Pourquoi je ne suis pas

Je suis is in, there is a trend to je suis-ing

ever since Charlie took a Muslim hit.

Je suis is I am,

one empathetically identifies in solidarity

with the vicitms of an aggressive act.

Je suis Charlie, je suis juif, je suis a murdered lad,

we may be seeing more of this in our

sense of powerlessness.

Descartes, giving us the basis

of Rationalist identity, claimed:

"I think, therefore je suis."

Some still debate that he rejected faith,

but for Muslims we are all unbelievers.

Being very much identified with my faith

I choose to ne suis pas.

I will not identify with this victimhood,

if Islam holds me to be Kafir (unbeliever)

in a world to be conquered, full of unbelieving

Kufar, then let me be that, and no victim

to this mad arrogance.

Je suis Kufar, and nothing else.

Let me join with all the loathed non-Muslim world,

the Jews and the Christians, the Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists,

the Parsis and Animists, the Alawites and the I'm-alrights,

the "wrong"-Muslims and the Ex-Muslims,

the atheists and the agnostics,

let us join together in a

conscious confession of own conscience,

saying: "Je suis Kufar!"

And saying it with conviction and with defiance.

Ridding

I don't care much for the old American addage,
"Don't get mad, get even."
I do think it is time for some people
to finally learn not to be helpless.
To stop seeing themselves as passive,
poor things, victimized or just intimidated.

Don't get mad at your enemies; get rid of 'em.
Did I say kill them?  No, nor whack 'em with a crowbar.
But loving, serving and remembering
should mature one over time and patient practice,
prepare one for sovereign handling of situations.

Loving everyone is not to love their ignorance or aggression,
but to love the sentient Being that is the core of all our potential,
and that core is divine, and it is pognantly, terribly, wonderfully human.
And sacred.

Serving is not being a "helper" and "fixing things" -- even if
someone gets helped and something gets fixed, this is not your concern.
Serving is to nourish from your heart, from the richness of spirit,
which nourishment you have only received and are not the source.

Remember that Source, it is your only wealth and can be shared.
Don't recite Scripture, be Scripture.  Be the temple.  Be the fire.
So what of those enemies?  It won't help, thinking you have none,
when for some very rude and angry forces of energy
you may be theirs.

Get rid of  'em.  Breathe and repose in that sovereign Presence,
then work intuitively instead of reactively, embracing first the fact
that you may not be liked, you may well be hated, don't avoid it.
Reposing in your Faith, neither seeking nor avoiding enmity,
clarify your cowardice and bent toward appeasement,
value your most genuine integrity and basic sanity.

Sometimes you can rid yourself of enemies by being authentic,
robbing them of ammunition by your humor, indiscriminate warmth,
your indifference to the illusion of injury, and clear eye contact.
Sometimes they will become your friends, having little recourse left.

Sometimes it's out of your hands, they are fixated on hostility toward you.
Give them no further thought, erase their existence from your mind;
if they stand before you, seeking to bait and provoke, arouse your reaction,
give them no satisfaction, address them with not so much as a breath or a glance,
look right past them and let them be as nothing.
For you are nothing and therefore empty of whatever they want to grab.

And if their grabbing should become physical, learn to not even be there;
and if you are there, then it is as it should be.  Prepare to stand your ground.
Know your ground:  it is to love everyone, serve everyone, and remember God.

Be open to the grace to rightly perceive, firmly confront, and
compassionately, creatively, constructively prevail over all forms
of tyranny and aggression and abuse, whenever and wherever you are
witness to it -- in defense of the defenseless, the innocent, or even the truth.
Don't say it's "karma" -- your karma may be to fight.

I am not for holding hands of victims, I am for teaching victims
to put perpetrators out of business by not being their customers;
by learning of one's inherent and natural worth and dignity,
and to ground oneself in that, knowing that God loves you.
To make an ideology of victimhood is pathologically unnatural.

Should one in enmity toward you be determined to make hostile contact,
it may be most loving, most nourishing, and most conscious service
to pull the weed out by the roots, gather your inner resources,
and fight back with all you've got.  You may not win,
but you will surely stop losing.

Heart Seeing

Jesus stands before me in the night:

I tell him, "You shouldn't have come.
Now I know with my own eyes
that you're there, that you exist.
I didn't need this.
The faith in my heart had already sufficed."

Jesus steht vor mir in der Nacht:

Ich sage ihm, "Ach, Du hättest nicht kommen sollen.
Jetzt weiss ich bescheid mit eigenen Augen,
dass Du da bist, dass es Dich gibt.
Ich hätte es nicht nötig.
Der Glaube in meinem Herzen hätte schon genügt."

A Risk I'll Take

I arrived here with certain impressions,
already within me traditions long in the tooth --
images unfolded ever so gradually in childhood
and reached their head in my heart's search for truth,

some four decades back, as I met and embraced
the path of devotional love and of service, uncompromised,
expressed through traditions of all the world's faiths --
for which I would risk at times being criticized.

I'd loved my Old Testament since I was a child,
now reading the New one I suddenly got it --
something was brewing in me, waking and wild,
wind of The Great Love came in and I caught it.

From this time forth and for a dozen years further,
I studied and practiced, was intimately instructed:
in Scriptures and Yoga, Sufism of some Orders --
and I did love what I believed was Islam, Qur'an and Muhammad.

