The Private Life Project

(Preface -for those too lazy to surf, seek and enter my Bamboo Forest...)

By His Grace i write. I remembered our master did talked about the human condition in these days. On how we have become the 'private life' with concerns that consumes the whole of our life such as 'life-long career', 'bank loans' which are all dunya-based they are individualistic in a limited and materialistic sense.

There are those who have even more grandeur designs such as imbuing those career paths with so called charitable activity such as building institutions that justify world aid and looking at the human condition as 'humanistic' and 'fatalistic' rather than adamic or in the true karmic created condition of success at the
final akhira.

Many do have such words still lying in the books and those books in some bookshelves and so i will dispense academising further as some charlattan journalist would - to mix words between ..the real people and fiction..

What i here take upon responsibly in my posting to this newsgroup is that i just received an SMS from SK.. and we should honour such a man
of our age. We should place ourselves at his feet and take instruction from him.

All i have done in my life, and u know what i have done so far, is nothing, just nothing compared to someone who has done great but in the right direction. And these last years i began to learn on what is the right direction.

Indeed i have found no other shaykh or teacher who speaks of this concentric circles so subtly and sharply that we cannot have zikir in the inner circle when our outer realm of muamalah is filth besides filth.

And that this shaykh has gone forth and brought so many into Islam is so overwhelming for me who also having come to this path by Allah's Grace. But how do i place my condition after that act of taslim ? Do i return to the human condition that i find myself before? I did try to bring my people into islam. I hardly brought any except my own children. And they arent even chinese.

Back to nasihat from what i am able. I wish to say well or not at all. I wish to say here on how i observe of a man who has left his world. Who has gone on a journey. Who has acted not by his wish for he has none anymore.

When this man was here last month, i took as often as i have done before since i first encountered him about 6 years now. I will make the pilgrimage to wherever he is and wait in case he passes my way. Whenever possible he would tell me what i do not know.

Latest i have a chance to sit for some hours with him and he told me how the teacher suddenly ask him to leave for Indonesia. He said he tried to evade, giving excuses, that he just came back from a journey and hardly able to be settled, his clothes are with the dry cleaner. With the dry cleaner? The Shaykh showed a queer look. He told me that indeed that was the most idiotic reason that has ever come in between a murid and his master. And the look from the master brought those thoughts into his mind.

The teacher has an instruction. He asks you to leave at once. He asks you to leave for a land most far. He asks you to return to this journey of the nafs. Nay , its a journey of the sharia. Nay, its the journey to Allah.

He left the dry cleaner and took the journey. He went without inkling of the cost. He landed with Amir Abbas of Jakarta whom i know himself to be broke. Abbas issued out a call for funds. Some came running to assist. I did not. I also classify myself equally if not more broke that time.

But what this journey brought? He then told me how he has stayed for 3 months and that he can see thousands if not millions coming to the sharia and to the muamalah of madinah. ....(in the coming years).

( courtesy@red1 written in 2007 )

...continue in part 2