Hari Raya Came and Went

There was no 'Balek Kampung' for me this year and so Hari Raya Aidil Fitri was spent in George Town, Penang visiting relatives and friends. The fasting month came to an end and i must say i did fast the whole month at least where food and drinks are concern however spiritually i had my doubts as to the purity of my fasting, but this i know the AlMighty knows well enough and will take into consideration accordingly as he is 'Oft-forgiving and Most mercifull and Allah I doubt is too overly concern over the minor trangressions of His servants. But one tries the best that is expected without being overly zealous so much so that one becomes swollen with pride over one's religious standings.
I fully realize that I have alot of making up to do where fasting is concern as i had never fasted for all those years spent overseas much less pray five times a day, but had Allah wanted me to be born a practicing Muslim He would not have allowed me my journey in life as it had been. I do not regret my past life and experiences for better or for worse but i have come to understand better my position spiritually in this life and know when i am a hypocrate or when I am genuine in my worship of my Maker. I now feel more than i ever did His Being, His Prescence and His Infinite Compassion towards those who seek to be home again after wandering lost l0oking for that which Is. I consider my self having entered Islam again through the back door and am seeking the acceptance of my fellow true believers in the practice of getting closer to that which we seek. I had never been a true Muslim all those years i was travelling in the West but i knew i was converted to Islam at the age of twelve and this made me a Muslim by conversion and Islam had always been that I ultimately seek to understand. Not merely the tenets and the rules and regulations, not just the historical and the words of the Prophet and the Holy Koran but the Islam that sits in the center of my heart. The Islam that is the original Devine Spark that is the Essence of Allah, I want to go home to this and not to Heaven or Hell but the the source that I came from.
Yesterday I stood in the Muslim cemetary at Dato'Kramat Road the cemetery where my Grandfather and Grandmother and all my aunties and Uncles are buried and where my second eldest brother was laid to rest two or three weeks ago. I was there to lay to rest my Auntie who had died at 3.30 am yesterday morning. She was unpligged from her life support equipments at the Lam Wah EE Hospital after she suffered a massive stroke and the doctor in charge saw no sense in prologing her suffering. As I held her face in my hands and called out to her to surrender or submit to Allah the pain and suffering I could feel the tension in her head like it was ready to explode! Her eyes were totally dilated but i could still senese the fear of not being able to breath. I stayed with her for quite a long time tryin my damdest to give her some comfort by my touching her and my voice in the effort to reach her but I was unsuccessful for she was struggling for her life breath for breath gasping and gaging. I was moved by the sight and the xperience of the whole event watching this woman who is two years older than me tortured till death claims her two and half hours latter after she was unplugged.
Life is Suffering, the Buddha is said to have said, Impermanence, old age and death is part and parcel of that which is called life. All that breath must taste death and death comes whenever and wherever regardless of one's condition or status in life and more often than not one is never ready for it even if one dare to claim that one is free from the fear of death. We spent most of our life living with death at the back of our mind tucked away in the farthest corner of our mental closset, we most of us live in denila of death till death knocks on our door. Islam insist that we live in preparation for our final destination after death, the life of the hereafter, where Allah will raise all of the sons of Adam back to their conciousness on Judgement Day. Death in the physical sense is merely a transition from one state to another for the soul when the physical body is claimed back by the veryy earth that it was created from. For the Buddhist the soul that survives the physical death goes into a transmigration stage where it will finally be reborn according to its Karmic state. Incarnation according to Buddhism is the spiritual evolution of the souls towards attaining to a state of being human again withtout anymore stains or blemishes from the physical world of existance, enlightened and becoming Light after going through countless transmigration of Birth, Death and Re-Birth. A liberated Soul is a soul that has freed itself from the chains and bonds of this Mayavic world or plane we live in due to our ignorance of it being an Illusion accepting whatever we experience as beith 'Real'. The Buddha aspired to be liberated from this Illusive world through various mens of realizations and awakennings including that of realizing the state death and dieing. Buddhism thus had developped various practices towards making man come to a full realization and complete awareness at the time of his death so that when it happens he is fully awaken and thus not afraid or confused.
In this modern day and age most of us will most probably die in a state of totally be under the influence of drugs and pain killers. Our mind or whatever is left of it at the approach of death most probably will be so sedated that our response to death would almost be mechanically drug oriented, we die in a state of being stone or high. Whatever happens after is as good as irrelevant to even dwell upon as there is not a shred of evidence that can testify that our soul can survive somewhere else after the body has seized to function. The atheist and non believers or free thinkers would say 'We told you so' and they may be right! But to the religious and sprituallly inclined, death is only the beginning of an even greater journey for the souls of the departed. Death is merely a shedding of skin from one form to another, one plane to another from one state of conciousness to another and this realization is what makes man different from other creatures. Without this realization man can do and get away with murder for he is held accountable to no one or any laws that can hold his acctions right or wrong accountable if he escapes this life through death by old age alone. Faith in the believe that ther is a life in the hereafter or in the event called karmic retribution as in the Buddhist believe is what has held most generations of civilization from self annihillation. It may be in the guise of the fear of the unknown that man checks himself from becoming a whole lot worse than the animals although there many instances he has already, however the majority or mankind still maintian that the soul will survive and will answer for what it had been in this physical realm of existance. That heaven and hell maybe for some just allegorical ideas to frighten or persuade our appropriate behaviours, but the fact that watching someone in the throws of death still frightens one is something to ponder upon for every living man. If man is keen enough to learn more about death he should educate himself by wathching the process of the decay of the human body through a glass case instead of assuming what happens beneath his feet at the cemetary.

SELAMAT HARI HARI TO ALL!!