What is in your purse?

The story below is related by the great Sufi teacher Attar:

As the Prophet Isa and his disciples entered a village, some of the villagers began to harass the Prophet, shouting unkind words and harsh accusations.

But the Prophet answered them by bowing down and saying prayers for their happiness and well-being.

A disciple said to him: 'You prayed for these men, aren't you filled with anger toward them ?'

Prophet Isa answered: 'I could only spend from what I had in my purse.'

When the situation is pleasant and comfortable, it is easy to be nice. But when we're faced with an unpleasant situation, then we begin to react from the very foundation of our being and automatically draw from of the depths of our purse. If, in such difficult situations, we respond in an unwholesome manner with anger, fear, hatred or violence, then that shows all too clearly what our purse really contains.

So, my dear friends, what's in your purse?

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

Perhatikan lah aib sendiri

"Ada lah satu kecelaan apabila kita lupa kepada keaiban yang ada pada diri kita sendiri lalu memandang keaiban orang lain. Kita sering menyebut-nyebut keaiban saudara kita yang lain yang patut kekal tersembunyi. Andai kata kita orang yang berakal nescaya kita tidak akan mengaibkan orang lain. Pada diri kita sendiri penuh dengan keaiban, andainya diperhatikan cukuplah bagi kita."

- Ahli Sufi

Pandangan di atas adalah selari dengan pendapat Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chishty (R.A.) yang berkata "A person who has firm faith and believes in Allah doesn’t complain of others behaviour"  yang membawa maksud seseorang yang benar (kuat) aqidah dan keimanannya kepada Allah tidak akan bersungut (berkata dengan tujuan mengeji atau mengumpat) atas kelakuan serta perbuatan orang lain samada kepada dirinya sendiri atau kepada orang lain. Ia lebih suka memilih diam dari berkata-kata sesuatu yang menyentuh peribadi atau kelakuan orang lain. Sekiranya ia memberi nasihat, nasihatnya adalah yang bersifat umum sahaja tanpa mengaitkan dengan mana-mana peribadi.

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

Knowledge of all things is within us.

According to Ibnu Arabi, Allah deposited within all of us knowledge of all things, and then He blocked us from perceiving it; this is one of the divine mysteries that reason denies totally and thinks impossible. This mean that we are not able to gain this knowledge using our reasoning and thinking ability alone. Most of this knowledge is also not available by normal method of learning through books.

"And He taught Adam the names - all of them. Then He showed them to the angels and said, "Inform Me of the names of these, if you are truthful." (Quran 2:31)

The nearness of the mystery to those who do not know is like God's nearness to His servant, as proclaimed in His words,

"We are nearer to Him than you, but you do not see" (Quran 56:83) and His words, "We are nearer to Him than His jugular vein" (Quran 50:16).

Despite this nearness, the servant does not perceive or know anything; no one can know what is within himself until it is revealed to him moment by moment.

For those who seek and travel on the path to know himself this special knowledge will be revealed directly to him moment by moment. But this is only so after he reached a certain level of "knowing himself".

To reach to that stage he must do so under the guidance of Wise Spritual Master. It is wise for us not to deny the existence of such knowledge.

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

Wise saying of the living sheikh

Do you think that this creation can be in existence without a Lord? Do you think that for this existence, for the whole creation, which is in existence, there is no one saying, This belongs to me"? Do you think that for all this creation no one is coming, saying, "I created it"?

What is that foolishness? But nowadays people do not ask this question. They say “It was in times unknown and in an unknown space. We don’t know its beginning nor its end. Therefore, we don’t know anything about that One...” - Sheikh Muhammad Nazim Al-Haqqni


If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

Dua jenis kematian

Sebagai mana yang diceritakan oleh Sheikh Abdul Qadir Al-Jilani di dalam bukunya Pembukaan kepada yang Ghaib (Futuh Al-Ghaib)

Sesuatu perkara telah mengacau fikiran saya pada suatu hari. Batin saya berasa berat dengan beban dan saya pohon kesenangan dan kesentosaan dan jalan keluar. Saya ditanya apa yang saya mahu.

Kata saya. "Saya mahu mati yang tidak ada kehidupan dalamnya dan satu kehidupan yang tidak ada mati di dalamnya,"

Maka saya pun ditanya apakah jenis mati yang tidak ada kehidupan di dalamnya dan apakah jenis kehidupan yang tidak ada mati di dalamnya, jawab saya:

"Mati yang tidak ada kehidupan di dalamnya ialah matiku dari jenisku sendiri supaya saya tidak melihatnya sama ada memberi manfaat atau memberi mudarat, dan mati dari diriku sendiri dan keinginanku, tujuanku, dan harapku dalam hal dunia dan akhirat, sehingga saya tidak ada dalam semua ini. [Sheikh Abdul Qadir menganggap makhluk langsung tiada ada kuasa memberi manfaat atau mudarat sedikitpun kepada beliau dan berusaha mematikan keinginan nafsunya kepada selain dari Allah, hatta balasn akhirat sekalipun. Beliau berada didalam keadan tawakal seperti mayat ditangan yang memandikan mayat. Iaitu mati dari kehendak dan keinginan diri sendiri - Rbain]

