Khwaja Baqi Billah (ra) Aspects of His History and His Teachings

Transcription

1 Khwaja Baqi Billah (ra) Aspects of His History and His Teachings Bismi-Llāhi-r-Rahmāni-r-Rahīm. Khwaja Baqi Billah (ra), whose tomb I have sat for many, many, many months in Delhi, was born in middle of the 16 th century Christian era. I will tell you a little about his background. He was born the son of a qadi, Abdu Salaam Khilgi, Samarkandi Qureyshi, and he was born in Kabul, sometime in 971 after the Hijra. His father was an alim and a Sufi. His mother was a descendant of Khwaja Ubaydullāh Ahrār (ra), whose name I hope you recognize. He was a very meditative child. Somewhere around six or eight years of age, a teacher and a poet from Samarkand arrived in Kabul from Mecca and Medina, the Mawlana Saadi Kaleb Halawi. He stayed there at the request of the younger brother, Akbar, who was Mirza Mohammed Hakim, who was the viceroy of Kabul at the time. And Mohammed Baqi Billah became his first murīd. He allowed him to accompany him on his journeys, which was to Transaxania. To the regret of some of the scholars there, he gave up his study of being an alim, because he turned his heart and mind towards Tasawwuf. He made tawba under a lot of Naqsbandi awliya-llāh from Transoxania first, Abdul Khwaja Ubayed, who was a murīd of Khwaja Maulana Lutfi Allah, and in the presence of Khwaja Iktifar, Shaykh of Samarkand. Initially, the second shaykh was very reluctant to become a Pir of his, but saw how sincere he was and he accepted him. His next spiritual influences was Amir Abdullah Balkhi, who was a very famous Sufi. He spent two years performing meditation and dhikr with him, but still wasn t spiritually balanced. He left Kabul for India looking for something more. 1

2 He contacted his family, his relations who were there who were prominent in the government of the ruler there. They attempted to persuade him in the service of the Mogul emperors, but he remained separate from that because he did not want to become an alim or he didn t want to become a military person, and he attached himself again to Sufism. He went to Lahore and he fell in love with someone. No one knows who it was. When the two were separated, he became an ecstatic, a majdhub kind of an individual. He spent his nights reading love poetry and his days sort of wandering the streets of Lahore and sitting in the graveyards. Finally, Khwaja Mohammed Baqi heard of a majdhub, found him but was rejected by him. He was driven away by being having stones thrown at him. His mother had accompanied him on some of these. She was upset by her son s mental and spiritual state and she prayed for him. After some time, the majdhub relented and allowed him to be with him, or blessed him I guess you would say, because he was not really teaching him. There was some mystical text he studied under him that gave him the illumination he was looking for at that time. He then he went to Delhi, where I met him. He was in the grave and I was on top of the grave. From there he went as far as Sambal in Western UP and he kept searching for a guide. He returned to Lahore and then he went to Kashmir. Such was the seeking of a person who was really interested in finding Tasawwuf. I hope this resonates with some of you who have travelled the world over only to wind up in Bedford, or who never went further than one place. In Kashmir, he made contact with Babu Wali. Babu Wali was a famous Naqshbandi saint who initiated him into the Naqshbandi Tariqah. When Baba Wali died, by that time Khwaja Mohammed Baqi felt the inner feelings of the Naqsbandi Khwajas, who had predicted that he would become an eminent teacher. [Those feelings] started to flow through him. He traveled through Balk and Baharkshan, and there he consulted the local Sufis near Samarkand. He was received by Maulana Khwaja Amkharnadi, whose name you 2

