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In these reflections, meditations, prayers and poems written over a month of fasting and shared daily with his friends via email, Shabbir Banoobhai describes the journey of love as "a journey of the heart, in the heart, from the heart, to the heart" and his experience as:
"one of spirit engaging with spirit - sometimes trying to remove the veil of selfhood that covers our hearts, or that of ignorance covering our faces. The reflections are about us, for us, about how we see ourselves and how we see others - about who God is and the part played by love in our knowing ourselves. But they are also a spiritual commentary on our social condition."
He is an established poet, has published three volumes of poetry and a collection of reflections. He received the 2001 Thomas Pringle Award for poetry for his poem sarajevo first published in New Coin and now a central poem in his third volume of poetry inward moon outward sun.
Eve
Gray said of his poetry: “The simplicity of Banoobhai’s poetry is deceptive. His words chosen with an almost austere delicacy yield ever-widening
rings of understanding. The
most outstanding feature of the poetry is that it is infused with such
clear intelligence … so that feelings become intelligence, and intelligence,
feeling…”
And Colin Gardner commented: “ – religious poems, love poems, philosophical poems, poems of social and political concern. Through all of them one senses the poet’s personality – sensitive, meditative, scrupulous, passionate, humane. Banoobhai’s apprehension of society and its pains and injustices is grounded, then, in an impassioned sense of the possibilities of human expansion and human relationships.”
Selections
from lightmail
CONTENTS
Introduction
Prayer
Suffering and Love
God, Knowledge and Time
Seed and Fruit
Then Moses Saw the Burning Bush
DNA and the Spirit
Moon and Sun
Peace
Sound and Light
Truth
When We Love
Do Not Fade When I Fade
In the Holy Night of Power
Light
and Shadows
Killing God
Seek To Be Lost Before Seeking To Be Found
Some Desire Paradise
Adding Value
Being Like God and Being Divine
O Lord of Grace and Mercy
The Worship of God Does Not Require God
Conclusion
From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date:
Wed, 19 Dec 2001
21:37
To:
Friends
Subject: Introduction
Introduction
During Ramadan 1998-1999 I wrote a poem every day, invariably after the pre-dawn prayer. During Ramadan 1999-2000 I again wrote every day, this time mainly reflections of not more than a few lines. At the beginning of Ramadan 2001 I decided not to write anything, as I was afraid that I might write for the sake of writing. I wanted, moreover, to engage in ‘being’ rather than writing about being. But this was not to be.
The first few mornings I stayed away from my desk, reading the Qur’an. The third morning a thought struck me about being ambushed by God’s love and this line became the impetus for the ‘Prayer’ I wrote that morning. Having written it, I wanted to share it, so I scanned my mail, selected the addresses of friends who I thought might enjoy it and mailed it off within minutes of having written it. And so began a series of Ramadan reflections I tried not to force, being happy to have days when I could not think of anything worth sharing — invariably writing early in the morning and mailing the writing instantly to my friends.
I
would like to think of my Ramadan experience as one of spirit engaging
with spirit — sometimes trying to remove the veil of selfhood that covers
our hearts, or that of ignorance covering our faces. The reflections are
about us, for us, about how we see ourselves and how we see others, and
about what we can be if we can be other than we are. The reflections revolve
around the themes of who we are, who God is and the part played by love
in our knowing ourselves as Divine. But they are also reflections that
have a social dimension — a spiritual commentary on our social condition.
I
have relied on earlier reflections to complete the rest of this introduction
— expanding my personal spiritual understanding — hoping that this will
help to make the rest of what I have written clearer.
My
writing elsewhere of God knowing Himself and us, and our knowing ourselves
and God, has its basis in Islamic literature where God says: “I was a
hidden treasure and I desired to be known. Therefore I created the world
in order to be known.” Rumi
makes a fascinating remark in one of his works where he says that the
Universe is a strand of thought in the mind of God. My writing is an attempt
at understanding these statements.
I started with the understanding
that we can only know something by knowing its opposite.
