The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship
Children's Stories
Finding Fault
My love you, my children, my grandchildren. Come closer, and I will tell you something to help you in your life.
Children, do you ever criticize others and find fault with them, complaining, "Why are they doing that?" Or do you ever look at the sorrows of the world and ask, "Why is God doing this?" A man of wisdom will never have such thoughts. He will study each situation and try to understand the cause and the effect. Finally, he will say, "Ahh, so that is why this happened." He will never find fault with God or question the way in which God does things.
If you stand in the middle of a gale and criticize it, saying, "Why is this wind blowing so hard?" then you too will be caught up in the storm. Don't try to find fault with the storm. That will only lead to your own destruction. Instead, understand the nature of the storm and look for a way to escape.
My children, God has created pairs of opposites to teach us about our lives. He created right and wrong, good and evil, sweet aromas and bad odors. If life did not provide us with these opposites, how could we understand anything? We can only understand goodness when we have known evil. We can only know light when we have seen darkness. We can only understand heaven if we have experienced hell. We can only know if there is a truth when we have witnessed falsehood. Only if we have experienced base desires and the harm that comes from them can we understand the heavenly messengers. Only if we have experienced selfishness and attachment can we find our way to non-attachment and unselfishness.
Thus there is no point in finding fault and criticizing God or anyone. Instead, we should try to understand each situation and find clarity within it. Each thing within creation is there to teach us something, and it is our duty to discover the lesson within it. We can understand the truth through examples. That is what maturity is. A man of maturity understands the cause and the result of everything.
Without this understanding, man is only an animal. He will perform an evil act and then say it was his duty. His actions will bring harm to himself and to others. But a man who understands before he acts will receive many benefits and will be able to give peace to others. He will complete the work of the All-Pervasive Treasure. If this state is established in a man, he will be called man-God, manu isan, and insan kamil, a perfected, God-realized being. He will understand.
We must discover the point of everything in our lives. We must use our wisdom to clearly understand each and every thing. Then truth will arise from within us, and within that truth we will see the radiance of God. That is the beauty and grace of the soul.
Jeweled lights of my eyes, you must think about this deeply. This is life. Criticizing and finding fault will only bring harm. You have to realize where the faults lie and then dispel them. Are the faults in God? Are they in others? Or are they in ourselves? Where do the faults lie? We have to understand this and avoid them.
My love you.
- M. R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
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