A personal epic by Rahmat Wibowo

Rahmatyana

An epic of code, courage and the search for love

The Ramayana, read through sufism: seven valleys, from seeking to dissolution.

Begin the journey

Original visual work by the author; appears to be AI-generated.

Prologue · Mukadimah

Listen to the reed flute

Mathnawi: the flute that tells of separation

Jalaluddin Rumi opens the Mathnawi with a reed flute, not with a teaching. In R. A. Nicholson's 1926 translation: listen to this reed as it complains, it tells a tale of separation. Music is born only from a hollowed body.

I first read that line as an engineer, and read it again after losing my voice. What is cut off from its source is best at singing the way home.

Listen to this reed as it complains; it tells a tale of separation.

The reed in Rumi's opening: cut from the reed bed, hollowed, then blown. Each stage is read twice, in nature and in a life: separation, the wound that makes room, and the breath that gives the voice back.

Valley 1 · Talab

Seeking

Ramayana: Vanavasa, the forest exile

In the Ramayana, Rama is exiled to the forest for fourteen years. He goes for dharma, a duty higher than comfort, not because he was defeated. Home loses its walls and everything familiar grows distant.

I know that forest. Mine had no trees: about a year and a half of near-silence after legal pressure and upheaval at work. What went missing quietly was my voice, my ease with other people, and the courage to look someone in the eye and say, "Hello, I am Rahmat."

Hijr and viraha: two words for one wound.

Five phases of the way home: a year and a half of isolation, apps used as speech practice, a widening into dance, song and flowers, the press picking the story up, and a return to being present.

Seven love stories from three traditions, from Layla and Majnun to Shiva and Shakti, each asking the same question: where does love finally lead?

Valley 2 · 'Isyq

Love

Ramayana: Sita is lost; bhakti

The story of Layla and Majnun travelled the Arabian desert for centuries before Nizami Ganjavi wrote it in Persian in 1188. In the hands of the sufis, Majnun turns from victim into teacher: a love so full that the self dissolves and only the beloved remains.

Rumi named it in one line: love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries. We do not understand love by explaining it, but by living it. In this valley the book climbs the ladder from Rabi'ah, Rumi and Shams, and al-Hallaj to al-Ghazali, and ends with a reminder: love of God, not worship of a person.

Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.

A note on Bollywood as a teacher: love is not found by stumbling on it. It is walked, one awkward and sincere step at a time.

Isolation takes more than your peace. It takes your fluency at being a person among people.

Four lessons from treating conversation like code: each message as a function call, presence repeated rather than perfected, noticing your own patterns, and practising vulnerability.

How the tool worked, in six steps: open profiles, a zero-shot image filter on value keywords, a threshold, a human reading every match, AI-assisted replies the author chose between, and honesty with the other person. The card also carries its ethics note: automating a dating app can breach its terms and touches honesty.

Miniature painting of an execution scene, associated with al-Hallaj

Cover of an English edition of al-Ghazali's Ihya' Ulum al-Din

Twelve stations of the soul, from taubah onwards. A maqam is reached by effort and then kept; an ahwal is a state that comes and goes. The order differs between writers.

Valley 3 · Ma'rifat

Knowing

Ramayana: Hanuman reading signs

Hanuman found Sita in the Ashoka garden because he read signs well, not only because he was strong: footprints, a dropped jewel, the memory of a face. Ma'rifat is knowledge that is lived, not only memorised, and it rests on honesty about what is actually there.

So this valley is filled with science, which asks for an honesty that is not always sweet: what genes do and do not say about descent, the story of Raden Patah as a family tradition that historians dispute, Habibie as what a crossing can produce, and neurodivergence as an inheritance, not a deficiency.

Ma'rifat rests on honesty about what is actually there.

Two things that get confused: close-kin marriage, where the same ancestors recur and the inbreeding coefficient rises, and population diversity, which is a wider store of variation. Heterosis is clear in plants and livestock; in humans the evidence is weaker.