Light has no meaning without darkness, good is irrelevant without
bad. How was God to
know Himself if there was nothing other than Himself? How could He know
He was light, love, grace — when all that existed was Him and nothing
but Him? God therefore created
man as His ‘shadow’ with His qualities and their ‘opposites’. But in reality,
since there can be no opposite, man in essence is nothing but divine and
the opposite nothing but God’s imagination.
The
highest form of knowing is loving, and the highest form of loving, dying.
Wanting to know Himself, God loved ‘other than Himself’, ‘died’ in His
imagination to live in ‘man’. But ‘living’ in man, He ‘killed’ the object
of His imagination; His love became Him (again) — He became (remained)
as He was before He was ‘other than He was’. In this instant of living
‘other than He was’ He knew Himself as He was and ‘man’ died as himself
and became ‘other than himself’ forever.
The other central theme of the
reflections is love, but not love as we commonly understand it — as it
is impossible for the lower self, a lower level of consciousness, to find
or love (know) the higher self (a higher level of consciousness).
Only the higher self can find a higher self.
A high state of love is marked by self-sacrifice.
A low state of love is marked by the desire of something from the
person you love — even of love. The highest love is only possible in the
highest realm. It cannot be a physical love — it has to be a spiritual
love, a love for the divine. This
makes it possible for us to love beyond time.
Pure love is spiritual oxygen.
The physical self, when attracted
to another physical self, attaches itself to the other self yet physically
remains itself and apart. The spiritual self, when attracted to another
spirit like itself, attaches itself to itself, and dissolves. Love is necessary for the dissolving — an ‘other’
is necessary as the dissolving agent. Without love for another we remain
ourselves: limited, finite, substance.
Loving dissolves the limited, makes the finite infinite and substance
essence.
We often believe we love others but what is our love
really? Very often it is
nothing more than self-love or a limited love, a love of our own, excluding
from this love what we perceive as not our own.
Yet to love someone means to see the beauty of God
in someone. Who then should we not love?
It is with this background that these reflections are being sent out to find homes in hearts that do not need them. One of the forty or so friends to whom they were initially sent suggested this book. The book is dedicated to him and to those who bore my almost daily intrusion into their lives for an entire month, unflinchingly. And of course it is dedicated to a Friend whose friends are numberless.
19 December 2001
Prayer
O Lord of Grace and Mercy
O Dispenser of Love
O our Protector
in
this age of war and waste
in this time of lies laundered as truth
in this day of mayhem and madness
ambush us with your love at every turn
cluster-bomb us with your grace and mercy
strike us with your missiles of guidance
commit us to the suicide of our egos
fill the caves of our minds with emptiness
except for the light of your presence
grant us endless loss of our greed and anger
and in the rubble of what we claim is true
help us find ourselves besieged by you
19 November 2001
From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 06:00
To:
Friends
Subject: Suffering and Love
Suffering
and Love
Suffering is the perfume
of love.
The Divine and Our Imagination
The darkest
that the divine can be
is the brightest we can imagine it to be.
22 November 2001
From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 06:02
To:
Friends
Subject: God, Knowledge
and Time
God, Knowledge and
Time
Wanting to know Himself — God says He
was a hidden treasure (of knowledge, love) and He desired to be known
— therefore He created the world (man) in order to be known (loved): God
imagined ‘other than Himself’. Imagining ‘other than Himself’ he visualised
all of creation — created every leaf, plant, animal and man —universe
upon universe — in an instant. And He saw Himself in everything. But being
God this act of creation did not result in the creation of a one-dimensional
other. He created an other that was real because He is real and His thoughts
are real, but at the same time an other that was only real to the extent
that the other was Himself. Therefore the other is both real and unreal
— real to the extent that it reflects Him and unreal to the extent that
it does not.
Being God — God says: “I am time” — Time
is spiritual essence — He saw every kind of other than Himself in an instant.
But in creating a real-unreal other, time (spiritual essence) acquired
a physical dimension, befitting the unreal part of the other, while (in
reality) remaining spiritual essence. Thus we are ‘still’ existing —living
in drawn-out time — either real lives or unreal. To the extent that our
living is spiritual or real we live as spirit in spiritual time, to the
extent that it is unreal, as physical beings in physical time. Furthermore
the choice whether we want to live real or unreal lives is ours, as God
allowed us that in order to know what the ‘other’ was capable of being.
