Bayazid

Bāyazīd 

Bāyazīd, born at eastern Iran, was the first major “ecstatic” Muslim Sūfī mystic. He was “a mystical genius of the first order … a man of profound spirituality, who through long austerity and meditation reached a state of compelling awareness of the merging of his human individuality into the Individuality of God. Bāyezīd hoped for a complete extinction [fanā] of the traces of self.

Bāyazīd was one of three brothers, each of whom became “a renunciate and servant of God.” Their grandfather, a Zoroastrian, had converted to Islām. Bāyazīd’s own youthful piety may have been influenced by this. He entered a Ha-nafī school of legal study, the most liberal approach to the Muslim sharī‘a. Yet he was strict in observing both voluntary and obligatory religious forms of worship. His career as a promulgator of Ha-nafi law was transcended when a student turned him toward Sūfism. He began to practice a regimen of terrible self-denial and to visit many dervishes and saints to learn from them the Sūfī way. Bāyazīd spent long sojourns as an itinerant wanderer, “meeting 360 Sūfīs,” and later embraced solitude and the contemplative life

Subsequently, he allowed himself periods of teaching disciples back at Bistām. In some places so many people became his disciples that he committed uncouth acts to drive them away, such as once eating bread during the daytime fasting period in the holy month of Ramad. Another story of Bāyazīd tells that in an Arabian town he visited en route to Medina, a large throng wanted discipleship under him. Though Bāyazīd left town, the crowd still followed him. Looking back, he asked his inner Divine Guide, “Who are those men?”

“They wish to keep you company,” came the answer. “Lord God!” he cried, “I beg of Thee, veil not Thy creatures from Thee through me!” Then, wishing to expel love of him from their hearts and remove the “obstacle” of himself from their spiritual path, after performing the dawn prayer he looked at them and said, “Verily, I am God; there is no god but I; serve Me.” “The man has become mad and committed blasphemy!” they cried. And they left him.

When he wasn’t preferring solitude with Allāh, but allowing a circle of disciples near him,

Bāyazīd urged them to put their affairs in God’s hands and to accept sincerely the pure doctrine of Tauh_īd, the Oneness or Non-duality of God

 (I have heard about a Sufi mystic, Bayazid. He meditated for years, and it is said God was very, very compassionate towards him. He had made such great effort; arduous was his search, intense was his prayer. So God sent an angel, and the angel came and said to Bayazid, "God is happy, and whatsoever you want He is ready to give to you. You just ask. Your days of seeking and inquiry are finished."
But Bayazid said, "But no, that is not the way. I don't want to get so cheaply because I know well...in life also I was deceived because of this cheap possibility. Now you cannot deceive me. Tell God that I will earn the hard way."
But the angel said, "You are foolish! He is ready to burn the innermost light of your being. Just ask!"
But Bayazid said, "Thank you, and give Him also my thanks, but I am not going to do that because it will be borrowed; even if borrowed from God, it will be borrowed. Let me seek and search."
The angel said, "God will feel offended. It has never happened; His offer has to be accepted."
Then Bayazid looked around -- he had a small lamp and the oil was almost finished. He said, "If He really wants to light something, tell Him to light my lamp because the oil is almost finished and the night is dark, and I have still to meditate. Just this will do. You just tell Him to give me one blessing: that my oil should never finish so I can meditate the whole night."
That's all he asked for, and it is said that God was very happy and He said, "This is the right way." If he had asked he would have missed; if he had accepted he would have missed -- because whatsoever comes to you without your earning it is never yours. You possess only that which you have lived. You possess only that which YOU have known. You possess only that which you have earned.)

Hazrat Bāyazīd, The Ecstatic Sufi (c.800-c.874)

(It is said about Bayazid that he lived with his Master for twelve years, and he passed the same hall every day to come to the Master. One day the Master said to Bayazid, "You go back to the hall. There, in the cupboard, one book is Lying -- you bring that book." Bayazid said, "I will go, because I have never seen that there is a cupboard." The Master said, "You have been coming to see me continuously, every day, for twelve years, and you have to pass that hall every day; you have not looked around?" He said, "I was coming to you, Master. I am not here to look at what is in the hall, whether there is a cupboard or not, and whether there is a book in it or not. I am not here for that. My whole intent, my whole being is just for you. I am open towards you. I will go and see." The Master said, "There is no need; the book is not needed. In fact, there is no book and there is no cupboard. It was just a test to see whether you are distracted. I am happy that you are not distracted."
- OSHO)

Muslim scholars and mystics say that Bāyazīd was the first or one of the first Sūfīs to spread the ideal of fanā, annihilation or extinction in God (a word likely derived from the old Buddhist term nirvāna, well known in Central Asia), to insure that the Tauh_īd view was authentically lived, not just thought about or talked about.

