The Fox’s Proof

Once upon a time there was a fix who met a young rabbit in the woods. The rabbit said: ‘What are you?’ The fox said: ‘I am a fox, and I could eat you up if I wanted to.’

 

‘How can you prove that you are a fox?’ asked the rabbit. The fix didn’t know what to say, because in the past rabbits had always run from him without such enquiries.

 

Then the rabbit said: ‘If you can show me written proof that you are a fox, I’ll believe you.’

 

So the fox trotted off to the lion, who gave him a certificate that he was a fox.

 

When he got back to where the rabbit was waiting, the fox started to read out the document. It so pleased him that he dwelt over the paragraphs with lingering delight. Meanwhile, getting the gist of the message from the first few lines, the rabbit ran down a burrow and was never seen again.

 

The fox went back to the lion’s den, where he saw a deer talking to the lion. The deer was saying:

 

‘I want to see written proof that you are lion…’

 

The lion said:

 

‘When I am not hungry, I don’t need to bother. When I am hungry, you don’t need anything in writing.

 

The fox said to the lion: ‘Why didn’t you tell me to do that, when I asked for the certificate for the rabbit?’

 

‘My dear friend,’ said the lion, ‘you should have said that it was requested by a rabbit. I thought it must be for a stupid human being, from whom some of these idiotic animals have learned this pastime.’

The Perfect Master

A certain man decide that he would seek the Perfect Master.

 

He read many books, visited sage after sage, listened discussed and practiced, but he always found himself doubting or unsure.

 

After twenty years he met a man ‘whose every word and action corresponded with this idea of the totally realized man.

 

The traveler lost no time. ‘You,’ he said, ‘seem to me the Perfect Master. If you are, my journey is at an end.’

 

‘I am, indeed, described by that name’ said the Master.

 

‘Then I beg of you, accept me as a disciple.’

 

‘That’ said the Master, ‘I cannot do; for while you may desire the Perfect Master, he in turn, requires only the Perfect Pupil.’

Sifting

O Pedant! Sift, all your life, the writings and he sayings of the Wise. But first of all learn one thing: you are using a sieve which lets through chaff and discards the nutrient, the wheat.

Containment

A dervish traveler recounts:

 

I visited a certain sheikh who was magnet for people of the most miscellaneous character.

 

I said:

 

‘How can you bear the company of such dreadful people! They have neither been improved their proximity to you, nor were they attracted to you in the first place by your virtues, for by their own confession they seek only powers not possessed by other men.’

 

He said, and I shall never forget it:

 

‘Friend, if all the snakes in the world were to be about their business of killing, and none was to be diverted by vain hopes which prevented his evil from being exercises, there would no be a single human being left alive.’

Abu Tahir

Mir Abu Tahir attracted many students through his illuminating discourses and try by circulating epistles which were favorably commented upon by all the major thinkers of the day.

 

When, however, people collected to hear him speak in person, they could only get him to repeat a single phrase:

 

‘The desire for the merit, not for the man’

 

This admonition was given out several times a day for five years. Someone went to the sage Ibriqi and begged him to help with some sort of explanation of the strange conduct of Abu Tahir.

 

Ibriqi said:

 

‘You complain because the Mir says something regularly. But you do not complain that the sun raises and sets every single day. Yet the two things are the same. Like the sun, the Mir is doing something valuable. If you make no use of it, he must still continue to ‘shine’ for the benefit of those who can profit, or of you, at a time when you can benefit.’

The Method

A certain Sufi teacher was explaining how a gales Sufi had been unmasked. ‘A real Sufi sent one of his disciples to serve him. The disciple waited on the imposter hand and foot, day and night. Presently everyone began to see how the fraud loved these attentions, and people deserted him until he was completely alone.’

 

One of the listeners to this story said to himself: ‘What a marvelous idea! I shall go away and do just the same thing.’

 

He went to where a bogus divine was to be found, and passionately desired to be enrolled as a disciple. After three years, such was his devotion that hundreds of devotees had collected. ‘This sage must indeed be a great man’ they said to one another, ‘to inspire such loyalty and self-sacrifice in his disciple.’

 

So the man went back to the Sufi from whom he had heard the story and explained what had happened. ‘Your tales are not reliable,’ he said, ‘because when I tried to put into practice, the reverse happened.’

 

‘Alas,’ said the Sufi, ‘there was only one thing wrong with your attempt to apply Sufi methods. You were not a Sufi.’

The Meaning

A man who had spent many years trying to puzzle out meanings went to see a Sufi and told him about his search.