Our physical lives therefore are the physical
expression of a spiritual experience of a spiritual being who was all,
wanted to know everything about Himself, learnt what He wanted to know,
and remained as He was — all-powerful, timeless, spiritual, essence.
We are living proof of His experience. In living true to Him, we
live in Him and He lives in us.
From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 06:53
To:
Friends
Subject: Seed and Fruit
Seed and Fruit
Before fruit is fruit, it is a thought in the mind of the seed. And being fruit, seed in the mind of the fruit. The fruit is in the seed and the seed is in the fruit.
Neither exists before it exists. Yet both exist when either exists. Neither is real until the other is real. Yet both are real when either is real and the cause of existence of the other. Both have to exist simultaneously as the other if they are to exist at all. Yet to be the other without being itself is as impossible as it is to be itself alone.
We too are seed and fruit: ourselves and other than ourselves, human and divine.
27 November 2001
5.30-6.30am
28 November 2001 4.30-5.30am
From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 07:03
To:
Friends
Subject: Then Moses Saw
the Burning Bush
Then
Moses Saw the Burning Bush
The Americans are killing the Taliban in Afghanistan for protecting Al Qaeda who are killing Americans all over the world who are killing non-Americans all over the world who are killing one another for being black, white, brown, tall, short, Palestinian, Israeli, Bosnian, Serb, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jew, Atheist, or for being Afghans who are Americans in reality, who are Afghans in disguise, who could be anybody we know but do not, who could even be Tony Blair flying around the world changing the napkins of baby tyrants, wondering all the time if he should be carrying more deodorants in his bag but nevertheless glad he does not have to clean up the mess in Mazar-i-Sharif where the Americans have just bombed hundreds of prisoners of war to smithereens whom Rumsfeld had wanted dead and who obliged by revolting so that just days after they surrendered they could all get blown to pieces, with perhaps some of the bits landing in Pakistan on Musharraf’s star-studded uniform, assuming he was wearing one at the time and not dressed in his other attire, getting ready to parade Pakistan’s debt to the world, like a mother parading a disabled child, expecting to move passers-by into dropping a few coins into her starving hands, which some do of course but not Putin who has enough troubles of his own killing Chechnyans who are killing Russians who grew weary of killing Afghans when the Americans decided to help Afghans kill Russians so that they could concentrate on helping the Saudis spend their oil-wealth, supplying them with weapons and later a ready-made army when Iraq conveniently invaded Kuwait, the Americans overstaying their welcome in a holy land, which is why someone called Usama bin Laden says he decided to do some killing of his own, which is why the Americans are killing the Taliban, many of whom are defecting to the Northern Alliance as fast as they can so that they can become a United Front, a kind of United States or a regular United Nations all on their own, leaving one to wonder whether anyone other than Moses has ever seen light in a bush.
29 November 2001 4.30-5.30am
From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 07:04
To:
Friends
Subject: DNA and the Spirit
DNA and the Spirit
DNA is the physical reproduction of the thought of God. A painting of how God sees us before He gives us the brush and encourages us to create ourselves. We are free to change His thoughts about us and to alter His artistic vision, even while we are compelled to surrender to the music at the heart of all the elements, that inspires our lives and gives meaning to our art.
When we realize that the material available to us is as limitless as our creativity, the futility of our limited art overwhelms us. Were it not for the music that never leaves us, we would be devastated. Surrendering to the music we merge with everything around us, finally realising that becoming part of a larger reality is the ultimate art and all our prior artistic endeavours were no more than an essential apprenticeship.
30 November 2001
From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001
05:57
To:
Friends
Subject: Moon and Sun
Moon and Sun
Softness and hardness make up the
sun-moon face of the universe.
How often we mistake love for an
ice cream. As long as we
can lick its face and satisfy a desire, we believe that to be love.
And how often we mistake vengeance for justice, being no more affected
by the murder of men, women and children than we are when playing a computer
war-game.
Looking
outside ourselves, everything seems different — other than us, more than
us, more often less than us. It
is not easy, perhaps not even possible, to love or to be just to someone
we see as other than ourselves. Yet the essence of everything that we
see outside ourselves that looks different is actually the same.