So what I know now I knew then but not really --
one adheres to a myth and reflects not on all,
for to be confronted oneself is most painfully
clear, yet for love of Sufism I'd felt oddly loyal

toward just that which had seen to the murder of Sufis
over centuries, and of Sikhs, of Hindus, of Christians, Jews,
as a matter of course, a matter of Scripture and example, pleas
for mercy notwithstanding -- so what am I risking if I lose

the shine of unquestioning appreciation for Islam?
The sign of maturity is worth the risk of angering those less awake
who may be appeasers or compromisers, I remain what I am
and always was, and God willing will be:  it is a risk I'll gladly take

 
for the sake of love, that love which brought me here,
brought me here with certain impressions.  The greatest of these
was awakened in me anew, the love which sees God everywhere,
and serves Him in every form, by awakening that love likewise

reflected through these eyes, the smallest gesture, accepting each
fellow creature as divine and dear, overcoming base loathing and fear.
The Sufi tradition, alive in me as ever, how dearly I would any teach
who came wanting it -- Gospels, Yoga, Bhajan, Kirtan -- it's all still here

wherever I am, and should Islam and its Muslims be irritated as hell
that I don't bend, that's a risk I'll take, even welcome -- but bend I won't;
nor for their apologists nor appeasers nor enablers, each of whom I still wish well,
knowing well they wish not the same.  I might regret this but still I don't.

Sufism will always be Sufism, expanding and blessing with its presence and God's;
compassion and empathy for Islam's victims, Muslim and non-Muslim alike,
is the way of ishq, karuna, agape, all terms expressing unconditionally what
"tolerance" never could.  And Islam will always be what it always was, to wake

up to this is by no means easy, but healthier and more responsible --
though should I ever prove to be mistaken, that is a risk I'm willing to take,
for in the meantime I remain for all my actions and sympathies accountable.
And should Islam prove me correct, I will confront it for God's sake.

That's a risk, again, to be taken -- I've had so many come and go -- God will stay,
by whatever name, I wish each dearly that experience.  No illusions, nothing fake,
no Sikh would fault me for defending the defenseless, or one's culture, come what may.
I will witness, I'll speak out, I will pray and I will fight, I'll risk my life -- that risk I'll take.

What Would Swami Say?...

Were you ever in love?
Can you imagine a beloved, your beloved,
can you relate to that?

Madly in love with this beloved,
you sing and you sing and you breathe
and you sing some more, on every tone
you're in the presence of this beloved,
and your beloved is with you, never leaving you.
This beloved is unborn and undying,
imparting health and wholeness, lots of
nonsentimental evelasting love.

Whatever the circumstances -- you might get placed
in solitary confinement for being politically incorrect,
and make that your temple.
If you were gagged and bound you'd hum
the beloved's song; if they drugged you
or put you under, your beloved would sing to you.

Were I to make a list of all the variations of my song
to this beloved, I'm afraid it would be long.
And long is the slow melody
of the great Shiva homage, offering refuge,
imparting expansion of crown and heart and matter,
and much earth as well in a highly etheric manner --
making the entire space palpably sacred.

That is how I'd received it first over forty years ago,
hardly anyone sings it like that now.
Yet it's still all there, and I'm still in love.
This is my religion, sealed in faith.

Wudu and Weeping

Muslims! When you perform your wudu,
What is that you think you do?
With what care you perform ritual ablutions,
Five times daily for your habitual intrusions
Into this world of creative spontaneity,
Hating Nature, loathing kuffar, and serving your own vanity!
Salafists, Wahabbis! wash your faces, forearms, feet –
While worms fill your hearts on which they feed!

I've relished wudu, learned the script, revelled in prayer ...
Then, absorbed in dhikr I reread those suras, became aware
Of what you're doing, have always been doing, will go on doing:
Not joy you sow but stark despair, and all of your wudu-ing
Will never cleanse a single hair; you love jihad but know no God!
You love to conquer, just not yourselves; claims of peace deception, fraud.

Taqiyya your gospel, and mighty hospitable, as it suits you, as it suits you –
Supremacist and underdog unified in Umma, addressing others, Christian, Jew,
Or East or West: your plans are laid, appeased and blessed by States who've screwed
Their peoples for less, dhimmitude without conscience courage or character to confront
An ideology of such massive proportion, with an own ideology which would grant
Islam all that it wants and hankers after – how the imams do sheikh with laughter,
At the suicide of nations – full of patience, speeding their haste for dominion – gullible kuffar!

And so I weep, and go on weeping, for all your victims, my head bowed –
My weeping is my wudu, my tears are my ablution now.

Savoring The Moment

^{(The following is from Zen Flesh Zen Bones, by Paul Reps with Nyogen Sensaki, as I recall it now.)}
 

^{"Zen is like a man who is being pursued by a pack of wolves until he comes to the very edge of a high and dangerous cliff; awaiting him below are the massive sharp rocks on the coast, and should he miss those, the roaming hyenas which will finish off his remains once he lands there. The wolves are nearing, he leaps.}

^{Halfway down, he impulsively breaks his fall by grabbing a lone branch growing out of the rock face. Hanging there, he considers his situational position. The branch now begins to give under his weight, and there remains nothing else to hold onto, the bare rock being slick from rainfall. The wolves howl, the hyenas howl, the branch begins to lose its grip from its roots.}

^{Just a hand's reach away grows a single fresh succulent berry on a twig. The man plucks that berry and pops it into his mouth, tasting it, savoring it. "How sweet," he says."}