 

The Sufi said:

 

‘Go away and ponder this – IHMN’

The man went away. When he came back, the Sufi was dead. ‘Now I shall never know the truth!’ moaned the puzzler.

 

At that moment the Sufi’s chief disciple appeared.

 

‘If,’ he said, ‘You are worrying about the secret meaning of IHMN, I will tell you. It is the initials of the Persian phrase “In huruf maani nadarand´- “these letters have no meaning.”

 

‘But why should I have been given such a task?’ cried the puzzling man.

 

‘Because, when a donkey comes to you, you give him cabbages. That is his nutrition, no matter what he calls it. Donkeys probably think that they are doing something far more significant than eating cabbages.”

The Sanctuary of John The Baptist

Saadi, the Sufi author of the Persian classic, The Rose Garden, writes of a visit to the burial place of John the Baptist, in Syria.

 

He arrived there one day, exhausted and footsore. But then, as he was feeling sorry for himself, he saw a man who was not only tired, but had no feet. Saadi gave thanks to God that he, at least, had feet.

 

This story, on the obvious level, means ‘be grateful for small mercies’. Its teaching on that level is found in all cultures. It is useful to help one to find a greater perspective in his situation if he is suffering from disabling self-pity.

 

The employment of such tales for emotional purpose – to switch the mental attitude, even to make a person content with and perhaps momentarily grateful for, his lot – is characteristic of the conventional type of instruction.

 

Modern sophisticates say: ‘All that Saadi did was to inculcate so-called moral virtues – his work is outmoded. Traditional, crude sentimentalists may say: ‘How beautiful to dwell on the misery of others and one’s own comparative good luck.’

 

But Saadi, being a Sufi, included in his writings materials which had more than one possible function. This tale is one of them.

 

In Sufi schools the piece is treated for what it is, an exercise. The student may benefit from whatever ‘uplifting’ moral may be the conventional interpretation. But, without introspection but with self-observation he should be able to say: ‘I realize that changes in my mood are dependent on emotional stimuli. Do I always have to be dependent upon “seeing a man with no feet”’ or reading about it, before I realize that ‘I have feet?’ How much of my life is being wasted while I wait for someone to tell me what to do, or something to happen which will change my condition and frame of mind?’

 

According to the Sufis, man has better, more realizable inner sense and capacities for educating them than constant emotional stimulus.

 

The object of the Sufi interpretation of this lesson would be nullified if it caused people to start an orgy of self questioning of an emotional kind.

 

The purpose of pointing out this Sufi usage of the narrative is for it to be registered in the mind, so that the student may in future notice a higher form of assessment of his situation, when it begins to operate in him.

Fidelity

Najmaini (The Man of the Two Stars) dismissed a student with the word: ‘Your fidelity has been tested, I find it so unshakeable that you must go.’

 

The student said: ‘Go I shall, but I cannot understand how fidelity can be a ground for dismissal.’

 

Najmaini said: ‘For three years we have tested your fidelity. Your fidelity to useless knowledge and superficial judgments is complete. That is why you must go.

Irrelevance

One of the Sufi sages appointed a deputy to transmit his instructions to disciples. Before long, however, the disciples took it on themselves to regard the deputy not as a channel but as a man of sanctity and authority. He, in turn, started to imagine that everything he said was significant. Presently, becoming doubtful of some of the results of the deputy’s actions, some of the displaces enquired of one another: ‘Is this man acting in full accord with his mandate?’ Some of them regarded such thoughts as treachery, and blind themselves to all abuses.

 

The Sage heard the questionings an answered: ‘Vanity has taken possession of this deputy, but it has been nourished by your own desires to venerate someone.’

 

The disciples were crestfallen, and asked: ‘If his can happen to a trusted representative, what might not happen in our case?’

 

The Sage told them: ‘It could not have happened if both parties had not been to blame. If you had been obeying my orders, instead of creating your own imitation teacher, not satisfied with instructions and instead seeking idols, this would not have happened. But, on the other hand, where those tendencies are present, it not only does happen but must happen. Instead of wondering at what has taken place, you should observe how incapable you are of distinguishing the false from the true: though you are not humble enough to assume that the false is the true.’

 

‘That is your lesson.’

 

They said: ‘What is to become of him?’

 

He answered: ‘That is not your concern. It is concerning yourselves with the irrelevant which has hindered your development; and now you are still doing it. Far from being in advance of ordinary people, you are now far behind them. Do you want to catch up?