Mercy Manifested..

Assalamu Alaikum,

A female leopard hunts a pregnant female baboon. While the leopard was dragging the baboon, the baboon delivers a baby. Leopard leaves the hunted mother and starts taking care of the newborn baboon. Watch this amazing video from National geographic.

Abu Hurairah (May Allah be pleased with him) reported: Messenger of Allah  (Choicest blessing and peace be upon him) said, “Allah has divided mercy into one hundred parts; and He retained with Him ninety-nine parts, and sent down to earth one part. Through this one part creatures deal with one another with compassion, so much so that an animal lifts its hoof over its young lest it should hurt it”.

[Al-Bukhari and Muslim]

Ya Rahman, we are all blessed with your Mercy.

Describing Oneself

Assalamu Alaikum Dear Readers,

Many often we are confronted with this question: “Describe Yourself”. And we all know how difficult a question it is to answer.

There are two ways you can describe yourself. One is with respect to the external factors. And the other is with respect to the emotions you experience. You can write down the tags that you can think of yourself and classify it into two buckets. Just write down whatever that comes to your mind one after the other, without ‘thinking’ and being judgmental .

I described myself with respect to the external factors, and it followed this pattern:

Name, profession, place of origin, date of birth, income etc..

Then described myself with respect to how I felt, and tag cloud looked something like this:

Seeker, Weak, Lucky, Guided, Sinner, Forgiven, Loved, Happy, Ignored, Accepted, Bachelor,  Writer, Friend, Friendless, Sad, Depressed, Desperate, Angry, Lonely, Optimistic, Careless,  Insensitive, Empathetic, Bold, Stupid, In-calculative, Spendthrift, Chaotic, Grudger, Impatient, Tender, Loving, Lovable, Caring, Young, Mature, Immature, lustful, Tired, Unforgiving, Creative, …

(You can see positive and negative emotions and even conflicting tags, but they all fit in in different contexts.)

It is the second category that constitutes a life for any person, no matter who he is. And when Allah asks you to “Describe Yourself”, it is this category He is looking into.

When we inspect who we are, do our tags match with those of our Prophet whom we say we follow?

You are burning in the flame

Assalamu Alaikum,

From nothing you become sad,
From nothing you become happy,
You are burning in the flame,
But I will not let you out
Until you are fully baked,
Fully wise, and fully yourself.

—Rumi(R.A.)

Purification, Allah, it is never easy. Allah,  make it easy for this weakling..

An understanding about Deen..

Today an interesting definition of Deen occured to me. Eventhough actually it is nothing original or new, it still is a fresh understanding for me.

Deen is not about any ritual or observations, although they form a part of it at the external layer.. Deen is the way you think- about yourself, about the world outside, about God. Deen is the way your thoughts form on every moment, on every breath. and on every response to the inputs from the world outside. Deen lies not on your body and costumes, it lies on your thouhts. If that is right for you, all your actions will fall in place, otherwise everything will go in vain and nothing will go right.

may Allah bless all with the right understanding..