Three numbers read honestly: an inbreeding coefficient of 0.254 for Charles II of Spain; 1.7 to 2.8 additional percentage points of birth-defect risk for first cousins, on a baseline of about 2 to 3 per cent; and average twin-study heritability estimates of about 74 per cent for ADHD and 80 per cent for the autism spectrum.

Narrowed race pride is not pride; it is anxiety wearing the costume of heritage. Real pride in a lineage is secure enough to welcome difference.

Marriage between close relatives makes two copies of the same recessive gene more likely to meet in a child. The risk is real, and its size depends on how close the kinship is.

Why diversity is a living force rather than a slogan: what the Habsburg and Windsor lines, and the inheritance of Raden Patah, teach about survival.

According to Babad Tanah Jawi tradition, which historians do not fully accept, a princess from China was sent from the Majapahit court already carrying the king's child. That child, Raden Patah, was raised in Palembang by Islamic teachers and later founded the first Islamic sultanate on Java. Chinese records know him as Jin Bun.

Old painting of Raden Patah — Raden Patah, founder of the first Islamic sultanate on Java, whose story in family tradition begins with a meeting rather than with purity.Old painting; source not stated.

Portrait of Charles II of Spain — Charles II of Spain, the last Habsburg king, whose inbreeding coefficient of 0.254 came from centuries of marriage between close relatives.17th-century painting; public domain.

Portrait of B. J. Habibie — B. J. Habibie, read in this valley as what a crossing can produce.Public documentation photo; rights remain with the original owner.

Garuda Pancasila, the national emblem — Bhinneka Tunggal Ika on the national emblem: unity read here as a living fact rather than a slogan.State emblem of Indonesia.

Valley 4 · Istighna

Letting go

Gita: nishkama karma; sufism: ikhlas

The Bhagavad Gita teaches nishkama karma: act without clinging to the fruit. Sufism calls a similar stance ikhlas, purifying an act of self-interest. Rama lets go of the crown for dharma, but not of responsibility.

For someone searching for love this is the heaviest lesson and the most freeing: do your best, then let go. That is ikhtiar and tawakkul, striving with everything you have and then surrendering. Results still matter, but hanging on them makes us anxious, and anxiety makes us absent.

Do your best, then let go.

Love built with intention: the six things the author made, from the Bumble Bot filter and an Indonesian-language reply assistant to conversation cards, a shared space called bloom, a proposal running on an ESP32, and a flower that does not wilt.

Valley 5 · Tawhid

Union

Hindu tradition: Ardhanarishvara

In the Hindu tradition there is a form called Ardhanarishvara: God as half woman. Half the body is Shiva, half Parvati (Shakti). Shiva is still, unchanging awareness; Shakti is moving, creating energy. Two different things, inseparable in essence.

Tawhid in Islam is a different union: the absolute oneness of God, with no partner. I do not equate the two traditions and I refuse to blur creeds. I take only the image: union in love does not melt two selves into one uniform thing. Two who differ complete each other. The valley then moves through Yusuf and Zulaikha, Habibie and Ainun, and Khadijah and Muhammad.

Two who differ complete each other.

Valley 6 · Hayrat

Wonder

Yuddha Kanda: Rama Setu, the bridge

In the Yuddha Kanda, Rama and the vanara army build a bridge across the sea to Lanka. Today it is known as Rama Setu or Adam's Bridge, a chain of limestone shoals between India and Sri Lanka. Legend or geology, the meaning is the same: some things can only be reached by crossing.

The sufis call the state of being unable to explain a beauty hayrat: wonder that paralyses words. I met it in three places I did not expect. This valley follows them through a newspaper that carried #OpenToDate, a platform called Bloom, a proposal that ran on firmware, and a dried edelweiss.

Some things can only be reached by crossing.

Page C2 of The Sunday Times (The Straits Times group), 24 May 2026, with the #OpenToDate featureSource: The Sunday Times (The Straits Times group), SPH Media. Copyright remains with the publisher. Read the original article

ESP32 screen showing the #OpenToDate frameThe author's own photo.

