Bawa Muhaiyaddeen - Public Career in The United States

Public Career in The United States

In 1971, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen accepted an invitation from an American woman to visit her in Philadelphia. She had been corresponding with him after being introduced by a university student from Sri Lanka. She and her associates made arrangements for his travel to the United States and for his stay in Philadelphia. By 1973, a group of his followers formed the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship, which hosted a Meeting house that offered several public meetings a week.

As before in Sri Lanka, people from all religious, social and ethnic backgrounds would join to hear him speak. Across the United States, Canada and England, he won recognition from religious scholars, journalists, educators and world leaders. The United Nation's Assistant Secretary General, Robert Muller, asked for Bawa Muhaiyaddeen's guidance on behalf of all mankind during an interview in 1974. During the years 1978–1980 when the Iranian hostage crisis was occurring, he wrote letters to world leaders such as Iran's Khomeini, Prime Minister Begin, President Sadat and President Carter to encourage a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the region. Time Magazine, during the crisis in 1980, quoted him as saying that when the Iranians understand the Koran "they will release the hostages immediately". Interviews appeared in Psychology Today, the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Pittsburgh Press newspapers. He continued his teaching and personal guidance to his students and visitors until his death on December 8, 1986.