The
soft moon-face of love is darker than the hard sun-face of justice — yet
infinitely brighter — when we see only one set of images, only one image,
only one presence, one divine principle, one sublime thought steeped in
mercy.
1
December 2001
From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 08:00
To:
Friends
Subject: Peace
Peace
Whatever is growing cannot be at peace. No living thing is fully at peace. The universe is full of restlessness. When we seek to grow, the price of that desire is loss of peace.
How then can we live in peace with ourselves, with others and with the One who is Peace and from whom Peace emanates, if growing is the outcome of desire?
The answer lies in knowing what to desire, in knowing what constitutes the inner or essential self and encouraging the desire of its surrender to its higher nature so that growing in self-loss it becomes the heart of peace.
2 December 2001 5.20-7.20am
From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 06:17
To:
Friends
Subject: Sound and Light
Sound and Light
A personal reflection on Charan Singh’s
Sound comes from light and light comes from sound
Light at its brightest is lightless, neither light as we know it nor
its opposite as we know it. The
heart of this light is love.
The cry of love becomes the purest sound. The purest sound becomes the
physical light we see. The
physical light we see is the brightest that physical light can be, but
the darkest that lightless light can be.
We need to become the purest sound, before it becomes the brightest light,
before it merges in lightless light, before we return to the heart of
love.
2 December 2001
3 December 2001
From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001
07:28
To:
Friends
Subject: Truth
Truth
Our understanding of truth is coloured
by who we are. This very statement reveals the particular understanding
of a particular person with particular limitations. The simplest statement:
‘The sky is blue’ can be questioned in the same way. This does not mean
that nothing is true. It
simply means that we may understand something as true when it is not,
or something as untrue when it is not. This is our right.
But our right to be wrong does
not give us the right to mislead others. In this age of conflict, with
the gulf between truth and untruth as wide as the gulf between CNN and
Al Jazeera, does the truth lie buried under the World Trade Centre, or
in the rubble of Afghanistan, or somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic
Ocean?
Should we as artists, writers and
activists not rebel against what is presented to us as truth when we believe
it is not the truth? Should
we accept as truth the daily ration of packaged truth dropped upon us
like manna? Is the truth so obscure that some acts can be perceived by
half the world as concealing murderous intent and by the other half as
benevolence?
This brings us back to the beginning:
what we know as the truth is as much the truth as we ourselves are true
to the truth of who we are. None
of us can know this unless we know it. Does it matter? Of course it does.
And yet perhaps it does not. Our truth cannot be another’s truth. Ultimately
the most we might be capable of is not to compel our truth to become the
truth for others and not to compel our untruths to be accepted by others
as the truth.
4 December 2001 4.30-6.00am
From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 06:43
To:
Friends
Subject: Two
Poems
when we love
he loves
when he loves
we love
we only love
him alone
when we love
all that lives
only he
is only love
only we
can love as he
5 December 2001 5.30-5.40am
From:
Shabbir Banoobhai
Date:
Wed, 5 Dec 2001 06:43
To:
Friends
Subject: Two poems
do not fade when i fade
do not forget when i forget
say you cannot live without me
speak this untruth not to shame a friend
who claims he cannot live without you
though he knows his love is flawed
but ultimately all lies are true
when they stem from love for you
if what i desire cannot be
of what use is this life to me
5 December 2001
From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 07:08
To:
Friends
Subject: Poem
in the holy night of power
is the still-unfolding hour
when you cried as we do now
knew and yet knew not somehow
what it means to take as slaves
those who love you till their graves
open wide to let them in
hoping love is their only sin
5 December 2001
From: Shabbir Banoobhai
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 06:06
To:
Friends
Subject: Light
and Shadows
Light and Shadows
Our
eyes, while helping us to see, simultaneously veil our sight.
We see in terms of ‘ourselves’ and ‘others’. And the ‘other’ we
see is perceived as not being, or (using an unscientific expression) being
illusion, not reality. Believing in the reality of ourselves, we create
the world in our own image, an image of light and shadow.
