The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship

Online Library

Interview with a Disciple

Interviewer: What was the first meeting with Bawa like?

Jeenet Lawton (high school English teacher): Bawa said, "What would you like?" I said, "I don't know what is real." He said, "Well, that's because the question is not real and the questioner is not real." I thought, "Oh no, I don't want to hear a Zen riddle like that."

I said, "All right, what is real?" He said, "Only three things and all of everything," and I felt like Ziggy on the mountain top ready to get the final word, and then he said, "God, truth and the soul."

I was bitterly disappointed because I no longer knew whether there was a God, and I saw truth as relative and the soul as a tabula rasa (a blank page).

That's about where I was at that time but I didn't say that to him and I didn't realize he knew everything that I was thinking. So I said to him, "I don't know what they are."

He looked very lovingly at me and said, "You will."