Tyger Tyger

He may have "fearful symmetry," but apparently he's also invisible (or maybe ynvisible). I owe the blog a posting about our trip to Dudhwa in search of tigers, which I've referenced but never discussed in detail.  Suffice it to say at this point that we failed magnificently to see a tiger, although not for lack of trying.  Late in the day, as we drove around in jeeps, I think we were all getting a little dopey.  We saw fresh tiger prints, and we could hear the tiger in the brush, but she/he wouldn't come out. This made me feel terrible, especially for Olivia Richer because she was almost beside herself with joy at the prospect of seeing a tiger, but they don't exist just to please us (the unfeeling bastards, to paraphrase the Young Ones). At a certain point Ines de Haro pulled up an image of a tiger on her phone, which Kelly Thomas held out of the jeep, and we fabricated the experience. Still, I don't think I would have traded that day for anything, even one featuring a tiger.

It didn't help our cause that we then started laughing out loud, which certainly didn't help the tiger hunt.

Vainglorious Bastards

It seems that I've been posting a lot (I'm inexplicably creeping up on 2000 posts, although over a ten year period) but I'm still desperately behind.  I can't believe I haven't posted this before.  Below is the official t-shirt of this last year's Zanzibar trip, produced by the most excellent Miranda Rodriguez.  According to her Wehmeyer and I were kibitzing in class and used the word vainglorious, which apparently she had never heard before. Say what you will about this generation of Champlain College students, but they are generally wickedly creative.  These were unveiled on in the JFK on the morning when we flew out.  I'm stunned that Cyndi Brandenburg or Kathy Seiler haven't stolen mine (as they did with the equally epic I Will End You kitty t-shirt that Craig Pepin gave me; as chronicled on this long-suffering blog).

Clearly, these are Shirts of Excellence.

What It Means - Day 58

"But I absolve not my own soul. Surely the soul commands to evil, save whom my Lord may show mercy. Truly my Lord is Forgiving, Merciful." (12:53)

"And I swear by the blaming soul." (75:2)

"O thou soul at peace! Return unto thy Lord, content, contenting. Enter among My servants. Enter My Garden." (89:27-30)

These three verses from the Quran express the three stages of the human soul: the soul that commands to evil, the blaming soul, and the soul at rest.

As Nasr tells us in the commentary in the Study Quran, "The soul is said to have three levels: the soul at rest, which is command of its lusts and desires, and has attained certainty; the blaming soul, which strives to overcomes its lusts and desires; and the soul that commands to evil, which is at the mercy of its lusts and desires." Nasr, SQ p. 1513

"The blaming soul is considered the middle state of the human soul in the process of spiritual growth, between the soul that commands to evil and the soul at peace. It is called the blaming soul because it recognizes the shortcomings of the lower concupiscent soul and chastises it in order to transform it into the soul at peace, which returns unto the Lord content, contenting. Every soul is believed to be capable of recognizing its shortcomings, as expressed in a hadith, 'There is no pious or profligate soul but that it blames itself on the Day of Resurrection; if it has done good, it says, "How did I not do more!" And if it has done evil, it says, "Would that I had desisted!"'" (Nasr, SQ 1446)

It's difficult to read Nasr's description of the blaming soul without thinking of Mencius's description of the Heart of Shame. Essentially, you can't hope for intellectual or moral improvement without feeling shame. It's an interesting comparison, and a bit of an odd fit, since you're comparing the thought of a philosopher from Zhou China, the most secular of the ancient societies, with the Quran. This brings us back to the discussion we were having the other day about whether or not you needed religion to have a moral life, or even a moral discussion, and the presence of Mencius, and Confucius for that matter, would certainly lean in the direction that you don't.

I'll have a lot more to say about this later.  I'm still processing it, but I wanted to lay out the three stages first.