3 recite every Saturday. And the Khwaja Ankhanibi, who was a descendant of Khwaja Nasrudin Ubaydullāh Ahrār (ra), completed the circle back to his own family. As things are, his mother was a relative of his. So he was very quickly initiated into the Naqshbandi Order in three days completely. His quick ascendance was similar to the one that happened to Shah abuddīn Suh rawardi (ra) by Bahā uddīn Zakariya. Maulana Khwaja advised Khwaja Mohammed Baqi Billah to go back to India. He prophesized at that time that the success of the Naqshbandi Silsila on the subcontinent would happen through his teachings. The senior disciples of Mawlana were jealous of the treatment he got, but he was silenced by the remark that before he had arrived in Amkhina, the Khwaja had already become a perfect Sufi. What the Mawlana did was merely stabilize his state by his company, by his suhbat, by his munasabat. He wasn t required to start from the very beginning. He just finished his journey with him, which had been going down. So he left Samarkand and went back to Lahore at a time when there was a lot of famine happening. A lot of people were dying in the street of Lahore and, in sympathy, he refused all food, giving his portion to be rationed out to the starving people. After a few weeks, he set out on the road to Delhi and gathered up those who were too weak to walk, put them on his own horse. Outside of every town, he got back on his horse, so that people would not see how charitable he was. He did not want to be seen to be a special person. After his arrival in Delhi, he lived in Feruzibad, where I met him. People don t know what happened with his mother whether she stayed in Lahore or she came to Kashmir but she did migrate with him to Delhi where she worked for him during a time when he was sick. He died on the 25 th of Jumada in He could not have lived there more than four years. He must have arrived in 1599 or 3

4 1600. He took two wives, and was survived by two young sons. He continued to teach the Naqshbandi Ubadaiyya Uhrar s teachings. I would like to talk about his teachings. Remember that Ahmad Farūqī Sirhindī (ra) has not come to him at this point. He invited people to follow teachings of Ubaydullāh Ahrār (ra) and you remember that Ubaydullāh Ahrār (ra) was a very, very wealthy man. He had much, much land in Central Asia. A lot of Uzbekistan and Samarkand was owned by him, and he was a very compassionate land owner. At one point, he was such a threat to the ruler, that he, himself, was once imprisoned. But the essence of the Ahrāri teachings, which permeates our teachings to a certain degree (because truly I had never let go of the teachings of the Khwaja Khwajagan) was the attainment or striving for baqa, or the re-integration of a person s being with the Divine essence. At the same time, [one is] striving to follow the laws of the Shar īah, developing deeper and deeper love for the Prophet Mohammed (sal), who we talked about recently. The Tariqah at that time was based on wahadat wujud. For those of you who have taken the time or had the interest, were curious and studied the difference between wahadat wujud and wahadat shuhud, the shuduli teachings that came later from Ahmad Farūqī Sirhindī (ra). The teachings of wahadat wujud of Ibn al Araby were based on the concept of fana/extinction. He reminded them that fana was really annihilation of lower human qualities, and the death of the nafs. When Allah (swt) would send His tajalli (illumination, lucid manifestation) into the heart of a seeker from a small particle of His own Divine theophany, His own Essence, that person s consciousness was changed, transmuted. That person acquired the real state of fana, which was the extinction of the human qualities that held them to this world, as opposed to some kind of ecstatic state. But in that state of fana, the name of that person and the individuality of that person disappeared. Whatever was attributed to 4

5 the seeker was in fact attributed to the Essence, to Allah. That state was called baqa bi llah, Eternity in Allah. So, you see, this shaykh became known as Baqi Billah. That transformation into fana, in a way, was like a barrier to the re-appearance of the lower or human attributes in a Sufi. Although outwardly, the Sufi kept the physical appearance, the physical existence and operations in the amr al-khalq, the barrier was built. The lower nature and the typical human qualities, though they were apparent to others, were not active in that individual. So the Ubaydullāh Ahrāri school was one where the Pir or Murshid guides the disciples or the murīds towards that mystical stage of fana or baqa. The experience of the lucid manifestation of the tajalliyat-e-bāri ta la you meditate on. Another way of saying tajalli is the self manifestation of the Absolute, or the vision of the Essence, the illumination of the Essence, the lucent manifestation. That is to say, the lucent manifestation of the Divine Essence as light in the individual was the stage that was dependent on the ascent of the Sufi through the different levels of awakening. Corresponding to that, Khwaja Baqi Billah wrote that the tajalli, the self manifestation of the Absolute, that is to say, Allah s Essence begins to manifest as light in the individual. In the journey along the mystical path, he said there were three types. The first type, the outward way, was sudi. By self-manifestation of the Absolute, the beginner perceives that. Then there is the spiritual manifestation of the Absolute called manawi. The manawi is perceived by the Sufis who have attained a higher state of understanding. The third is the true manifestation of the Absolute, which was attained only by those few who attained it. The perception of this self-manifestation of the Absolute, or the perception of the tajalli, or the lucid manifestation, did not imply that one became one with Allah (swt) that is to say, that the essence of Allah (swt) was somehow infused into that 5

