Sufism

Subsistence (baqa) is what remains, or returns, after annihilation — a servant restored, transformed

Baqa answers a worry critics raised about fana: if the self is annihilated, who is left to worship, obey, and act in the world?

Al-Qushayri devotes a chapter of his Risala to pairing fana with baqa, subsistence or abiding, because annihilation alone would leave Sufi theology with no one left to perform religious duty in the world. Baqa describes what happens after fana - the servant, having had their self-assertive attributes annihilated, is restored to ordinary functioning, but now acting through God's attributes rather than their own ego. Al-Qushayri's careful sequencing, always fana before baqa, never baqa alone, answered orthodox critics who worried that claims of annihilation in God bordered on incoherence or heresy, by making clear the saint returns to normal social and religious life, transformed rather than dissolved. This pairing became the standard technical vocabulary for describing the endpoint of the Sufi path in virtually every later manual.

Al-Risala al-Qushayriyya