By Shah Faisal - Greater Kashmir - Srinagar, J&K, IndiaWednesday, February 13, 2008
The famous Kashmiri aphorism, “Kääwà dòònì” has a philosophical message behind it. It refers to a common crow who spends his day collecting walnuts for winter, but soon forgets the location of his nest and his walnuts.
The despondent crow still survives the travails of a harsh weather, but nonetheless, every autumn he again wastes his halcyon days in the same old unyielding exercise.
When we look around, the crow seems to have become not just a part of our common parlance, but a part of our most fundamental thought processes as well. The worry of an unforeseen tomorrow has frustrated us like never before despite greater luxuries available, now greater than ever.
(...)
Contentment simply does not seem to be in his nature, though the pursuit of contentment is.
(...)
Maulana Rumi narrates in his Mathnawi in very demonstrative terms this futility of human desire and the infallibility of divine will.
In a green island, there was a mysterious meadow, ruled by a lonely robust bull who fed on its abundant foliage without having to share even a single blade of grass with someone else. But the voracious bull would consume all its green slopes till sunset, growing big as a monster, but leaving the island completely barren.
This would at the same time give rise to an immense fear of starvation in him, as he had nothing left to survive the next day. So by sunrise, this worry would torment and make him emaciated and thin as a thread.
But all of a sudden in the magical island, the grass would grow again high above his horns, and the bull set on a grazing-spree to lose even his leisure to ruminate.
It had been happening for centuries, but every night the anxiety of tomorrow would reduce him to bones and the bull could never convince himself against it.
According to Rumi, the world is that inexhaustible grassland, and the bull is the insatiable human desire.
It is very hard to stop thinking for the tomorrow, but as long as we believe in an omniscient being of Allah, everything is bound to come towards us one day, though after a commensurate effort. Tomorrow is like an oyster, and we must not dive to drown today in greed for the pearl that may or may not have formed there.
Living in future is like living in the castles built in thin air. One day when like that crow or that bull, the realization of our ludicrous fears dawns upon us, all the people of this world will surely split in a loud laughter.
That day this world of ours will be a true utopian dreamland, inhabited by a wise and content humanity.
[Picture: Swallows from the Miniatures of Babur Nama, f. 393a].
(...)
Maulana Rumi narrates in his Mathnawi in very demonstrative terms this futility of human desire and the infallibility of divine will.
In a green island, there was a mysterious meadow, ruled by a lonely robust bull who fed on its abundant foliage without having to share even a single blade of grass with someone else. But the voracious bull would consume all its green slopes till sunset, growing big as a monster, but leaving the island completely barren.
This would at the same time give rise to an immense fear of starvation in him, as he had nothing left to survive the next day. So by sunrise, this worry would torment and make him emaciated and thin as a thread.
But all of a sudden in the magical island, the grass would grow again high above his horns, and the bull set on a grazing-spree to lose even his leisure to ruminate.
It had been happening for centuries, but every night the anxiety of tomorrow would reduce him to bones and the bull could never convince himself against it.
According to Rumi, the world is that inexhaustible grassland, and the bull is the insatiable human desire.
It is very hard to stop thinking for the tomorrow, but as long as we believe in an omniscient being of Allah, everything is bound to come towards us one day, though after a commensurate effort. Tomorrow is like an oyster, and we must not dive to drown today in greed for the pearl that may or may not have formed there.
Living in future is like living in the castles built in thin air. One day when like that crow or that bull, the realization of our ludicrous fears dawns upon us, all the people of this world will surely split in a loud laughter.
That day this world of ours will be a true utopian dreamland, inhabited by a wise and content humanity.
[Picture: Swallows from the Miniatures of Babur Nama, f. 393a].
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