40 Days with God – The Grand Design

So how does a pilgrimage purify?

The first question that comes to mind is purify what? If the answer is purification of soul then what does that mean in real terms?

I could distill it as purification of intent. Because intent determines our thoughts, our actions and thus eventually the results that we achieve. And thus if we were able to purify our intent at all times our outcomes at all times will be pure, which is eventually what we aspire.

How do you purify something, say your clothes? Basically it involves two fundamental steps – cleaning or removing accumulated dirt and sustenance or ensuring you don’t acquire new dirt after the purification process.

A pilgrimage essentially does both these tasks.

Let us take the Haj example and try to build the algorithm of a pilgrimage, unravel the steps that, when done in letter and spirit, will ensure purification of intent.

1.    The foremost step before you even start planning for the journey is to ask the question ‘Why am I going for Haj’ or what is the intent? The single, simple intent has to be ‘pleasing God’ or rab ko raazi karna, and thus in the process purifying oneself. If there is any dilution of this intent then purification process may not yield desired results.

2.    A pilgrimage is about leaving the world behind. So you need to ensure that you have taken all your professional and personal tasks to a logical end or assigned them to a responsible person so that they do not need your intervention for the next six weeks.

3.    Forgiveness of past sins is necessary to remove the accumulated ‘dirt’ of life so far. Hence seek forgiveness from all your acquaintances before you leave. While Allah is all merciful and can forgive you for your transgressions of faith, it is mandatory for your acquaintances to forgive you for any perceived wrongdoings against them since only they have the right to do that. However this can easily become an opportunity to publicly proclaim your Haj rather than an exercise in atonement. Thus intent needs to be carefully guarded.

4.    Haj, like all pilgrimages, requires travel. Any prolonged travel exposes your practicing values through numerous occasions of conflict which are opportunities to demonstrate and build character.

5.    Haj requires you to be patient and provide service to your fellow pilgrims at all times. This requires a constant awareness of your situation and a determined effort to stay true to these principles in times of conflict and threat to personal comfort, security or opportunity which can be often. This determined effort builds taqwa or mindfulness or a conscious awareness of what is right and wrong and then having the courage to do the right in the given situation.

6.    Before you enter the boundary of Makkah you have to discard all your clothing, cleanse yourself physically and adorn the ‘ihram’ or the two sheets of white. And while in the state of ihram you have to avoid scratching, or killing any type of animal or plucking leaves or maintaining conjugal relationship. This helps you to ‘detach’ from everything worldly – including your clothes, the last vestige of your status, before you go in the presence of Allah. This is the closest to death while living. It also symbolizes the removal of all distinctions and the equality of mankind irrespective of social, economic, educational, regional and all other boundaries.

7.    Every pilgrimage involves being in the presence of something deeply reverent, something which is extant at that place only – for Haj it is the Kaaba, the black stone cuboid which is the direction for every Muslim to pray in. This leads to a sense of deep gratitude, of the feeling of being the ‘chosen one’ amongst the millions of aspiring common men.

8.    The forsaking of the world, the time to reflect without distraction and the sense of gratitude of being present with the divine helps you to undertake the journey into your core intent, the true purpose of your actions and you begin to discover the dirt of pride, ego, greed, temptation etc. that lay at the core of some of your even so called good or noble deeds.

9.    Forgiveness is the detergent of the soul. This discovery of your fundamental flaws leads to deep remorse and you seek forgiveness with an intensity and genuineness that is difficult to experience from any other place.

10.  As you start feeling the peace that comes after forgiveness you realize that only someone who loves you deeply can forgive you for so many transgressions and still provide you the privilege of His presence. This leads to a true understanding of love and a feeling of great love for the Almighty and thus eventually for mankind.

11.  Most of the rituals at Haj (as also other pilgrimages) e.g. Tawaaf (the seven circumambulations of the Kaaba) and the Saee (or the seven rounds of Mount Safa and Marwah) require you to walk. Medical science has proven that physical activity leads to the release of specific neuro-transmitters by the brain which are the source of relaxation, energy, positivity and relieving of pain.

12.  Remorse, Gratitude and Love are a potent combination. The rituals before the actual Haj rites help inculcate them. And then, in this heightened state of awareness and emotional ripeness, when you stand under the sun in the huge plain of Arafat along with millions of others like you and seek forgiveness there is a collective divinity at work that is at the same time powerful and humbling.

This grand climax at Arafat completes the process of Cleaning.

