Once upon a time there was a baby elephant who heard someone say: ‘Look, there is a mouse.’ The person who said it was looking at a mouse – but the elephant thought that he was referring to him.

Now, there were very few mice in that country; and in any case they tended to stay in their holes, and their voices were not very loud. But the baby elephant thundered around, ecstatic at his discovery, ‘I am a mouse!’

He said it so loudly and so often, and to so many people that – believe it or not – there is now an entire country where almost everyone believes that elephants, and particularly baby elephants, are mice.  

It is true that from time to time mice have tried to remonstrate with those who hold the majority belief: but they have always been put to flight.

And if anyone ever wants to reopen the question of mice and elephants in those parts, he had better have a good reason, strong nerves and an effective means of putting his case.

A visitor who had come from a far country said to Bahaudin Shah:

‘Let me sit in your durbar and hear your words, for it has truly been said that reading is no substitute for hearing.’

Bahaudin said:

‘Alas! If you are not deaf, it is sad that I should have had to wait so long to welcome you here. You see, I never give any lectures nowadays.’

The visitor asked why.

Bahaudin said:

‘I have never given any lecture since a group of partially deaf people came one day. I said “Do not be like a dog or swine…” and after they left me they fell out, disputing as to whether I had said “Be a dog…’ or even “Eat swine’s flesh…” With the written word this is not possible. If you are blind, someone can always read to you.’

Isa Ibn Abdulwahab al Hindi held long and frequent conversations in which he discoursed on every imaginable topic, for a number of years.

One day a certain respected sheikh called upon him and said:

‘My hear is heavy, for it is reported that you have spoken critically of me on many occasions.’

Isa said:

‘I have said twenty times that there are disparities between your words and actions. Can you doubt that this is true?’

The sheikh asked:

‘I would be glad to hear the grounds upon which you find fault with me.’

Isa replied:

‘You will know them the moment you hear the two hundred occasions on which I have praised you before those same people who, in the name of accuracy, now inwardly seek to separate us. To report half a thing is worse than reporting nothing. To report one-tenth of a thing is equal to falsification.’

Bahaudin Shah once gave an address on the principles and practices of Sufis. A certain man who thought that he was clever and could benefit from criticizing him, said:

‘If only this man would say something new! That is my only criticism.’

Bahaudin heard of this, and invited the critic to dinner.

‘I hope that you will approve of my lamb stew,’ he said.

When he had taken the first mouthful, the guest jumped up, shouting ‘You are trying to poison me – this isn’t lamb stew!’

‘But it is,’ said Bahaudin, ‘though, since you don’t like old recipes, I have tried something new. This contains lamb all right, but there is a good dash of mustard, honey and emetic in it as well.’

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!’

A certain Bektashi dervish was respected for his piety and appearance of virtue. Whenever anyone asked him how he had become so holy, he always answered: ‘I know what is in the Koran.’

One day he had just given this reply to an enquirer in a coffee-house, when an imbecile asked: ‘Well, what is in the Koran?’

‘In the Koran,’ said the Bektashi, ‘there are two pressed flowers and a letter from my friend Abdullah.’

First I thought that a Teacher must be right in all things.

Then I imagined that my teacher was wrong in many things.

Then I realized what was right and what was wrong.

What was wrong was to remain in either of the first two states.

What was right was to convey this to everyone.

It is related that Mahmud of Ghazna was once walking in his garden when he stumbled over a blind dervish sleeping beside a bush.

As soon as he awoke, the dervish cried:

‘You clumsy oaf! Have you no eyes, that you must trample upon the sons of men?’

Mahmud’s companion, who was one of his courtiers, shouted:

‘Your blindness is equaled only by your stupidity! Since you cannot see, you should be doubly careful of whom you are accusing of heedlessness.’

‘If by that you mean,’ said the dervish, ‘that I should not criticize a sultan, it is you who should realize your shallowness.’

Mahmud was impressed that the blind man knew that he was in the presence of the king, and he said mildly:

‘Why, O Dervish, should have king have to listen to vituperation from you?’

‘Precisely,’ said the dervish, ‘because it is the shielding of people of any category from criticism appropriate to them which is responsible for their downfall. It is the burnished metal which shines most brightly, the knife struck with the whetstone which cuts best, and the exercised arm which can lift the weight.’

The champion bowman of the town of Salima complained that he had no peer.

‘These people, the Salimites, are no archers, and thus they cannot judge my excellence!’ He repeated, again and again, to anyone who would listen.

He convinced everyone of his unhappiness.

One day a certain Sufi master was passing through the town, and stopped to drink some tea.

In the tea house the people told him of the miserable archer.

‘He may believe that he is suffering’ said the sage, ‘but the All Highest has in fact been more thank kind to this man. Had he been placed among archers, he would have been in constant fear of being outdone.’

‘If he had really needed adversaries of his own quality, nothing would have prevented him from finding them.’

‘Until man and his audience can hear the unspoken message, and forget the spoken one, he will remain in chains.’

If you want to be with the Teacher when he wants yu to be apart from him, you must obey hi or shun him. If you argue about it, you are worse than disobedient.