August 2016 Message

Beloved Family,

I’ve been home over two weeks enjoying the garden and the birds, walking, meditating, doing office work and loosing weight!

I had a wonderful time with the Mendocino Sufi Youth Retreat followed by the Mendocino Sufi Camp. We had several special guests at this year’s camp. One was Pir Asim Chishti, a wonderful Sufi from Pakistan whose grandfather knew Murshid Sam. The other was Samiur Rahman, the director of the Hope Project in New Delhi, India, which we have been supporting for the last 40 years. Next year I will take my turn once again as the director of the Mendocino Sufi Camp!

This coming Wednesday I’m off on a long adventure—first to Lama Foundation for our Annual Sufi Sesshin, then to Istanbul for this year’s Universal Sufi Council Conference, then back to Omega Institute Labor Day Ecstatic Chant Fest, leading the Dances along with all the most famous kirtan wallas of the day. Lastly I head to Cambridge, MA with Abraham and Halima for an evening Zikr Wednesday night September 7 at the Friends Meeting Hall before returning home.

September 29-October 2 I’ll join my Colorado family for a retreat and then Oct 7-14, the Maui Sufi Camp!

For our next wazifa I’d invite us to practice a pair that Murshid Sam did (and I do) every day as part of his regular practice.

Much love, Shabda

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Recite 101x YA HAYY-OO ~ YA QAYYUM

62. Ya Hayy (yaa ḤAIYY)

Al-Hayy is the perfection of everlasting life, and the only one who truly lives. It is the one source of all life and the very life of everything that lives. It is the life principle that never dies, and it is inside every being. This divine Name is also the living presence of everything, whether it is dead, alive, animate, inanimate, material, spiritual, or anything in-between. No distinction is made among these states because al-Hayy lives in everything. Because of this infinitude, it is truly a transcendent Name, beyond the apparent relativity of al-Mumit (61) and al-Muhyi (60).

Al-Hayy is filled with vitality; it is the inner life of the heart. Repetition of Ya Hayy arouses a kind of life energy and freedom that is an antidote to the deadened condition of the heart that is often the result of grief and sorrow. See Ya Qayyum (63) and Ya Haqq (51), two similarly transcendent Names with which Ya Hayy is often paired in recitation.

63. Ya Qayyum (yaa ḳaiy-YOOM)

Al-Qayyum is the only one who remains through all the permutations of time and space. It is an existence beyond being or appearance, form, or continuance of form. Al-Qayyum manifests in everything, down to the very heart of every being. It is eternal time and omnipresence. Al-Qayyum is a continuous unending activity that bestows existence, or kun, to everything else.

The very fact that anything exists, including the very existence of being itself, is because of the nature of al-Qayyum, which transcends the passage of time. A variation of the root, qaama, means to stand. Things come and things go. Al-Qayyum stands. Due to the reality of al-Qayyum’s nature, all things continually exist, even after death, as living entities in the mind of God. It is recommended to pair Ya Qayyum with Ya Hayy (62), in chanting. Both have the same root H-Y-Y, the life principle inside each one that never dies.

To hear the pronunciation: Ya Hayy ~ Ya Qayyum

TEXT and COMMENTARY to STUDY

This month we continue reading Githa Dhyana (On Meditation) by Murshid Samuel Lewis, also known as Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti (One Who is Drawn to God by Grace). Finish reading Series II: Numbers 9 through 10(A), and begin Series III: Numbers 1 and 2, pages 42-49. Click here to download the document.

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