Taliban vs. Jaahilan!

The world is a funny place. As they say, truth is stranger than fiction. Life never ceases to amaze you, always coming up with surprises, phenomena that you least expected occur and things that were beyond your wildest imagination suddenly become a part of your life.

Who could have imagined that our dear country, formed in the name of Islam and then abused in the name of the same religion for more than sixty years, would one day be under attack by fundamentalists with their own version of the same religion. 

Then again, maybe it is not that surprising after all. Maybe we asked for it. Yes, the Taliban are a threat, but to what? They cannot be a threat to our freedom, our peace of mind, our ideology, our religion, our unity or our march towards better times. It can’t be an attack on any of these things simply because none of these things exist here. We’re still slaves to centuries old fallacies in the name of traditions, culture and religion, we have no intention of striving to develop and instead spend all our energies fighting against ourselves, we have never agreed on our definition of better times, we are still to develop the tolerance and sense to coexist despite the differences in our thinking and culture. In short we are an idle, indifferent and sleeping nation.

I feel that this purposeless existence, which most of us have become used to and do not want to change, is the very thing under attack. We fear the Taliban, not just because they have a fundamentalist, illogical and violent outlook on Islam, but more so because they are a force that would make us gets off our butts. Whether we support them, oppose them, follow them or block them, we just cannot stay asleep. And that is what scares the living hell out of us.

I am not a supporter of the Taliban but I am an even bigger opponent of the Jaahilan. In the possibility of the approaching battle between the Taliban and the Jaahilan, victory will probably not grace the one who is right or even the one who is more powerful but the one who is readier to move his ass. The Taliban might stop short of Islamabad, but our own lethargy is the enemy that has already entered our gates.

Historically, we have never required an external enemy to defeat us; we are pretty self-sufficient in that. It is about time we put an end to this. Open our eyes and see the life we lead, the things we believe and the shame we put our religion and ideology to.

One cannot succeed if he does not know what he wants to achieve, can’t grow if he doesn’t have an idea of what growth is and can’t fight unless he knows what he is fighting for.

Unlearn!

The ability to learn is one of the greatest assets we have. But the apparent inability to unlearn, or more appropriately the unwillingness to unlearn whatever we have learnt by whatever means is one of our biggest weaknesses. 

Starting from our early childhood when we are always trying to satisfy our curiosity by learning from our environment, our family and our teachers, we become the target of an unconscious campaign by these very people to kill the said curiosity. A lot of the questions remain unanswered and we acquire the habit of ignoring these questions that our minds generate so frequently during our early years. As soon as our egos become large enough to play their part, we start getting convinced that any question that is still unanswered does not matter, that it is unimportant. These unanswered questions further put a stop to the birth of other questions in our minds and gradually, we only ask trivial questions, the answers to which do not affect anything which has any real significance in the time-space curves of the universe. We are only interested in learning things that affect our immediate surroundings in time and space. We are not bothered about the actual questions of time and space. We have to re-awaken the curiosity. We have to accept the fact that nobody knows everything and that there may be hundreds of truths that nobody knows at all. And somebody will be the first to uncover them and that that somebody could be us. 

In this age of technological revolution, information is more accessible than it ever was before. Thus, satisfaction of most kinds of intellectual curiosities is just a click away. What stops us from pursuing this path then? More than anything else, it is our belief that it is a useless exercise. Amusingly, by believing that learning varied things is a waste of time, we do not actually stop learning. We continue the process and learn new things everyday from people, from our experiences, from books, from the media. The only difference such an attitude makes that we learn whatever is thrown at us, whether we want to know it or not. In other words, our learning process escapes the boundaries of our free will. And when even our intellectual growth is in the hands of forces beyond our control, what else can we expect to hold on to?

The first thing we have to unlearn is this attitude. We must know the truth and if it is not readily available, we must find it. We must discover the truth about what we are doing at any given time and then decide whether it is worth doing or not. There should be only two reasons for doing anything. One that you want to do it and two that you have to do it. If nothing else we should at least be interested in learning and ensure that what we are doing is either what we actually want or it is something that we definitely have to do. We must unlearn to ignore unanswered questions. We must learn to ask and then to seek.

Even more harmful than the unanswered questions are the unquestioned answers; things that we learn starting from our childhood to the end of our lives; things that we learn not to question. We believe a lot of things merely because we hear them from someone, and are more prone to believe them without question if we read them in print or hear them from someone on media. Such unquestioned answers play a huge role in turning us away from the truth and making us believe a lot of falsehoods as if they were the absolute truths. Unfortunately we start living our lives on the basis of these facts and gradually the chances of our stumbling on the truth diminish. Then a time comes when even if we do stumble upon it, we try to ignore it since it does not fit in with our life and concepts, mostly based on false notions. When falsehood is believed to be the truth, the actual truth becomes a lie.

