Last few weeks have exposedcertain pathological attitudes we have been living with including thefollowing:
- Taking affairs of life too seriously and thus failing toappreciate the adventure of the climax of life – death or the great secret andjoy of dying every moment or dying before death in which lies the true art ofliving well. Art’s abiding value in reconciling us to life is mediated throughtranscendence of life wedded to ego/self, thus embracing the tragic/death.Those who are ready to die every moment really live. Death is no punishment asSocrates noted and literature is one with philosophy in its aim of preparing usfor death. Fear of Corona shows how muchwe have understood this elementary lesson of religion, philosophy and art.
- Our failure to live with ourselves and be truly religiousunderstood in Whiteheadian mystical sense as what one does with one’s solitude.We want gossip and all kinds of distracting activities to escape what is feltas terrible encounter with ourselves, with solitude.
- Investing in the art of destruction (war) instead of health bymajor and minor powers. Corona would hardly be a news if we hadn’t been cheatedby our rulers who build warships, polluting industries and massive ecologicallyharmful farms and projects of all kinds and not hospitals and research labs.Our environmentalists tell us of corona affected lungs of our earth, our homeand “mother,” crying for a ventilator (that intelligent organized lockdown canbe. What barbarity is in the demand to deny her access to ventilator in thename of business or GDP! It is opting to send mother in flesh trade. It is timeto ban for months if not years (or at least heavily tax) personal cars, theculture of single use disposables and luxurious feasts in restaurants – in factthree or higher starred facilities, big farms, many a construction projects,especially road construction projects passing through forests and ten thousandother projects and scores of corporate houses including mobile manufacturingcompanies that are literally raping our earth for profit.
- Failure to see such monstrosities as work, work and work (alienatedunsanctified labour involved in workholism/Capitalism nurtured protestant ethic of work) as the norm ordriving a car daily to workplace, drifting from café to cafe while failing toexperience and attend to thousandblessings that home provides or attend to the most ennobling “work” of beingjust oneself, the art of contemplation and basking in the sanctuary of soul.The most treasured things are within our homes and involve routine activities.Fear of lockdown shows we fail to treasure them. Let us read Joyce andappreciate the key point in the art of Johannes Vermeer.
- Failure to cultivate the space of relationships – one hardly everlooks once deep into the eyes of our near and dear ones including parents,children and spouses as that is a life’s work that would never cause boredom orrequire early lifting of “lockdown.” Thegreatest joy life can offer is love and play for the sake of love and play andthese are perfectly possible inside homes with spouses and children. We havebuilt houses and not homes – how tragic that domestic violence has increasedduring lockdown. The most sublime and treasured object of life is to experienceit under the shade of eternity or heaven and this is possible by turning moreinward than outward or better transcending the distinction between home andstreet or inward and outward. Bedil has said that rather than stroll in themost prized garden, he just needs to tune to the station of heart within toexperience heaven. Poetry is a way to access this heaven and how tragic thatthis is largely missing from our lives. Those who know the orgasm of words havehardly any desperation for other orgasms that living with the other or outsideoffer. Telling stories is what is central to the art of living and how joyfullywe have, previously, endured months of lockdown by God during winters bytelling stories to ourselves and one another. Writers write, children devourand we the masses live great stories/myths told in scriptures and classics. Welive by virtue of the word and not bread alone. There is no lockdown on words,dreams, love, play, creative pursuits and most of vocations and crafts andfulfilling sanctified work in homes or in small scale industries.
- Overinvestment in outdoorand underinvestment in indoor activities including sports by this otherdirected self-escaping civilization that Joyce rightly called syphilization.
- Failure to cultivate love of reading books. Had our schooling beena success we would never have parted with books. And those who can read books andfind almost everything there need not fear lockdown. The State would not needto enforce lockdown in a society where people read. Retirement is felt aspunishment and not gift because we don’t know that life is about living and notjust working. We fail to appreciate poetry and beauty of life in the school oflife – schools kill the poet in us – lived on its own terms, for the sake ofgreater or more bounteous life. We fail to heed those asking for transforminglife into a work of art.
