Titles and Honorifics
Bawa Muhaiyaddeen was referred to as Guru or Swami or Sheikh or 'His Holiness' depending on the background of the speaker or writer. He was also addressed as 'Bawangal' by those Tamil speakers who were close to him and who wanted to use a respectful address. He often referred to himself as an 'ant man', i.e., a very small life in God's creation. After his arrival in the United States in 1971, he was most often addressed as Guru Bawa and he established the Guru Bawa Fellowship. By 1976, he felt that the title 'guru' had been abused by others who were not true teachers in his estimation. In that year, he decided to drop the title Guru and the organization became the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship. Most of his American students use the familiar name 'Bawa' when speaking of him.
By 2007, a new honorific, Qutb, was being used by his students in the publications of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen's talks. Qutb literally means pole or axis, and signifies the spiritual center which explains and reveals through divine wisdom the true nature of man. The name Muhaiyaddeen means 'the giver of life to true belief' and has been associated with previous Qutbs. By using this lofty title, his students are presenting him as a universal teacher for this era.
Read more about this topic: Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Famous quotes containing the words titles and and/or titles:
“We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy, or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy, or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)