We create with the light of that image that which we love, and
consider as shadows everything else — that which represents to us what
we ourselves have come to be by being who we are, rather than who God
wants us to be.
Our
illusions are endless. Each
need exposes us. Each breath
destroys us, each act of creativity reveals the poverty of our imagination. Even the best of what we are and what we create is no more
than a work of art — a combination of light and shadows that veils and
unveils, that veils as it unveils, and differentiates as it integrates.
We create illusions that feed on themselves, leaving us hungry
for more illusions. Being
an ‘illusion’ is not easy to explain, when everything we are, see, hear,
feel and touch, says that we are real and everything around us is real.
There
is reality, yes. But what
we see as reality is illusion compared to the reality we cannot see.
How can we claim the existence of a reality we cannot see? To illusion,
illusion appears as reality. Yet scientifically this statement is untenable.
It may be true if the illusion in “To illusion” can be proved to
be illusion — which the statement implies is impossible because, to illusion,
illusion appears as reality — so visible ‘reality’ at least exists, and
appears to be the only reality that exists.
Where
does the illusion come from? And is there a reality that cannot be seen? Where there is ultimate reality there can be no other reality.
The unreal cannot exist side by side with the real.
Reality cannot create unreality.
Our
own reality as we think of it, as it appears to be, cannot be the ultimate
reality because the light we know creates the shadows we see. To light
that is other than light that creates other than light, the other than
light it creates appears as real as itself. Illusion is real to illusion
as reality is real to reality. Illusion appears real and the real appears
illusion.
The
unreal can only be real if the real is unreal.
But the real can only be real. Therefore the unreal can only be
unreal to itself and as itself.
And can only be real to the real.
As ourselves, we are unreal in the light of the real.
As other than ourselves, we become real in the light of the real.
When we cease to be shadows of the light of the light of God —
that have come into existence after ‘seventy thousand veils of light and
darkness’ were created by God between ourselves and Him before we could
exist as ourselves — we merge into the light of the light of God, till
there is no other light, where there are no shadows, when in the face
of reality illusion dies.
7 December 2001
From:
Shabbir
Banoobhai
Date: Sat,
8 Dec 2001 06:38
To:
Friends
Subject: Killing
God
Killing God
A believer can have various understandings of who God is. Believers believe that God is Love, Light and Peace and that He is Merciful, Compassionate and Just. Disbelievers in a divine presence also believe in love, light, peace, mercy, compassion and justice. Believers believe in Prophets, Books, Guidance or that He died for their sins. Or that He lives in their Hearts, that they are Him and that He is them or that they are from Him and will return to Him or that theirs is a journey in various stages of development from Him to Him. Disbelievers can have as many interesting and yet different beliefs.
But both believers and disbelievers can also be vicious, murderous, totally destructive, and mad beyond belief. Can raze not just buildings to the ground but entire countries. Individuals can terrorise nations and the disturbed psyche of terrified nations can make them see the entire world as a killing field.
What is more disturbing than the killing is the justification believers find for it and the equally gruesome overt or quiet rejoicing at the killing of the ‘other’. Those who believe in a God of Mercy are as at home with war as those whose central vision of God is a God of Love or those whose central vision of God is a God of Justice. The technology-averse believer notches up his kills quietly on prayer beads, the technologically advanced believer displays his killing skills relentlessly on CNN. Yet even as they kill believers talk of love, even as they commit atrocity after atrocity they talk of justice, even as they oppress they continue to demand secure borders — as if there can ever be a secure border around oppression!
And everyone continues to believe in love, peace and justice. Those who believe He is Love and that He died for their sins so often give the impression that this frees them to commit any sin. Would it not be better to believe that He lived so that we do not sin? That every time we kill others we kill Him? Those who claim that Peace is the essence of the guidance given to them just as often display no peace within their hearts or in their lands to make their claim credible. And those who seek a state of Justice just as often resort to injustice to establish that state. What difference does it make to the victims of these atrocities whether their becoming victims is the outcome of some misguided act of Love, or misguided quest for Peace or Justice?
