deka ali's Blog

This world is a dream

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:19:40 GMT

This world is a dream — don't be deluded; if in a dream a hand is lost, it's no harm. In dreams, no real damage is done if the body is maimed or torn in two hundred pieces. The Prophet said of this apparently substantial world that it is but the sleeper's dream. You've accepted this as an idea, but the spiritual traveler has beheld this truth with an open eye. You are asleep in the daytime; don't say this is not sleep.

Deliver me from this imprisonment of free will

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:31:51 GMT

Deliver me from this imprisonment of free will,
O gracious and long-suffering Sustainer!
The one-way pull on the Straight Path*
is better than the two-way pull of perplexity.
Though You are the only goal of these two ways,
still this duality is agnonizing to the spirit.
Though the destination of these two ways is You alone,
still the battle is never like the banquet.
Listen to the explanation God gave in the Qur'ân:
they shrank from bearing it.**
This perplexity in the heart is like war:
when a man is perplexed he says,
"I wonder whether this is better for my situation or that."
In perplexity the fear of failure and the hope of success
always are in conflict with each other, now advancing, now retreating.
From You came this ebb and flow within me;
otherwise, O glorious One, this sea of mine was still.
From that source from which You gave me this perplexity,
likewise now, graciously give me clarity.

Once you conquer your selfish self

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 21:43:23 GMT

don't be bitter my friend
you'll regret it soon
hold to your togetherness
or surely you'll scatter

don't walk away gloomy
from this garden
you'll end up like an owl
dwelling in old ruins

face the war and
be a warrior like a lion
or you'll end up like a pet
tucked away in a barn

once you conquer
your selfish self
all your darkness
will change to light

-- Ghazal (Ode) 3299
Translated by Nader Khalili
"Rumi, Fountain of Fire"
Burning Gate Press, Los Angeles, 1994

Pornography

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 18:53:45 GMT

IN PERSIA I SAW that poetry is meant to be set to music & chanted or sung--for one reason alone--because it works.

A right combination of image & tune plunges the audience into a hal (something between emotional/aesthetic mood & trance of hyperawareness), outbursts of weeping, fits of dancing--measurable physical response to art. For us the link between poetry & body died with the bardic era--we read under the influence of a cartesian anaesthetic gas.

In N. India even non-musical recitation provokes noise & motion, each good couplet applauded, "Wa! Wa!" with elegant hand-jive, tossing of rupees--whereas we listen to poetry like some SciFi brain in a jar--at best a wry chuckle or grimace, vestige of simian rictus--the rest of the body off on some other planet.

In the East poets are sometimes thrown in prison--a sort of compliment, since it suggests the author has done something at least as real as theft or rape or revolution. Here poets are allowed to publish anything at all--a sort of punishment in effect, prison without walls, without echoes, without palpable existence--shadow-realm of print, or of abstract thought--world without risk or eros.

So poetry is dead again--& even if the mumia from its corpse retains some healing properties, auto-resurrection isn't one of them.

If rulers refuse to consider poems as crimes, then someone must commit crimes that serve the function of poetry, or texts that possess the resonance of terrorism. At any cost re-connect poetry to the body. Not crimes against bodies, but against Ideas (& Ideas-in-things) which are deadly & suffocating. Not stupid libertinage but exemplary crimes, aesthetic crimes, crimes for love. In England some pornographic books are still banned. Pornography has a measurable physical effect on its readers. Like propaganda it sometimes changes lives because it uncovers true desires.

Our culture produces most of its porn out of body-hatred-- but erotic art in itself makes a better vehicle for enhancement of being/consciousness/bliss--as in certain oriental works. A sort of Western tantrik porn might help galvanize the corpse, make it shine with some of the glamor of crime.

America has freedom of speech because all words are considered equally vapid. Only images count--the censors love snaps of death & mutilation but recoil in horror at the sight of a child masturbating--apparently they experience this as an invasion of their existential validity, their identification with the Empire & its subtlest gestures.

No doubt even the most poetic porn would never revive the faceless corpse to dance & sing (like the Chinese Chaos- bird)--but...imagine a script for a three-minute film set on a mythical isle of runaway children who inhabit ruins of old castles or build totem-huts & junk-assemblage nests--mixture of animation, special-effects, compugraphix & color tape-- edited tight as a fastfood commercial...

...but weird & naked, feathers & bones, tents sewn with crystal, black dogs, pigeon-blood--flashes of amber limbs tangled in sheets--faces in starry masks kissing soft creases of skin--androgynous pirates, castaway faces of columbines sleeping on thigh-white flowers--nasty hilarious piss jokes, pet lizards lapping spilt milk--nude break- dancing--victorian bathtub with rubber ducks & pink boners-- Alice on ganja...

...atonal punk reggae scored for gamelan, synthesizer, saxophones & drums--electric boogie lyrics sung by aetherial children's choir--ontological anarchist lyrics, cross between Hafez & Pancho Villa, Li Po & Bakunin, Kabir & Tzara- -call it "CHAOS--the Rock Video!"

No...probably just a dream. Too expensive to produce, & besides, who would see it? Not the kids it was meant to seduce. Pirate TV is a futile fantasy, rock merely another commodity--forget the slick gesamtkunstwerk, then. Leaflet a playground with inflammatory smutty feuilletons-- pornopropaganda, crackpot samizdat to unchain Desire from its bondage.

