EYE POETRY

Cheikh Bamba’s Alchemy of the Heart

Image credit

A Muslim visionary and spiritual leader, Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba dedicated his life to writing poetry on meditation, rituals, and Qur’anic study. His teachings emphasized the virtues of pacifism and the importance of hard work. 

He taught his followers that salvation comes through submission to Allah, hard work and being of service to others - a departure from conventional Islamic teaching. 

The life of the Cheikh is a testimony of his commitment to the revival of authentic Islam, the religion of Peace. 

Cheikh Bamba inaugurated a new era in the history of Islam and of the role of black people in what is sometimes called African Islam.

Listen to what an adversary turned admirer had to say about Cheikh Bamba:

By 1919, Antoine J. Henry Lasselves, the Administrator of the District of Diourbel, was assigned to watch the Sheik’s activities. His role was to observe the Sheik at any time of the day and send regular reports to his superiors. Here is what he wrote at the end of his mission:

“This Sheik Bamba is gifted with some innate power whose origin the human mind cannot understand so as to explain his befriending capacity. The way people give up themselves to him is extraordinary and their love of the Sheik is unconditional. He seems to have some divine light and secret similar to what we read in the stories of the great prophets and their people. But this one (the Sheikh Bamba) differs from them by his purity of heart, his generosity and his wishing good to friends and enemies alike. These are qualities his predecessors would have envied him, whatever the virtuousness, their piety or prestige were. The most unjust and ignorant people of human realities are those who accused him on false grounds, alleging that he was interested in temporal power. I am sure that the prophets and saints who waged holy war did it without having half the forces that he has got.”

Exploring the Philosophy of Africa’s Muslim Gandhi

The following is a brief background on Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba. In the coming weeks, I hope to continue a series of posts exploring his philosophy of non-violence and culture of peace. May his story and light be illuminating to you.

Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba is an African Muslim Sufi master, born in 1853 in Senegal (West Africa), during French colonization, just after the official abolition of slavery in the colonies. He was born into a renowned Muslim clerical family, the Mbacke, well-known for their deep-rooted attachment to learning and teaching religious knowledge. Islam had then nearly a thousand years of history in Senegal.

Showing precociously gifted inclination towards learning and imitating the noble devout Sufis he heard about, Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba started, in his early youth, to write books devoted to the fundamentals of religious knowledge any believer is compelled to know—Islamic Law (Fiqh), Theology (Tawhĩd), Spiritual education (Tarbiyya), Sufism (Tasawwuf) etc. His high concern to preserve and to spread in an easier form true knowledge and the valuable Islamic principles among his people led him to put in verses many of the reference prose books of that time he found too hard-learning for most of his contemporaries.

After his father’s death, Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba founded the first Muslim brotherhood ever been founded by a black man in all Islamic history (the Muridiyya) and settled new forms of teaching he thought more suitable to his disciples and more likely to rekindle their human dignity depreciated by long years of political and intellectual domination. Many from all around the country, from all social classes, came to join the revival movement he initiated through teaching and worshipping God in accordance with the Sunnah of the Prophet (PBH) and with the rules of Sufism. Thanks to his charismatic virtues and to the spiritual lights his disciples were shining, his reputation soon expanded and crowds towards his daaras (schools) fast took larger proportions.

Such a trend aroused a libelous campaign against Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba, from some native colonial representatives, and provoked strong mistrust to the French colonial power who suspected him of preparing his disciples to Jihad (holy war). This bias was all the most unfair if we consider the nonviolent philosophy of the Sheikh as well as his concept of Khidma (Rendering Service to the Prophet) which excluded any violence, even against the vilest creature. Indeed the kind of spiritual and intellectual jihad the Sheikh was carrying on was quite different from all what was known by western people about Muslim leaders’ resistance. 

Sheikh Bamba wrote on this purpose: “I am waging my Jihad through Knowledge and Fearing the Lord”.