6 individual. But it was a mystery experienced by those who reach a stage of perfection where they were, in a sense, in accompaniment with Allah. As you say, mayata hubb accompaniment in love with that Divine Light, with that Divine Absolute. It was not that the individual became infused with the Divine Light or at one with Allah, but rather one identifies in their human nature that accompaniment with Allah, that nearness to Allah. It begins, of course, as we have talked for many, many years, with tawba. In that initial stage of tawba, repentance was intended to bring to our mind the desire to disassociate ourselves from our errors, from our doubts, from our sins, from our wrongdoing, from our wrong thoughts. These types of accretions are the heaviest kind of veils/hujub that shields the seeker on their path. There were sins, of course, against the Shar īah, the worst sins that people could manifest (however you would want to define them, social sins, venal sins), which most religions focus on. The path/tariqah called on those seekers and on those murīds to avoid the worst of those sins. But rejection of sins was only the preliminary state and only the negative aspect of tawba. There is a positive side of tawba, but most people and most paths focus on the negative side of tawba, repenting from one s sins and one s actions. But the positive side of tawba was the removal of the veils, the development of love, the development of knowledge. So the desire is to remove those veils so that one would gain knowledge, and one would be free to love the shuyukh and to love Allah. This is where you get the understanding that we spoke about many, many years ago. There is the repentance of the average person, the common person, and there is the repentance of the seeker, and there is the repentance of the Sufi, and there is the repentance of the elect and the elect of the elect. 6

7 The common person repents of their sins, venal and heinous. But the Sufi repents, in a sense, begs forgiveness for their forgetfulness, while at the same time remembering to be obedient to Allah and perform their duties like your prayers and your zakat and your fasting and your pilgrimage. [You are] struggling against the nafs, but at the same time feeling happiness at purifying the soul. That is to say, you are joyous to be on the path, to be joyful to be on tariqah. You know you have sinned. You know you want to repent of them. You repent of your forgetfulness. The fact that you do that means you remember. Right? You see that you forgot. You repent of the forgetfulness, because you see that you forgot and you are joyful. You find joy in the seeking of knowledge and the purification of the soul. [One is] purifying the soul as one heads towards the state of nafs mutm aina, towards tranquility/sakina, or nafs of serenity. Behind this is the understanding that if you have joy in the journey, or you seek it, or you are grateful that you are on the path, you are grateful that you have been accepted by the shuyukh, or you are grateful that you have become stabilized in the path, or you are grateful that you are even trying to refine your own nafs, and you have been given the opportunity to do that, then the idea behind that is that whatever gratitude you have for being on the path love of the shaykh, love of the path, love of Allah, love of the Prophet that is what makes you inspired, and that is what brings on the tranquility. You go past the nafs lawwama to the nafs al mutma innah, but by the fact that you have gratitude and joy in the path. Even if it is periodical, it eventually becomes continuous. If you feed your doubts and your worries, if you feed your lower nature, if you become so obsessed by your lower nature, you will not have that joy and therefore you will not find tranquility. The second duty of the Sufi, according to Naqshabandi Hariya, according to Khwaja Baqi Billah (and he had the title of khwaja) was zuhd/renunciation. Now sometimes 7

8 when we talk about the Chishti teachings, of Khwaja Mu īnuddīn Chishtī, you will understand renunciation like you never understood it before. The first two of the Mu īnuddīn Chishtī s instructions were: to do no work except prayer, grow no food, and ask for no food or anything. How about that? In the first stage, one rejected greed, rejected the desire for money not rejected money, rejected the desire for it. In the advanced stage, the person would abandon the desire for the world, and also for the Hereafter. But the attitude of the zahid, the ascetic was a kind of what we understand to be the fuqara, or the dervish, where you abandon the world and its material benefits, or at least you divide them into different categories. The greedy who was without wealth but wanted to attain it was one category of people. The renunciate who requested nothing, but when offered seized it was another. And then there was the contented person who neither requested it nor rejected it. One didn t request it, but when it was given, accepted it. If you want, you can take the time and go back over this and see how certain aspects of the Qur an manifest in these teachings. This is a teaching of balance. You are not requesting but you are not rejecting. The perfect form of renunciation, therefore, is neither hoping for something or reward for something, nor out of fear for not having anything or losing anything. Basically it is like the story of Rabi a al-adawiyya who was contented with whatever Allah gave her. It is being contented with what Allah has given, with what one has, who one is and what one has. Now you see, he was not contented with where he was. He travelled here and there, here and there, which was a sign of his lack of stability; yet, he was seeking all along. But only when he got to the point where he was sent, and he accepted that, did he become balanced. Do you understand? The third request of his students on the Sufic path, was tawakkul, trust in Allah. So the perfect form of tawakkul came from the perception of tawhid, unity of being, when your tawakkul would be perfect, 8

