the way home.

WallahuAlam.

#TheRoadHome #AIAndHumanity #FindingBalance #MorningReflections #DreamsAndReality #WallahuAlam

One Step, One Breath

 

 

One Step, One Breath

Perhaps I am drifting big time.

Maybe it is the collapsing of my old self, seeking the comfort zones I have always been familiar with, together with the fear of losing my footing after having worked so hard to achieve some measure of peace with myself.

A strange thought came to me through two dreams.

In the first, I was trying desperately to strike the great Boncho bell correctly. Even my Zen instructor was there, trying to figure out what was wrong with the whole procedure. But the harder I tried, the more my confidence disappeared.

Then the large wooden striker disappeared.

And eventually, even the great bell itself was gone.

A little girl was playing nearby, looking at me as though she had lost recognition of someone who had once been her favourite friend.

It was a deeply depressing feeling.

In the second dream, there was a young woman to whom I was attracted. She seemed to be approaching some kind of ordination or awakening, and I was trying to reach her. But I couldn't make it. Instead, I found myself declaring my love for another friend who was actually trying to help me get to her.

I woke up with that strange mixture of loss, confusion and longing that dreams sometimes leave behind.

And perhaps I have been carrying some of that into waking life.

Yesterday morning, for the first time in a long while, I deliberately denied myself the Morning Doa on YouTube that had become part of my daily routine. There were even several versions of the same videos appearing on the screen, almost as though the universe was saying, “Well? Are you going to listen?”

But I didn't.

Something inside me knew I was becoming negligent. Taking things for granted. Letting things slide.

Then came yesterday's haze—the worst I can remember hitting the Island.

My daughter's laptop suddenly went out while she was working and now needs to be taken to the shop.

Small things, perhaps.

But when we are unsettled, small things can suddenly seem to carry enormous meaning.

And yet, something good happened yesterday too.

I visited my closest friend, Ben Ronjen, and his wife, who had just returned from travelling in Tibet. They brought me a gift—a small black stone from one of the highest points they had reached in the mountains.

There I met several close friends.

We talked.

We touched base.

And somehow, that simple gathering brought me back to earth.

Perhaps that is the lesson I am beginning to see.

The little incidents are not necessarily signs that something is going wrong. They may simply be part and parcel of getting deeper into knowing who I am—my strengths, my weaknesses, my attachments, my fears and the places where I still seek comfort.

I have been feeling as though I am in regression.

But perhaps regression is not always going backward.

Perhaps sometimes what feels like losing our footing is simply the old ground giving way.

And perhaps I don't need to understand everything.

I don't need another explanation.

I don't need to make up stories or excuses.

I just need to take the next step forward...

and breathe the next breath...

welcoming a new day.

The Azan has just broken the silence.

So perhaps that is enough for now.

One step.
One breath.
One new day.

Wallahu A'lam.

#OneStepOneBreath #WallahuAlam #Awakening #LifeJourney #FindingMyWay 

The You Tube Apocalypse.

                                                     Knowledge at our Fingertips.
 

 The You Tube Apocalypse.

“God Cancelled Everything Because of You!”

“It’s Happening. September 10th. 4 Major Cosmic Shifts in One Day!”

“GROK — The Unborn Self.”

“It’s Hard to Hold on to Islam.”

“Spiritual War.”

“It’s Coming in 2027.”

“Houthis’ Big Red Sea Victory.”

These are just a few titles randomly picked from a single page of YouTube.

It boggles the mind just reading the titles alone.

And yet, after a while, one begins to notice something even more interesting: beneath all the different subjects, religions, predictions, wars, cosmic events and supposed revelations, the narratives begin to sound remarkably similar.

Something is happening.

Something enormous is coming.

You need to know.

You need to wake up.

You are running out of time.

The urgent nature of these messages seems almost as important as the messages themselves.

And this, I think, is where the real story begins.

How does one remove oneself from being sucked into this smorgasbord of podcasts, videos, revelations, predictions and opinions?

It has become a challenge—an unnecessary and unwanted challenge.

The irony is that the technology that gives us access to practically all the knowledge of humanity also gives us access to practically all of humanity’s fears, fantasies, certainties and nonsense.

And we keep clicking.

Perhaps that is because there 

is something in all of us that wants to know what is coming next. We want the mystery explained. We want somebody to connect the dots. We want to believe that, beneath the apparent chaos, there is a pattern.

 

But perhaps there is another reason.

Many of us simply have too much time on our hands.

Drifting somewhere between boredom and curiosity, we open YouTube almost innocently. One video leads to another, and another, until suddenly we are listening to somebody explaining the future of humanity, the end of the world, the next great spiritual awakening or the secret meaning of something we had never even heard about ten minutes earlier.

And then we wonder where the afternoon went.

This, too, is a reflection of the state of humanity.

Perhaps the most revealing thing about today's media is not whether it is fake or real.

It is that we are willing to keep watching it.

The algorithm has discovered something about us that we perhaps haven't discovered about ourselves.

We are fascinated by uncertainty.

We are attracted to urgency.

We are seduced by revelation.

And, apparently, we are never quite satisfied with the answer.

I care about what is happening in the world. I care about humanity. I care about where all this technology, religion, politics, war and spiritual searching is taking us.

But sometimes I wonder whether the wisest response is simply to turn the screen off.

Go outside.

Look at a tree.

Make something.

Cook some fried rice.

Talk to another human being.

Or simply sit quietly for a while and discover what remains when nobody is telling us what we should be thinking about.

Maybe that is the real spiritual challenge of our time.

Not finding the next revelation—

but learning when to stop looking for one.

#TheYouTubeApocalypse #MediaOverload #Humanity #Awareness #WakeUp