All progress in humanity occurred when a few people, scattered throughout history, questioned the hitherto unquestioned answers. Almost every time, they found them to be wrong and went on to ask, to seek and to learn, and a number of them ended up changing the world forever. We must unlearn the things we have been taught against our desires. It is not necessary that all of them would turn out to be wrong, but even if most of them were true, this questioning, learning and unlearning would give us an infinitely stronger basis to believe in them. Such a line of thought would omit the fiction from our belief and would strengthen the facts that already exist along with starting us off on the path to learning the truth that we do not know as yet.

Once we have uncovered the truth of all the forces that control us, we will realize that the strength of these powers is merely in our minds, a mere illusion. Only when we realize that we can be free of the powers these factors exercise on us. And only then would we be able to breathe the fresh air of freedom and take our own decisions based on our own choice. Freedom is something that just cannot be appreciated unless it is experienced.

In-Charge!

It must be realized that we are probably one of the few (if not the only) creatures with ego. There is this unfathomable desire in all humans to justify whatever they think, say or do. Where we should be analyzing the causes of our thoughts and actions and then beginning our efforts to liberate these from influences which are regressive, we waste our time in convincing ourselves and all around us that we already are free and that we are not controlled by these influences against our will. We want to believe that we have chosen to be controlled by them. The simple reason for such an attitude is that any other explanation casts doubts in our own minds about the veracity of our status as God’s great (if not greatest) creation and deals a tremendous blow to our self-esteem, both individually and as a race. Hence, you see all around you people explaining that they are not free and the reasoning is that they have to follow whatever customs, traditions, laws and rules that they are following. Paradoxically, we justify that we are not free because we have freely chosen not to be free. I wonder if anything could sound more absurd. Unfortunately though, since almost the whole race believes in this absurdity, it does not seem that odd to the untrained eye.

Setting our egos aside for a moment, we would instantly become much better equipped to understand our position vis-à-vis all the internal and external forces that are controlling our lives and because of which we are spending our lives and not living them. Though these forces and their relative influence may vary from person to person, for the sake of clarity, some of the more common ones are listed below.

(i) Our physical and physiological requirements that account for the desire for food, clothing, sex and dwelling; 

(ii) Our emotional make up generates the desire to love and be loved in return;

(iii) Religion, or more importantly, what we have been taught or have learnt in the name of religion continuously pricks our conscience in the name of good and bad, right and wrong;

(iv) Society with its own peculiar sets of customs and traditions, dos and don’ts is a constant irritant as we perform a large number of acts against our wish, and sometimes, against our better sense, only to gain social approval and sometimes refrain from great deeds only to avoid social isolation;

(v) Law of the land we live in forces us to abide by it, not for any particular gain, but more so to avoid punishment, and more often than not, social degradation as a consequence;

(vi) Peer pressure exerts a greater influence than the society as a whole and exploits our inherent desire to stay a part of the group. Interestingly, this group is also mostly not of our own choice but imposed upon us by circumstances;

(i) Family is the most powerful part of the society, especially in the eastern culture. We feel obliged to continue the sort of life our families approve of, without giving much thought to whether it makes much sense;

The list could go on and on but the above examples give a fair idea of the point. It must be remembered here that these factors are not evil in themselves. Not only are they necessary for our survival individually as well as collectively, they are also great fillips to our struggle for a quality existence. Hence, they do not constitute a problem in themselves. Like all other entities that humans interact with the problem does not lie in them but in the way we deal with them. These factors are necessary and useful but only as long as we are ones using them. The moment we start becoming used by them, we falter, since none of these forces have the capability of free will. Only someone or something that has this capacity has the ability to use others, we however, have surrendered our wills to these factors without as much as a complaining whimper. So rather than controlling all these influences with our intellect, we have chosen to let our intellects be controlled by them. We are convinced that these factors are in fact the indisputable truth in this world and have thus created our very own golems1. 

It is essential that we take some time out for introspection and analyze which of these factors are controlling our decisions and acts, and to what extent. There must be a fairly accurate assessment of these issues and the only way to do that is simply, to want to do that. Egos must be left behind; we cannot fully be free unless we believe two things; one, that we are not great and two, that we can achieve greatness.

Spend it away!

The first step towards the solution of any problem is the admission that a problem exists. Under the given environment in which we are spending our lives, we do not have the capacity to exercise free will. 

Note the word ‘spending’ above. This is the way in which we normally refer to the passing of days from our arrival in this world to our departure for the next. We spend our lives, but do we live them? It is a matter of common knowledge, not requiring any level of study in finance or economics, that when you spend something, you must get something else in return, something better or at least as good as that spent. Another matter of common sense is that when you spend something, you part with it. It is gone from your possession. Whereas our spending of life fulfills the second criteria, i.e. we don’t possess the spent moments anymore, the first condition is hardly ever present. What makes the whole transaction even more serious is that the spent moments, unlike spent money, can never be recovered. When spent, they are gone forever. But what do we get in return. Do we get anything beyond life in return? We cant prolong our life, we can only improve its quality, and that too according to the definition of improvement that we have received from the world, a definition that has been infinitely influenced by our genes, our environment, our education, our society etc. all of which, as explained above, are not under our control. When your life does not give you anything beyond itself, you have spent it. When you gain things that are not within the domain of the life itself in return, you have lived. Thus, if it is accepted that the possibility of spending your life in return for gains that are not a part of this mundane and uncertain existence exists, and when it is also admitted that we are not making such gains to any mentionable degree, the logical conclusion is that there is something wrong.

We have the gift of free will but we have not achieved the freedom required to exercise it. Therein lies the problem and in the realization of this lies the first step towards the solution, the first step towards becoming human.

I Don’t Have Time!

We don’t have time. In fact, a number of readers might even not read this to the end for the reason that they don’t have time.

We keep hearing things like time is short, time is money, we must not waste time, always be on time, there is a time for everything, the time is not right, and so on throughout our lives. As we move on in years, we hear ourselves uttering tragic remarks like, time went by too quickly, I didn’t notice how swiftly time passed, I have wasted too much time and the like. This, for all practical purposes, is an illusion.

To understand the illusory nature of this belief of not having enough time, we have to see how we measure time. The passing of day and night, coming and going of seasons, the physical and other changes brought upon us and those around us show us that time is passing. Even more so, with the invention of the clock in the Middle Ages and then its spread to all corners of the globe to the extent that life without it is inconceivable in the modern world, has divided time into even smaller portions. Where time was normally divided into dawn, noon, evening, sunset and night, i.e. five parts, we now are capable of dividing it into seconds, which means one day has 86,400 parts. Hence, even if nothing much changes, we still feel the passage of time and consequently also believe that we are wasting it.

To find a way to get out of this dilemma we have to stop concentrating on the temporary aspects of life and the universe. Our predominant concentration on the years, days, hours and minutes traps us in a circle where everything keeps changing so speedily that we sometimes fall under the extreme illusion that the speed of time is actually increasing. Here, religious and spiritual people can be of much help. Take a look at the lives of priests, yogis, Sufis and the like. You will never see them in a hurry, or gloomy for the reason that time is flying by and being wasted. The reason is that these people are predominantly concerned with things which are not bound by time, or in other words, are eternal. They concentrate on the existence and characteristics of God, the creation, cause and end of the world, the moral and ethical principles which define right and wrong on the criteria of absolute truth, on the messengers of God and their message, on the heavens and so on. All these things are either eternal or relate to such huge expanses of time compared to our own mundane existence that they seem eternal. They don’t change with time. An eye on these eternal realities from time to time takes the mind off all the speedily changing stuff and we realize that though time does pass, it does so only for a very limited, to the extent of being infinitesimal, proportion of things. Most realities do not change with time as much. And if the truly important things don’t change, time does not seem to go by that quickly at all.

Meditation and prayer routines are a great help in this realization. Even taking a little time out of the daily routine to concentrate on eternity completely changes the perspective with which we look at life. Just closing your mind to the daily businesses and sitting calmly does the trick. I can almost hear some readers thinking that they don’t have time to indulge in such activities. This response is another absurdity since all it means is that ‘we do not have the time to realize that we actually do have time’. Amusing if you just read it but tragic if you actually believe it.

Name-Masoom, Profession-Suicide Bomber!

Here I am with another appeal to all the experts who know much more than I do about how things work in this world. A report in today’s papers states that the intelligence agencies have forewarned the law enforcement authorities that 18 terrorists have entered Lahore in the past few days. The agencies have further warned that the said terrorists are likely to target important personalities, sensitive installations and public places and have suggested that security in these places be beefed up. It has also been stated by the said agencies that the terrorists will use an ambulance and two double cabin vehicles for these attacks.

This was also a part of news bulletins on certain channels yesterday and I have come across a number of such reports on TV and in newspapers over the past couple of years. With my limited (or none at all) knowledge, I don’t know whether to cry my eyes out or laugh my head off at these.

First, the funny part (though I admit that finding anything funny about the possibility of terrorist attacks is a little sick). After all, how intelligent can these agencies be! Imagine, telling you that certain terrorists are planning to strike a major city of Pakistan and explaining that their target will be either an important personality, a sensitive installation or a public place. Phew! Thank God that rules out a suicide attack on my kitchen. Talk about stating the obvious. It has also been suggested that security at these places be beefed up. So, basically they are suggesting that security at all places be beefed up, since I have not heard of much security at any place that does not fall into one of the above categories.

Now, the serious question; I request anyone with any knowledge on the subject to please tell me what in the world do these reports mean?

How do the intelligence agencies know the exact number of terrorists entering a certain province or city? How do they know the exact number and type of vehicles that they intend to use for their heinous designs? How do they know the probable targets of these attacks? And if they know all this, why the hell don’t they know the location of these people and why don’t they catch them and remove the threat once and for all? I mean a report that “certain” terrorists might have entered a city and might attack a certain place makes sense. But the exact number and their exact methods? That seems like a load of bullshit.

It seems as if the intelligence agencies have their teams stationed at the gates of all cities and these teams give out forms so that all people entering the gates fill out their details. The teams also seem to have a way of making sure everyone tells the truth so a terrorist always writes down “Terrorist” in the profession column.

I will not comment further on this practice. I will wait for an explanation that enlightens me.