9 when you experienced that there is only Allah, there is nothing but one. Everything comes from, everything is a manifestation or reflection of, everything is under the Light of Allah (swt). That meant fana, absorption in the Divine Essence, as we say, I turn my attention to my heart, and my heart turns to the Divine Essence. It is that moving, of paying attention to the heart and the different transmissions through that latifa. You are moving towards the Divine Essence, eventually to arrive there, inshā a-llāh. That whole process creates more of a confidence in one s own self and in Allah. You should not ignore the effort that you are making. In the same way, you should not ignore the effort you are not making. If you make no effort at all, your no effort will become very dominant, obviously, and it will take you off the path. If you make some effort, then you pay attention to the effort you are making, but you are also aware of the effort you are not making. Does that sound strange? Anybody who remembers going to school, knows exactly what that means. You have a course; you know exactly what effort you are making, and you know exactly what effort you are not making. If what is dominating you is the effort you are not making, you do not complete it. You fail it. The failure hangs over you like a weight. The weight eventually makes you turn away from the seeking of knowledge. Turning away from the seeking of knowledge means that you are only wrapped up in your own ego. Being wrapped up in your ego, means you create a little world around yourself where you keep convincing yourself that that is the reality. So you don t have to think about what it is that you are missing, whatever else you didn t get. It is all [due to] a lack of good time management, or lack of self-discipline, or selfishness, or things don t interest you. Whatever the psychological explanations are for it, everybody knows the weight of knowing what effort you are making and what effort you are not making. An example is that a child trusts in his mother, but 9

10 Parvez and Fatima have Munira. Right? Does Munira trust Fatima? Of course. Does she still cry for the milk? Sure. Trusts the mother, but still cries for the milk. Same thing with Esse Nur. Trusts Zainab, but still cries for the milk. So, another aspect of this teaching is that you have to work. You have to make an effort. I have to raise the cup to my mouth in order to taste my tea. The tea looks delicious, but how am I going to taste it unless I make the effort. I have to raise my hand, grab the glass and put it to my mouth. So Allah gave me the means. What would it be, if Allah gave us food and only eyes and we could not move, but we had hunger? The least of the effort when you arrive at the least of the effort is when you get to that point when you don t ask; it is brought to you, and all you have to do is put it to your mouth. But until you get there, you have to work. That means the major benefit of work or effort of any kind is to give us the strength to live, to serve, to perform our prayers, to worship Allah. It is not just to achieve pleasure, but to get pleasure in doing the things that are the necessities. So there are different rules and different guidelines, which are prescribed and proscribed for the accumulation of worldly resources and sustaining one s life. But the cornerstone of tawakkul and the Hariya teaching was that all resources were designed to strengthen our love for Allah. So whatever comes to us, we recognize comes to us from Allah. Anything that tastes good is because Allah put the taste in it. Anything that is beautiful is beautiful because Allah made it beautiful. You get to the point where you believe it, because you start to see it that way. Another duty of the Sufi and the teaching was kanat. Kanat is to resign yourself. You should only keep what is essential, and be simple in your food, and simple in your dress, and simple in your style of living. The people who began on the path accepted only what they needed; and those who reached that middle stage, only ate 10