Hakim Bey

The Ghost of Tom Joad

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 01:17:14 GMT

Man walks along the railroad track

He's Goin' some place, there's no turnin' back

The Highway Patrol chopper comin' up over the ridge

Man sleeps by a campfire under the bridge

The shelter line stretchin' around the corner

Welcome to the New World Order

Families sleepin' in their cars out in the Southwest

No job, no hope, no peace, no rest, NO REST!

He pulls his prayer book out of a sleepin' bag

The preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag

He's waitin' for the time when the last shall be first and the first shall be last

In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass

With a one way ticket to the promised land

With a hole in your belly and a gun in your hand

Lookin' for a pillow of solid rock

Bathin' in the cities' aqueducts

Now Tom Said; "Ma, whenever ya see a cop beatin' a guy

Wherever a hungry new born baby cries

Whereever there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air

Look for me ma'

I'll be there

Wherever somebodies stuglin' for a place to stand

For a decent job or a helpin' hand

Wherever somebody is strugglin' to be free

Look in their eyes ma,

You'll see me! And The highway is alive tonight

Nobody's foolin' nobody is to where it goes

I'm sitting down here in the campfire light

Searchin' for the Ghost of Tom Joad

Knowledge of the degrees of speculative sciences and other things

Thu, 23 Nov 2006 21:32:26 GMT

If you do not stop with this, He reveals to you the degrees of speculative sciences, sound integral ideas, and the forms of perplexing questions which confuse understanding. He reveals the difference between supposition and knowledge, the birth of possibilities between the world of spirits and the physical world, the cause of that genesis, the infusion of the Divine Mystery into the domain of His loving concern, and the cause of abandoning the world by effort or otherwise -- and other related matters.

God and the World

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 00:37:48 GMT

"The Sufi said to the judge, "He whose aid is
sought has the ability to to make our trading without loss.
He who turns fire into trees and rosegardens
can also make this world a place without harm.
He who produces roses from the midst of thorns
can make our December into spring.
He from whom every cypress grows straight and
free can turn our grief into joy.
He from whom every nonexistent thing has
come into existence--how would He be any less if He made
that thing everlasting?
He who gives the body a spirit so that it may
live--how would He lose if He did not cause it to die?
After all, what would happen if that Generous
One gave each servant his soul's desire without toil,
And kept far from His weak creatures the wiles
of the ego and the temptations of the devil waiting in
ambush?"
The judge replied, "If there were no bitter
commands, beauty and ugliness, stones and pearls,
If there were no satan and ego, and self-will,
and if there were no blows, battle and war,
Then by what means would the King call His
servants, oh abandoned man?
How could He say, 'Oh patient man! Oh
forbearing man!'? How could He say, 'Oh brave man! Oh wise
man!'?
How could there be the patient, the sincere and
the spending without a highwayman and accursed
devil?
Rustam, Hamzah and a catamite would all be
one.* Knowledge and wisdom would be useless and abolished.
Knowledge and wisdom exist to distinguish the
right from the wrong: if everything were the right way, then
wisdom would be useless.
Do you consider it permissible to destroy both
worlds for the sake of keeping open the shop of your
worthless natural disposition?
Of course, I know that you are pure, not unripe,
and that your question is for the sake of the vulgar."

-- Mathnawi VI: 1739-55
Translation by William C. Chittick
"The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi"
SUNY Press, Albany, 1983

*Rustam is the archetypal heroic champion of ancient Persia,
immortalized by Firdawsi in the Book of Kings ("Shahnameh" ). Hamzah
is an uncle of the Prophet, and one of the great warriors of early
Islam.

Lose your wisdom

Sun, 05 Nov 2006 00:52:53 GMT

If you wish your misery to end,
seek also to lose your wisdom—
the wisdom born of human illusion,
that which lacks the light
of God's overflowing grace.
The wisdom of this world increases doubt;
the wisdom of Faith releases you into the sky.

Mathnawi, II: 3200-3203
Rumi: Daylight
Threshold Books, 1994
Persian transliteration courtesy of Yahyá Monastra

I am the call of Love

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 14:03:55 GMT

You whispered in my ears like early spring:
"I am the call of Love,
can you hear me in the full grasses,
in the scented winds,
it is I who makes the garden smile."

My pure source of life, helper of lovers in despair,
where have you been so long?
Your breathtaking beauty creates such excitement,
such a stir everywhere
that you leave me bewildered.
From the spring of love you bring back
life to my ailing heart.
The song of the awakened earth, the seasons,
the changing Moons,
all this fuss you make is glorious.
Creation bows at your feet.

-- Ghazal (Ode) 12
"Rumi: Hidden Music"
Translation by Azima Melita Kolin
and Maryam Mafi
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001

"The Beloved you've lost"

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 05:36:05 GMT

i want to leave this town
but you've chained me down
stolen away my heart
leaving yourself behind

now i've lost my way
my soul restless and head twisted
all because of those secrets
you once whispered

i only must keep
fasting my heart
to set me free
from sleepless nights

since your only advice
when you saw me in flame
was to keep burning
with you or with your thoughts

words of wisdom
came to me at last
"the beloved you've lost
the one you've been seeking outside
can only be found inside"

-- Ghazal 2582, from the Diwan-e Shams
Translation by Nader Khalili
"Rumi, Fountain of Fire"
Cal-Earth Press, 1995