Like many early Sūfīs, Bāyazīd never wrote anything, but some 500 of his sayings have been relayed in texts by other writers, many of these sayings expressed in boldly mystical, paradoxical, even shocking language. A few later Sūfīs branded him a heretic, while others defended Bāyazīd and similar mystics, saying that they were overtaken by God in a prophetic way and made to utter momentary, involuntary utterances (shathiāt) by God Himself. Thus, claim the defenders of Bāyazīd, his ecstatic utterances should not to be construed as actual egotistic beliefs or self-aggrandizing claims. Bāyazīd’s seeming antinomianism and blasphemy were, in fact, balanced by obviously humble, devout, self-effacing statements, such as “Better that Thou be mine without me, than I be my own without Thee” (in the Tadhkirat); and “If I could say—and absolutely mean it—‘There is nothing real but Allah [Lā ilāha illā Llāh],’ there would be nothing to concern me after that.”

When Bayazid physically expired in or around 874, he was over seventy. Before he died, someone asked him about his age. He humbly replied: “I am four years old. For seventy years I was veiled. I got rid of my veils only four years ago.

His lovely tomb-shrine is located in Bistām, Iran. No less a spiritual authority than Baghdad’s sober Sūfī al-Junayd allegedly declared: “As the Archangel Gabriel is superior among all angels, in the same way Bāyazīd is the superior Sūfī among all.”

(In his youth, Bāyazīd, was deeply struck yet confused by the Qur’ān’s words, “Be thankful to Me and to thy parents.” He approached his mother. “Either you ask God for me so that I may be yours entirely, or apprentice me to God, so that I may dwell wholly with Him.” “My son, I resign you to God, and exempt you from your duty to me. Go and be God’s.”

Sitting at the feet of his teacher, he was suddenly told, “Bāyazīd, fetch me that book from the window.” “Window? What window?” asked Bāyazīd. Said his teacher: “Why, you have been coming here all this time and did not see the window?”

 “No, what have I to do with the window?

When I am before you I close my eyes to everything else. I have not come to stare about.” “Since that is so,” said the teacher, “go back to Bistām. Your work is completed.”

[Bāyazīd said:] For twelve years, I was the blacksmith of my soul. I thrust my soul into the furnace of discipline and made it hot in the flames of arduous endeavor, then I placed it upon the anvil of reproach and hammered it with the hammer of self-blame, till I fashioned out of my soul a mirror. For five years I was my own mirror and I polished that mirror with every manner of godly service and obedience. After that I gazed upon my own reflection for a year and I saw about my waist an infidel girdle of delusion and coquetry and self-regard, because I relied upon my own acts of obedience and approved of my conduct. For five years further I labored, until that girdle was snapped and I was a Muslim anew. I looked upon all creatures, and saw that they were dead.

I gazed upon God with the eye of certainty after that He had advanced me to the degree of independence from all creatures, and illumined me with His light, revealing to me the wonders of His secrets and manifesting to me the grandeur of His He-ness. Then from God I gazed upon myself, and considered well the secrets and attributes of myself. My light was darkness beside the light of God; my grandeur shrank to very meanness beside God’s grandeur; my glory beside God’s glory became but vainglory. There all was purity; here all was foulness. When I looked again, I saw my being by God’s light. I realized my glory was of His grandeur and glory. Whatsoever I did, I was able to do through His omnipotence. Whatever the bodily eye perceived, it perceived through Him…. All my worship proceeded from God, not from me, and I had supposed that it was I who worshipped Him.

I said, “Lord God, what is this?” He said, “All that I am, and none other than I.”

