Bawa Muhaiyaddeen - Literature and Books By His Students

Literature and Books By His Students

A number of books have been published by students of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen that explore his teachings from their perspective and understanding and detail the impact these teachings had on their lives.

• Owner's Manual for the Human Being by Mitch Gilbert, One Light Press publisher, 2005, ISBN 0-9771267-0-6

• The Illuminated Prayer: The Five-Times Prayer of the Sufis by Coleman Barks and Michael Green, Ballantine Wellspring publisher, 2000, ISBN 0-345-43545-1. According to the publisher, the book "offers a compelling introduction to the wisdom and teachings of the beloved contemporary Sufi master Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, who brought new life to this mystical tradition by opening a passage to its deepest, universal realities. It is the loving handiwork of two of Bawa's best-known students, Coleman Barks and Michael Green, who also created The Illuminated Rumi."

• One Song: A New Illuminated Rumi by Michael Green, Running Press publisher, 2005, ISBN 0-7624-2087-1

• My Years with the Qutb: A Walk in Paradise by Professor Sharon Marcus, Sufi Press publisher, 2007, ISBN 0-9737534-0-4

• THE MIRROR Photographs and Reflections on Life with M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (Ral.) by Chloë Le Pichon and Dwaraka Ganesan and Saburah Posner and Sulaiha Schwartz, published privately by Chloë Le Pichon, 2010, ISBN 0-615-33211-0. A 237 page large-format photographic compilation with commentary by 78 contributors.

Coleman Barks, a poet and translator into English of the works of the 13th-century Sufi poet Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, has described how he met Bawa Muhaiyaddeen in a dream on May 2, 1977. As a result of that meeting, he began to translate the poems of Rumi. Coleman finally met Bawa Muhaiyaddeen in person in September, 1978 and continued to have dreams where he would receive teachings. In Coleman's estimation, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen is on the same level of enlightenment as Rumi and Shams Tabrizi, the companion of Rumi.

The band mewithoutYou explored many of the teachings of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen in their fourth album, It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright. The sufi teacher's story of "The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie" from My Love You My Children: 101 Stories for Children is told as well as his story about the "King Beetle" from The Divine Luminous Wisdom that Dispels Darkness. Other concepts from the teacher are explored in "Allah, Allah, Allah," about seeing God in every blade of grass and in "Fig with a Bellyache" dealing with sexual temptation from The Divine Luminous Wisdom and The Golden Words of a Sufi Sheikh. The lead singer and writer for the band, Aaron Weiss, and his brother, band guitarist Michael Weiss, were raised in a sufi household, though Aaron later converted to Christianity.