English Version

Were my whole body festooned with eyes,
I would gaze at my master with untiring zeal.
O how I wish that every pore of my body
would turn into a million eyes.
Then, as some closed to blink, others would open to see!
But even then my thirst to see him
might remain unquenched.
What else am I to do?

This body is the temple of the true Lord; peep within it,
O seeker, you need no help from Khizr, the water of life is already within you.
Light the lamp of love within your heart to dispel the darkness within
And discover the long lost treasure,
Those who realize the secret die before death (and ﬁnd everlasting life).

With such down-to-earth charm and engaging simplicity, these Punjabi verses of Hadrat Sultan-ul-‘Arfin (the king of gnostics), Sultan Bahu (RA), convey the immediacy of the spiritual quest as expressed in the popular idiom.

The great Punjabi Sufi poet Sultan Bahu (RA) comes alive in his simple and lucid diction. Transmitted orally by generations of singers and truth-seekers, these powerful verses show how Sufism has actually been communicated. Hadrat Sultan Bahu (RA)’s Punjabi verses were a source of love and knowledge. He explained that Allah lives within and a seeker must enter within himself to find Allah:

The body is a temple of the true Lord,
In which fragrant gardens abound.
With eternally fresh blossoms,
Inside are the prayer mats,
The places for prostration,
And the means of ritual purification.
Inside is the Kaaba and Qibla (house of the Lord)
And here cry out “Allah Hu,”
The One without parallel.

The Punjabi verses of Hadrat Sultan Bahu (RA), who achieved fana (extinction) in His Pure Essence, may Allah sanctify his secret, sprang to his pearls-producing lips when he wandered for thirty years from town to town and village to village in the quest of a Murshid (spiritual guide).

His verses in Punjabi drew on the images of the Divine and contained parables that anyone could understand.The refrain of rhyming Hu in the end of his each verse has spell-binding effect on the listeners. His verses are sung in many genres of Sufi music, including qawwali and kafi, and tradition has established a unique style of singing his verses.

The soul has come to lodge in this body,
A desolate wilderness,
A rapidly crumbling bank on the river of time.
It will collapse tomorrow, if not today,
Lodged on the edge of such a shore.
How can a traveller sleep in peace?
For where sand and water meet,
No embankment can hold, O Bahu.

It is evident that strange effects and spiritual influence (barakah) have been found in every word of Hadrat Sultan-ul-‘Arifin (the king of gnostics), an accomplished and most perfect saint. Accordingly, his Punjabi verses also contain an extremely strange, esoteric, magical influence. When any of his Punjabi bayt is recited somewhere, whichever assembly or gathering it may be, the audience there experience a sort of ecstasy and burst into shouts of Haq Haq and Hu Hu. The illiterate true seekers and pious faqirs in the olden days learnt these verses by heart and kept them under constant recitation, thereby crossing the stations of spiritual journey. Some perfect vicegerents and faqirs were often seen warming up their chests with the Punjabi verses of Hadrat Sultan Bahu while sitting in circles of dhikr. That is, when a Shaykh along with his disciples held a circle of dhikr, he asked some melodious and sweet-voiced disciple to sing these Punjabi verses loudly, and once the verses charged the gathering, all the participants started the dhikr of Kalimah loudly. Highly mysterious inward states are experienced at such gatherings where seekers attain spiritual blessings and grace.

Such type of dhikr circles were arranged by Rafa’i Order in Baghdad Sharif. Being Arabs, they used to warm up their circles of dhikr with the Arabic verses of Qasida Burda. They do dhikr of Kalimah Sharif loudly in the way that their Shaykh would stand in the circle while one of the participants stood in the middle to play tambourine along with a sweet-voiced person who recited Qasida Burda. Tambourine was played for rhythm and tempo so that, while doing dhikr, all voices stay uniform and in unison, and nobody is out of tune.The verses from Qasida Burda were recited to enthuse and warm up the hearts of participants in a circle. There is no exaggerating that such a great esoteric fervour and spiritual effect was found in their circles. Some excellent doers of dhikr kept daggers in their hands and when they fell in a state of ecstasy during dhikr, they struck their bellies and chests with daggers, which penetrated their bodies deeply, but they did not receive any harm or injury. At times when after it turned very cold in winter, they held circles around fire. Some of the seekers jumped into fire in a state of ecstasy, but the fire caused no harm to them. The bodies of spiritual itinerants become soft and tender like water and wax.

If a seeker or a dervish or a faqir wants to gain the aforementioned benefits from the Abyat of Hadrat Sultan Bahu, he will Insha Allah be graced with such spiritual influences and blessings.

The word ‘Hu’is added to the end of each Punjabi verse, which has a special relation and attachment to the name of Hadrat Sultan Bahu (RA). It sounds pleasant while reciting.

His Punjabi Abyats represent his spiritual teachings and Suﬁsm in its pure form. His poetry has great inﬂuence in drawing Punjabi speaking audiences (Muslims and non-Muslims alike) towards the ultimate truth, real source of love, and the reality of Allah.

