A (re)site which runs through the roots, rhythms, and routes of what it means to read. Recycling insights and revealing its source, this digital (re)collection gives you the chance to reflect on One Writer, the first Word, and what is Real.
"My Earth and My Heaven cannot contain Me, but the heart of My faithful servant contains Me." — Hadith Qudsi
A first-of-its-kind digital book that sets out to prove love. “Books are proof that humanity is capable of magic”, Carl Sagan tells us, and yet if you are bound to thinking of books as just a bunch of pages stuck together this may sound profound, but not ring true with experience. While I love the smell and feel of physical books and am convinced by Sagan either way, I find no less wonder - or variety of expression, mutation and interpretation - in our genetic code, or the beautiful mathematical statements it has discovered, or the physical symmetries it keeps on finding. Books are more than what can be bound between a cover.
This work, served as a simple subdomain of the work above, examines in a more direct way what it means to wake up every day and sincerely live your truth, rather than just know it conceptually. I have found that the more I write what I have experienced in the form of honest poetry, the more my experience honestly becomes poetic. We design our world, and our world acts back to de-sign us. The two are in one continuous dialogue. “Waking up” is nothing other than learning how to tune in to that which is already being said between soul and self, Word and wor(l)d, way and wanderer.
Using a new framework, this book pushes the boundaries of what is possible with open source, associative knowledge structures. Dyeing begins with surrender and presents no definite, structured journey from beginning to end, unlike it's two predecessors. You can follow multiple threads through its interconnected interior, discovering for yourself the most appropriate way.
I don't spend all of my time building esoteric digital books (only most of it). The rest is devoted to writing transparent and open economic algorithms aimed at improving the creation and distribution of value online. Programmable money is already playing a pivotal role in our increasingly connected world, and we need to use it wisely if we are to align our incentive structures with the greatest possible good. Dap.ps is the world's only open, permissionless, economic ranking system for information. One day, we hope to use something akin it to eliminate phenomena like #FakeNews.
Occasionally I feel the need to impose my views on the internet. Of course, it doesn't care at all. However, if you do, you can find some of my recent essays and thoughts below.
An overview of the loftily inculcated ethical system I have been taught.
The leftovers from The Blue Book and Living it. Best for a quick scan.
Not something I engage in often, though no-one is spared temptation as long as they are still breathing.
The worst of all temptations. Only to be entered with the utmost caution and humility.
This amazing, one-of-a-kind school in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa educates 142 children from poor backgrounds, attempting to break the cycle and lift an entire community out of economic oppression engineered over many generations.
Be careful how literally you take this teacher. He is all Makkah, no Medina.
A talk given in Berlin with some interesting technical history thrown in for good measure.
A talk given in Toronto that starts with Leipniz, binary, and his idea of a perfect language, and then applies it to executable code run on turing-complete blockchains which can't be turned off.
Taking back the web with an open economic ranking system which cannot be gamed.
If you've gotten this far into the gallery, you must be a real digital seeker...
Everyone needs a true guide. Shaykh Haeri is one such master.
"I was a hidden treasure, loving to be know, and so I created."
"And Allah's is the east and the west; thus wherever you turn, there is the Face of Allah. Surely, Allah is Vast, Knowing." (2:115)
The Qur’an is the most mysterious, impossible declaration: a wave weaved into other waves, emerging still with all kinds of changes and movements. It’s unfathomable. The right attitude with which to approach it is humility. It’s not about intellect. It’s about coming bereft. It’s for you to be confused - moving from we to I to you and back again. That is why its language is woven so tightly: it encompasses both the seen and the unseen and you have to yield yourself to it. That’s why the Western intellectuals could never get it. If you want to “get” the Qur’an you will be confused. It will get you. — paraphrased from Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri
The notion that deepening awareness and expanding conscious skill or discpline leads to experiencing every moment in this world as perfect, as one spent witnessing the ever-present Face of God, has been around for a long time. The //Xam, and other tribes of the First People who wandered the Kalahari Desert and the Karroo, spoke of those harsh and beautiful landscapes as "The Great Face", which they were able to read for signs critical to their sustenance and survival. The Qur'an, as above, contains many ayat specifically devoted to this same metaphor which points at what is truly Real, what lasts and is not subject to the transient limitations of spacetime; shown also below:
"Everything upon it (the earth) perishes and the Face of your Lord remains, the Possessor of Might and Generosity." (55:26-27)
I have a sense that the internet can be seen as the Great Digital Face, and I have left some traces from my experience of witnessing it below for you to follow at your leisure. Of course, though my chosen metaphors differ, people like Doug Engelbart and Aaron Swartz knew this long ago. Doug, because he saw that the entire online system could be viewed holistically as a universal knowledge repository, with each site providing a different view over the same inherent data; and Aaron because, well, he was the Internet's own boy.
"I ascribe to Islam something which no one has previously ascribed to it: Islam is surrender, surrender is certainty, certainty is belief, belief is affirmation, affirmation is to execute and carry out, execution and carrying out are good actions." — Iman `Ali
And your Lord is the Most Generous, He who taught with the pen, Who taught man what he did not know. (96:3-5)
"This world is forbidden to the People of the Hereafter and the Hereafter is forbidden to the People of the World, but they are both forbidden to the People of Allah." — Hadith Qudsi
Iqra' was the first word of the Qur'an revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). It's root in Arabic is qara, as in "He gathered it". It means to put it all together, to unify. From the Singular, everything spread out. Iqra' is to gather it back, to connect it, relate it, see it in its root of Oneness.
“The real basis of their poetry is a loftily inculcated ethical system, which recognises in purity of heart, charity, self-renunciation, and bridling of the passions, the necessary conditions of eternal happiness.” — Reynold Nicholson
We are people of the Middle Way, as prescribed by The Book. We use our heads and our hearts. Brainpickings is undoubtedly the best place to hone your practice online.
"He is the First, the Last, the Apparent, the Hidden and He is the Knower of all things." (57:3)
"And whoever trusts in Allah He is sufficient for him, indeed Allah carries out His commands. For all things Allah has set a measure." (65:3)
"And Allah encompasses all things." (4:126)