Then … He instructed the gaze of my eye in the root of the matter, the He-ness of Himself. He annihilated me from my own being, and made me to be everlasting through His own everlastingness, and He glorified me. He disclosed to me His own Selfhood, unjostled by my own existence. So God, the one Truth, increased in me reality. There I dwelt for a while….God had compassion on me. He granted me eternal knowledge, and put into my throat a tongue of His goodness. He created for me an eye out of His light, and I saw all creatures through God. With the tongue of His goodness, I communed with God, and from the knowledge of God I acquired a knowledge, and by His light I gazed on Him. He said, “O thou without all with all, without instrument with instrument!” [The idea here is that a mere impotent being can, by Divine Grace, be made a channel for some of God’s power.]

I said, “Lord God, let me not be deluded by this. Let me not become self-satisfied with my own being, not to yearn for Thee. Better it is that Thou should be mine without me, than that I should be my own without Thee. Better it is that I should speak to Thee through Thee, than that I should speak to myself without Thee.”…

When He had perceived the purity of my inmost soul, then my soul heard a shout of God’s satisfaction; He sealed me with His good pleasure. He illumined me, and delivered me out of the darkness of the carnal soul… I knew that through Him I lived; and of His bounty I spread the carpet of gladness in my heart.

…….

In my intoxication I flung myself into every valley…. I galloped the steed of questing in the broad expanse of the wilderness; no better game I saw than utter indigence, nothing I discovered better than total incapacity, no lamp I saw brighter than silence, no speech I heard better than speechlessness. I became a dweller in the palace of silence…. He opened a fissure of relief in my darkened breast, and gave me a tongue of divestiture and unity. So now I have a tongue of everlasting grace, a heart of light divine, an eye of godly handiwork. By his succor I speak, with His power I grasp. Since through Him I live, I shall never die…. My tongue is the tongue of unity [tauh_īd, “only God!”]… He moves my tongue according as He wills, and in all this I am but an interpreter. In reality the speaker is He, not I. Having magnified me, He spoke again, “O Bāyazīd, My creatures desire to see thee.” So I said, “Adorn me with Thy Unity, and dress me in Thy I-ness and raise me to Thy Oneness so that when Thy creatures see me they may say ‘We have seen thee and it is Thou,’ and I am no longer there.”

Quotes by Bayazid

Shrine of Bayazid Bastami

·         A man came to the door of Bāyazīd. “Whom are you seeking?” asked Bāyazīd. Replied the man, “I seek Bāyazīd.” “Poor wretch!” said Bāyazīd. “I have been seeking Bāyazīd for thirty years and cannot find any trace or token of him.”

·         “You walk on water!” they said. “So does a piece of wood,” Bāyazīd replied. “You fly in the air!” “So does a bird.” “You travel to the Ka’aba [shrine at Mecca] in a single night!” “Any conjurer travels from India to Demavand in a single night.” “Then what is the proper task of true men?” they asked. Replied Bāyazīd: “The true man attaches his heart to none but God.”

Bāyazīd said: Keep your vision fixed on high and descend not; for whatever you descend into, by that you will be veiled.

·         A man encountered me on the road. “Where are you going?” he demanded. “On the pilgrimage [to Mecca].” “How much have you got?” “Two hundred dirhams.” “Come, give them to me; I am a man with a family. Circle round me seven times. That is your pilgrimage.” I did so, and returned home.

·         A man who rejected the sainthood of Bāyazīd once came to him and said: “I want to learn the secrets of God.” Bāyazīd first sent him to a mountain to meet a friend. When the man went up that mountain, he found a thick, large python, and fell unconscious from fear. After coming to his senses, he ran back to Bāyazīd and told him whole story. Bāyazīd remarked: “It’s strange! You have such great fear for the creature, how could you bear dread of the Creator!”

Bayazid Bastami

·         A certain ardent ascetic, with his own disciples and admirers, always came to hear Bāyazīd, but once complained that, despite all his fasting and night-vigils, “I discover no trace in myself of this [Divine] knowledge of which you speak.” Said Bāyazīd, “If for 300 years you fast by day and pray by night, you will never realize one atom of this is course.” “Why?” asked the ascetic disciple. “Because you are veiled by your own self.” “What is the remedy?”

“You will never accept it,” said Bāyazīd. The man persisted. “Very well,” said Bāyazīd. “This very hour go shave your beard and hair. Take off your clothes and tie a loincloth of goat’s wool about your waist. Hang a bag of nuts round your neck, then go to the marketplace and tell all the children you can, ‘I will give a nut to everyone who slaps me.’ Go round the city in the same way, especially to where people know you. That is your cure.”

