Basic Levels of Awareness

good thoughts rehan.....i was bent upon thinking that DO I REALLY KNOW SOMETHING now ya nahi ....but its all very beautiful...n that cone part of it....
after reading this write up of yours i had this song coming up strongly in my mind..
ZINDAGI KA SAFAR ...HAI YE KAISA SAFAR...KOI SAMJHA NAHI...KOI JAANA NAHI.....
well in my words to put it...
GUM HO CHALE HAI HUM TO BAHUT KHUD MEI
ZINDAGI KO KUCH TO APNA PATA DENA CHAHAY

EK NAGAR KA NAKSH BULA DUN..
EK NAGAR IJAAT KARUN........
EK TARAF KHAMOSHI KARU....
EK TARAF AABAAD KARUN......

JUST got some random thought but ofcourse i hope i m nt sayin nyhin offendng
nyways i just loved this peice of ur write up....want to read more by u so keep ur work going
regards
basma

Amber # 18:

Wah, kiya maa’soomiyat say woh baat poochi hay jis ka jawaab sans kay qatah honay ka baad hi shayad yaqeeni taur per mil sakhta hay! Is chowk kay gali koochoun main hamara home page hay. WahaaN hum kabhi kabhi is kis’m ki khalfishaat ka izhar kartey hain. Wahan janay ka pata hay:
http://www.chowk.com/people/Tools/cc_printhome.cgi?temporal

Kabhi waq’t milay tou khadim ki dargah maiN tashreef laa’ayN. Fil hal zindagi aur maut ki kash ma kash par yeh musings haazir hay:


ON LIFE AND DEATH

MUSINGS

Edge of precipice. Cliff.
Diving board . Looking down into water.
Water?

Of hope.
What hope? Mirage. Chimera. Shimmer. Fallacy. Belief in unseen. Acceptance.
Acceptance--with or without conviction.
Conviction of what? Faith or reasoning?

Of reason.
Rationality. Two plus... Cause and... Things not...
Self-existential illusions. Illusions or reveries? Reveries or sophism? Sophism or faith?

Of faith.
Belief of unfathomed power. Recognizant of the unrecognized. Unresolved nothingness. Ensconced nothingness. Transference.

Back to hope, reason, faith.
Nothing.
What if nothing is the vacuum cementing life to death?

Oh death! The final dot. -30- The End.

End, another beginning. Movement towards another dot. To other unresolved queries. To other needs and desires. To know or to give in. Again.


CONVERSATION WITH MY SHADOW


Go for it yaar temporal. You bloody self effacing, self effusive, self evasive temporal. Go jump in one h two o. You wanted to experience death. Go ahead. What is stopping you?

Nothing. Nothing is stopping me. Even if I am reluctant to meet, face I will --- sooner or later. I will die like I have died before. You, me, him, her, believer, unbeliever, undecided all will hear that music. Six under (mud) or six over (sandalwood). So why not embrace it?

Embrace it? Death wish? Resignation? Wait. I am not in doubt. You are. I do not care if a truck wheel stops over my head and splashes my brain all over the tarmac. You do. You wonder how you should greet Death. What will it be like. Will there be a vision when you are flat lined. How soon the blood in the vein will coagulate. Soul. If there is one -- how will it escape. Will you feel it?

Stop there. Do not overwhelm me with your brilliance. It is I who query. Who has unresolved queries raging within. You, you are just the shadow. With me every living moment. Deserting me when I die. I can and I will question that phase. You cannot. I will, if I chose to, deny. Deny life or deny death. That is my sole prerogative.


FROM A LETTER

A young one died without breathing in the pollution. Life sustaining umbilical cord, wrapped around the neck in the womb, took the life away. Happens in one in ........ the doctors tried to pacify grief. Today, she would have been your age my friend. Yes the medicine men played their voodoo. Hi-tech toys, tests, egos. But the fury of nothing on nothing with nothing to nothing defeated them. And we collapsed a thousand times. Then. And again and again later.

Why?

We futilely ask hope, reason and faith.
We ask the passers-by too. In vain.

Hope, reason and faith meliorate. And tranquilize. Singularly and collectively. But they did not. But they must have. For we survived.