The next stage is about Sustenance, or ensuring that you avoid gathering ‘dirt’ (or wrongdoing) in your life hereafter. How does one avoid ones clothes getting dirty in real life? The answer is not difficult. First you become aware of where dirt is and avoid those places or circumstances. Where you cannot, you tread cautiously taking the correct steps and avoiding temptation.

We have already seen how the focus on being patient and being of service to others at all times helps build Taqwaa or a sense of heightened self-awareness. Let us see how other rituals at Haj help to reinforce sustainability.

1.    After Arafat, a key ritual is the stoning of the Devil. This requires you to throw seven stones at three devils each, with each stone recalling one wrongdoing in your life. Thus not only are you reflecting on your own wrongdoings, but building a mental pattern within yourself to ‘stone the devil,’ or resist the temptation, whenever you are accosted with one in your life hereafter.

2.    It also inculcates a sense of ownership and responsibility for your own wrongdoings by suggesting that the devil lies inside each one of us and not in those pillars or the external world which is only a manifestation.

3.    Every single Haji, irrespective of caste, creed, color, nationality, wealth, education, age or gender stays together, travels together and performs the same rituals during the five days of Haj. This creates a strong bond of universality and unification with mankind that inculcates a deep sense of community and love. And only this feeling of love for your brethren can provide the wisdom and courage to forgive others and sustain not just purity for yourself but help others in achieving purity for them; because sustainability can be best achieved not just by keeping yourself clean but also helping your environment become clean.

The process thus can be summarized as Gratitude, Remorse, Forgiveness and Love enabled by Reflection leading to a heightened Mindfulness.

The final question then that needs to be asked is what is the end outcome of achieving purity? How does it make your life different than what it was before the journey?

I can only answer this for myself. It has been nine months since the completion of the journey and what I have experienced myself and validated from my close friends and colleagues is summarized below:

1.    There is better clarity in the thought process. I am thus able to respond better, which means I speak less in calls and meetings and am more relevant. I realized I used to speak a lot earlier simply because I was finding clarity as I spoke.

2.    This clarity has also helped me prioritize better and I am now able to identify and give more time to things that I feel are important and add value to my life.

3.    My need to impress people has reduced to a certain degree which has also resulted in being able to accept shortcomings easily, share bad news and participating in calls and meetings only when required.

4.    I have become less impulsive. This has improved my facilitation skills and I feel in better control during a session.

5.    I have become more mindful of situations and understand the right and wrong options. That doesn’t mean I am able to act correctly in each of them but I hope awareness is first step and my ability to action will also improve gradually.

6.    I feel a heightened sense of gratitude for everything which means giving has become easier and I get the urge to say thanks more frequently.

To summarize measurable outcomes, as is the preoccupation these days, my participation in calls and meetings has reduced by around 70% and I am on the verge of completing two books.

And I feel at far greater peace with myself.

I cannot conclude this series without saying Thanks. I deeply thank my boss who sanctioned my leave without the slightest hesitation, my team which ensured I wasn’t called one single time during those 40 days, Asian Tours, the travel operator through which I undertook the pilgrimage, my room partner during the journey – a fantastic couple who kept the spirits high despite having gone through some of the greatest tragedies a parent can face and all my fellow pilgrims.

When I started the series I expected it to conclude in around 5 episodes. However the writing process made me reflect and relieve the experience and as is common one is always wiser in hindsight.

I reserve my deepest gratitude to every reader, now and in the future. On returning from Haj I didn’t want to write about it simply because it would seem like public posturing, drawing mileage from what was essentially an intensely personal and private experience. However I started to pen it down only when more than a few friends requested to understand the experience.

I hope you have gained as much from it as I have writing it.

In the end I would repeat what I said at the beginning – everyone must go on a pilgrimage sometime in their life, in whatever form it is. It helps.

Thank You!

[In a subsequent appendix I will list down the do’s and don’ts for any person who is planning to go on Haj. Since it will be relevant to only a small populace I will be happy to share that with anyone planning to undertake the pilgrimage.]

40 Days with God – The Haj Part I - Purification

The obligatory Haj rituals are to be performed in the vicinity of Makkah during 8 – 12 Zul-hijja (the month of Hajj) which is the last month of the Islamic calendar. Only when you have performed the prescribed rituals on these given days are you said to have performed Haj.

