A Review of The Book of Bullah, the revolutionary, passionate Sufi Punjabi poet

To the Bullah in my reader, a thousand salaams

And the Bullah in me, I bow again and again.

 The kafi-styled Punjabi poems by the Sufi mystic poet and philosopher Bullah/Bulleh Shah (1680-1758) of Kasur (now in Pakistan), performed in both traditional and contemporary modes, continue to be immensely popular, particularly in the subcontinent. My first brush with his lyrics was as a teenager, belting out and swaying vigorously to disco queen Runa Laila’s rendering of Dama Dam Mast Qalandar (a famous qawwali composed by the 13th-century Sufi poet Amir Khusro in honour of the Sindhi Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, and later modified by Bullah Shah). We threw our arms in the air and danced with abandonment. 

 Among the many diverse translations of Bullah Shah’s Punjabi songs into English, one recently found its way to my home: The Book of Bullah by Manjul Bajaj (AMARYLLIS Publishers``). Unique to this translation is the artwork created for each lyric, often sharing the page with the verses. Beautifully augmenting the poetry, these illustrations by Donette Gomes provoke much contemplation too, as they support the words yet offer their own narrative trajectory. An elegant, subtle cover in soft colours invites the reader to enter, and the visual device of small footprints is deployed, to ‘walk’ and ‘wander’ with the reader like an intimate companion from page to page, beginning to end. The lyrics are deceptively simple but must be read several times to grasp the deeper meaning. Here is just one example:

 I know only myself 

Nothing other than the Self

Nothing greater than the Self

Who then is that I see watching me? [p. 5] 

A renowned scholar of Persian and Arabic, Bullah Shah was an Islamic theologian before encountering his spiritual Master, Shah Inayat (1643-1728) of the Qadri Sufi order, in Lahore. That meeting was the turning point in his life. Bullah fell in love with his Master, whose presence and teachings opened the floodgates of his heart and soul to an altogether higher plane of consciousness. The songs he composed after this radical transformation of his being are suffused with intense adoration, desire and longing. However, differences arose between teacher and disciple, and Bullah was forced to return to Kasur where he lived for the rest of his days. The extreme agony of separation from his Master and incessant craving for reunion, passionately expressed in sensual and nuptial metaphors, recurs in song after song:

 Let me merge in you

Make me one with you.

 You are the one 

Who awoke this love 

Now hold my hand

And take me through [p. 83]

 

Don’t forsake Bullah now

His worship is true

Be with me

Till the veil is removed

And I have seen my bridegroom. [p. 85]

 Yet Bullah’s lyrics are as powerfully universal and social as they are personal: he calls to people to abandon their fixations on temples, dargahs, scriptures, priests and rituals, and to come together as one human race, with Love as its common language. For example:

 Look beyond this world's duality

There is a river there

where everyone swims

He is here, there, everywhere

The servant the master

Bullah, such is his game

He does everything

He does nothing.(p.221)

 

A simple truth ends the matter

 Forget your calculations

Stay away from doubt

Dismiss thoughts of hell and heaven

Banish imaginary concerns

Truth enters a clear mind (p 183) 

 The Book of Bullah will be appreciated by all who love poetry and Sufi philosophy. Bullah Shah’s potent, timeless celebration of the Divine has taken a fresh stride into the contemporary through the adept collaboration of translator and illustrator.

 To the readers of this review, a million salutes. May Bullah touch your lives too. 

 Title: The Book of Bulla

Author: Manjul Bajaj

Publisher: Amaryllis An imprint of Manjul Publishing House Pvt. Ltd. Noida www.manjulindia.com

Pages: 234

 

About the Author: Manjul Bajaj writes novels, short stories, children’s fiction and poetry. Several of her works have been shortlisted for literary awards and prizes. She lives in Goa.

 

                                                            

 

 Note: Thanks to my friend, Smriti Vohra, I am adding this short note for the reader, which is not part of Manjul Bajaj’s Book Of Bullah.

“As noted by scholar William C. Chittick (Sufism: A Beginner’s Guide, 2009), “From about the thirteenth century onwards, few themes play as important a role in Sufi teachings as love. Historians have commonly spoken of a gradual development of Sufism that began in a mysticism of asceticism and fear, slowly changes to an emphasis on love and devotion, and then turns to knowledge and gnosis. . . [of the] large numbers of authors who wrote on divine and human love, Ibn Arabi [d. 1240] and Rumi [d. 1273] can be considered the two greatest masters of the tradition. . . The Persianate world, from Turkey to India, looks back upon Rumi as the greatest spiritual poet of history, just as the whole Islamic world considers Ibn Arabi the greatest Sufi theoretician” (74, 76). For Sufis, God is the true beloved; and as “God created the world through love, so love produces the multiplicity that fills the universe” (79). In the words of Ibn Arabi: “None but God is loved in the existent things. It is He who is manifest within every beloved to the eye of the lover – and there is no existent thing that is not a lover. So, the cosmos is all lover and beloved, and all of it goes back to Him. . . no one worships anything without imagining divinity within it. . . No one loves anything but his own Creator, but he is veiled from Him by love for [. . .] everything loved in the world… God [is] hidden beyond the veil of forms” (82). And in the words of Rumi: “All the hopes, desires, loves, and affections that people have for different things – father, mother, friends, heavens, earth, gardens, palaces, sciences, deeds, food, drink – all these are desires for God, and these things are veiled. When people leave this world and see the Eternal King without these veils, then they will know that all these were veils and coverings and that the object of their desire was in reality that One Thing” (82). 