However, regardless of such kind of concern, the colonial authorities decided to arrest and deport him to Gabon (Central Africa), in September 1895. After eight years of a very trying exile, during which the Sheikh wrote, in loneliness, an impressive number of poems all dedicated to the Lord and His Messenger (PBH), the French decided to let him go back home, in November 1902. But, in fearing his growing charisma over the masses aroused by his success, they exiled him again to Mauritania, afterwards they maintained him in house arrest in Senegal until his death in 1927. However history proved later that colonial strategies of “containment” did not succeed in holding back Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba’s teachings and work from shaping deeply the thoughts and the culture of his nation and of millions of people all around the world.

Confessions: From Autobiographical Essays of Hazrat Inayat Khan

Inayat Khan, may God sanctify his soul secret, was a brilliant spiritual teacher and is credited for bringing Sufism to the West for the first time back in early 1900s. Many western as well as eastern seekers who came to the Path, came through the direct or indirect influence of this great personality who left behind volumes of his inspired writings and teachings that helped bridge east and west in the common spiritual thirst. At the moment a great many spiritual teachers who themselves have flowered and became teacher of holy teachings have received directly from Inayat Khan’s transmission.

Below is an excerpt from his Autobiographical Essays that shades upon his early days of coming to the Path, his intimate thoughts and events that lead him to the Journey to eventually become what he became. His initiatic journey is also a beautiful inspiration and may work as a guiding map as an indicator of ‘which phase to follow after what’ - for the seekers who are in the beginning phase of their heart’s awakening.

The Early Years

‘Whatsoever road I took, it joined the street which leads to Thee.’
-The Dabistan.

I was born in Baroda, India, in the year 1882, when a great religious reform began, not only in India itself, but all the world over, and which was the first source of our present-day awakening. I am sure it was the planetary influence which existed at that time that has kept me busied all my life in seeking the divine truth, which is as the garment of God’s glory.

Music and mysticism were my heritage from both my paternal and maternal ancestors, among whom were numbered Maulabakhsh, whom people called the Beethoven of India and whose portrait is in the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington, and Jumma Shah, the great seer of Panjab.

My curiosity about the hidden secrets of nature was early aroused, and I made frequent inquiries concerning the mysteries of religion, such as, Where does God live? How old is God? Why should we pray to Him? And why should we fear Him? Why should people die? And where do they go after death? If God has created all, who was the creator of God?

My parents, Rahemat Khan and Khatija Bibi, would patiently answer me in the simplest and most plausible manner possible, but I would prolong the argument until they were wearied. Then I would ponder upon the same questions. I was sent to school when quite young, but I fear that I was more inclined to play than to study. I preferred punishment to paying attention to those subjects in which I had no interest. I enjoyed religion, poetry, morals, logic, and music more than all other learning, and I took music as a special subject at the Academy of Baroda and repeatedly won the first prize there.

I had so much curiosity about strangers, fortune-tellers, fakirs, dervishes, spiritualists, and mystics, that I would very often absent myself from my meals to seek them out. My taste for music, poetry, and philosophy increased daily, and I loved my grandfather’s company more than a game with boys of my own age. In silent fascination I observed his every movement and listened to his musical interpretations, his methods of study, his discussions and his conversation. 

My kinsfolk were Muslim, and I grew up devoted to the Holy Prophet and loyal to Islam, and never missed one prayer of the five which are the daily portion of the faithful.

One evening in the summer time I was kneeling, offering my Nimaz (prayers) to Allah the Great, when the thought smote me that although I had been praying so long with all trust, devotion, and humility, no revelation had been vouchsafed to me, and that it was therefore not wise to worship Him, that One whom I had neither seen nor fathomed. I went to my grandfather and told him I would not offer any more prayers to Allah until I had both beheld and gauged Him. “There is no sense in following a belief and doing as one’s ancestors did before one, without knowing the true reason,” I said.

Instead of being vexed Maulabakhsh was pleased with my inquisitiveness, and after a little silence he answered me by quoting a sura of the Qur’an, “We will show them our signs in the world and in themselves, that the truth may be manifested to them.” And then he soothed my impatience and explained, saying, “The signs of God are seen in the world, and the world is seen in thyself.’

