fasting

Sweetness

Sweetness, Beloved
Shows on the plates, wok and wrap
In one sweet dinner.

veggies, rendang and deep fried (sweet potato balls & banana) — sweet

rendang I prepare for Eva next Thursday’s ifthar in a Japanese restaurant — what a sweet mix 😁

today’s sweet herbal chocolate

Sweet Dreams

Learning, love, Poetic, This Person

All dreams should be sweet.
They should leave beautiful trails
To be well followed.

living with acceptance is a dream

and I’ve achieved it to some extent; I’ve learnt letting go each and every day

and now I want to enjoy my life with someone who has the same project with mine: to live loving & forgiving, to die loved & forgiven

because to me that’s the only way to live happily

Still About Dreams

Learning, Poetic

When dreams are calling,
Get up! The sky's the limit,
Be the wind that blows.

my dreams call the wind so they can meet you soon

❣️

What About The Dreams?

Learning, Poetic

I still keep the dreams:
You're the only one to meet
When sky's clear one day.

I hug my dreams in the dark day; they will again fly to find home when the wind sweeps clouds away

💙

🥰

Why?

Learning, Poetic

They ask, Beloved
Why repeated the same thing?
Based on what you do--

why I say the same ideas repeatedly, only moving the point of view?

because those are the things I not only know but also embrace, internalise and experience in life

saying something I don’t truly know and feel and walk feels like not stepping on the ground

❣️

Clear Glasses

Learning, Poetic

Clear glasses, my love
With which colours and shapes seen
Are cleaned everyday.

it’s both the glass container and the glass spectacles should be clean to see clearly

exactly like one person’s action and the other’s perspective

❣️

Kitchen Calls

Learning, love, Poetic, This Person

Kitchen calls, my love
Those in love with life and taste
And the folks in heart.

today’s ifthar with so much love

we call it bothok not the Botox injection — it’s tempeh, anchovy in grated coconut + santan wrapped by my hands in banana leaves 😍

sayur asem (sour soup) normally the sourness is from tamarind but today I used buah kedondong peel

Japanese cracker that I love always

still the Bac Ninh oranges

kedondong

Today’s Joy

Learning, Poetic

What's for today's joy?
Colourful and full of taste
On a wooden tray

today’s ifthar

salad for fresh evening from my fridge

kolak (stew of sweet yam, aloe vera and sago pearl) from my kitchen

orange from Bac Ninh, Hanoi

steamed rice cake from Bengawan Solo

Goes Down On Her Knees, Prays

Learning, love, Poetic

Her heart aches,
She needs some medicine
And so she goes down on her knees and prays
For clarity.

She hopes soon her tips of fingers can touch clearly
Whether it is pulsating
Of better future
Or potentially repeated puncture.

Show me his way.

fastbreaking today — bismillah

i booked a table in my favourite Japanese resto as i wanted to enjoy their crab but no table was available at my preferred time

so i bought kanikama as the frozen crab was not available either in dondondonki

….randomly mixed it with whatever i had

i needed rice but not much time to cook it

…. ok

not bad at all to start this evening

japanese restaurant, see you on sunday

Hidden

Learning

All cracks in the stone
Show what is glowing inside.
Light in the darkness—

—

2nd day of Ramadhan – craving another one that is not shown through a photo 😁

Fasting is a very familiar way of life to Javanese. Called pasa or poso, fasting in Javanese culture is always related to the effort to self align. Many Javanese like doing fasting with or without meditation (tapa brata or topo broto) depending on their commitment.

While Javanese Muslim do at least one month of fasting per year in Ramadhan, fasting in Javanese culture itself came even much earlier before Islam was introduced. While in Islam fasting is between dawn to dusk and the same restriction is commonly applied to all kinds of fasting, Javanese fasting is more varied both in term of period and restriction.

Fasting helps Javanese slow down the pace in their mind, regulate the speed of their ambitious behaviour upon life goals, train themselves to be patient.

There are several kinds of fasting in Javanese culture that are still practiced by relatively many nowadays.

1. Regular fasting
This fasting is done only from dawn to dusk like the Islamic fasting. This is a common practice, many Javanese parents use this kind of fasting to train their children about how to manage their immediate excessive desires and concentration in under pressure situation. I remember when we were elementary and high schoolers, we were instructed by parents to do fasting on Monday and Thursday during yearly school testing weeks. Yes, I felt more focused on my study as I had to prioritise tasks to save energy. Brilliant!

2. Mutih
Mutih is derived from the word putih (white in Javanese, Indonesian, Malay). During this fasting, a person is restricted to eat other than white rice and fresh water for 24 hours started either at dawn or dusk. Ordinary Javanese can do it for one day, three or seven. Yet more advanced (usually senior) Javanese would extend the period as per commitment.

3. Ngasrep or nganyep
Ngasrep is derived from the word asrep that means cool or cold; while nganyep from the word anyep means tasteless. In this kind of fasting the food and drink should be all cool and tasteless. The person is suggested to eat only boiled vegetable without adding taste (salt, sugar, oil, sauces, etc) and drink fresh water. It is mostly done in three days.

3. Ngrowot
Ngrowot is a word derived from the word krowot that means Javanese common carbo source except rice. The person who does this fasting will only eat carbo non rice like sweet potato, suwek (konjac), gembili, gembolo (English please….), taro, cassava and other tubers.

4. Ngebleng
Ngebleng means staying in; so doing this, a person will do regular fasting but very limited food intake allowed without leaving room or house, not meeting anyone, just doing meditation or doing household chores without distraction from anyone. Someone can do it three and seven days and forty days. Not many are doing this as this is a challenging one: not easy to find a place. This fasting is quite heavy because it does not allow sufficient food intake for a long time.