We may believe whatever we want, but it is not our beliefs that prove the value of our living but our living that proves the value of our beliefs. The clothes we wear are naturally different. And we wear different clothes in different seasons. Let us wear in the season of hate the clothes of love, in the season of disquiet the clothes of peace, in the season of oppression the clothes of justice. Warm clothes are worn in cold times. And cool clothes when it is hot.
We cannot say: We are hated, now is not the time for love. When is there a better time to love? Killing the world to save the world is still killing the world. Killing the world to save ourselves is still killing the world. Killing ourselves to save the world is still killing ourselves, and who are we but the world? Equally we cannot say this is not the time for Peace. Or this is not the time for Justice.
More than an age of killing, this is the age of deceit. Our killings are always right. Their killings are always wrong. Our God, we claim, is Merciful. Our God, we claim, is Just. Our God, we claim, is Love. But our God is dead. We killed Him the moment we became conscious of ourselves and lost consciousness of Him. He died when we began living other than as He conceived. He died so that we could live. But not in the way we believe.
8 December 2001 4.30-6.00am
From:
Shabbir
Banoobhai
Date: Sun,
9 Dec 2001 05:47
To:
Friends
Subject: Seek
To Be Lost
Seek To Be Lost Before Seeking To Be Found
Unlike other journeys, the journey of love is not about gain but loss, the vehicle not self but selflessness, the path neither known nor unknown. Every path is different yet the same. The traveller relies not on hope but on hopelessness to help him in his task.
Nothing is worthy of his love, yet everything is worthy of his love. He may seek consciously but cannot find what he seeks consciously. He has to risk his heart to find his heart. Lose everything, to find everything. But first Love has to find him as nothing, before he finds himself in Love.
8 December 2001 7.00-7.45am
9 December 2001
From: Shabbir
Banoobhai
Date: Mon,
10 Dec 2001 08:23
To: Friends
Subject: Some
Desire Paradise
some
desire paradise
some desire higher
some
desire domination
through unbridled power
some
desire a life of grace
and death by friendly fire
10 December 2001
From:
Shabbir
Banoobhai
Date: Tue,
11 Dec 2001 07:48
To:
Friends
Subject: Adding
Value
Adding
Value
I
wondered what you were doing amongst the pages of the Value Added Tax
Act of 1991. This was no
Bible or Qur’an. And there
you were in the definition of zero-rated supplies.
I had quite a few questions to ask, but as I learnt to my cost
you are no slouch at asking questions either.
“Do you know what is happening in Afghanistan?” I asked accusingly, (implying:
“What on earth are you doing here when you rare needed there?”).
“The Americans are...” Interrupting me in a flash you continued for me
“…killing the Taliban for protecting Al Qaeda who are killing Americans
all over the world…”
“You write very well” you said.
“Who would have thought that one day you would write so well. By the way there is a comma missing after…” and before you
could continue I exploded: “A comma missing!
Half of Afghanistan is missing.
And you are talking about a comma missing.” That (fortunately)
did not ruffle you.
“What are you doing here?” you asked.
“Why are you not in Afghanistan?
All air traffic is back to normal as far as I know.
You aren’t afraid of the Americans are you? You know I created
them too. And South Africans,
Indians, Israelis, Palestinians. Even the English. That might have been
a mistake, I admit. But look
you make mistakes too. I
didn’t agree with your interpretation of Section 7 (1) (a) last week.
But did I say anything?”
“That was a question of interpretation” I said.
“Men, women and children are dying in conflicts all over the world.
That is a fact. Suffering
is a fact. Death is a fact. What you are doing here, when you are needed
elsewhere, is open to interpretation.”
The minute I said this, I regretted it.
You looked hurt. Immediately
I understood how little I had understood and you confirmed it with these
words:
“Everything you say is true. Suffering,
disease and death are facts. But
not facts as you see them. These
are shadows that you see. When
you see shadows, see also the light.
Just yesterday you were reading Rumi.
The embryo in the mother’s womb, when it was asked why it prefers
to keep its eyes closed and live in a dark, confined world when it could
live in another world full of light replied: ‘This is the only world I
know. How can I believe in
a world I have not seen?’ Would
you say the embryo knew the facts? I did not only give you physical sight. Where is your insight?
I admit suffering is hard and death not easy to deal with.
But enlightenment is never easy to attain.
To become light when you are a shadow of light was not intended
to be easy. I created enlightenment
as a possibility. I created life as a fact. I created you from dust.
You are turning my creation to dust. And now you are angry with
me!”
I was taken aback, wondering why I had revealed my ignorance in this way.
It’s not every day you get to meet the captain. And I have not
even met Mandela. I should have asked about zero-rated supplies and whether
it was possible to claim the Input Tax in respect of the sale of shares
to non-residents. Or I could have spoken about how just recently we had
succeeded in having the penalties waived on a late submission of outstanding
tax. That might have been much better.
Reading my mind instantly, you said: “You know how much I dislike interest!
You should also have had the interest waived!”
11
December 2001 4.30-6.30am
From:
Shabbir
Banoobhai
Date: Wed,
12 Dec 2001 06:19
To:
Friends
Subject: Being
Like God and Being Divine
Being Like God and Being Divine
Being
like God is not the same as living within the divine. Being like God implies
And this loss is only possible through love. As much as God ’s love causes
us to be, our love causes us not to be. Effectively through love we become
who we are and through love God remains who He is.
From:
Shabbir
Banoobhai
Date: Thu,
13 Dec 2001 01:05
To:
Friends
Subject: O
Lord Of Grace and Mercy
O
Lord Of Grace and Mercy
O Purity, Peace and Love
O Dispenser of Justice
O Everlasting Light
Who gives us the gift of Your names within which is the divine music of
the universe that sweeps us in waves onto vast shores of silence
Who allows us to trap You with our guile and mislead You with our false
promises of love, remaining pure, forgiving and true
Who brings forward the harvest of our goodness when storms threaten to
destroy us and stores it as Joseph stored the grain of Egypt
Who ruins our capacity for evil and destruction by making us vulnerable
to suffering and by making death our constant companion
Who protects the weak from the mighty, causing the mighty to self-destruct
by rendering them incapable of avoiding the abuse of their power
Who becomes a beggar to remind us of poverty or a refugee to remind us
of homelessness so that we may become compassionate towards others
Who teaches us that only with the thread of love and the needle of justice
can we sew the garments of earthly peace and who clothes the self-less
with light
Who makes excuses for our faults and accepts our repentance with alacrity,
full of grace and mercy, revealing our own love as love only of ourselves,
not You
Who makes us worthy of being loved by loving us despite our not being
worthy of being loved, living within us when we live within you
Grant
us Grace that is veil-less, Mercy that is boundless
Purity that is seamless, Peace that is soundless
Love that is selfless, Justice
that is fearless
and Light that is shadowless
12 December 2001
12-13 December 2001
From:
Shabbir
Banoobhai
Date: Wed,
19 Dec 2001 09:20
To:
Friends
Subject: The
Worship of God Does Not Require God
The
Worship of God Does Not Require God
God can be
completely absent from our lives and yet be worshipped.
We can create God out of our own thoughts, a frog, a prince, sex,
money or power. We can even
create a home for him, a temple, church, mosque or synagogue.
We can dress Him (or Her) up as a man or woman, can create a Presence
out of his absence, put Him to bed when He is naughty or if He disturbs
us when we are naughty. He
is blindfolded when we need to kill someone (we think He might just be
squeamish), is given a make-over now and then (when we think He needs
a fresher look or when we want Him to appear on television), and called
Love, Mercy and Justice when we want to seduce Him to side with us in
our conflicts and power struggles. He looks stunning on the ramp of our
deceit, is paid in contributions that are used to espouse His causes,
loves publicity and occasionally protests He is only human, seeming remarkably
like us in every way.
To love God we need to be absent from ourselves.
We cannot love Him by loving ourselves.
When we cease to see ourselves as we are, we see Him as He is. He lives in our hearts when our hearts are not our hearts but
His heart. He is light that we cannot know until we become blind to the
light we can know. We cannot
hear Him until we become deaf to everything we can hear.
His Presence depends on our absence as much as His absence results
from our presence. He is
everything that needs nothing. We
know Him by the most beautiful of names before we find that He is nameless,
a sound, a sigh, a sea, a place of drowning where we cannot be to be.
