WIE: In your own life, you were a very successful artist, but you gave up your career, gave up fame and fortune to devote yourself to the spiritual life. What was it that compelled you to leave your own life behind and take that step?
TB: Actually, both my wife and I were artists, and we felt very strongly that it was feeding our egos. Art, art exhibitions, and the consequences of being accepted and successful are incredible food for your ego, which is the Sufi‘s enemy. The final straw was when we went to Rome to visit a friend, a sculptor, and there was a very pretty young girl there whom my friend introduced me to. And she was so adoring to me. She said, “Ohhh, I know you. I love your art.” She was completely praising me, and I saw the ego suddenly rise up and say, “Aha! This beautiful, spiritual girl is telling you that you are a great artist.” So I said, “Oh, my God! That’s it. It’s over.” I hit the ego on the head and decided I was finished with it all.
WIE: In the Sufi tradition, what is the ideal relationship to the world for those who have gone very deep into the spiritual life?
TB: I’ll just say that what I myself do and what I ask my students to do is to find their place in the world, or I should say their duty, their function in this world. And when they find it, they should do it as best they can. And they should ask for Allah’s help in finding it and doing it. For example, when a person wants to go to college and study certain things, they often take aptitude tests. So in a much larger and more complete sense, we have to pass ourselves through aptitude tests and find out what we have been brought into this world to do, and then we must do it as best we can. I think that’s how one’s relationship should be to the world.
Thirty years ago, if somebody would have told me that I was going to be a Sufi and a sheikh, I would have laughed and said, “What are they talking about?” Therefore, you cannot say that I did it. Finally, Allah has to do it for you. That is why when we pray, we open our hands. If your hands are open and something drops into them, you can catch it. But if they’re not open, you can’t. It falls away. So you have to be open, and that’s all that you can do. I don’t even say open your heart. You have to open yourself, everything—your body, your mind, your potential. You have to keep everything open and somehow hope to receive direction and indication as to what your function is. And once you find your function, I think then you will also find yourself through your function.
WIE: As you’ve said, Sufism isn’t generally known as a spiritual tradition that emphasizes renunciation of the world. But, in the Sufi tradition, does renunciation play some role in the quest for spiritual union? I’ve read many stories by Sufi mystics that detail the dangers of the “deceiving” world with its “limitless tricks” and that encourage the seeker to fly away from it on the “wings of prayer.” That seems to suggest that renunciation or removal from the world offers the surest and safest path to the realization of spiritual freedom and communion with God.
TB: In our discipline, we don’t agree with this. On the contrary, I would go so far as to say that renunciation is a sin. Renunciation means that I am thirsty and he, Allah, is offering me a glass of water and I say, “No thank you.” That’s a sin! For instance, Allah offers to reduce our prayers when we are traveling. And some idiots say, “No. I will continue making my prayers as if I’m not traveling.” That’s an insult. It’s a sin. Because Allah offers you a gift and you say, “No, keep your gift.” It’s arrogance in the extreme, this renunciation business. This isn’t just my opinion; this is the opinion of the Sufis. You should take whatever it is you receive, and you should put it to good use. If you don’t want it, give it to somebody who needs it! I have, praise to Allah, enough money. But if he gave me a million dollars today, I’m not going to refuse it. I’m going to take it and I’m going to give it to the ones who need it and keep some for myself too. I’ll buy myself a new car instead of an old one, and maybe a $150 pair of shoes. That would be the day!
So there is no going to the monasteries, no climbing up the Himalayas, no pouring ashes on your head and sitting cross-legged on nails. You have to go out into the world and participate. For example, my own teacher, Sheikh Muzaffer, loved to eat, loved good food. And he had a young wife, whom he loved very much. He used to say, “Money—there should be a lot in your pocket, but none in your heart.”
WIE: What about the example of Jesus? He is considered to be a Sufi prophet and yet he encouraged people to leave the world behind and follow him.
TB: In Arabic, we call Jesus “Ruhullah,” the spirit of God—or more accurately “Ruhu min Allah,” which means not the spirit of Allah, but the spirit from Allah. Jesus was pure spirit, you see, and a human being cannot be pure spirit. His method of teaching was not by example. In fact, whoever tried to imitate him got eaten by the lions, or lost in the dark chambers of monasteries or convents which were not good for anybody. His message was not through imitation, but through what he said. So I don’t agree with you that the teaching of Christ was to abandon the world. It is just that some people tried to follow his example, which is absolutely impossible to follow. But his teaching is possible to follow.
WIE: Today there is a growing spiritual movement in America that has been very critical of traditional spiritual paths and teachings, specifically those that emphasize a separation between the world and a transcendent God. This new philosophy claims that even the most mundane aspects of our worldly lives are inherently sacred and can potentially become the vehicles for spiritual awakening. Books on such subjects as sacred sexuality, sacred sports, and spirituality in the workplace are becoming more and more popular, blurring the lines between what is considered to be spiritual and what is considered to be secular. In her recent book The New American Spirituality, Elizabeth Lesser writes, “The bliss of the world is no less spiritual than the bliss of transcendence,” and goes on, “We can indeed ‘follow our bliss’ as we follow the spiritual path, whether that bliss is . . . reading a holy text or running a marathon.” So my question is: Are the proponents of this new spirituality on the right track? In the end, what exactly is the difference between a holy life and a worldly life? Is there any difference at all?