11 as much as what would allow them to fulfill their duties and to pray. They wore clothes that were just protection from the heat and the cold. That is how they lived, in those days. The perfect Sufi, who had come to understand the unity of Allah (swt), completely disassociated their self from the love of anything but Allah. They saw Allah in everything, so this kind of recursive thing might happen, like it did with Khwajā Ubaydullāh Ahrār (ra). He was a wealthy man, much power, lots of land, but there was no attachment to it. All this attachment and all this asceticism and all this zuhd takes place in a journey towards perfection. But at some point, it all means exactly the same thing or nothing, whatever way you want to look at it. Wealth means nothing; poverty means nothing. There is no ego associated with wearing rags, or eating very little food, or having nothing. At the same time, for periods of time, people would go into khilva, because another aspect of the path was the necessity of uzlat, which is secluding oneself. A person would keep the company of their family, or a shaykh would keep the company of their murīds only when it was absolutely indispensable for the welfare of the family or the welfare of the murīds; otherwise, they would spend most of their time in seclusion, most of the time alone. The reason for that is so that [the degree] they were not so taken up with the needs of others, with the worldly thoughts, and staying connected to the things of the world [would be] to the degree that the focus on Allah would not be removed from their heart. In this seclusion, a lot of thoughts happen. Any of us who have spent time alone know that your mind can get the best of you. So it should be a good mind. The mind should be directed in good ways; otherwise, gnawing questions, doubts, worries, anxieties about what is happening to so-and-so and such-and-such and this situation and that situation gnaw at you. 11

12 In seclusion, you take some time, like wuqufi qalbi, only you spend extensive periods of time re-examining the spiritual condition of your heart. As you gain more and more control over your own self, then the murīds were permitted to mix more with people, especially people who would help with suhbat, people who would help promote their spiritual growth and their spiritual life, and keep them on their straight path. It could be a khanaqah, or a community like the Khwaja Khwajagan, community. Don t forget like the Sarmoun and those communities of the Khwaja Khwajagan; people who were of the suhbat would be there. The last requirement, as you can imagine, would be sabr, patience, perseverance. Whether or not a person achieves a high state of mystical awareness (hazari) of the Divine Presence (nazari), [a hight state of] the acceptance and the understanding of tawhid (the unity of Allah), which is essential to really complete one s journey of tawakkul and zuhd, kanat and sabr, at least a person who had sabr, who had patience and would persevere with a good attitude would basically have the Promise of Allah (swt) in the Qur an, Remember Me and I will remember you. You will find Me in the heart of the believer. Wheresoever you turn, there is the countenance of Allah. I am the Lord of East and West. These promises of Allah Swt would come from that sabr; eventually, tawakkul; eventually, kanat; eventually, zuhd. Many of you understand that as we age, and we get ill, and we become infirmed, and we get on our death bed, there is very little of the world that attracts us. There is much less of the world that we can interact with. This is why we should die before we die. This is why we should at least understand this in the journey. One of the people that very much appealed to Khwaja Baqi Billah, he had a correspondence. In his correspondence, he discussed the teachings of Shaykh Alla udin Samnani, who you have heard me speak of before, who was an exponent of 12

13 Shaykh al-akbar ibn Arabi. Khwaja Baqi Billah believed that Shaykh Alla udin Samnani, though engaging in true and representative teachings of wahadat wujud, he felt that they were too dogmatic, and that they were not based enough on personal experience. So he followed this thinking, and the reason I tell you this is because it tells you that you do not stop thinking, you do not stop gaining knowledge. Just the week before he passed, Khwaja Baqi Billah declared to his students that wahadat wujud tawhid was a narrow path, and that the highway for the faithful was different. He added that it was confirmed to him through his ayn al yaqin/eye of certainty. Though he knew this earlier, at the end of his life, he said that he had attained different consciousness, and implied in that, that his student, Shaykh Ahmad Farūqī Sirhindī (ra) (who was sent to him) [was greater than him]. He, himself, announced that Shaykh Ahmad Farūqī Sirhindī (ra) was greater than him, and was to be follow. He was mujaddid al-alf ath-thānī and he, Shaykh Ahmad Farūqī Sirhindī (ra), said this was the beginning of his acceptance of wahadat shahud, his broader path. What that was, and I will leave you with this. The universe as we know it is a reflection. All the universes were contained within the Divine Essence. Creation was a process of externalizing that consciousness, and all external existence was like a reflection and a mirror, which exists at the same time but does not really exist. What you see in the mirror exists, but does not really exist. The only thing that exists is the source of the reflection. So there is only the source of the reflection and no existence is separate from a being. There is only the One Being. In short, we say that the universe is the instrument of the manifestation of the Divine Omnipotence or Omnipresence and Will. All the Names and all the Attributes (that you meditate on in the third transmission of the first circle) are identical with Allah s essence. All of the Names are identical with His essence. He used another analogy. He said, The central point was the source of the formation of the circle, and 13