Uncharacteristically, pushed to corner, we rebelled. We fought our shadows. We threw obscenities at darkness. Finally, fatigue set in, draining us of all energy. Exhaustion brought in entente. Armistice by default. Pacification to re-group. Peace to fight another time.

These voices from yonder tell us what we do not know. What do they mean? Why were we questioning. Why were we made to question? Who did it? Life or Death? And why?

So we move to small r reason. Aim. Purpose. Purpose for life. Life that surrenders to death. Purpose for death? Metamorphosis. Another life form.

This nano second of existence shall come to pass. I will be no more. You will be no more, my friend. And you will be no more, my perceived enemy. The worlds will remain. The words will remain. To do what?

Queries are eternal.

Is God a query? Queries catechize. Queries are the eternal pulses that drive the universal computer.

I will accept death. Any death: timely or.... peaceful or......
I have no choice. You have no choice. Six over or six under.
Yet we query. So we have a choice. What is it?

The answer is there, somewhere; for a payment. Can we reparate? Importantly, is it worth the effort?

Or in the final analysis will it be dust to.......and ashes to.........?
End of the tale? And another beginning?

* * * * * * * * * * *30 * * * * * * * * * * * *

Rehan: Thanks for the long and truly insightful replies. As one who is trying (rather vainly I might add) to beat netoholism, I will try write this post so as to not merit another response.

I think you might have misunderstood me on the ``Why ask Why?`` issue. For this, I think I am more than partly to blame for ill-expression. In pointing to what i see as the inherent limitations of reason in the realm of values/meaning, I was by no means being dismissive of the entire project of ``knowing thyself``. Probably more than anything, I was suggesting a solution to the problem from where I stand today. This may quite possibly change as we (I) reach different, if not more basic, levels of awareness.

It seems that the more we depend on reason alone for the answers, the more we tend to atrophy sensation, which in the past was at least viewed as a complementary source of meaning. As someone put it, (modern man) tends to sleepwalk through life.

Of course, all your prose and poetery is directed at remedying just that condition... at finding out what it really means to live again, to be alive!

But can Reason alone get us there? (I know that you have not suggested that it ALONE can -- just thought I`d toss the question up for other`s to cogigate on.)

Ironically, it is reason that can tell us where we are misapplying it... temporal, consider this: you say ``[we are] nothing but... specks of sand on a never-ending shoreline...``. So, we are insignificant by virtue of our RELATIVE size and impact. But in an eternal (as opposed to temporal {heheheh} universe) size, finally, does not matter ... everything becomes relative, nO? So any attempt to impute insignificance (or by the same token, significance) by virtue of size or longevity is kinda non-sequitor.

This is one of the things I like about Western religions (incl. Islam): they begin with the premise that WE DO MATTER, a premise that, I think under the most rigorous logical scrutiny, is every bit as tenable as the one that ``we are but grains of sand...`` Furthermore, I think it rings true at a certain intuitive level. And why question the validity of this intuition when we have no better reason to take the opposing position? We need to give more important to consciouness, I think.

=====

Rehan, I was surprised to hear that ``Ali Hassan`` was seen as a provocative piece. Maybe that`s coz some desis have their defenses up so high, they didn`t read it (as I did) as something that could have happened to anyone on any continent. I mean, wasn`t Sleepless in Seattle a box office hit? Don`t so many English movies sell on the love-at-first-sight spline? But that`s not very cool anymore amongst our more `educated`, sophisticated, reason-able and `mature` young people now, is it!?

Anyway, until yo unext resurface, so long, and hope to see that play you`ve no doubt being toying with come to fruition :-)

best regards,

P.

amber #15:

Joos’t’joo zindagi ki ham saf’r hay
aur tajas’soos is joos’t’joo ka ham shareek
gar her baat ka waq’t say pehlay ilm ho jai
tou zindagi ka baqqiyah saf’r giraaN guzray ga.

(Just a thought.)

Dakh’l andaazi kay liyay ma’azrat,

khair andesh,

t

PS: How come you haven’t contributed here?

Rehan # 8:

If you have not re-entered the premises of Chowkoholics Anonymous......