- Failure to put God before religion. “Religion is a means, notthe end. It becomes idolatrous when regarded as an end in itself.” “Thereis nothing more important, according to the Torah, than to preserve human life…. Even when there is the slightest possibility that a life may be at stakeone may disregard every prohibition of the law.” One must sacrificemitsvot for the sake of man, rather than sacrifice man for the sake of mitsvot.The purpose of the Torah is “to bring life to Israel, in this world and inthe world to come.” Those who put mosques or congregational prayers beforeGod (especially in the times of Corona) need to note this. Given God is theground of life and His name The Living and durood (blessing the ProphetS.A.W) is blessing life, sitting home and distanced is the prayer demanded now.The Kaaba’s kaaba is the human heart and living and letting others live fittingreverence to this heart. God is where love and relationships are honoured andin the times of epidemics, He is like the King who leaves palace to visitsubjects at ground zero, choosing to dwell with them for their consolation. Godfeels we have deserted homes and His sanctuary (the mosque’s mosque, humanheart) and invites us from mosques, this Ramadhan especially, to water thisgarden – the garden of solitude of home or the garden of relationships there.We know once in the medieval world at the time of epidemic Muslims assembledfor collective repentance and prayer of healing and God responded byintensifying disease several fold immediately afterwards. Details may be foundin masterly summary of all that we need to know (both ulama and laity)about Islamic tradition vis-à-vis epidemics in an article published in monthly Tazkeerby Kashmir’s exemplary scholar-preacher Dr G. Q. Lone.
- Failure to understand life and work of such monks as Merton orappreciate vivifying value of voluntary withdrawal/chilla/itikaf. Allour problems spring from our inability to sit alone in our rooms (as Pascalnoted) or failure to learn doing itikaf. This years’s Ramadhan seems topromise the feast of itikaf to all and sundry. In fact as Heschel hasnoted that the great dream of religion (for him Judaism) is “not to raisepriests, but a people of priests; to consecrate all men, not only some men.”Few amongst us have so far had time for ourselves or commune leisurely with God(itikaf).
- Failure to appreciate how small (small scale industries/home basedskills and crafts, including home schooling) may be beautiful – as Schumachertaught – and the sanctifying value of manual work as traditional culturesincluding Islamic and such influential figures as Heidegger and Gandhi taught,how how the best job is one closest to one’s home or ideally in home andobsession with machines such as cars constitutes necrophilia (love of corpses)as Eric Fromn argued. There is enough for everyone’s need and we don’t need towork throughout week or six days to live with dignity. The spirit of “Abolitionof Work” movement that underscored little noticed pathological character ofmodern living that gives a holiday or two in a weak needs to be understood. Infact far happier civilizations/communities than ours are premised on working onaverage for less than half of time we are required to. People centric, lifecentric and environment centric governments would institute, for all and notjust employees, three days a week or one session (forenoon or afternoon) forfive days besides compulsory holidays – organized lockdown with periodical homedelivery of essentials (in Kashmir after Eid az Zuha would be ideal as noshortage of quality food and what else is essential as few would need doctorsor go sick with such celebratory environment with our families) – for a monthor so. Monthly requirements of informal sector/daily wagers could be met for amonth from donating one day’s salary from employees, CEOs (that may later beentertained for tax deductions) and all charity/zakat giving people andappropriating 1% of profits of corporates for CSR in the form offeeding/educating in the time of lockdown. (Reportedly, inevery city in Palestine there was a place called “the chamber of thesilent .. in which people deposited their charitable donations in secrecy, andthat with equal privacy the impoverished members of self-respecting familieswould receive their support.” We mayexperiment with creating a common charity account or special credit card orbetter qarzi hasana account to which access could be provided to needy selfrespecting persons confidentially by banks.) Almost all disease includingwounds inflicted by strained relationships if voluntary lockdown in thecelebratory manner were designed and annually repeated. We need to rechargebatteries of Spirit (whose fuel is time, silence, rest). Traditional cultureshave revivified spirit by truly living weekly holiday, number of communityfestivals/celebrations/special days for heroes that would extend for days,sometimes weeks. We hardly observe Sabbath or holiday and do all kinds ofdistracting even exhausting works on weekly holidays. This is time to reclaimthe legacy of Torah and the meaning of Sabbath (Saturday, weekday for Jews,involving abstaining from any work, doing nothing but living, just joyfullybeing). Let us focus, with Heschel (the philosopher of religion reading andassimilating whom one would endure, even long for, lockdown for months) on howto honour holidays or appreciate true meaning of sabbaticals/vocations andtransform the pain of lockdown into joy and into a hobby. Read his TheSabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man and feel the difference and see howvacations become chosen vocations and the prison of home gets unveiled asheavenly spa
A few statements from his God in Search for Man today, leaving his more detailed treatment of the theme in In The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man for future. For Heschel Sabbath is the art of surpassing civilization and preview of heaven – “the incomplete form of the world to come is the Sabbath.” What shall one be doing in heaven if not rest and chant or sing to heart’s content? And Sabbath is “a reminder of every man’s royalty; an abolition of the distinction of master and slave, rich and poor, success and failure. To celebrate the Sabbath is to experience one’s ultimate independence of civilization and society, of achievement and anxiety. The Sabbath is an embodiment of the belief that all men are equal and that equality of men means the nobility of men. The greatest sin of man is to forget that he is a prince.” During lockdown we are all princes, not paupers as it is civilization that defines a pauper. “The Sabbath is an assurance that the spirit is greater than the universe, that beyond the good is the holy…The Sabbath is holiness in time. ..The presence of eternity, a moment of majesty, the radiance of joy. The soul is enhanced, time is a delight, and inwardness a supreme reward. Indignation is felt to be a desecration of the day, and strife the suicide of one’s additional soul.”