We returned back to Makkah on 5^th Zilhijja after the 10 day stay in Medina – and it seemed to be a different place than what we had left. There were people everywhere, on the streets, in front of hotels, in temporary makeshift tents in traffic gardens and in the grand central Mosque – the Masjid-al-Haram.

Yet despite the huge crowds, when we returned back for the obligatory Umrah to Masjid-al-Haram on the night we reached from Medina, it felt like a homecoming, like getting back into the arms of Allah again.

Let me share some insights into how the Saudi government manages the large crowd. In 2012 around 40 lakh pilgrims performed the Haj as per the official version out of which 16 lakhs were foreign visitors while the remaining were from GCC countries who do not need a visa and just drive in or local Arabs and migrant workers in Saudi Arabia. All the foreign pilgrims are allocated to a Muallim – or a local leader. Muallim in Arabic means ‘Sir’ or ‘Teacher’. Each Maullim is allocated approximately 5000 pilgrims and during your stay in Saudi your travel and security is his responsibility. In the month preceding the Haj week and the month that follows, the government controls the pilgrim population by distributing them between Makkah and Medina. Thus some batches first travel to Makkah and then visit Medina, whereas an approximately equal number visit Medina first before traveling to Makkah. This is managed centrally by Muallims through an IT program.

Thus on any given day when a set of pilgrims is travelling from Makkah to Medina, an almost equal number is travelling back from Medina to Makkah and the 7 hours journey gives the hotel staff at both locations time to clean up the rooms for the new set of arriving pilgrims. However for the Haj week the entire population travels to Makkah only and hence when we returned back to Makkah we were allocated a hotel in the suburbs, around 5 KMs from the Central Mosque since hotel rents in the city during these days are exorbitantly high.

The rituals during the Haj week (8-12 Zilhijja) are taxing both in terms of physical effort required as well as due to the huge crowd and hence it is recommended to refresh and rejuvenate for a few days prior to its commencement. We spent 5 – 7 Zilhajja in our hotel room in Azizia (a suburb of Makkah) largely attending sermons on the Haj rituals, their significance, the travel and stay arrangements during those days and how to manage if one got lost. The mosques deliver these sermons in various international languages based on the nationalities staying in that location.

On the night of 7^th Zilhajja we took bath, packed a small bag with necessities, discarded our clothes and donned the white ihram once again and became ready for the final passage; the purpose of the pilgrimage. All the preparation, all the knowledge, all the insights resonated internally and nothing mattered besides that single intent to ensure every rite was performed as prescribed, every ritual measured up to the standards deemed by the Prophet and our Haj could meet the acceptance of Allah. The entire journey would then be worthwhile.

The prophet had set for Haj on the morning of 8^th Zilhajja, but due to the large crowd now we set forth on the journey around midnight of 7^thZilhajja. The Haji during these prescribed days has to stay in Mina, a huge plain about 5 KMs to the east of Makkah where more than 100,000 air-conditioned, fire proof tents are set up to provide temporary accommodation to the pilgrims for these five nights.

The 10 minute bus journey took us almost one hour since every road leading to Mina was packed with vehicles and people walking with their belongings trying to find their tent in that sprawling sea of white. As you look around from your bus it was the only color you saw – white. The white tents packed close to each other separated only by streams of the same color; streets made invisible by millions of pilgrims all dressed in the same two sheets of unstitched white – the ihram.

And on the lips of everyone is a single prayer – the Talbiyah, which (in translation) states "Here I am at Thy service O Lord, here I am. Here I am at Thy service and Thou hast no partners. Thine alone is All Praise and All Bounty, and Thine alone is The Sovereignty. Thou hast no partners.”

The central theme of Haj is Oneness – the equality of mankind, all dressed alike, all reciting the same prayer, united in their desire of seeking servitude and love of a single Lord. No soul can stay unaffected in that atmosphere of energy created by forty million people unified by a single spiritual purpose.

The 8^th of Zilhijja is known as Yaum-ul-Tarwiyah (The day of giving water) because on this day, in ancient times, the pilgrims and their caravans would drink and fill water for the day of Arafat to follow. There are no specific rites for this day except to offer the five mandatory prayers and spend the day in zikr or remembrance of the Lord seeking His forgiveness and help.

The beds in the tent are foam mattresses cramped adjacent to each other with hardly and space to walk and the toilets though many can be few at ‘rush’ hours so you do become careful while eating and have to plan your natural visits. However it is important to ensure enough nourishment for the two tough days to follow.