You say, “ Now I only venture out for the essential stuff like e-mail, Dawn, Cricinfo, and critical research. I miss Chowk a lot but I have to restrain myself.......” Well, just a suggestion ..... You can drop Dawn from your daily list without any ill effects. Even after you go back a year later you will find the same dismal stuff.

As for the where are they bit.....

BG, Anita, Saad, RanaRansher, and Wasiq Bukhari are MIAs.

Afrasiyab is moving from motel to motel having ‘sold his soul’ to a budding dot com in exchange for a percentage. Occasionally hear from him.

Anita and Saad may have moved back.

Wasiq, my friend, miss your talents here. Are you a recovering Chowkoholic as well?)

Finally, in response to your pensive reflections:

Despite our ---
---sense of personal worth
---profound beliefs
---intense likes
---burning hatreds
---lingering discomforts
---habits eternal
---warm friendships
---close relationships

the intriguing thoughts that remains least pondered: Will it all come to naught?

There is a sense of finality in the answer. It could be a yes or a no. No ifs or buts.

Now if we go back to the rhetorical questioning, and I am using rhetoric in the ‘enquiring’ sense, or forget that, just look carefully at ourselves in soul’s mirror and lo! everything slowly diminishes. Matters not if the answer is in the affirmative or the negative. We continue to be but a spec of sand on the never ending shoreline of life. And nothing but.....

regards,

temporal

akber #6

Thanks a bunch Akber, I`m glad I could provoke your inquisitive mind into this direction. Once in a while, its a good idea to let your mind wander into known and unknown realms.

PM #7

Patrick: its always a pleasure to read an insightful response. Thank you for liking my poem and taking the time to read my other work. Overkill you say? Hey, I ain`t even started yet :) But I don`t believe in the `why ask why?` system of belief. I think its up to each and every one of us to try and ask as much as our individuality, personal quest and leisurely activities permit. As we go deeper and deeper in search of the mysteries of this cosmos, whether by way of science or philosophy, we just might find the answers we are looking for. Yes, the problem will always be what came first, chicken or the egg, ha ha, but do we or should we stop asking?

Look, here`s my personal take on this. Our knowledge and faculties may be limited. Visible light is only a fraction of the spectrum of light. Similarly, the sounds we can hear are very limited. But we can think. We can imagine. We can postulate. We can infer. We can deduct. We can ASK how, who, what, when, where and why. As long as there are minds within the brains, we`ll continue to explore and search for answers that, seemingly, we simply cannot find.

To tell you the truth, I really liked the Discovering Ali Hasan` piece myself. It was provocative for some people but I just wanted to tell a simple story of a young man grappling with growing up in an adopted culture. I`m happy that you liked it.

Well, I`m truly thankful to you and all others who took the time to read my work. And if you liked it, all the better. And everyone of you who put in your replies, thanks so very much. I truly appreciate it.

Take Care,

Rehan.

Sameer JB #5

My sincere thanks Sameer. As I said to scout, I don`t consider myself to be a writer, a poet or a critic. These are pretty ambitious titles for a beginner like me. However, I`m trying and since expression is as unique and subjective for each one of us as we are individually, we may disagree on some of our choices for words and their placements. As for the “inverted cone” as you call it; I must confess it was initially unintentional. However, when you are writing, patterns don`t always take shape by design. Sometimes, design and patterns emerge on their own accord and all you have to do is recognize them and fine-tune them.

I believe that poetry is universally popular because it tends to be vague, non-specific and open to interpretation. We can all relate to the generalizations made in a few words of a poem by filling in the specifics of our own lives, thoughts and ideas.

I was talking to a Pentecostal minister the other day and he explained to me the beliefs in their school of thought that when God breathed His spirit into Adam, we, the progeny of Adam, too, inherited that spirit. Among Muslims, one Sufi school of thought had beliefs on the similar lines. Masoor cried “Ana-ul-Haq” using the same argument and was duly hanged by the establishment for speaking kufr and shirk. There`s much debate about it and all I can say is that I believe that if God is the Creator of this Universe then He must be so powerful and omnipotent that He can create infinite number of universes like this one without any effort. And since this universe is just a small creation for Him, He does not necessarily have to be a part of his creation to create it. He is above and beyond of his creations.