“Six days a week we are engagedin conquering the forces of nature, in the arts of civilization. The seventhday is dedicated to the remembrance of creation and the remembrance ofredemption…to the exodus from a great civilization into a wilderness wherethe word of God was given. By our acts of labor during the six days weparticipate in the works of history; by sanctifying the seventh day we arereminded of the acts that surpass, ennoble and redeem history.”
“Civilization is on trial. Itsfuture will depend upon how much of the Sabbath will penetrate its spirit.””The Sabbath is the counterpoint of living; the melody sustained throughout allagitations and vicissitudes which menace our conscience.” Every holiday “wemust kindle the lights in the soul, enhance our mercy, deepen our sensitivity.”
Now an important question thatconcerns especially medical staff, administration and volunteers who helpreduce pain in the wake of Corona. The question where is God during Corona maybe answered by transposing the remark about Holocoast to corona. “Where was God during Holocoast?” is answeredby a counter-question “Where was Man?” A doctor/volunteer says labayka(I am present). And “We tend to read the Bible looking for mighty acts that Goddoes and not seeing that all the way through the Bible God is waiting for human beings to act.” This lesson is especially put forthby Camus’ hero (Dr. Rieux) in The Plague who serves tirelessly statingthat all he knows is that his job – calling, vocation and “salvation” – is tolessen misery. Heschel shows how, in the face of absurdity that epidemics mayforce us to take notice of, one can still find meaning of life. “There is ameaning beyond absurdity. Let them be sure that every little deed counts, thatevery word has power, and that we can do — every one — our share to redeem theworld despite of all absurdities and all the frustration and alldisappointments. And above all, remember that the meaning of life is to livelife as it if were a work of art. You’re not a machine. When you are young,start working on this great work of art called your own existence.”
Holidays – healing days, holydays, days devoted to living as against this or that work/engagement/officialassignments/money making – are invitations to feasts we mostly miss. Heschel states: “Man is not a beast of burden,and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of hiswork.” We have forgotten distinctionbetween labour and toil (where soul is not) and means (“work,” time) and end(rest/living/eternity). Pity those who rest to work confusing means (work) foran end (rest). Angels flee from the shops/offices where work goes on even afterdesignated closing time and on some holidays.
P S For those who take the Prophet (SAW) seriously by optingfor a sort of itikaf or self/home quarantine during epidemics and don’tcourt suicide (cardinal sin) or endanger lives of others but nevertheless dieduring Corona, these words of our sage Heschel: “In Jewish tradition, dying inone’s sleep is called a kiss of God, and dying on the Sabbath is a gift that ismerited by piety. For the pious person, my father once wrote, it is a privilegeto die.” Dying during epidemic is a kiss from God for Islamic tradition and ifcombined with the lockdown/quarantine celebrated as sabbath, it is pure grace.We needn’t trouble relatives for mourning and death rituals. Death is acelebration and may well be celebrated by a feast – death anniversaries shouldbe celebrated as is the tradition of urs.Death is an adventure we lose in hospitals and is best enjoyed consciously,in home as if it is the first night of wedding (One recalls here Ghulam RasoolNazki who made it a point to die consciously – adventurously, joyfully.)