The second day of Haj i.e. 9^th Zilhijja (also called Yaum-ul-Arafat or the day of Arafat) is probably the most crucial of all days because it includes the mandatory rite of seeking pardon in the plains of Arafat. There are 3 mandatory and 6 obligatory rituals for the Haj to be deemed complete. If you miss any of the obligatory rites then you can still continue with the Haj by paying a compensation in the form charity (sadqa) or sacrifice of a sheep or goat.  However if you miss a compulsory ritual the Haj is deemed incomplete and one has to undertake the whole journey again. Being in a state of ihram, standing in the plains of Arafat on the afternoon of 9^th Zilhijja and the Tawaf-e-Ziyaarat (the circumambulation of the Kaaba during specific Haj days) are the mandatory rites.

The Arafat ritual is probably the most significant ritual of the pilgrimage. On this day the Haji has to stand in the huge open plains of Arafat from noon till sunset and seek forgiveness for all his sins. For the ease of the pilgrim and to provide undivided focus on this single act of repentance even the mandatory evening prayer (namaz-e-asr) that day are to be read along with the afternoon prayer (namaz-e-johar.)

We reached Arafat just after midnight and the few tents over there were dark since there is no provision for electricity. It didn't matter, because that day you only have a single worry; will I receive forgiveness for my sins?

What if you were aware of your many wrongdoings and given one chance to stand in court and seek mercy from the judge?

The plain of Arafat that afternoon is full of men and women from every culture, nationality, age, prosperity standing with their hands raised to the sky, unmindful of the blazing sun on top, the burning sand underneath, sobbing as they recall their sins, the sweat and the tears difficult to distinguish.

It was as if the entire journey had prepared you for this one moment; all that time to read and reflect, to be with yourself and God unpeels the outer layer of superficial modesty to reveal the garbage lying inside you – your truest intents for doing what you did and you have realized that these have not always been honest. From this acute self-awareness comes a sense of remorse that is deep and heartfelt. And when this opportunity arrives to get everything excused, you seek forgiveness as if nothing else mattered. That afternoon there is no one in Arafat who doesn’t cry.

And that afternoon you realize why the pilgrimage, if performed as prescribed, has the potential to make you as pure as a new born.

A loud alarm signals sunset. It is time to leave Arafat and reach the mountains and plains of Muzdalifah to spend the night, which is the next obligatory task. Imagine 40 million people leaving a place at the same time to reach another common place. The crowd, the chaos, the commotion can be unmanageable and we had a near life-threatening experience as we were sandwiched in a crowd of more than fifty thousand trying to enter the metro station through a single narrow gate.

The harrowing experience though doesn’t affect you. You have managed to board a train and get dropped somewhere in Muzdalifah (it is almost 9 KMs from Arafat and there are three metro stations for Muzdalifah.) You are separated from your group, you don’t know which place you are, you had nothing to eat since the afternoon lunch yet nothing matters.

All that matters is compliance to God, to dutifully do as He reckons. To, as someone had rightly said, trust the process.

[In the next episode we will look at the remaining rituals of 10 – 12 Zilhijja and how they complete the process of purification and lead towards the other important thing - sustaining that purity.]

40 Days with God – Liberation through Forgiveness

What if Religion was thought as Ancient History? Would it then be more acceptable?

History has its share of conflicts but they are less vicious and dogmatic than religious ones. And you tend to believe in history more than religion because they are observable facts. During the pilgrimage the tour operator took us on a visit to all the historical places around Makkah and Medina – the place where Prophet Mohammed and few other known leaders were born, the cave in which Koranic verses were revealed, the mountain top where the prophet hid during his migration to Medina, the battlefields where some famous battles happened etc.

You had read or heard many tales of the Prophet but seeing all those places in reality makes religion seem like history and helps you visualize the world at that time with its cultural and political dimensions.

There is an interesting aspect of the government in Saudi. They have not preserved most of the historical structures (e.g. the birthplace of the Prophet, houses of other leaders) in their original form but converted them either into a mosque or a library. The objective we were told is to prevent people from worshipping these places but rather praying and seeking only from a single God.

The library on the roof top of Masjid-e-Nabwi, the central mosque in Medina is a veritable delight for readers and historians. There are books in all major national languages across the globe covering various facets of Islamic and Arabic civilization – the arts, sciences, culture, politics and history besides the religious doctrines. What I found romantic were the early photos of Makkah and Medina before modernization giving a glimpse of how our grandfathers would have seen it when they did their Haj. The one hour that I spent in the library every afternoon was valuable education in the history of Islam and the character of Prophet Mohammed.