Yes, we all do and should think about the meaning of life and our position in the scheme of things at one time or another. It is said that we are programmed to think like that. However, it is upto us as to what we make of it and how do we solve the riddle. The other day I was doing some research on a business related subject and happened to be using the Ask Jeeves search engine. Hey, sometimes it works. Anyway, just for fun, I don`t know why, I typed in the question what is the meaning of life? Well, I came across a very interesting website that I didn`t have time to explore fully, but if you have time, try it and you might find some witty responses.

Take care,

Rehan.

scout #3

Thank you so much for being such a good critic, scout :) Hey, my philosophy is that if you can read it, understand it and like or dislike it, you are as good a critic as anyone else. I am humbled by all the praise, though. I don`t consider myself a poet or a critic, either. It’s just that sometimes when all the mess around you begins to take a certain shape, words jump out and take their place. I have nothing to do with it; I just let them fall in place.

Take care,

Rehan.

taimurmalik #2

Shukria Taimur Malik Saheb. I try. I`m glad you liked my basic approach. The fact is that very often most of us become so preoccupied with the details that we lose sight of the basics. I`m nothing but a student of life and as such I try to keep myself from entangling into the unknowns without the support of the familiar basics. It creates uncertainty but isn`t that the essence of life?

Sure we like to know if it will rain tomorrow or that inflation will not rise above the danger level. That coffee will still cost $1.89 at Starbucks and there`ll be plenty of trees available to provide us with our insatiable appetite for paper. But do we really believe that all this reliability and certainty will continue forever? I`m keeping my fingers cross.

I`m not a doomsayer or a pessimist, nay, I`m an optimist. I believe in uncertainty of nature and of man`s nature and the unpredictable rise of the underclass around the world to claim its share of the pie. Sorry if doesn`t make much sense.

Take care,

Rehan

temporal #1 & #4:

Thank you sir...Adaab Arz hai. Coming from you it means a lot to me. Yes, I’ve read that proverb. There`s a word in Urdu for the second type of man ``who knows not and knows not he knows not``: Jahil-e-Murrakab. But, then again, don`t we all sometimes behave like one?

As for my absence from the forum...well, all I can say is that aside from some personal issues that kept me away, I`m a self-professed recovered Netoholic. “Sober” for more than a year now, I don`t plan to change that for a while. Now I only venture out for the essential stuff like e-mail, Dawn, Cricinfo, and critical research. I miss Chowk a lot but I have to restrain myself from going there because once you get involved in a debate it consume you comprehensively regardless of whether or not you are participating yourself. But then, Chowk is the most suitable place to share one`s work when it comes to subjects of such nature as this one.

Speaking of which, though, I`ve been away for so long, it seems, that everything has changed. Just now, when I found out that they had published my work, as a courtesy I found it obligatory to respond to any replies that might have been posted. I was amazed to see how much Chowk had changed in its appearance in the last few months. The new and redesigned Chowk has improved much since it first began.

Though I wasn`t much of a participant myself, I still enjoyed the company of you guys and to get myself reoriented, I started looking for the old regulars. You are still there thank goodness. But I couldn`t find most anyone else. Where are they? I said to myself. I tried to recall some of the names: Sohail Rabbani, Bad Girl, Saad and Anita, Feroz Khan, Amin Saleh, Shandana, Afrasiyab, Bina, Solitude, Wasiq Bokhari, Ranaransher...the list is long. I felt like when I first went back to Karachi to visit my old neighborhood a couple of years ago. Where the hell did everybody go? I wondered. I started scanning the names in the replies of the not so old articles in the back pages and got some relief when I saw a few familiar names. Weird, hunh?

Such is man`s nature. All the bigotries, prejudices and other ills of human societies stem from our emotional need to surround ourselves with familiar people and things. Anyone and anything that seems different and strange causes disorientation in us. An unknown primal fear, perhaps, which immediately activates a defense mechanism within us.

We, then, either seek to conform the “different” people to our own norms, if they are physically not that “different” from us. Or we try to make them go away, even into oblivion if necessary. And if that is not possible, then we try to keep them down by claiming all the available resources for the likes of us. But even if that can`t be done then we treat them as different and keep a distance from them as much as possible. People who are familiar with this process call it politics. And as someone has said, war is nothing but the pursuit of political goals by other means.

