Ayatullah Bahjat Asceticism and Simplicity of Lifestyle
The friends of Allah do not look at the worldly appearances as ordinary people look at them. Rather, they look at the reality of life.
They do not busy themselves except with securing their true future, always distancing themselves from the shackles of greed, living in the pure environment of content and humbleness. For this reason, they earn a soul from which the fragrance of spirituality and purity emanates. Ordinary people live in the darkness of ignorance, heedlessness and affluence. They indulge in ambitions and desires.
Mentor Ayatullah Bahjat was regarded as one of the righteous friends of Allah. He was an ascetic and Gnostic who always lived with humbleness, asceticism and renunciation of the world.
He was one of the most outstanding ascetics in our time, for he realized the truth about the world and its implications and was attracted in all his existence towards the spiritual world.
Materialism did not taint him; rather, he was liberated from all its shackles.
He did not only distance himself from the world and its appearances physically but made along this path broad practical strides in various fields of his daily life. His simple life, his residence at a small old house in the holy city of Qum, his lack of response to the demands of the scholars and ordinary people who continuously demanded him to change his residence are good evidences about his asceticism, humbleness and the greatness of his soul.
Sheikh Misbah Yazdi, pointing out to his asceticism and humbleness, says, "Ayatullah Bahjat had rented a house in the vicinity of the Hujjatiyya School, then he rented a small house in the beginning of Chahar Mardan Street, and that house did not have more than two rooms. He used to place a curtain in the middle of the room where we assembled while his family lived behind it as we were attending the class on the other side. It is a very simple life distant from affectation and luxury and full of light and spirituality. Till our day, the mentor does not own a house big enough for a large number of visitors. There are no more than two or three small rooms in his house furnished with their floor covered with the same covering which he placed more than forty years ago. He did not change his house after he had become a marji` although it cannot accommodate the visitors and those who used to see him frequently and whose number was daily on the rise; therefore, the mentor used to sit during the feast or commemoration occasions at the Fatimiyya Mosque to receive people."
Ayatullah Mas'udi says, "Many people offered the mentor to buy him a house but he always rejected such offers. I said to him many times, 'Master! This house is old and not fit for living, and it may not be permissible to live in it from the Shari'a standpoint,' but he never listened to such talk nor give it any significance."
Other links:
Revered cleric Ayatollah Bahjat passes away
Ayatullah Bahjat: Conduct and Gnosticism
Glimpses of the Life of Grand Ayatullah Bahjat
