Pir Shabda Kahn: Music, Dances and Teaching Shabda Kahn

Setting the tone of the talk with a poem from Hazrat Inayat Khan's Gayan, Pir Shabda illucidates the path of fana, self effacement, and leads retreatants into concentration on wazifa practice, anticipating the publication of the book, Physicians of the Heart, explaining its history and development and deepening in practices with various wazaif.

Opening with "la ilaha illa'llah," Pir Shabda then addresses concerns about resistance, suggesting we make friends with our life and invite our resistance into our practice in order to help overcome it. With the sense that life itself becomes the teacher on the path of love, strength may be developed with the wazifa pair Ya Qawiyy, Ya 'Aziz.

Pir begins by sharing advice on spiritual living which Inayat Khan spoke in Edinburgh 90 years earlier. Continuing with the theme of the srength and capacity needed, Shabda describes three main pillars of this lineage and explores emotion and breath and then leads the group into meditation practice, explaining options for posture and importance of focus with calm abiding, then bringing the breath to the heart.

Recalling the title of the retreat, "The Art of Being Human," Pir Shabda gently bring focus to the third pillar, encouraging participants to see life as an adventure, to cultivate an attitude that brings passion and energy, ease and effortlessness to one's life. He describes the awakened condition as optimistic and not based on circumstances, and he compassionately addresses questions from the group.

Pir Shabda's talk recorded at the Portland, Oregon, retreat in 2009. In Part B, Pir Shabda shares Hazrat Inayat Khan's message to "seek continually an answer to every question that arises in the heart." He works with the wazaif, Ya Waasiya and Ya Waleeya, as well as the pairs Ya Malik and Ya Malik-al-Mulk. Having described the value of action and activism, he concludes by addressing the similarity among Vipassana and Tibetan Buddhist practices with Sufic self-effacement methods.

In his characteristically pragmatic approach, Pir Shabda explores our relationship to ego and offers techniques and guidance about how to move through the tendency toward self-grasping.