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a tree, wild animals all around, he cannot sleep even -- what type of God are you talking about who knows everything that you need?'
Bayazid laughed and he said, `He knows that this is what I need at this moment. This is my need! Otherwise, how? -- why should it be there? God knows when you need poverty,' said Bayazid, `and God knows when you need riches. And God knows when you have to go on a fast, and God knows when you have to participate in a feast. He knows! And this is my need right now.'
You cannot ask. If you ask, it will not be given to you. In the very asking, you prove yourself not yet capable of receiving it. Prayer should be silent. Silence is prayer. When words come in, desires follow suddenly -- because words are the vehicles of desire. In silence, how can you desire? Have you tried it? In silence, can you desire something? How can you desire in silence? Language will be needed. All languages belong to the realm of desire. Hence the insistence of all those who know on becoming silent, because only when there is no word in your mind will desire cease completely; otherwise, with every word, desire is lurking behind.
Whatsoever you say, even if you go to the temple and the mosque and the church and you say, `I don't desire anything,' it is a desire. Just look, watch -- hidden somewhere is a desire. And you have heard that until you stop desiring, it will not be given. That's why you are saying, `I don't desire' -- to get it. But it is lurking in the back, in the shadow it is there. Otherwise what is the need to say, `I don't desire anything'?
Be silent. Only silence is prayer.
So all the prayers that you have been doing are false. All the prayers that have been taught to you are not prayers at all -- dead rituals. There is only one prayer, and that is to be silent. That is to be so silent that not a single word floats in the lake of your consciousness. No ripple. The lake is completely silent. It becomes a mirror. It mirrors existence. It mirrors God. In that moment of silence everything is achieved.
So, this story says:
EVERY DAY HE GAVE GOLD TO ONE CATEGORY OF PEOPLE -- THE SICK, WIDOWS, AND SO ON. BUT
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