TB: What they say is, in a sense, true. If, in running the marathon, you feel that the force in you which permits you to run is from God, the ground which you are running upon is from God, and the breath which you inhale and exhale is from God, then this experience is indeed more important than reading the Bible in vain. But they’re not teaching this, you see. What they say is taken from the scriptures; it’s true. But their intention, by saying that a marathon is equal to the Qu’ran, is to abolish the Qu’ran. Their premise is right, but their actions and their intentions are wrong.
You see, there is nothing new in the world. But they think that because we’re living in the twenty-first century, things have changed. Nothing has changed. The same thing is valid now as was valid for the caveman, except, of course, that life was simpler. Life became more complicated, but we still have the same sized brain. And we have the same good and bad, right and wrong, sweet and bitter, dark and light—everything has existed for a long time. The camel became the airplane, but everything is the same. At the time of Jesus, all these problems that we have today existed. Read the Bible. The villains were there. The thieves were there. The murderers were there. The politicians were there. Everybody was there, doing the same thing! So what makes people think that new solutions have to be found? What makes them think that they know better than Jesus? They’re arrogant, and that’s the problem.
WIE: Would you say that in the Islamic teachings, our daily lives in the world are sanctified through our ongoing voluntary submission and surrender to the will of God?
TB: It’s not as simple as that. Submission, yes, but cognizant submission. Not blind submission. That’s the difference between the orthodox and the mystic. The orthodox blindly submits, and in blindly submitting, imagination may intervene. While the Sufi, the mystic, tries to understand and submit, and therefore taste what he is eating. The orthodox eats at McDonalds and then goes to a French restaurant and eats beef bourguignon. To him, it’s the same thing. He doesn’t taste it, he just submits, he eats. But the Sufi chooses. The hamburger tastes bad and he recognizes that, so he goes and eats the beef bourguignon. He tastes his religion and he understands what he’s doing. He submits willingly and knows that one thing doesn’t taste good and the other does. That’s the difference.
WIE: In the “new American spirituality,” instead of that kind of cognizant submission to a higher authority, many people are speaking about self-authority—where it is up to us to pick and choose as we see fit from among the world’s wisdom traditions, to find our own methods and spiritual practices that suit our lives in the world.
TB: There you go kaputski. There you go crazy. There you go arrogant. You’re saying: I know better than God. I know better than Jesus. I know better than Moses. I know better than the sheikhs. You see, we are forbidden to say “my.” We are forbidden to say “me.” This is my idea. This is my concept. This is my right. This is my wrong. Forget it, it’s just anti-discipline. This is self-glorification, making your own self your God. And that’s deadly. And those people, they die. They’re living zombies. They live this life with imagination, with no concept of truth, no concept of reality. They live in their imagination, and they die in their imagination and they will wake up when they die and say, “Oh, my God, what have I done to myself?”
For 6,000 years in Judaism, for 2,000 years in Christianity, for 1,500 years in Islam, hundreds of thousands of saints and spiritual teachers have devoted themselves to this, and they have found and refined the relationship of the human being to the world, to life, to the hereafter. And here comes this man or this woman who studies a little psychology, a little philosophy, and rejects the whole thing. Millions of people, intelligent people, devout people, have made this their specialty. We are living in a period of specialty, but those people were super-specialists. And their documents are here, their words are here, their principles are here. It’s not even worth discussing.
May Allah help these people. That’s all that I can say. And may Allah forgive them.
WIE: I have one last question. At what point on the spiritual path are we ready to be of service to the world?
TB: At the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. This is in the Qu’ran. Allah said that “I have created man so that he can make ibadat to me.” Ibadat means “service.” But it also means “worship.” So the true worship is in service. Allah said that “I have created man so that he serves me.” But God doesn’t need service. On the contrary, he is our servant. Every minute of our lives, we are being served. I inhale; he makes me inhale. I exhale; he makes me exhale. He brings me coffee; he makes me drink the coffee. Twenty-four hours a day, to all of us—from the microbe to the highest specimen of this creation—he’s in continuous service. So what does he mean when he says that he has created human beings so that they would serve him? In short, he means to serve his creation. If we are the supreme creation, then we have to serve those in creation who are like us, who are in need, or who are under us. That’s the purpose of our creation.
So as I said, service should be from the moment you are born until the moment you give your last breath, but you have to find out in what way. That’s what’s most important. We have to find out in what manner we are supposed to serve.
WIE: Based on everything you’ve said, it seems that in the Sufi view, the ultimate expression of our spiritual lives is found in the world. I wanted to ask you about this because in some of the great traditions, East and West, they say that what we are looking for is found in the afterlife or in some future birth.
TB: No. Hell is here. Paradise is here. Everything is here.
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