Berkenaan kehidupan yang tidak ada mati di dalamnya, ialah kehidupanku dengan lakuan tuhanku dalam keadaan saya tidak ada wujud dalamnya, dan matiku di dalamnya ialah wujudku dengannya. [Sheikh Abdul Qadir menganggap semua kewujudan selain daripada Allah itu tidak wujud pada hakikatnya dan yang wujud hanya lah Allah semata-mata. Makhluk tidak ada perbuatan sendiri melainkan Allah yang melakukan perbuatan. Seperti firman Allah di dalam surah Al-Imran

"..Dan bukanlah engkau (wahai Muhammad) yang melempar ketika engkau melempar, akan tetapi Allah jualah yang melempar ...Al-Quran 8:17)

- Bagi beliau itulah kehidupan yang sebenar-benarnya - Rbain].

Oleh kerana saya telah mengetahui maka ini telah menjadi tujuanku yang paling berharga sekali."

Gambar foto diambil disini

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

Redha itu sikap utama Insan

Tiga perkara yang wajib bagi seseorang mukmin dalam semua keadaan ini ialah:

(a) Melakukan segala perintah Allah;
(b) Menjauhkan diri dari segala yang haram;
(c) Redha dengan hukum-hukum atau ketentuan Allah.

Seseorang mukmin hendaklah jangan tidak ada tiga perkara ini. Oleh itu si mukmin hendaklah memikirkan perkara ini, bercakap kepada dirinya tentang perkara ini dan anggotanya melakukan perkara-perkara ini
– Sheikh Abdul Qadir Al-Jilani (Pembukaan kepada yang Ghaib - Syarahan Pertama Halaman 17)

Menurut Sheikh Abdul Qadir Al-Jilani selain ketaatan kepada Allah di dalam hal yang disuruh dan dilarang, redha dengan hukum-hukum atau ketentuan Allah adalah merupakan kunci paling utama menuju kebahagian yang hakiki.

Sebahagian tanda orang yang redha itu ialah ia sentiasa bersikap tenang dan sabar di dalam semua keadaan, tidak merungut apabila ditimpa kesusahan, tidak menceritakan kesusahan yang dihadapi oleh nya kepada orang lain kerana ia sentiasa bersangka baik kepada Allah yang mengetahui hikmah segala sesuatu yang berlaku.

"Boleh jadi kamu membenci sesuatu, padahal ia amat baik bagimu, dan boleh jadi pula kamu menyukai sesuatu, padahal ia amat buruk bagimu ; Allah mengetahui sedang kamu tidak mengetahui.." [al-Baqarah:216]

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark

Five Mysteries of the Universe

Even today, there are scientific phenomena that defy explanation. If history is anything to go by, resolving these anomalies could lead to a great leap forward, so what are the greatest mysteries, and what scientific revolutions might they bring?

1. The Missing Universe

Everything in the universe is either mass or energy, but there's not enough of either. Scientists think 96% of the cosmos is missing. They have come up with names for the missing stuff - "dark energy" and "dark matter" - but that doesn't really tell us anything about them. And it's not as if they're not important: dark energy is continually creating new swaths of space and time, while dark matter appears to be holding all the galaxies together. No wonder cosmologists are searching for clues to their whereabouts.

2. Life

I know you think you're more than a sack of molecules, but why? Next time you see a tree, ask yourself why that is alive when your wooden dining table is not. The phenomenon we call life is something that biologists have almost given up trying to define - instead they're investigating ways to make different combinations of molecules come alive. Bizarrely, the best hope is similar in chemical terms to laundry detergent.

3. Death

Here's the flip side: in biology, things eventually die, but there's no good explanation for it. There are hints that switching genes on and off controls ageing, but if our theory is right, those switches shouldn't have survived natural selection. Then there's the argument that an accumulation of faults does us in. However, there are plenty of whales and turtles who seem to age ridiculously slowly - if at all. Of course, if we can work out why, that could be great news for future humans (if not for the planet).

4. Sex

Charles Darwin might have fathered 10 children, but he couldn't understand why almost everything in biology uses sexual reproduction rather than asexual cloning - sex is a highly inefficient way to reproduce. We still don't know the answer. The suggestion that sex's gene shuffling makes us more able to deal with changing environments seems plausible, but the evidence is scarce. At the moment, sex only seems to exist to give males some role in life.

5. Free Will

If you want to keep your sanity, look away now. Neuroscientists are almost convinced that free will is an illusion. Their experiments show that our brains allow us to think we are controlling our bodies, but our movements begin before we make a conscious decision to move. Some researchers have already been approached to testify in court that the defendant is not to blame for anything they did. A scary legal future awaits.

By Michael Brooks / Source: The Guardian

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears - Glenn Clark