Islands of Isolation
It took me a while to settle down today to write my weekly blog article. But here I am, at the Coffee Bean Cafe at the Sunway Square Mall, allowing my thoughts to settle down so that they may form coherent words here on this blank page.
Right now, like in any other mall, there's a lot of background noise: snippets of conversation from a nearby table, the incessant drone of nondescript music and announcements from the PA system, advertisement jingles, and the occasional shrieks of children at play. It's another typical Saturday afternoon at a busy mall in Malaysia. With the humid and hot weather, coupled with the lingering haze from Indonesian forest fires, malls are the go-to sanctuaries for most people.
Cafes are good places for me to think and write. I'm actually less distracted here. There are no books within easy reach, and being in public and in the company of strangers, you don't get too many interruptions. You are isolated on an island of anonymity in a sea of people, which strangely makes it very conducive to work. I try to carve out these islands of isolation, in the midst of chaos, with the hope of mining some insights through study and writing.
All religions have their contemplative and mystical side where practitioners isolate themselves from society. Apparently, only through isolation could the deepest spiritual insights be realised.
The so-called Desert Fathers in the Christian tradition were ascetics and hermits who lived a life of isolation and simplicity in the Egyptian desert to commune with God through prayer and meditation. They laid the foundation for Catholic monasticism. All the religions of the East are famous for their ascetic and monastic practices, which are sometimes taken to the extreme. In some Tibetan traditions, 1-to-3 year solo retreats in caves are not uncommon. I see them as professional sportsmen of the spiritual kind, dedicating their lives to something which they think is the ultimate pursuit. Even spirituality can be an extreme sport too.
Islam does not have a tradition of monasticism, but followers of the Sufi or tasawwuf tradition are not unlike their Christian and Hindu brethren. They too seek an inner connection to God through silent and reflective meditation. Even the Prophet Muhammad himself was meditating in the Hira cave when he was given his first revelation by the Angel Gabriel. He was practising a spiritual pursuit called Tahannuth, in which one spends time in isolation to contemplate one God, as opposed to idolatrous polytheism that was widespread then.
The ritualistic aspects of religion, like regular prayer and worship, set the necessary framework for the real practice of spirituality, which by nature is an inner pursuit, done in the hearts and minds of the practitioner. Rituals provide the physical platform and the 'agentic loop' for the pursuit of the spiritual goal. If you have a scheduled habit of praying five times a day, you don't even have to make much of an effort to drag your busy mind to God. The rituals, done habitually, already carve out the necessary time and space within your routine for it. It's instant isolation, from which spirituality can then take root.
My weekly blogging ritual can be seen as such. I am a student but not a follower of any spiritual tradition. In My Religion, I hypothesised why human beings have a propensity for religion. As I mentioned in another blog article, Truth or Taste, the religion you choose to adopt is a matter of taste. Our engagement with the world fills us with both pleasurable and painful moments. In our quieter moments, we would yearn for some peace and isolation from it all. That provides the fertile soil for the seed of spirituality to take root. And if properly nurtured, it will certainly grow.
As I look at the people in the cafe and mall around me, I see the agitations of modern life in all their forms. Everyone, I dare say, would welcome a reprieve from it all. They will seek to find it, anyhow, through hobbies, religions and other spiritual pursuits. And in my case, through my weekly blog article.
