A lesson in life ...

I don't know who said it first or where I got it from, but here goes ...


"Borrow money from pessimists - They don't expect it back."

An easy thing to do ...

A while back, I received e-mail mocking the Indonesian group Dewa and how its lead, Ahmad Dhani is of jewish heritage and all those stuff (as if being a Jew is bad, we forget how many great prophets are Jewish, being zionist is a different matter altogether). That kind of e-mail I only scan thorough and don't remember much details since I feel that there's malicious intent on the author instead of trying to do good.



And today I came across this article about Ahmad Dhani. Well, well, seems our friend is going places. Good for you brother and may you always be under our Master's guidance and our Lord's blessings. Free ticket ada ka?



Back to the e-mail, I can't just imagine the faces below as bad people, if anything, we want to be like moth to a flame and perish within their light ...

Nice to see such a face again

It is sooooo nice to see Shaykh Adnan's face once again. I heard he came to KL sometime during Ramadan and left yesterday.

I think I've mentioned before that I'm not a good Muslim at all. Just in case you might think otherwise (by seeing such a photo here), I do break a few ten commandments on a daily basis and not a regular on some Rukun Islam.

That apart, some aspect of my life was at the lowest low few weeks ealier and I was so much in despair that I'm ready to throw some of it away. Orang kata, kalau ikut rasa ... binasa. Had I followed my emotion, years from now friends would bump into me and take a pity that I've become a zombie and clueless in life.

And thank God for people like Shaykh Adnan! Somebody hosted him for a dinner in Tropicana last Saturday and I went there. He arrived around 9:00 pm, we prayed Isha' behind him, short zikir & sohbet afterward. And dinner with lamb, chicken, & beef. A good dinner it was; buat muka tebal and tambah dua kali.

The difference between people like Shaykh Adnan and others is that, by just being in their presence, we feel a certain aura and charisma about them. And dare I say, a certain peace comes to our troubled heart. I don't know how to put it in words but it was as if all those rough & troubled emotions in the heart are slowly being made beautiful once again.

And life has become its usual self. Thank you Sir.

Further Thoughts on the way to Work

Still on the subject of guidance, teaching, I remember our Malay peribahasa:

Kalau melentur buluh,
biarlah dari rebungnya.

And also the African proverb:

It takes the whole village to educate a child.

But how do we teach a virtue to somebody. I remember vaguely reading one of Idries Shah about a Sufi Master taking his murids on a journey and show them various examples of people persevering in their pursuits. The idea is for the murids to learn what perseverance means and keep the discipline in their own struggles. Listening about perseverance and seeing it in action is certaily two diffrent things.

We can’t just tell people to behave and everything will be fine and dandy after that. I believe this is so because within our own self, within this person that we call, for example sake, Fateh, there are various faculties at work. There are the egos, desires that try to go one way and the soul, the heart that wanna go the other way. Throughout human history, we could see this in the Yin/Yang, various facets of the Hindu gods, and even in the id, ego, super-ego of Freud. There’s a good introduction about this in a book called, appropriately, Book of Sufi Healing by Hakim Chisti.

In my own case, despite her temper, my grandma is one generous person. Whenever we go to visit some relatives, close or near, she will always bring a simple gift. Befitted orang kampung like her, the gift could be a few cans of condesed milk or a few kilos of sugar; and if she’s financially constrained, biscuits will do. And I hope to emulate her in that sense. If anything, charity is a good deed and could take away difficulties from us. May we do this more and more everyday. Aminnnn.