He is Essence of Essence, He is the Light within Light that gives Light
to Light, He is Love that is Alive to Love that is Alive, The Generous
Giver, the Map and the Treasure, the Seeker and the Finder, the One, the
Sublime.
19 December
2001 6.30-8.30am
From:
Shabbir
Banoobhai
Date: Sat,
22 Dec 2001 13:31
Subject: Conclusion:
Saving Mankind
I had thought when I wrote “The worship of God does not require God” that
it would serve as a very appropriate conclusion to these Ramadan reflections
but the spill-over effect of Ramadan is still strong and this morning
I woke up to the following thought: “There is so much bloodshed all around
the world — the angels seem to be dressed in red”. I made a cup of tea
and then went to my desk and began writing what has now effectively become
the conclusion.
so
the angels will be a little late in coming i am afraid
but in the meantime
we have instructed cnn
to ensure that you get the very brightest pictures
of our cruise missiles
as they fill the skies over baghdad
(Lines
from a poem I wrote on the first day of Ramadan 1998–1999)
on 21 December 1998. It is
22 December 2001 today.)
In the introduction I concentrated
on trying to explain, through a combination of acquired, imbibed and instinctive
or primordial knowledge, not necessarily correctly, how I saw (how we
might see) God, ourselves and the part that can be played by love in helping
us find ourselves and realize our divine inheritance, effectively saying:
God cannot be found by seeking but by being divine.
It needs to be recorded that whatever I am saying is ultimately rooted
in a tradition — the Islamic tradition — my sources of acquired knowledge
are mainly Islamic, my spiritual fundamentals are Islamic — fundamentals
that inspire me to see the world as I see it and drive me to write as
I write.
I once read — “It is better to be alive for a day on earth than to live
a thousand years in Paradise” — a confirmation that living in Paradise
is not the highest state one can ultimately aspire to.
The highest state, that of being pleased with God and earning His
pleasure, can only be acquired on earth. If we do not know God on this
earth we cannot know Him in the Hereafter. As we are, so we shall be.
Therefore it is important, not only to acquire knowledge of the self and
self-less ness, but to live a life of service and sacrifice. This is why
the extra day on earth is worth so much. It gives us more time to earn
the pleasure of God! In the end our goodness must be expressed in tangible
ways — easing someone’s hunger or pain or loneliness. If we abandon those
in need, we shed our humanity.
Every Prophet of God tried to change the world.
Imagine if all the Prophets who ever lived, were present today,
around a table, trying to decide how to save the world, with the world
still in the control of those who control it, put into those positions
of power by us because of our fears, our greed, our selfishness or our
mistaken piety — would they succeed in changing the world overnight? Would
we allow them to? It is a
question that is not wise to ask though I have asked it.
But it is not a question I shall attempt to answer.
So how do those who love, change the world, controlled as it is by those
who favour might? How do
we deal with a world that has always been at war? How can we begin to ‘save’ mankind if indeed it needs to be
‘saved’?
The Qur’an says that if we save one person we will have saved the whole
of mankind. So while we seek
with the world to find solutions to the problems of the world that befit
the highest of our natures, let us begin with a clearer understanding
of the goals and the means.
Let us start with a hungry child that we find on a street.
If we can save one child from hunger, illness, or loneliness we
have saved the whole world. Saved
the whole world — not just every child in South Africa or Palestine or
Rwanda, but the whole world — every child in the world. Not just every
child in the world but also every adult in the world.
Let us then save the world again and again by helping others in need —
whoever they are, wherever they may be — those who are near as well as
those who are distant. For it makes no difference in the end, if one is
interested in saving the world, whether the person being helped is near
or distant, one of ‘us’ or an ‘other’, for ultimately we are all one and
there is no ‘other’.
And let us continue to develop a global vision for a better world — as
no great achievement is possible without a great vision.
But that vision should be based on a return to love!
Finally, since there are always dark times as well as times of light,
let us not forget:
for darkness to triumph over light
all light needs to be extinguished
for light to triumph over darkness
a single light that shines is sufficient
22 December 2001
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