Here in the West, when we set out to “explore” the world, in our (read “our” as in “our manifest destiny”) struggle to provide ourselves with comforts of familiarity in everyday life, we sent out missionaries around the world. We still do that. But we have progressed much since. Now we have McDonald`s, Coke, Levi`s, Nike, CNN, MTV and Hollywood. But, those who object to our efforts to homogenize the world into a single global village are nothing but consumers of sour grapes. They would do the same if they could. They have in the past, as a matter of fact.

So, the moral of the story is my brother temporal, I am but a part of this complex story in which I`m both a character and a reader. How, and when, one influences the other, and vice versa, I don`t know. It`s all part of a learning process. I have yet to cry Eureka.

I will make it a note to read the rest of the George Will article, though, scientists might disagree with some of the dates he mentions for different milestones in human progress.

Take care,

Rehan.

Rehan,

I think we`ll never know the ``meaning of it all`` in any sense that satistfies the rational self. Going doen the road of a raional self-knowledge will ultimately pose more questions than answers.

Yet, we thirst. We cannot accept that we ``should not understand``....

Sameer`s on the money.. the only ultimately satisfying understanding is that from experience. Reason necessarily precludes a sense of eternity by asking ``why?``. There will always be an antecedent Why. Why, then, grapple with it?

But certainly, your dedication to the examined life is noble and inspiring (don`t know if even Plato envsioned this degree of overkill, though :-) ). Piqued my interest enough for me to read all your other contributions. I thought Discovering Ali Hasan

was brilliant in it`s treatment of the eternal conflicts of heart and mind. Bravo! I honestly feel that is your true genre and style.

Best regards,

PM

hi ,

nice work Rehan !!!

just made me wondering too!!!

Do We Really Know What We Don`t? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

;o)

take care

Rehan: If temporal says it is a good poem; it must be good. I really liked the style of inverted cone with increasing degree of ignorance. There may be some fellows on chowk who will put faith above mind and may be even at the top of the list.

Similarly you have palced Buddhist concept of ``the voids of being`` pretty high on the list. Buddhist monks chant the ``Heart Sutra`` in chorus as the mantra for the perfection of wisdom. It goes like,``[Om] gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha`` (translation: Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, enlightenment svaha)

(Taken from ``Elaborations of Emptiness`` by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. )

Is it, perhaps, that I can`t understand? Or

May be is it that I don`t understand?

The simple complexities,

The business of truth,

The voids of being,

Secrets that aren`t,

Peaceful conflicts,

Rational insanity,

Chaos of order,

Relationships,

Emotions,

Mind,

Faith,

Us,

It,

I.

Similarly ``I`` can be simultaneously on the top as well as bottom just like hydrogen in the periodic table because some of its properties fit more like flourine, chlorine etc.

Many of the non-organized religious thinkers of modern times take ``I`` as the singularity--the universal consiousness of all forms of life, a spirit or soul.

Anyway, don`t we all think about meaning of life once in a while? I believe it is more important to think about the experience of life. The life keeps recycling itself whereas experiences keep summing up?

[Zidgi ka safar, hay yeh kaisa safar, koi samjha naheeN, koi jana naheeN--sung by Kishore Kumar]

Great Awakenings

By George F. Will

After agriculture was invented 11,000 years ago, it took 4,000 years for it to supplant hunting and gathering as mankind`s main source of food, 5,000 years for cities to emerge, 6,000 years for writing to develop, 7,000 for the invention of mathematics. After harnesses were devised to hitch oxen to plows, it took 4,000 years to adapt harnesses to the long necks of horses. But 66 years after the Wright brothers flew a distance shorter than the wingspan of a Boeing 747, a man stood on the moon, and mankind marveled at the modern pace of change.

rest @

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/opinion/columns/willgeorge/A41383-2000Jun1.html

bravo! clear, concise, uniquely presented, deep

I`m no famous critic or poet, but I like pretending to be one.

Loved it

enough said

BASICS are what we must know..basics of living..basics of learning...basics of being..

nice one...liked your way of putting your thoughts across..

``Is it, perhaps, that I can`t understand?

Or May be is it that I don`t understand?``

best wishes,

TM.