On hearing this, the disciple cried out, “Glory be to God! Lā ilāha illa Llāh! (There is no god but God!)” Replied Bāyazīd, “If an infidel uttered that sacred formula, he would become a believer. But by uttering the same formula you have become a polytheist [i.e., presuming the existence of someone other than God], because you counted yourself too grand to be able to do as I have said. You used this formula to express your own importance, not to glorify God.” The man protested, “I cannot do this task. Give me other directions.” Bāyazīd replied, “Did I not say that you would not do it, that you would never obey me?”

·         He often prayed in such words: “Oh, Allāh, how long will this ‘You’ and ‘I’ remain between You and I? Take this ‘I’ from me so that all that remains is ‘You’. Oh, Allāh, when I am with You, I am greater than all; when I am without You, I am nothing.” “Oh, Allāh, my poverty took me to you and Your blessings protected my poverty.”

·         Bāyazīd always said: “I desire not to desire except what He desires.”

·         A man asked Bāyazīd: “Show me a deed by which I will approach my Lord.” He replied: “Love the friends of Allāh in order that they will love you. Love his saints until they love you. Because Allāh looks at the hearts of His saints and He will see your name engraved in the heart of His saints and He will forgive you.”

·         A Sūfī master, Sahl at-Tustarī, sent a letter to Bāyazīd that read: “Here is a man who drank a drink that left him forever refreshed.” Bāyazīd replied: “Here is a man who has drunk all existences, but whose mouth is still dry and burns with thirst [for God].”

·         Asked, “What should be one’s support in worship?” Bāyazīd replied: “‘O God,’ if you know Him.”

Asked, “How is knowing attained?” He replied, “By losing whatever you have and by relying upon whatever He has.”

·         Paradise is of no concern to the people of love, and the people of love are loved through their love.

  

 A  few quotes alone will not satisfy your appetite, hence a few more. 

  

·         Bliss is everlasting; gratitude for bliss should be everlasting as well.

·         Someone asked, “When does man reach God?” Bāyazīd replied, “O you miserable one—does he reach Him at all?” [i.e., the ego cannot ever co-exist with God who is the only One.]

·         I saw my Lord in my dreams and I asked, “How am I to find You?” He replied, “Leave yourself and come!”

·         I came out from Bāyazīdness as a snake from its skin. Then I looked. I saw that lover, Beloved, and love are one because in that state of unification, all are one. I went from God to God, until He cried from me in me, “O Thou I.” Thus I attained the stage of annihilation in God.

·         The thing we tell of can never be found by seeking, yet only seekers find it.

·         All this talk and turmoil and noise and movement is outside the veil. Inside the veil is silence and calm and peace.

·         Nothing is better for a man than to be without anything—having no asceticism, no theory, no practice. When he is without all, he is with all.

·         That which I was I am no more, for “I” and “God” represents polytheism, a denial of His

Unity…. I am no more… I have passed away.

·         For thirty years I sought God. But when I looked carefully, I saw that in reality God was the seeker and I was the sought. He who discourses on eternity must have within him the light [lamp] of eternity.

 Bayazid and the Dog

One day, when Shaykh Bayazid was walking through a street, suddenly a dog appeared, approaching him slowly. Being cautious and not wanting his clothes to be in contact with the dog, Shaykh Bayazid pulled up his clothes.

Unexpectedly, the dog was communicating to Shaykh Bayazid with a voice like human,” If my fur is dry and accidentally comes into contact with your clothes, there is no need for you to have your clothes cleansed. However, if my skin happens to be wet, all you need to do is to have your clothes cleansed the way God prescribed. But then the prejudice attitude inside you will not be washed away even if you use all the water obtained from seven rivers. The internal or spiritual sins are difficult to clean.”

Shaykh Bayazid said,” Dear dog, you are very intelligent. Please come and stay with me for a while.”

“No, we can’t stay together as I’m being despised by humans while you are glorified in this world. Furthermore, I do not store any food for the next day while you store your needs for the whole year,” replied the dog.

Hearing the words of wisdom from the dog, Shaykh Bayazid whispered to himself:” If even a dog refuses to accompany me, am I eligible to be close to God and attend His functions? All the Praises for God who has shown all the flaws in me and guiding human beings through the minor things.