There is pain. Then there is spiritual pain. The one you nurture so you may live spiritually. At least.
Walli’s life may be a physical tragedy, but his pain was purely spiritual. Without a doubt.
While sitting with Buddha on the hills, Walli gave him the secret. It wasn’t the hunger or abandoning your family. These are physical pains which lead to nothing spiritual.
Well, Buddha achieved enlightenment – nirvana – afterwards. Walli didn’t. Or maybe he did too, but he didn’t tell anyone. Because his was a personal journey, which was yet to be finished.
Centuries later, Walli narrated the same secret to Christ. While waiting in the death chamber, Walli revealed that physical death is temporary. Spiritual death is the real tragedy.
Walli told him to ask God for heavenly permission. In return, Walli died on the cross. No one knows it was Walli who died that day. Only to be resurrected again and again and again.
But who is Walli?
We don’t know for sure. All we know is that he had some unfinished business. In his original life, he went on to a useless war enforced by the emperor. He left his pregnant wife behind and promised her that he would return soon.
He didn’t.
His wife gave birth to a girl, while Walli got buried in an unidentified grave outside Mesopotamia after the victorious war for the emperor.
Since then, he has been helping people to complete their journeys while he himself is wandering for the reunion with his daughter.
While his journey remains incomplete, he was sure to complete the miraculous reunions of Buddha and Christ.
Anyway, can you imagine Walli being the emperor himself? From an unknown soldier to the emperor of all faiths? Well, that’s another tragedy. He had to conquer the Holy Land to complete a prediction.
That war wasn’t holy. It was personal. As he perished for his emperor back then, he too got crowned himself while thousands perished for his war. And history, which he wrote himself, calls him Commander of all Faiths.
Anyway.
These are bits of his journeys from here and there. We don’t have a complete story. But we do know the essence.
From the power of the great emperor to the powerless life of a small farmer, Wali lived through it all. He died on the battlefield without a name and had a whole kingdom named after him in his time. In all the powerful and powerless journeys, his essence remained the same.
He once lived a dervesh life too. He left his home and went far away to a small village where he lived like a hippie. He did poetry and his poetry was against the crowd. He targeted all those with power because he knew how useless this power is. The power only keeps you busy, that’s all. Useless.
He died in his late 70s. People built a tomb in his name. The tomb became a symbol of sufism for generations.
And in another later journey, Walli was singing and dancing to his own poetry in the verandah of his own tomb. Like a madman who never bathed and never prayed.
That is Walli’s cycle of life. That is everyone’s cycle of life too. Vicious. Like a snake. Eating its own tail. Forever and ever.