Stopping for Fast Food

Or at least stopping for fast food India style. Early in the trip to India we made a mad dash one morning from New Delhi to Lucknow, which meant getting to the New Delhi domestic airport crazy early for the flight to Lucknow. That in itself probably deserves its own blog post, as the airport was sheer chaos. We were stuck in a line, inexplicably, for so long that the students were starting to freak out as they became convinced that we were going to miss the flight. And then a couple students realized that the only people who weren't agitated were Santosh and me, and they figured that if we were calm then everything was going to be OK. When asked about my relative serenity I simply responded, "If this flight leaves on time it will be the first one in the history of the nation." Needless to say, we caught the flight and made it to Lucknow, but we were also way behind schedule so we had to jump on the bus and head north to Dudhwa (a trip of several hours). The students were starting to get pretty hungry, so I asked Santosh to find someplace for us to pull over to grab a quick bite.  Naturally, I wasn't expected a McDonald's of KFC, although the students would have accepted anything. We pulled over at a little place in the middle of nowhere and had what the students universally declared their favorite meal in India, which was some pickled relish on fresh chapatis. As is always the case with trips like this, they're always defined by the unplanned little moments.

Our friend Santosh told us that this translated out as Family, so to the students it became the Family Restaurant. It's been too many years since I tried to tackle Hindi so I took his word for it.

The kitchen of the Family Restaurant. My good friend Michelle, who traveled with me to India several times in my early days at Champlain, would have been horrified. We used to joke about whether should wear WWMD (What Would Michelle Do?) or WWSD (What Would Scudder Do?) bracelets; the former was way too restrictive and the latter essentially gave no guidance whatsoever.

We dined outdoors, on another beautiful Indian day. March is not a bad time to go to India as the weather is just starting to heat up but is about a month away from being uncomfortable.

We started with some chapati, freshly baked.

This was the key: a relish, which featured pickled mango. Several of the students spent the rest of the trip trying to acquire some to take home.

It seems awfully simple, but it was undeniably delicious, and the students spent the rest of the trip talking about it, and I think every one of them would uniformly say it was their favorite meal.

Charlie after taking the hot pepper challenge; he isn't normally this flushed.

I don't know, Anna, what do you think?

Success! Although in the background John looks unhappy that the latest order of chapati hadn't arrived.

What It Means - Day 57

"So be patient with beautiful patience."
Quran, 70:5

This is one of the many verses in the Quran which deal with patience.  I guess I chose this one simply because I quoted it to my students before the India trip as I sending around my famous/infamous Rules of Engagement, which I do on all of our trips. Someday I really should gather together a representative sampling of them and include them on this blog just for the sake of history (or to be a completist). Truthfully, one of the things that drew me to Islam is it's emphasis on patience.  It's certainly not one of my virtues naturally. In some ways I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing, entirely anyway, because it's pushed me to make meaningful change when other more patience (or sane) folks would have accepted the illogical norm. Still, it's also made me a pain in the ass an awful lot of the time, and also caused more than its fair share of personal angst. I talked a couple days ago about my belief that we as Muslims, in a sense, misrepresent Ramadan because we say it's the month when Muslims fast as compared to the month when Muslims are supposed to be focusing on reading and studying the Quran, with fasting playing a role (again, I borrowed that observation from an Imam I follow on Twitter). My normal contrarian sense would quickly turn this notion into a tidy justification not to fast. So why do I fast? One of the chief virtues of fasting is to learn patience (along with greater self control and a very tangible reminder that there are many people in the world who are hungry involuntarily).  Now, in Islam it's not simply an unquestioning patience that breeds acceptance of all wrongs. Instead, we are taught to always fight against injustice, so in this case the patience is tied to an activism. Even though we tend to say inshallah all the time it doesn't mean that we sit on our hands. Rather, there's a recognition that life is challenging and it's going to take a long time to make things better. This particular verse is drawn from surah 70, sometimes known as The Ascending Ways, which I featured before when I discussed the eight responsibilities of Muslims. It's another one of those surahs that I think I overlooked the first couple times I read the Quran, and only gained a greater appreciation of because Ramadan allowed me the time and space to study it more closely; once again, I guess, patience.

Oh, and another good example of a Quranic admonition for patience would be: "Bear patiently that which they say and take leave of them in a beautiful manner." (73:10) Of course, this one also includes a call for toleration, so I may revisit this one separately later.

