Different Color of Life

This week I had assignment from my office to go to Bali. I stay there for a week to replace one of the staff who had to take leave to visit her sick mother in Java. It had to be me because there is no other people to serve the english speaking customers there. So I said why not. It gave me a chance to do several things like visiting my oldest sister and my other friends, helping my colleagues at work and returning the book and the dvds I borrowed from one of my friends there.


Going to Bali this time was like going to different world. Because apart from my so called normal life, I got to experience something different. Something to make me (again) think about the world and everything it is offered.



Cultivating Harmony

O Allah, there is no true life but the life of hereafter 

In Bali I met my friends who used to be my colleagues and my clients which are mostly tourists or people who worj in arts and entertainment services. Understanding their life's background, I can say that we are different in term of our way of life. We have different lifestyle and things to pursue in our life; they seemed to really enjoying life (work, arts, entertainment, etc) and dedicate their life into it.

I respect their dedication and try to see if I may be able to do as theirs. I find that if I try hard I may be able to achieve it, but my other self also said to me 'I won't let you take that path'. As much as I may be able to push myself to that direction, the Greater Cause of my life will not let it to take place. Talk about 'been there and done that'.


I mean I have tried to lead myself to take another road to see how good can I be in indulging my desires. My mind ended up making analysis and couldn't really feel 'the true enjoyment' as those people may feel. All I got is a feeling of being detached from myself. I become an observant, an outsider to my own self. I guess that would be the feeling which most people who worked in entertainment industry from film to music, to night life to sex industry had and later led them to take drugs to get rid of that feeling or try make themselves feel complete.


For me as I live by experience, I try to accept things as it comes. Try to mingle with people by accepting them as they are and ignore the difference in our principle core to be able serve them as human being based on my capacity. I try to cultivate harmony within myself even in different environment. I let them see only my outer surface not my deeper core which I'm afraid is different from my other part as I live a life being a student of thariqah, in communion with my spiritual master and meet up my other friends.


Have I been an hypocrite?


Well, that will be up to people to justify me. To live in this world, we need to accept the world as it is and that is including all the colors of the world and its people. And the most important thing in living this life is being in harmony with our Self, the world and its people, regardless who and what they are. Their relationship with God is their personal choice to make. I am merely given the 'furqan' to differentiate what is right and what is wrong thus to guide me in making choices and stay afloat in this world. On this matter a guideline has been given:


54. Cultivate Harmony
Cultivate harmony within yourself, and harmony becomes real;
Cultivate harmony within your family, and harmony becomes fertile;
Cultivate harmony within your community, and harmony becomes abundant;
Cultivate harmony within your culture, and harmony becomes enduring;
Cultivate harmony within the world, and harmony becomes ubiquitous.

Living a teaching of thariqah isn't about hermitage

Live with a person to understand that person;
Live with a family to understand that family;
Live with a community to understand that community;
Live with a culture to understand that culture;
Live with the world to understand the world.


How can I live with the world?
By accepting.


As learning thariqah isn't about living in seclusion like in monastery or being a hermit but to mingle with others, then having harmony isn't about living a solitary life. I will say that if I can't find my true harmony even when I mingle or socialize with people from different background or color of life, my feeling of being in harmony has not been fully practiced. There is still a feeling of partiality. 


When I can still be in harmony with my self even with different people or in different environment, then I have been impartial in accepting things though it doesn't mean that I have to be one like them.




Indulgence


I don't know if you ever watch a movie by Stephen Chow called Kungfu Hustle. It's a about a man named Sing who in his effort to be accepted by people, he joined a chinese gangster called The Axe Gang. Though Sing had tried to impressed his gangster that he was a very bad guy, his true nature finally emerged and stated otherwise.

Being in odd situation was also experienced by Asiah, the wife of Pharaoh. She was the one who was destined to look after baby Moses in his early age and later embraced the religion he was sent for. Her prayer in such odd situation was recalled in the Qur'an "....the wife of Pharaoh, when she said, "My Lord, build for me near You a house in Paradise and save me from Pharaoh and his deeds and save me from the wrongdoing people." [QS 66:11]

The dying moment of Bhisma -
Even in the darkest hour I will not abandon you

Of all the characters at odds, against their true nature, I like the personification given in Bhisma. I see him as the personification of the white dot inside the black half circle. For his personality represented the true nature of a human being in his best characters, but due to his oath to his parents he was situated in an ugly environment, to witness the wrongdoing of his nephews that led them to the great war of Mahabharata as well as his death.


I know it is very difficult to see and understand this kind of character when we think in black-and-white kind of way. This kind of thinking belong to the realm of angelic, where they can't understand the Supreme Knowledge and Wisdom behind the creation of mankind so that they raised question to Allah as mentione in Qur'an ".... when your Lord said to the angels, "Indeed, I will make upon the earth a successive authority." They said, "Will You place upon it one who causes corruption therein and sheds blood, while we declare Your praise and sanctify You?" Allah said, "Indeed, I know that which you do not know." [QS 2:30]. 

Having the furqan, we are given the free will to choose between the right and wrong. And it is our choice to be the righteous one or not thus entitled to be the witness upon mankind, as mention in the verse ".... He has chosen you and has not placed upon you in the religion any difficulty. [It is] the religion of your father, Abraham. Allah named you "Muslims" before [in former scriptures] and in this [revelation] that the Messenger may be a witness over you and you may be witnesses over the people ..... " [QS 22:78] The parable to this will be as if we were taking our measuring tool to calibration bureau to be calibrated.


And in this life, some people are born to be a good person and some are born to be a bad people. Those who are good sometimes have to live a life in an environment that is against their true nature because they may have no choice to survive. To this kind of people the word indulgence then have a slightly different meaning. They may practice this verse to be able to survive in their bad environment.

The purity of human nature -
Can you see it even in an engineered environment?

24. Indulgence


Straighten yourself and you will not stand steady; 
Display yourself and you will not be clearly seen; 
Justify yourself and you will not be respected; 
Promote yourself and you will not be believed; 
Pride yourself and you will not endure. 


These behaviours are wasteful, indulgent, 
And so they attract disfavour; 
Harmony avoids them.



Given a chance to be a better person, I believe they will strive to be the better one than the good ones. And even though they try to ignore or avoid a state of 'being good' because being bad seemed to be more fun and easily gained power, sooner or later the net of fate will catch them that they have no other choice but to submit themselves to the greater cause of life, for the sake of their own peaceful mind, which is inherent.