by T.L. James of MarsBlog. Part of our weekly Sufi Wisdom series. As terrorist Islam does its best to discredit the religion, it is important to remember that there are other voices within the faith. One such is the Sufis, a branch of Islamic mystics with roots in many religious traditions. The lessons of Sufism are often communicated through humorous stories and mystical or romantic poetry.
Bahaudin el-Shah, great teacher of the Naqshbandi dervishes, one day met a confrére in the great square of Bokhara.
The newcomer was a wandering Kalendar of the Malamati, the "Blameworthy". Bahaudin was surrounded by disciples. 'From where do you come?' he asked the traveller, in the usual Sufi phrase.
-- 'I have no idea,' said the other, grinning foolishly.
Some of Bahaudin's disciples murmured their disapproval of his disrespect.
'Where are you going?' persisted Bahaudin.
-- 'I do not know,' shouted the dervish.
(from "Wisdom of the Idiots")'What is Good?' By now a large crowd had gathered.
-- 'I do not know.'
'What is Evil?'
-- 'I have no idea.'
'What is Right?'
-- 'Whatever is good for me.'
'What is Wrong?'
-- 'Whatever is bad for me.'
The crowd, irritated beyond its patience by this dervish, drove him away. He went off, striding purposefully in a direction which led nowhere, as far as anyone knew.
'Fools!' cried Bahaudin Naqshband, 'this man is acting the part of humanity. While you were despising him, he was deliberately demonstrating heedlessness as each of you does, all unaware, every day of your lives.'
Leave a comment
Here are some quick tips for adding simple Textile formatting to your comments, though you can also use proper HTML tags:
*This* puts text in bold.
_This_ puts text in italics.
bq. This "bq." at the beginning of a paragraph, flush with the left hand side and with a space after it, is the code to indent one paragraph of text as a block quote.
To add a live URL, "Text to display":http://windsofchange.net/ (no spaces between) will show up as Text to display. Always use this for links - otherwise you will screw up the columns on our main blog page.