Punjabi has always been treated as a non-literary language. It was never the official language of a state or country and has never been sponsored by royals and courts in the past. The scope of the Punjabi language was limited to the praise of women, wine, and ordinary tasks of daily life. Sultan Bahu’s eloquence, however, transformed the language into a vehicle of mystic literature. He spoke these poems extemporaneously, like a blossoming of the heart, and explaining the mysteries of fana, baqa, submission, and Divine love. These verses come from a place where human and Divine love is deeply transformed.

His verses are widely read, heard, and sung. His couplets are sung in many different genres of music. There is a special style of singing his Abyats, which is not used in any other genre of Suﬁ music. Although his poetry is from the seventeenth century, it seems to oﬀer a new kind of love message. The poetry has lived for four hundred years, but we are just beginning to understand and assimilate the essence of his Abyats. Here is a glimpse of his spiritual verses:

You will only meet the Beloved if you oﬀer your head on the altar,
Intoxicated by His love when you constantly chant His Name,
Devoting every breath of your life to His remembrance;
Only then will your self merge in the Essence of the Lord,
And you will truly be with Him.

Ever since the Lord ordained creation, I’ve been pledged to return my real home.
People know from my longing for unity with God,
That I am desperately eager to merge with Him.
I shall bear the blows of destiny as I pursue Him,
While I am ferried across to Him on the boat of love.
No one ever found the Lord while living;
O Bahu, except those who found Him by dying while living.

Curious are the ways of love, it weans you away from religion.
When smitten by love, even priests would forsake their priesthood.
The ignorant preach against love, but lovers pay no attention.
Those who are called by God Himself ﬁnd it onerous to turn to the world.

Those whose hearts are ﬁlled with the love of God keep their lips sealed,
Every pore of their bodies has a million tongues to exalt the Name of God;
They cleanse their hearts with the Name of the Essence.
They bathe in the ocean of oneness,
Only when your soul identiﬁes with its Divine source
Will your prayer be accepted?

Unknown to me are the mysteries of my Lord.
My origin have I all but forgotten;
The temptation to eat the forbidden fruit put the noose of destiny around my neck.
Once I sang like a nightingale in my Lord’s garden,
Trapped in this mortal cage, I now ﬂutter with pain.
Discard love for everything else from your heart,
And pray only for his grace to call you back.

Fasting, prayers, and nightly vigils end only in misery,
God is not found through such means;
These are all but acts of vanity and deception.
You have failed to recognize the Beloved, who always lives within you,
You will save yourself from rites and rituals, O Bahu, when you lose your being in God.

When God ordained the creation, we were with Him,
We possessed His qualities; we were of His Essence;
Separated, now we wander around searching for Him.
Once we lived in the realm of pure spirit.
Trapped in mortal bodies we now cry with pain.
We were unsullied in our native state.
It was our lower self that defiled us all.

Formal prayer and prostration are feeble pursuits,
Fasting has little merit, other than to save on food;
Only they go on pilgrimage who are not wanted at home,
Only they pray loudly who are deceptive of intent.
But those who have found God’s love in their hearts,
In that, O Bahu, lies the secret of the unity that is God.

This body, this desolate wilderness in which the soul is lodged,
Is a rapidly crumbling bank on the river of time.
It will collapse tomorrow, if not today.
Lodged on the edge of such a shore, how can a traveler sleep in peace?
For, where sand and water meet, no embankment can hold, O Bahu.

They have read thousands of books; they are known to be great scholars,
But the one word love they could not grasp, so helplessly they wander in perplexity,
Vast is the gulf between love and intellect,
Those who have not attained love in this life will be losers in the next.

For my Friend I built a home in my heart.
When He took abode in it, I was blessed with eternal bliss.
I now hear His voice in everything, even in voices other than His own,
Only those who suffer in love can realize this secret, and no one else.

Endless fasts, prayer, and worship have worn me out.
A thousand times I have gone on pilgrimage to Mecca,
But that did not end the wandering of my mind
Nor did my retreats bring me the enlightenment I had sought,
But all the objectives of life were met, when I fell in love with Him.

A seeker can quickly become a saint when he loses himself in love,
His self becomes subdued, heart revived, as he annihilates himself in the Beloved.
One must hence get rid of ego, for without dying in love,
The union cannot be attained. Countless other means I have tried and failed.

A heart among hearts is the heart that is sublime beyond comprehension.
When your heart contemplates God, it will comprehend how there is unity in diversity.
The heart is the essence of Divinity in man; in form and beauty it is the symbol of perfection. When I contemplated on my Friend in my inner self,
The temple of my heart was illumined with His light.

Mystics live in this world as Hu personiﬁed.
They practise the Name that is the Essence of God.
They live in Hu, beyond religion, belief, and unbelief, beyond life and death.
If you explore the path within yourself, you will ﬁnd God nearby.
He now lives in me, and I in Him, O Bahu,
Not only distance from Him but even nearness to Him has become irrelevant.

The Lord lives near but seems so far,
You do not know how to look for Him.
Nothing will be achieved by looking outside;
He lives right within you,
All the veils will be lifted when you remove the dirt, and your heart will shine like a mirror.

When love of God enters your heart, religion will fall by the wayside,
And you will be left an inﬁdel;
You should then wear the thread of idol worshipers and live in the idol house,
For futile is prostration where the Beloved is not manifest,
Pointless is the repetition of the formula, when the Beloved is not seen face to face. (Translation by Ahmad Javid Sarwari Qaderi MD, FAAP)