These words entered so deeply into my spirit, that from this time every moment of my life has been occupied with the thought of the divine immanence; and my eyes were thus opened, as the eyes of the young man by Elijah, to see the symbols of God in all the aspects of nature, and also in that nature which is reflected within myself. This sudden illumination made everything appear as clear to me as in a crystal bowl or a translucent jewel. Thenceforth I devoted myself to the absorption and attainment of truth, the immortal and perfected Grace.

Read More

Observing a Mental Fast During Ramadan

                                    Photo property of: creativesam

Reading and talking about Oneness of God is one thing,

But to enliven it is another matter all together.

There are many for whom Oneness is just a spiritual theorization,

For the friends it is Seeing the Friend’s Face in every direction.

O Beloved One, help us walk in your friends’ footsteps,

For towards them flow Your tender love, mercy and grace.

~ A Dervish Prayer

The secret of religion is Law (rights). The secret of Law is conscience. And the secret of conscience is love.

The holy month of Ramadan was an opportunity for millions around the world to cleanse, detox or purify oneself. As well as become conscience of our place in the fabric of life. During the fast I chose to abstain from solid foods altogether and opted to break fast with only juice, water and sometimes herbal teas. For me this special month was a time of rejuvenating my spirit and purging my attachments to a past that will be of no benefit to my successful future. It was a time of rekindling a lost desire for self-love, which ultimately allows me to unconditionally accept others and most importantly brings me closer to the divine.

After a long night of Zikr I sat in silence and realized all the challenges that arise from the mind and pondered whether I could actually obtain spiritual growth while maintaining the same patterns and rhythms that fuels the world’s hate. I realized that while denying my physical self the indulgence of food so as to obtain a higher level of consciousness that I had failed to implement one important change.

Engaging my mind in a mental detox or ‘mental fast’. What’s the use of seeking purity if at the end of the fast period we go back to engaging in negative thinking, gossip and verbal destruction?

The last seven days of Ramadan I decided to partake in a ‘mental fast,’ which is one of the most important tasks by Sufi alchemists in one’s search for inner transformation. As soon as I made the decision many obstacles occurred and presented me with a host of fears and negativity that I had never realized were prohibiting me from reaching the next station in my growth. I like to call these moments, the storm. The storm happens to shake up one’s very existence as a test of faith, perseverance, flexibility and to determine whether one’s foundation is intact.

Everything has its cyclical nature. Tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes and storms are the earth’s revolutions. The people’s storm, like that of the revolts raging across the Arab world, is also nature’s storm because that’s where our true roots lie. - Simba

Tai Chi Chuan, which literally translates to Tai - supreme, Chi - ultimate, Chuan - boxing is an ancient Chinese form of internal alchemy that represents an expression of living life to it’s fullest, bending like a bamboo in the face of even the strongest winds, while continuing to grow supple and strong. 

I’ve no doubt have my bouts with the earth’s most strongest winds. Our relationship is like a child and their parent. Sometimes the gentle, subtle winds come as a comfort but during the daily rigorous regime I leave full of fatigue. As the seven day mental test continued I meditated on the meaning of the chapter I just finished in the book, ‘The Mysticism of Sound and Music’ by Sufi Mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan where he describes the rhythm of life and how the minds’ motions give way to either joy or illness. 

Confronting truth and reality has made this month truly a holy one in that I was able to realize how powerful our thoughts and words are towards others and our own destruction. During prayer I uttered the words of my spiritual guide Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, ‘For all those who have sought to destroy me, I wish that no harm comes to them on my behalf.’ I hope that I start this New Year with a new spiritual lens that allows me to view the world from a new level of purity. I hope that future mental fasts instill upon me even greater truths and that the I learn to embrace even the strongest of winds because in the end everything comes from Allah. By embracing this fact I moved one step closer to freeing a mind that had been enslaved to world full of sheep.

Eid Mubarak to all!

Your dance just took me today, and suddenly I began to whirl. All the realms spun around me in endless celebration. My soul lost its grip. My body shed its fatigue. Hearing Your drum beat and Your hands clap, I floated up to the heavens.” - Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi