UMRAH.......on to the next level

ru, joe, nina , shasha and yazman,


ok guys, you have all completed 5 makkan days following tabung haji's directives from their small booklet to the T.
now papa want you guys to move to the next level. let us all leave the  ground level piazza and move on  to the next level, to the upper level floor.

join me here for tawaf sunat minimum twice a day for more 'exercise'! it is 0.9 to 1 km in circumference and the whole exercise will take us about 2 hours if we walk daintily and slowly.
with the hard marbled floor and just your stockinged feet,  papa would advice that you guys do just that: walk slowly and daintily. or else you will get plantar faciitis in no time , and our spiritual and physical experiment in the masjidil haram will fail right after the 1st attempt!

papa do not want that to happen because papa want to share with you some of the secrets that the haram has to offer, if just its millions and millions of  adherrents care to consider.

let us leave the 'too noisy indonesians , malaysians, turks and bangla with their cacaphony of group zikr and oftentimes 'irritating and noisy' and distracting group chanting on the ground floor of the 'mataaf', the pearl white marbled floor of the piazza surrounding the kaabah..

let us also leave those people who are too busy clicking their way in tawaf doing 'selfies' and answering calls on their handphones, to themselves. too many of these nowadays!

come children! join me on the 1st floor.
papa has not entirely abandoned the piazza yet, but when the crowds get busy and noisy, papa go to the relative peace of the upper levels.

over here let us throw away all pre-prepared long doa's and standard chantings.
it is a silent world up on the upper level.....we do zikrullah silently up here,
zikr of the heart rather than the lisan, the mouth.

we have the Qur'an, the 99 names of the asma ul husna and the tasbih, tahmid and tahlil to choose from.
any one of them in xcombination. 
the permutations and combinations are endless!

on the upper level papa has even done away with 'la illa haillallah' .
and why not!?

right here, around the kaaabah, 'la illa haillallah' seems superflous.
if you have so far reached the haram, it is a given thing already!
HE is the one. the only substantive one. the rest, including all of us, living and non living, are non entities!

papa's favourite for the 1st round is 'ya allah'
it encompasses all the 99 names.
it is indefinable.

the 2nd is 'ya rahman'.

Allah's mercy does not differentiate whether you are buddhists, christians, jews, muslims or downright secular. HE is mercy to everyone, including the stones and birds....

then we move on to 'ya rahim'.
while 'ya rahman' is for everyone, 'ya rahim' is extra special. 'ya rahim' is only for the people who submit.

by the beginning of the 4th circumbulation, you guys must have covered some three plus kilometres.
tired feet and sore muscles.....but 'ya hayyu ya quyyum', the ever living and the eternal, will soldier you on.

then on to 'ya rabb ya zaljalaliwal ikram'.
you guys will be energized and motivated by now.

if by the beginning of the sixth circumbulation, 'ya fattah ya razak ya wahab ya ghoniy ya mughni' fail to excite you, papa will be utterly disappointed. these most beautiful names are about power, richness, generousity and benevolence.
some shyakhs and tok gurus even dare to suggest that if one make this 'mantra' a daily occurrence, one's life will be 'rich'. 
papa is not into this

finally we finish our tawaf with 'ya khadeem,ya daim, ya ahad ya wahid ya samad'.
the one who has no beginning, no ending, no equal , the one and only and the eternal.

you guys have four more makkan days to elevate yourselves beyond the din and commonness of everyday life.
after that we leave for kuala lumpur, back to our ordinariness and oftentimes daily chores and rigours.

when we circumbulate the kaabah, our hearts and mind are focussing on the Owner of the kaabah, the 'ya fattah, ya razak, ya wahab, ya ghoniy ya mughni, ya khadeem, ya daim, ya ahad, ya wahid, ya samad, ya rahman, ya rahim , ya hayyu, ya qayyum, ya rabb, ya zaljala liwalikram'.....in all HIS indefinable majesty, splendour and power.

the trick really is to bring back some hidden secret of the 'baitullah' into one's mundane ordinary day to day life and work,
how can one do this, you may ask?

as papa have told you in our previous communication,umrah is a great open university of life.
it is back to zikrullah during your tawaf......bring it to your work place.

for shasha, do it at the operation table and your er.
yes! even when you are faced with death ond the dying throes of an eight year old down with haemorrhagic dengue.

for ru, do it while you are managing those American visitors in kuala lumpur  from remote year.
it seemed incongrous, since they are mainly 'godless and secular' to you.
but you can take it from papa that this is where 'ugama' is needed most.

for yazman, the national oil company and its strategic planning unit would benefit if you can bring back some semblance of ugama into klcc. you guys deal with billion rm projects. a wee bit of 'ugama' may help here.

and for joe, papa know on a scale of things at star cruise, you are still  'gurkha' doing the number crunching and prenegotiations for their tender committee. if you do move on later to managing the nation's ' durian and musang king' plantations, and i hope you will move on subsequently to things more 'halal', since you have the talent, don't ever leat the chinaman's disease of 'that 2.5 per cent' ever percolate into your life.

we already have too much of this lately in putrajaya.
ringgit malaysia has upped the ante and refined it to an art-form.

for you my dear nina, insyaalah, your exam next week will just be a breeze!
insyaallah.


with lots of love and fatherly tenderness,
papa

UMRAH.......reminiscence of 'old time' and our time for renewal

Labbaik Allah humma labbaik

Labbaik la sharika laka labbaik

Innal hamda

Wan-ni'mata

Laka walmulk

Laa sharika lah.

O my Lord, here I am at Your service, here I am.

There is no partner with You,

here I am.

Truly the praise

and the provisions are Yours,

and so is the dominion and sovereignty.

There is no partner with You.

nadzru, johan, nina , shasha and yazman,


children,

we are coming to the penultimate week before our umrah.

i hope you guys are polishing up yourselves spiritually so that you would not just end up as  'tourists'.

we want to be 'travelers' not tourist....'travelers on the path to allah'

the late ustaz dr harun din once told papa in the eighties before haj and umrah that, 'haj and umrah are essentially a rehearsal of death'.

he was echoing the fact that in a haj mabrur a traveler 'dies to the duniya and lives for the akhirat' after that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56I7cSwg0ec

the good shaykh, shaykh ninowy here talks of attachment and detachment. 
papa could remember some years back, being an 'old kaki' at umrah and haj, when doing tawaf and papa could feel like acres of space, while some years, when papa was 'sergabuk' and unfocussed, it felt so crowded.
iman , like everything else , waxes and wane, even in the best of circumstances and place, for all of us mere mortals! 

life is a mind game.
the relative 'success' or 'failure' in life is determined largely by the paradigm or shift of paradigm that each individual make up there in his cerebral cortex.
and your 'cerebral cortex' is just a servant of  your 'heart'
the 'heart' of a believer is malleable.
it is 'moldable', but require a lot of serious work.

it is our choice, to be ok or not ok, to be a good abdal of allah or to be 'always in a state of 'irrational' anger with HIM throughout life.
there are so many example for you guys to see around, people perpetually 'angry with allah'

if you can achieve that detachment, alhamdullillah, if not continue to work on it.

it will come to you, insyaallah.
it is 'dowable' insyaallah.
and  in papa's estimation, 'umrah' is a 'great  open university' for such game plan to change towards the better.
an expensive one no doubt but you guys are fairly lucky lot since papa is very much an addict to this 'open university'!

but this is not free guys!
you guys have to some work on your own.
in the equestrian parlance, one can bring the horse to the water but one cannot force it to drink!


to achieve this end it is important in this last week to brush up on the following :

1 . prayers ie sunnat prayers around the compulsory prayers.

2.  solatul jenazah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MatM8gFMmKU

there is jenazah prayer all the time in the haram and masjid nabi

3. solatul tasbeeh

https://muslimvillage.com/2013/08/01/42243/an-exceptional-prayersalatut-tasbeeh/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yY6TR3XRMw

this is papa's favourite prayer. some months ago  papa used to do it daily and in ramadan almost twice a day. 

now at least twice a week. children, iman and fervour waxes and wane. your dad is no exception.

' why solatul tasbeeh, i heard the hadith is dhaif? ', you asked.

' sons!, forget about dhaif, hasan or soheeh! you are not there 1470 years ago ! if imam al ghazali [circa 300 to 325 year, post nabi ] or al qushairi [ circa 350, post nabi ] did it, i dont care that  muhammad ibnu abdul wahab [ circa 1102 to 1192, post nabi ]  
and present day wahabbis did not think ibnu abbas' tradition is soheh.
other scholars disagree with them 

just do it. 

papa's point is this: if you are al ghazali or imam qushairy, your tok gurus were at least tabi-tabi'in or at worst, tabi-tabi-tabi'in. hadiths and memories , especially in the arabian context, were still fresh. if the 'salafis' now whose substantive tok gurus was at least 11 centuries after nabi, what basis of claim can they make that their version, and only their versions are correct , the rest are maudhu' or suspect. these modern day young blinkered wahabbis have to reexamine themselves......just because their 300 to 400 hadith which they commit to memory do not recommend  some ibadat does not mean it is bidaah. it may be in the thousands of hadith that they dont know.

in solatul tasbeeh, papa agree with the minority view . 

children!,do it  daily in the haram for size.

and when you are safely back home in KL , go do tasbeeh daily for 6 months. 

then come back tell me whether you think it is dhaif,  soheeh, hasan or maudhu'. !
we can discuss further.

chances are, you will  find solatul tasbeeh bringing in  so much solace and pleasure to you, that you would feel embarassed to discuss dhaif, hasan or soheeh anymore!

those who feel happy going  thru life wearing blinkers, go ahead.

we have no querrel with these 'blinkered'  guys!

' is'nt it  time for those who believe in the zikr of allah to taste the sweetness of iman? '

'experiential islam ' is more important than a load of hadiths and theory.

the hadith is not dhaif, the iman is dhaif.

4.night prayer [ tahajjud ]

in the haram, one don't sleep my sons!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDyF_JaiFKw [ mufti menk short take on night prayer ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z04qPe1YquE

5.sembahyang israk and dhuha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ2tQU_dWrI

6. zikr

http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2014/12/a-long-prescription-for-friend.html

any of those 30 or so zikr,  or more.

these are papa's favourites.

they are short and the ma'ana are quite obvious and easy.

we are not 'schooled' in the ugama, so just try do what we know best.

7. and please polish up on the rudiments  and doa involved in an 'umrah'.

if you guys find the doa during tawaf and saei too tedious, do a thousand 'kul huwalah' instead.

some 15 years back, papa did the big tawaf, around the kaabah, early morning after sahur and the crowd was too big! the big circle on haram's 1st floor is around 1.2 km or so and that equates to 750 kul huwallah each round!

in the haram, children, do your things.

on that day papa thought papa did very well well until papa met a young somalian teacher, and mashaallah the conversation went on like this:

'assala mualaikum young brother , where are you from'

'somalia...', said he, he carried one sling bag, and later i found out that was his only luggage.

'where are you staying in makkah?'

' i eat, sleep in the haram....i wash and have bath in the public rest room outside sir'

...and papa had a five star hotel room to go back to after the ordeal of the sunat tawaf!!!!

7. solawat to the nabi.

the little time we spend in madinah, try to be in continous solawat to the nabi [ pbuh ].

visit his grave every prayer if you can, otherwise everyday.

read his seerah before our journey to know him better.

martin ling's seerah of the nabi [ pbuh ] in papa's estimation is one of the best.

it is collecting dust on papa's bookshelf for over 40 years!

none of you read it, so occupied you guys with whathapp, misshaps etc etc and etc!

t o love THE BELOVED you must 1st love HIS prophet numero uno.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw7u6_DZyAI

at the end of the day guys, ' what is  the heck papa, are these all about!!?? ', you may ask.

it is all about getting closer to HIM.

when HE is your friend, the rest of the world can go and fly kites.

that young somalian teacher had very little.

but papa thought his haj and umrah was 'more mabrur' than papa's.

on the day when nothing else matter, that is the difference between the night and the day.

i am not asking you to be an average worker or citizen.

for from that.

if you are just a bandaraya worker, be the best , honest bandaraya worker.
if you are a shopkeeper in downtown pj, be the best and honest one.
does not matter you earn million rm or just a mussel here, and a mussel there.

if you are a govt doctor in shah alam, be the best medical officer.

likewise, if you are ceo of malaysia incorporated, please, please, don't be like that shameless numbskull, that clown , that badut, now sleeping and shitting in putrajaya, totally oblivious of what the whole wide world thought of him!

islam is about good intention [ niya'], good thoughts, good deeds and above all good character. islam is about excellence.
certainly it is  not about this kind of utter nonsense!
..... and being quiet on this tantamount to 'subahat'.

where are all the shakers and movers of society!!!??
are  we justa nation of 'cari makan' with no 'core' values?
no maruah and no accountability?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOK4B6W67AY

papa.