14 therefore the circle was only shaped by its relation to the central point. Geometry. You can t get a circle unless every dot is in relation to the central point. The same analogy applied to the conscious descent of the Essence of the Absolute, and the emergence of the universe, and the subsequent mystical ascent of the perfect human being. Everything is only a reflection, or can only have its existence because of the central point, Allah (swt). Baqi Billah (ra) commented on that in an āyat of the Qur an, from the evil of darkness when it is intense. asserting that the act of being was pure and good, and that evil was a relative concept. So he rejected the possibility of the existence of good and evil as two separate identities. To take one example: good may be compared to the sun and evil to night. When the rays of the sun are no longer visible, night emerged. The sun, of course, never disappeared. The sun never disappears in order for night to come just the light. So this illusion was just a temporary one, because the sun was going to return. So it was with evil, which was similar to the relative nonvisibility of the sun s rays. That s why men rightly thought that their sins and faults were their own creation and were not caused by Allah. So if you turn towards the light and remember the sun, so to speak, and your relationship with the sun, the evil disappears, the darkness disappears. This caused him to move through all these different states and he placed a tremendous emphasis on being humble and self-effacing. He used the Prophet Mohammed (sal) and Abu Bakr (as) as examples of humility and of adab. He said that ego and assuredness of your rightness was the worst obstacle on the path. We are told that the Naqshbandi Pirs concealed their spiritual achievements and were continually engaged in praying to Allah, even while they were doing their work, giving thanks to Allah, reciting Qur an, performing their namaz. Khwaja Baqi Billah 14

15 was notably courteous and polite in his behavior, taking responsibility for any error or sinful behavior on the part of his disciples. In his khanaqah, petty bickering was an anethma and the khwaja did not consider that he, himself was superior to anyone. He encouraged people to be pious by quoting allegorical anecdotes. What was offered to him, he accepted. Although he helped the deserving, he refused much of the help that was given to him directly. It is traditional in our Order to take it indirectly. He did not allow the people to perform dhikr jahri. He was of the school of dhikr kafī, and he remained in an ecstatic state often. During the dhikr, when people were concentrating on their own dhikr, his tawajjah/ attentin would be placed upon the individuals in the circle, enabling them to make more progress, more rapidly than they would without it. He very rarely initiated disciples. Question: Sayyid, are you saying that Shaykh Ahmad Farūqī Sirhindī (ra) appeared to Khwaja Baqi Billah (ra) in the physical form? Shaykh: Yes. He was sent to him. He came to Dehli from Sirhind, which was only four or five hours away, on his way to Mecca. He met Khwaja Baqi Billah, and he became his murīd. Khwaja Baqi Billah told him to go back to Sirhind. It was a matter of a very short time. This was at the end of his life, remember. Khwaja Baqi Billah only had a few years left to his life. He sent him back to Sirhind and said, The Hajj will come to you. So he went back to Sirhind, instead of finishing his Hajj. I prayed there. His tomb is under the ground. There is a tomb above the ground, and there are many khilva cells there, now, but there is a place where you stand to pray, outside. His foot touched the ground, and a spring came, just like in Mecca. That water is still there, today. I drank from that water. And the Ka aba appeared to him. He made tawaf and he prayed right there. So the Hajj came to him. It was predicted 15