For Sufis, true love “depends on discernment”; people with “faulty knowledge”, who think “that lightning is the sun”, are ever veiled in illusion (Chittick, 84). The theoretician-poet Bullah, in his critical register, calls upon to abandon our innumerable social and psychological “veils”, including caste prejudice, religious bigotry and embedded fixations on temples, dargahs, scriptures and rituals; he appeals to us to come together as one human race, with Love as its common language: “

Introspecting the Possibility of Aversion Therapy used by Buddhists

 " Nibbana is a realisation about the frailty and transience of beauty, the body, and emotions like desire, grief, anger, and attachment to anything that binds one in this life. Nibbana thus means to 'blow out' all emotions that lead to desire and attachment."  Snigdha Singh,  pg no. 263, Of Thieves and Theris, Potters, and Pativratas, Essays on Early Indian Social History for Kumkum Roy, the book presented to Prof. Dr. Kumkum Roy, on her Felicitation on 9th November 2022. 

In her scholarly and profoundly interesting article,  Dr. Snigdha Singha goes on to explain how the Buddhist Theras and Theris, monks, and nuns were guided to achieve Nibbana by practicing detachment following certain teachings/notions around the body per se and especially that of women. This is described in the Theragatha and Therigatha, poems composed by the senior monks and nuns.

Before I quote from her essay any further, let me remind my readers that I was taught, that The Buddha himself wrote nothing. All texts are the interpretation of his teaching by His disciples and thus must be allowed the concession of 'as they heard, seen The Buddha speak or do'. It is quite possible that The Buddha said something in some context, but his disciple heard and interpreted otherwise. Leave that as it may, we readers of such texts must be allowed the freedom to introspect on the Buddha's words as interpreted/inferred by his disciples. 

A few examples below should suffice:

" The Buddha says to Sundari - Nanda,

As with this body, so with thine, as with,

Thy beauty, so with this --- this shall it be 

With this melodious, offensive shape, 

Wherein the foolish only delight."

It is apparent from this verse that drawing attention to the body in Buddha's eyes was merely foolish, as this body does become a 'foul compound, diseased, Impure!' Hence, 'compel thy heart to contemplate'. 

If the position is such that the body must be viewed as loathsome, for the mind to single-mindedly pursue the path of Nibbana, then, we can infer that this is a strategy used by the Buddha to prove that the body is transient/impermanent. So, for this life to be meaningful, only the permanent must be sought after, which is Nibbana. 

In his discourse, the Buddha has used death and decay as a potent reason to seek a life above all changing matters. The problem arises when examples of decay are bodies of women and not men. The objectifying of women's bodies to drive home a point may cause a man to fight his desire for a woman, in search of that which never changes or decays, but the point remains that in both Theravada and Therivada poems the use of women's body as against the reference to men's bodies as also gross, bloating, changing and dying is never used in the same manner. Bringing our argument to a necessary query - 

- these references make us wonder about the patriarchal nature of Buddha's teachings which must be investigated further.  What is even more strange is both Theris and Theras indulge in degrading their bodies, men on women and women on themselves literally to escape the circle of death and birth by achieving Nibbana. My question is, why are the Theris not speaking the same way about male bodies as ugly, decomposing, deforming bodies which meet death as well, just as women do?

The point of introspection thus lies in this question - 

- if Theragatha is a collection of poems written by male disciples of The Buddha, is the Therigatha in some way edited by Theras and is not totally poems written by Theris only? Is there a male point of view woven into the text? 

The Buddha had only a male monastic order until under the request of his favorite disciple, Ananda, he admitted his foster mother Mahaprajapati Gomtami into the monastic order for females. And it continued after the Mahaparinirbanna of The Buddha. Even then, the female order came under the male order. It is only probable then, that the texts too could have been whetted out/ interpretations of the Theras which has made the patriarchal divide more prominent - the male body kept away from degenerative references, while the women have been exposed as the least desirable. 

Psychologists use what is called Aversion Therapy to de-addict a person from a substance of abuse by making the person associate the substance of abuse with something unpleasant in thought and visually thus creating an aversion to the substance. 

The Buddha is a Master Psychologist but could it be that so much of what is assigned to be his saying, might have been a Manusmriti authored by his Theras? 

Snigdha Singh teaches history at Miranda House, University of Delhi. Her article titled Beauty, Body, and Desire Gendered Voices in Buddhist Monastic Tradition, Chapter 13 can be found in Of Thieves and Theris, Potters, and Pativratas, Essays on Early Indian Social History for Kumkum Roy,

Note: Views expressed in this article are entirely mine, Julia Dutta