That Time You Rode an Elephant in India While Listening to the Call to Prayer

Yes, that's a bit of a strange title, but that's what I entitled a video that I uploaded on Facebook for my students so it makes some casual sense. On the last trip to India I had arranged for the students to ride elephants when we were in far northern India in Dudhwa as part of our visit to the tiger sanctuary (more on that later). Unfortunately, the female elephants were still in heat, so the elephants, both male and female, were a little unpredictable.  The decision was made to cancel it, which, although disappointing, was obviously the right decision. That said, I had been promising the students the elephant ride for months and I was determined not to let them down. So, I began conniving right away, the details of which I'll leave out. Through the heroic efforts of our friend and guide Santosh we were able to arrange a ride when we were in Jaipur in Rajasthan on the tail end of the trip. Truthfully, the students were a little hesitant to go on the ride, mainly because they had seen elephants chained to trees in Dudhwa and it bothered them. It led to some tough but beneficial discussions about how Americans view animals, whether they're pets or not, as compared to how the rest of the world views them, and the role that we may, unwittingly, be playing in their mistreatment (it's much the same discussion we have when we arrange to swim with dolphins in Zanzibar). In the end we always leave it up to the students. In the end, they checked out the place in Jaipur and felt comfortable with how the elephants were treated, and decided to take a short ride around town. Not surprisingly, they loved it. Like I said, I posted a video on Facebook which featured the ride, which was made more otherworldly by the fact that the call to prayer was being broadcast at that exact moment. It wasn't quite as epic as riding them in Dudhwa while we were looking for tigers, but I was able to keep my promise.

Harry and Nik taking off on their adventure. I was on the first elephant with Ashley, so I was able to grab this shot from way above ground level.

Hattie (doing her best Almost Famous impersonation) and Genevieve on their elephant.

Ines reaching down to pet her elephant while Olivia looks on.

John and Charlie returning to base.

Sally bonding with her, and I do mean her, elephant. I thought I was going to have to drag her out of the elephant compound, especially when she found out that you could also help bathe the elephants. I suspect that on next year's trip I'll turn around and she'll magically appear. 

And Olivia was equally happy with spending quality time with the elephants. I know how excited Olivia was about the trip, so I was not about to break my promise to her about the elephant ride.

What It Means - Day 56

"When Our signs are recited unto him, he says, 'Fables of those of old!' Nay! But that which they used used to earn has covered their hearts with rust."
Quran, 83:13-14

OK, now I know that my long-time friends, if they ever read this blog, would suggest that I chose it simply to make a Neil Young Rust Never Sleeps reference, which is clearly not my intent (even though I just did). The passage relates to sinners who sin repeatedly with the unstated, but implied, question of why do they sin. The answer is that their hearts are covered with rust.  In the footnotes (and all the cool kids read the footnotes) Nasr, in the Study Quran, quotes a famous line from the Sufi poet Rumi, "Everyone sees the Unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more - more Unseen forms become manifest to him." First the disclaimer: this is one of my favorite passages from Rumi, and that is really saying something. Essentially, the more pure your heart the more of the Unseen you see. Now, what is the Unseen? I don't think it's God, because who can see God? But it might be appropriate to compare it to the deeper, purer nature of the divine, or maybe the Platonic the Good. In a famous hadith, also quoted by Nasr, naturally, the Prophet said, "For everything there is a polish, and the polish for the heart is the remembrance of God. There is nothing more potent in saving a person from the Punishment of God than the remembrance of God." This, of course, brings to mind the Simpsons episode featuring the famous prayer from the Flanders' boys after they were terrified by a moth: "Thanks for sending Lisa to protect us from the bug you sent." More seriously, and importantly, the crucial question is raised in regards to how we become better persons by drawing closer to God. The answer is the remembrance of God.  I've been thinking a lot about this subject, and it brings us to taqwa, or God consciousness, which I'm still doing some background research on for a fuller answer, so I'll revisit this in a couple days (it's hard to think clearly during Ramadan, but that's also another post). On one level, and thinking back to yesterday's post, I would propose that it's a constant reflection on your thoughts and actions and how they impact the world around you, but more soon.