16 he would come to Khwaja Baqi Billah, and he did; and Khwaja Baqi Billah, in a sense became a student. Shaykh Ahmad Farūqī Sirhindī (ra) said that Kwaja Baqi Billah had given up wahadat wujud and had accepted wahadat shuhud. Now years later, the difference between wahada wahadat wujud and wahadat shuhud was reconciled by Shah Waliullah in Dehli, basically by saying that they are both right. They are just different perspectives on the same truth. Up until that time, it was a big controversy, because the teachings of Ibn Arabi had gone throughout the Islamic world. So in a strange sense, the murshid became the murīd, in a way. When you sit at the tomb of Khwaja Baqi Billah in Delhi, it is a very unique and special place. I don t know what it looks like now. It was pretty run down when I was there. There was an old rusted out car sitting in the cemetery. I don t know how it got there, since there are steps from the street. It is a very special place. There is hardly any Sufi who does not know the name of Khwaja Baqi Billah of any Order. He is well known. It is almost as though he reversed his journey. He starts off as an ecstatic, and winds up as an ecstatic, and goes through this. He did not like pettiness, argumentation. He felt that everybody s failure was his failure, a very traditional Naqsbandi way of thinking. To some degree, I certainly think that is true. There is not a day that goes by that I don t think I should have pushed you all to finish your transmissions twenty years ago. Every time I sit to give you a transmission, I think, Why did I not push at you to do this? I mean, I do know why. It just goes to show you about how your own thoughts about your own Shaykh can betray you later on. I honestly used to think, and though I didn t say it in a declarative way, I said it in an interrogatory way to Hazrat. Hazrat used to travel around and give transmissions out all the time. I would say to him, Every time you 16

17 go to Hydrabad, every time you go to Maisar, every time you go to Bangalore, every time you go to wherever you go, you are giving the next transmission. Why are you doing it so quickly? He would laugh, and sometimes he would give me an answer. The answer he would sometimes give me was, If I don t do it when I go there, and since I only come every three to six months, they are going to sit in the meditation and then they are going to get tired of it. Then they will turn to some other shaykh and get something from some other shaykh. That is what he would tell me. So I would ask, What happens when you are done, because they get done very quickly. And he would reply, Sometimes they will go to some other shaykh. But if they really do the sitting and they really do get done, there are three other transmissions and then there are three beyond that, which very rarely do people do and very few people know them, but they have already been so established in the Order that they wouldn t go anywhere else if they really did them sincerely. So on the one hand he cared, and on the other hand, he didn t care. Because if they are going to go somewhere else, they will go somewhere else eventually anyway; so they may as well go with all the transmissions. I think that in some ways I was reacting to that, so I let you sit in qalb for God knows how many years. I probably should have pushed at you. Now I am towards the end of my life and if you calculate where you are and calculate how many months it takes, chances are that you are not going to get the transmissions from me. Three months times 13 transmissions times how many latā if unless I live to be years old. So you see, I feel guilty. I do. That is how I feel every day about it, but I am in good company. I am in the company of Khwaja Baqi Billah, if that gives you any solace. It does not give me much solace. That is why I want to tell you about these individuals. We don t follow exactly that model; we don t live in that time; we don t come from that background. Very few of you, if any of you, here know poverty, 17

18 simplicity. I just pray that you don t lose that and you don t get greedy, that you don t get attracted by the wonders of the material good. If Allah blessed you to grow up poor and in need, that is a good blessing. Those of us who did not grow up so much poor and so much in need are very resistant to that idea. I thank Allah for my months and years of nothing in India, cold water to bathe in, a fire to sit by, a couple of chapatis and little food to eat. I really thank Allah (swt) to have given me that opportunity. Because I never would have had, I never would have had and some of you never have and never will have. On the other hand, we started this place with nothing, so everyone had some experience of deprivation. Many of us earned no money for twelve, fourteen years not one salary, not a penny. I did not earn a salary for twenty years. In a way, we lived that way. So for those of you who lived that way, like Nadia living in a cardboard building on the edge of the pond and in a chicken coop with you, these are great blessings, great blessings. Those of you who have not had that opportunity, you have to find another way to be humble and simple. The older people here have stories to tell Sufi stories. Those of you who have so much opportunity, and you do not take advantage of that opportunity, and you do not maximize that opportunity, well, the only thing you have is the material world. You don t have anything else. And maybe sleep. But if you work hard and serve others, that can replace a great deal. If you don t strive to have a lot of money, name and fame, that can serve you in good ways. Eventually, you get on to siratal mustaqim. That is good folks. I am liking the questions that are coming. I don t know why, after all these years, you are asking me questions. The answers to all of your questions really do lie in these suhbats. I know that you have specific questions that you want specific answers to, but if you really listen, I do answer all your questions. Don t be petty, don t be greedy, don t be 18

19 critical of each other. Be grateful for what you have. Honor the people who have gone through what they have. Even those of us who built our homes, we built them somewhat for our comfort, but we also wanted to make the place comfortable for whoever came comfort to their eyes and comfort to their bodies. aleikum. Asalaam 19