We were returning from a guided tour of Medina and our guide was a Pakistani scholar from the North-West who spoke in a monotonous but endearing accent – isn’t it always charming to hear someone speak a language in their local dialect. His pain at being distanced from his homeland and of a rapidly commercializing culture that was distancing itself from old values was palpable in his commentary. On the last leg of the tour he reminded us of the sanctity of Masjid-e-Nabwi where the prophet lived, prayed and died and the great opportunity life had given us to pray at the same place, to touch with our forehead the same ground which the prophet must have touched one day in prostration.

Affected by that emotional speech I was determined that afternoon to offer namaaz in the original mosque that housed the prophet’s pulpit – the place from where he preached. Since this place is smaller than the huge, modern prayer hall created as an extension, you need to be early to get a place to pray inside. I skipped my afternoon nap that day to secure a place inside the mosque.

The Prophet’s pulpit was in front of me and on my left was Bibi Ayesha’s (the Prophet’s wife) house where the prophet died and lies buried. The fact that I was sharing the same space where 1400 years ago the prophet would have stood and addressed people sitting where I was sitting made me tremble with reverence and fear. Was I worth the place? Did my character come anywhere close to that of the prophet’s companions and the people of those times, about whom I had read in the library books? And I bowed my head and cried for forgiveness because that was the only thing I could do.

God reserves the right to forgive you for your wrongdoings of His edicts – and He is most merciful. However Islam insists that if you have hurt your fellow citizens, you need to be first forgiven by them before Allah forgives you for such transgressions. That probably is one reason why it is customary to seek explicit forgiveness from all your relatives and friends before one leaves for Haj.

I had by now complete faith in the mercy of the Lord, but what about people I may have deliberately or inadvertently hurt. I needed them to forgive me. But what could I do sitting from there but only pray that God put the thought of forgiveness in their hearts.

And then I realized that if I am expecting others to forgive me, shouldn’t I be forgiving others for any wrongdoing or hurt they had caused me? The Universe, I had learned in a training program earlier in the year, gives you back what you sow. So the only way those I have hurt may forgive me is if I forgive those who have hurt me – and it didn’t matter if the hurting and the ones causing hurt were not the same, for the Universe will take care of that; haven’t we heard about the Laws of Conservation in physics.

I tried to recall the incidents and people who had pained me and as I went back in memory to remember such moments I realized that they were rarely from casual acquaintances or one-off incidents; most memories that I had of pain and hurt were caused by close relationships and friends and that revelation suddenly stunned me.

Do we hurt our loved ones the most? And if we hurt them then that hurt has to come back to us in some form or other, as per the Universal Law of reap as you sow. So then, are our loved ones the reason for all the hurt that we get from the world and vice-versa?

A very close relative, who works near my house, had refused to help or even inquire when I was struggling with all the preparations before leaving for Haj. As I would sleep exhausted well after midnight and then wake up before dawn each day to wind-up remaining tasks I would feel pained by his indifference. And I had carried that pain with me to the pilgrimage.

I called him up from the mosque, knowing well that it was not courteous to make a phone call from that holy precinct. But it was important for me to forgive him then and there. He inquired cheerfully about my pilgrimage, told me how he had been praying in every namaaz five times a day about my well-being and safety. I felt cheerful and happy talking to him and all the hurt seemed to go away.

Did he feel he was doing his duty by praying to God for helping me out and taking care of me? Was his intent thus to help me, only his manner was different from what I was expecting? And thus was he wrong or only I was assuming he was wrong?

Only God knows the true intents of a person so does anyone other than God have a right to judge another person?

As I walked out of the mosque later that evening I felt strangely liberated, completely at peace with myself. What great freedom it is to have the burden of judgment taken away, to know that you can never truly judge anyone else and thus everyone may be right in their own way. And that makes forgiving others so easy.

How light and peaceful it feels on having truly forgiven everyone. I tried to recall again all those incidents of pain and hurt which had been stored inside me for years. They came back now only as incidents with no feeling of pain or hurt. Is this the test of true forgiveness?

I realized how simple it is to live a hurt-free life. All we need to develop is an ability to genuinely forgive the other for their seeming mistakes.

[Next week we will travel back to Makkah for the actual Haj rituals – the prime purpose of taking this pilgrimage.]