5. Pati geni (pati: turned off, geni: fire)
It literally means “fire turned off”. This is the highest level of Javanese fasting as the restriction applied really tests the person’s very high commitment: s/he is not allowed to eat, drink, sleep including fall asleep and see any light both artificial and natural. How long? The shortest is 24 hours, maximum unlimited. Note: if s/he sleeps or falls asleep, s/he has to restart the fasting.

There are other kinds of fasting in Javanese culture which were done by very limited people and have been left by many due to the impracticality such as pasa ngidang (from the word kidang or deer) in which a person is only allowed to eat raw foliage like a deer, pasa ngalong (from the word kalong or bat) only eating ripe fruit from the tree, pasa kungkum (bathing up to chin level either in the pool, river or shallow sea) without eating or drinking, etc. There are probably other kinds of fasting as Javanese used to be very creative in “fasting engineering” hahaha….

Javanese believe that with fasting they will connect better to themselves and inevitably with the ultimate power of the universe. They will usually become confident people without showing off. Those fasting committed people —if doing it right and without evil intension— will be a highly spiritual people and voluntarily dedicated to environment and people.

Javanese believe that this type of people bring blessings to the surroundings although blessings are not always tangibly seen. The blessings can be as simple as peaceful daily life with little conflict,

Do we still have many of them? In very silent villages around Java island we might still find a few. They are traditional farmers who feel the need to connect with the ultimate power as only that can help them manage their humble farming that is now severely industrialised and exploited.

Hope we still have them in silence. Amen.

Alfatihah.

“too much” in all kinds: portion, protein, sugar, carb – never mind, it’s good! 🥰 my yesterday’s break fasting

Hello Dusk!

Learning, Poetic

Bright Eyes are blinking
Lazily greeting the dusk
Hiding mister sun.

—

Cycles

Learning, love, Poetic, This Person, Those People

Under the green leaf,
Crawls then sleeps. Wake up with love.
Fly, Butterfly, fly.

Metamorphosis of egg to caterpillar to cocoon before butterfly is beautiful and relevant with the cycles of human being’s life in all aspect.

How someone finds a potential and amplifies the potential with any resources that one can think of such as schooling, taking courses/training/workshop, reading, listening, watching, contemplating, consultancy…. Oh some others who don’t have clear thinking include their actions of cheating, stealing, breaking the law, stepping the integrity lines, backstabbing, etc.

It is like witnessing the eggs sheltered by some shade of plants and with the weather and pressure, they are pushed to crawl out of the shells. Here it comes one hungry caterpillar, playing happily, eating this, eating that, eating these, eating those, eating everything. This caterpillar can only stop eating when one feels numb and one’s fullness melts away and wraps itself to sleep. The things one consumed liquifies it like ice thawed in a plastic bag.

Sleep soundly, hungry caterpillar and don’t wake up until someday your fluid self come into form, embodied into a totally different creature. The butterfly you are!

There was a time when an employee is so preoccupied with what one is doing, as if one is wrapped in a system that trapped one doing the same thing like no choice is given. One does it everyday until finally not having to think of how to do it already. One might feel the job is ingrained as a thought, a feeling, an intuition, movement, the life itself. Trained skills and talents make an art, the integrity shapes wisdom. A job—when has become a dedication— will not betray a human being.

Hope someday mine becomes one. It is never about how high I climb but about how deep I dive into the commitment of making what I’m doing a wisdom and benefits for those we promise to protect and support.

I think it is ok to be one hungry caterpillar, looking greedy and craving for more knowledge, experiences, adventures. As long as it knows where poison lies, it is safe to chew and swallow anything. No no not anything…. Select wisely, Beloved.

I remember Steve Jobs said “Stay foolish, stay hungry”. That person really knew what he was doing. Many people might have thought negatively about him, laughed at what he was doing, called him crazy, kicked him out for having different ideas, backstabbed him to stop his annoyance. Those people just didn’t know that that guy was a hungry caterpillar processing into a cocoon before butterfly. Amazing human being! God bless time when he was alive and forever.

Hmm…. Perhaps he truthfully made himself hungry by fasting and foolish by learning and unlearning.

God bless you, Steve Jobs and the people around his belief about staying foolish and hungry.

Salam….

Hungry Caterpillar

Learning, Poetic

Caterpillar feet
March on a twig. Oops! They flip.
Scary acrobat!
It looks up to the blue skies,
Prepares to cocoon itself.

—

Butterfly is never really born. It is a natural breakthrough after the hungry caterpillar is willing to go fasting and liquidize itself in seclusion. When it is time, a butterfly comes into being.

You might be not a colourful pretty butterfly but cocooning should have taught you that your present being is the output of a long resting period after such a long euphoric period of being a hungry caterpillar. The euphoric being is gone, replaced by a winged soft being flying and dancing celebrating the moving air around its body.

Your wings might be just pitch black but they are the result of how sincere you are in a transformative sleep hanging in a weak twig, without knowing if you’ll be slapped down when the twig is broken, without knowing that you’ll be aborted because of the wet, without knowing that the end is the end or a transition point. You just don’t know but you accept your not knowing.

You might not be as pretty as the most beautiful butterfly out there but…. You’ve gone through the same quality of cycle – not less not more. Thanks to fair Mother Nature.

To be “born” winged, fly, help the flowers pollinate before fruition and magically create graceful move with super powerful effect….

Don’t be upset for being a flipping hungry caterpillar’ coz when you’re transformed, your flapping wings can blow a typhoon!

May all caterpillars be happy…..

Rike Jo