Sound and Unsound

A wandering seeker saw a dervish in a rest-house and said to him:

 

‘I have been in a hundred climes and heard the teachings of a multitude of mentors. I have learned how to decide when a teacher is not a spiritual man. I cannot tell a genuine Guide, or how to find one, but half the work completed is better than nothing.’

 

The dervish rent his garments and said:

 

‘Miserable man! Becoming an expert on the useless in like being able to detect rotten apples without learning the characteristics of the sound ones’

 

‘But there is still worse possibility before you. Beware that you do not become like the doctor in the story. In order to test a physician’s knowledge, a certain king sent several healthy people to be examined by him. To each the doctor gave medicine. When the king summoned him and charged him with this deceit, the leech answered: ‘Great King! I had for so long seen nobody but the ailing that I had begun to imagine that everyone was ill and mistook the bright eyes of good health for the signs of fever!’

~ by Shaykh on April 26, 2008.