Interface of the Bumble Bot RS toolScreenshot of the author's tool.

The Bloom platform, "Our Growth Space"Screenshot of the author's product.

Question cards for two people getting to know each other, such as where you would most like to go together, and which dream you have never said out loud.

A jar of dried edelweiss with a photoThe author's own photo.

The three things Ar-Rum 21 places between a couple: sakinah, the stillness of a home for the soul; mawaddah, love that shows in action; and rahmah, the mercy that shelters, waits and forgives.

Valley 7 · Faqr wa Fana'

Poverty and dissolution

Ramayana: the epic that is not finished

The Ramayana ends with a reunion. Rahmatyana is not finished. I once wrote that I had not found my "Sita". Then, with a joy I am grateful for, she answered yes. Between those two sentences runs the same journey: I found again something I had lost, myself. The ability to be present in a room calmly, to joke without rehearsing, to say "I am nervous" and still step forward.

The epic does not stop at the wedding vow. Faqr, poverty, teaches that we never own; we are entrusted. Fana', dissolution, teaches that when the ego loosens, what remains (baqa') is what is useful.

We never own; we are entrusted.

Fana' is the ego loosening, so that apologising first and admitting you do not know become light. Baqa' is what remains afterwards: service, love and work that no longer centre on the self.

A small dictionary between two vocabularies for one practice: debugging and muhasabah, logs and dzikir, sprints and mujahadah, observability and muraqabah, rollback and taubah, deploy and amal.

Epilogue · Rahmatan lil 'Alamin

Mercy for all the worlds

Al-Anbiya' 21:107

God says: "We did not send you (Muhammad) except as a mercy to all the worlds" (Al-Anbiya' 21:107). Rahmatan lil 'alamin, mercy for all the worlds, is the mission of InfraLoka and the direction of this whole journey.

Rahmatyana means the path of mercy. It begins, like every sincere mercy, with the compassion we extend to ourselves, and spreads: to the stranger who replies to our message, to the flowers we arrange, to a partner who believes, to children who will one day be born into a warm home, to a diverse land.

O God, make us reeds that are hollow but sing.

“True love does not only unite two hearts, but also upholds dharma across the archipelago.”From the poster, "Rahmat Wibowo as Sri Rama Wijaya in Rahmatyana"

Mercy for all the worlds: the mission of InfraLoka and the north star of this journey, written from Bandung.

The title card: a personal epic about how isolation, technology and old myths taught the author to speak, to bloom and to love again.

About the author

Rahmat Wibowo founded InfraLoka, a digital transformation company in Indonesia whose mission is rahmatan lil 'alamin.

Rahmatyana is a personal reflection written in the author’s own voice. It is an essay, not a biography.

A note on reading

This is a personal reflection, not medical, legal or relationship advice. The author’s partner and other people are not identified. Passages on genetics and neurodivergence summarise research in plain language and are not clinical guidance. The story of Raden Patah follows family account and Babad Tanah Jawi tradition, which historians dispute.

Sources

Rahmat Wibowo, "Rahmatyana: An Epic of Code, Courage & the Search for Love" (InfraLoka blog)
Rahmat Wibowo, "The Biology of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika: Why Diversity Is Not a Slogan, It Is Survival" (InfraLoka blog)
R. A. Nicholson, translation of The Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi (1926), opening of the first book
Alvarez, G., Ceballos, F. C., Quinteiro, C. (2009). "The role of inbreeding in the extinction of a European royal dynasty." PLoS ONE 4(4)
The Ramayana (Yuddha Kanda) and Rama Setu (Adam's Bridge)
Ardhanarishvara in Hindu tradition
Al-Anbiya' 21:107
Farid ud-Din Attar, Mantiq al-Tayr (the seven-valley framework)
Felicia Keok, "Finding love on LinkedIn: Why are more singles giving it a shot?", The Sunday Times (Singapore), 24 May 2026

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