Abu Yazid al-Bistami

In due course his mother sent him to school.  He learned the Koran, and one day his mater was explaining the meaning of the verse in the Sura of Loqman, Be thankful to Me, and to thy parents.  These words moved the heart of Abu Yazid.

“Sir,” he said, laying down his tablet, “please give me permission to go home and say something to my mother.”

The master gave him leave, and Abu Yazid went home.

“Why, Taifur,” cried his mother, “why have you come home?  Did they give you a present, or is it some special occassion?”

“No,” Abu Yazid replied.  “I reached the verse where God commands me to serve Him and you.  I cannot be manager in two houses at once.  This verse stung me to the quick.  Either you ask for me from God, 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 jto God, and exempt you from your duty to me,” said his mother.  “Go and be God's.”

“The task I supposed to be the hindmost of all tasks proved to be the foremost,”  Abu Yazid later recalled.  “That was to please my mother.  In pleasing my mother, I attained all that I sought in my many acts of self-discipline and service.  It fell out as follows.  One night my mother asked me for water.  I went to fetch her some, but there was none in the jug.  I fetched the pitcher, but none was in it either.  So I went down to the river and filled the pitcher with water.  When I returned to the house, my mother had fallen asleep.

“The night was cold.  I kept the jug in my hand.  When my mother awoke from sleep she drank some water and blessed me.  Then she noticed that the jug was frozen to my hand. 'Why did you not lay the jug aside?' she exclaimed.  'I was afraid you might wake when I was not present,'  I answered.  'Keep the door half-open,' my mother then said.

“I watched till near daybreak to make sure if the door was properly half-open or not, and that I should not have disregarded her command.  At the hour of dawn, that which I had sought so many times entered by the door.”

After his mother resigned him to God, Abu Yazid left Bestam and for thirty years wandered from land to land, disciplining himself with continuous vigil and hunger.  He attended one hundred and thirteen spiritual preceptors and derived benefit from them all.  Amongst them was one called Sadiq.  He was sitting at his feet when the master suddenly said, “Abu Yazid, fetch me that book from the window.”

“The window?  Which window?  asked Abu Yazid.

“Why said the master, “you have been coming here all this time, and you have not seen the window?  

“No,” replied Abu Yazid.  “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 this is so,” said the teacher, “go back to Bestam.  Your work is completed.”

from Episodes from the Tadhkirat al-Auliya' (Memorial of the Saints) by Farid al-Din Attar