Title: Reciting the Al-Fatihah in the Green Dragon Zendo
Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, California – 1985/86
I’m not great with dates and times, but if memory serves me right, it must have been sometime in 1985 or 1986 when the late Allen Ginsberg visited Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. Also present at this gathering of poets was Stephen Levine and a few other notable figures of the American poetry movement. At the time, I didn’t even know who Ginsberg was—not until after the event, when I did some research at the library and asked around among my fellow Zen students.
It was a beautiful summer afternoon at Green Gulch. We had just completed a seven-day sesshin—a rigorous sitting meditation retreat—and everyone was either burnt out, blissed out, or walking around on cloud nine, filled with enlightened musings on everything from the sacredness of a blade of grass to the cosmic significance of orgasm. I was one of those, still wrapped in my Zen robes, which smelled like they'd been slept in for a week—because they had.
These robes had been handed down to me by Edward Espe Brown—Ed Brown, as he was known among Zen folks in San Francisco. He told me it had been his first robe at Tassajara. Though a bit rough around the edges, it was still in decent shape. I often wondered, if those robes could speak, what amorous or absurd adventures they might recount from their time with Ed. I wore them with quiet pride; they made me feel like a real Zen man. Cloaked in their folds, I felt protected and secure.
That was how I found myself seated in my usual place in the Zendo, amid two or three hundred faces who had come from all over the West Coast to hear Ginsberg and others. It felt like the poetic equivalent of a Grateful Dead concert.
One by one, poets got up and read their verses. The air was charged. People were high on language, rhythm, and silence. I remained sitting zazen, my eyes closed, continuing as though the sesshin hadn’t ended. And then it happened—something stirred in the pit of my belly. At first I thought I was just hungry. But soon the sensation grew. Something was rising—not food, not gas, but sound. My neck and jaw began to tighten and loosen, pulsing uncontrollably.
Then—pop! A click in my ears. Silence. A vast, familiar void. I had entered that strange dimension of deep meditation, or perhaps madness. I had been there before, and I knew something strange was about to unfold.
Without warning, my mouth began to form words—Arabic words.
"A‘ūdhu billāhi min ash-shayṭān ir-rajīm... Bismillāh ir-Raḥmān ir-Raḥīm..."
The opening lines of the Al-Fatihah flowed from my mouth, vibrating with a strange resonance. Suddenly, I was no longer in a Zen hall in California—I was a young boy again in Kampung Selut, Sungai Pinang, reciting the Quran with my childhood friends. I was at peace. I was home.
Part of me was screaming, "You’ve lost your mind!" I had just recited the Al-Fatihah—the opening surah of the Holy Quran—in a hall packed with mostly non-Buddhists, many of them remnants of the Flower Power movement. Had I gone too far? Was I about to be exiled from the Zen Center as the "Great Disruptor"?
When I finally opened my eyes, they met Allen Ginsberg’s across the hall. He smiled and called out, "My God, you had to do it, didn’t you?"
Out of habit, I gave him a half-bow and closed my eyes again. The event was wrapping up. People began filing out, assuming my recitation was the poetic grand finale.
In the daze that follows seven days of deep meditation, I stumbled out with the crowd like a zombie. Suddenly, a strong hand gripped my arm. A man pulled me close and whispered in my ear:
"Qul huwal-lāhu aḥad. Allāhus-ṣamad. Lam yalid wa lam yūlad..."
It was the complete Surah al-Ikhlas—the declaration of the Oneness of Allah.
He shook my hand firmly and said, "Hi, my name is Gabriel. I'm from Hungary."
I stared into the face of this long-haired, Jesus-looking hippie and nearly pissed in my robes.
As I stepped outside, another hand caught my arm, more gently this time. It was Bill Sterling’s large, friendly face looking down at me.
"Sam, I don’t know what you said in there," he said, "but it was the best poetry I’ve heard all day."
Bill, the ultimate skeptic of religious practices at Green Gulch—he was more of a corporate man whose wife happened to be one of the Abbots. Our conversations usually revolved around Malaysia or football scores, not spiritual outbursts.
I never did meet Ginsberg again, and perhaps that was for the best. As for Gabriel from Hungary, he hung around for a few days, doing Tai Chi or yoga on the lawn, but we never spoke again. One day he vanished as mysteriously as he appeared.
I still have no rational explanation for what happened that day. To recite the Al-Fatiha in the Green Dragon Zendo of all places—it must have sounded strange even to the most liberated of Muslims. I sometimes wonder what would’ve happened if I’d chanted it in a Hindu temple or Chinese shrine in Penang. Or flipped the script and recited the Heart Sutra in the mosque of my village?
Most likely, I’d have had to answer to several religious departments and their fatwas—and maybe even a stint in Tanjung Rambutan, ( Famous Mental Home in Malaysia) for excessive spiritual fervor.
But in that moment, it felt... right. As if something deep and ancient within me had surfaced and spoken through me. It wasn’t a rebellion, or a conversion—it was simply the poetry of the soul.
Reflections
Some moments defy logic or even belief, but they happen nonetheless. And if we are lucky enough to witness them, or even be the vessel for their emergence, perhaps our only task is to bow, breathe, and allow the poetry of the universe to speak through us.
No comments:
Post a Comment