As militant Islam does its level best to discredit the religion, it's important to remember that there are other voices within the faith. One such is the Sufis, a branch of Islamic mystics who live islam (submission), iman (faith) and ishan (awareness of G-d, "to act beautifully"). Idries Shah was certainly one such individual, and this story comes from him in the April 1978 issue of Human Nature magazine. As "The Wisdom of Sufic Jokes" notes:
"Instead of presenting a body of thought in which one must believe certain things and reject others, Sufis try to provoke the experience in a person. Why provoke or develop experience instead of teaching dogmatic principles or processes? The Sufis assert that knowledge comes before ritual. Rituals may become outworn, may not function as intended when practiced by communities for which they were not designed. If rituals and practices are, as Sufis believe them to be, specially developed psychological methods, only those who have the knowledge that lies behind them can confirm whether historically notable ones are still functional. Hence priority is given to knowledge and understanding over feeling or belief."Of course, we have a joke to illustrate:
"There was once a small boy who banged a drum all day and loved every moment of it. He would not be quiet, no matter what anyone else said or did. Various people who called themselves Sufis, and other well-wishers, were called in by neighbors and asked to do something about the child.We've had excellent responses to this before, so use the comments section and tell us: what is inside this joke?The first so-called Sufi told the boy that he would, if he continued to make so much noise, perforate his eardrums; this reasoning was too advanced for the child, who was neither a scientist nor a scholar. The second told him that drum beating was a sacred activity and should be carried out only on special occasions. The third offered the neighbors plugs for their ears; the fourth gave the boy a book; the fifth gave the neighbors books that described a method of controlling anger through biofeedback; the sixth gave the boy meditation exercises to make him placid and explained that all reality was imagination. Like all placebos, each of these remedies worked for a short while, but none worked for very long.
Eventually, a real Sufi came along. He looked at the situation, handed the boy a hammer and chisel, and said, "I wonder what is INSIDE the drum?"
Only the last Sufi understood that the kid would act on his own motivations, not those of the stuffy grownups around him.
Whenever possible, you must speak to people in thier own language.
And the converse, from Chaim Potok,
"You must listen when someone is trying to tell you something"
Very true in both cases.
As noted in the blog post, I also see a link to religious ritual, a "noisy" activity that serves an easily understood function, and may be taken to a point where the neighbours are annoyed. The Sufis focus, instead, on the understanding INSIDE the practice. It's the real secret behind religious practices' effectiveness, just as it's the "empty, unseen" space in the drum that creates the sound. By focusing the punchline on what's INSIDE the drum, the story is implicitly asking for religious ritual to be broken in order to get at what's inside. This will enlighten, and also prevent any further annoyance to the neighbours.
Idries Shah then takes the story to a different level than that...
IS: "The subjective self, which is made up of part ordinary human training, part instinct, and part obsession or conditioning may answer well enough for many purposes, but it must be possible to set aside that self in order to get to the real thing. Sufi teaching often has to resort to indirect methods in order to eliminate the destructive effect of those activities that give great pleasure to the individual but actually inhibit his potential -- as well as annoy everyone else around.
Incidentally, a lot of diversionary activity such as musical assemblies, dressing up, and incantations -- well but erroneously know in the West and among ignorant people in the East as "spiritual" or "esoteric" -- originates in attempts to satisfy the demand for "real mysticism" by unsuitable people (or by suitable people who are thinking wrongly). Sometimes the only shortcoming is that they lack the right information."
This kind of mutlilayered meaning is entirely typical of Sufi stories, and all lessons derived from it are useful lessons. There is no "one valid" interpretation - the story is setting up a paradox to create thinking and enlightenment in the listener, and succeeds by working on a number of levels.
My reaction was that some adult should simply have taken his drum away. A good spanking would have helped too. But if no one is willing to discipline or control the child then it makes sense to trick the child into doing something that removes the source of irritation.
I'm skeptical of the idea that studying Sufism or other mystical schools of thought will make one wiser.
Since the child is actually a metaphorical stand-in for adults like you and me, "taking the drum away and giving him a spanking" probably isn't a good meme to encourage. All kinds of complications there, and of course there's no enlightenment value either.
As for whether studying mystical schools of thought makes one wiser, the answer is surprisingly prosaic: it will if you want it to, won't if you don't.
There is another significance to the surprising punchline. Taking a hammmer and chisel to a drum to look inside it is the last thing that would occur to a person to do in the course of "ordinary" experience or as part of the "ordinary" understanding of things. Taking the truly extraordinary step, which perhaps only a learned mentor can suggest, is what leads to a new level of understanding, or a new awareness of what is possible.