Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Of Hoofbeats and Zebra

I'm currently reading this book titled 'When you hear hoofbeats, think of a Zebra.' by Shems Friedlander.
Title sounds abit strange right? But it's an interesting read about Sufism. It contains several short stories on Sufism.

Would like to share the introduction with you. If you like it, you can get it from
wardahbooks . It's back in print. :)

When we hear hoofbeats, do we think of a zebra? Probably not. Because we usually do everything the way we've always done it. I'm interested in how we perceive reality and how we gain the knowledge to accomplish this. Islam and Sufism ask us to gain knowledge. To have knowledge of Allah it is necessary to have knowledge of ourselves. If we truly know ourselves, then we will know Allah. If Allah allows us to know Him, we might know ourselves.

This body we live in is a kingdom and a grave. It is a kingdom where our heart resides. It is the grave of our soul. Our heart has the spiritual faculty of knowing Allah. Through this body we experience the world, we travel through this world like a traveler in the desert, and no one remains here. When it is their time, all the prophets and beings endowed with divine grace and knowledge, regardless of their achievement and station, will go. He who created them will also take them, whether they are willing to go or not. This power that brought us here will remove us from here. This power of Allah not only created us, but created everyone and everything we love; whether it be a man, woman or flower, it is His creation.

To understand Sufism, we have to understand that Allah, who created the heavens and the earth and all in between, also created us. If we can fathom and accept that Allah created each of us, then we know that He has created everyone who is on this planet. We are not just something that happened; each of us is a miracle. If we understood this, we would not take ourselves for granted....

Not only are we obliged to seek knowledge, we must also understand how to behave in life. We will never understand this unless we observe ourselves in daily life. Observe ourselves, and not try immediately to change, but to say,"Ah, this lazy one again, how easily he got angry." We must first try to recognize all the faults within us, in order to change them into qualitites, in order to become our own shepherd...

A man was wounded in battle, but he didn't let his friends draw the arrow out of him. First he wanted to know who the archer was, what he looked like, and where he was standing when he shot the arrow. He wanted to know the type of bow and the length of the arrow. As he discussed all these things, he died.

This is how we are in life. We must pull out the arrow of useless thoughts, throw it away, and discard the toys of our mind before it is too late.

We make our prayers and roll our beads. If we do it mechanically, we don't change, and then we argue that there is something missing in the Path. How do we change ourselves? When we say Bismillah, in the name of Allah, before we eat and then just gobble down the food, never thinking of Allah, we come to the end of the meal feeling stuffed and only know that we have eaten a lot of food. If we say Bismillah knowing that we are putting the Nur, LIght of Allah, into the food, and if we eat this food with the idea that the food will nourish us so that we may be strong to pray to Allah and thank Him, then we are eating correctly. If we dress not out of vanity and not for fashion, then we are dressing correctly.

What is this life, that passes so quickly and in a moment is gone? An old dervish in Madinah once said to me that life is a gift that consists of 3 days and 2 are gone. No matter how much money you have, regardless of how much influence you have in this world, you cannot bring those days back. We have one day left, and in that remaining day are we going to seek the pleasures of the world that we know are so temporary? Can we not put the love of Allah in our hearts before that heart becomes dust? For dust it will become. And for those who could never have enough of big houses and acres of land, one day they will have to be satisfied with six feet of earth....
(end of introduction)

That's a little preview of the book. I like it because it's presented in stories form.

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