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Welcome to The Dervish Tales. Here are some interesting small stories that Sufi masters have been using to teach their students in their progressing wisdom and enlightenment.
A man who was troubled in his mind once swore that if his problems were solved he would sell his house and give all the money to the poor. The time came when he realized that he must redeem his oath, but he did not want to give away all his money, so he thought of a way out.
He put the house for sale at one piece of silver. Included with the house was a cat. The asking price for the cat was ten thousand pieces of silver.
Another man bought the house and cat. The 1st man gave the single piece of silver to the poor and kept the ten thousand for himself.
Many people's minds work like this. They resolve to follow a teaching; but they interpret thier relationship with it to thier own advantage. Until they overcome this tendency by special training, they cannot learn at all.
Two pious and worthy men went to a mosque together. The 1st one took off his shoes and placed them neatly, side by side, outside the door. The 2nd man took off his shoes, placed them sole to sole and took them inside with him.
There was an argument among a group of other pious and worthy folk who were sitting at the door, as to which man was better. "If one went barefoot into a mosque, was it not better to leave the shoes outside?" asked one. "But should we not consider," asked another, "that the man into the mosque, carried them in to remind himself by thier very presence that he was in a state of proper humility?"
When the two men came out of thier prayers, they were questioned separately, by different people about thier reason.
The 1st man said, "I left my shoes outside the door so if someone wanted to steal them he will have an opportunity to resist the temptation, and thus acquiring merit for himself." The listeners were most impressed by the high-mindedness of the man whose possesions were of so little importance to him, that he would leave them to fate.
The 2nd man said, "I took my shoes into the mosque with me because, had i left them outside, they might have constituted a temptation to steal them. Whoever would have yielded to this tempation would have made me an accomplice to his sin." The listeners were most impressed by this pious sentiment, and admired his thoughtfullness.
But yet another man, a man of wisdom, who was present, cried out "While you two men and your followers were indulging in your admirable sentiment, training each other with the play of hypothetical instances, certain real things have been happening. "What are these things?" cried the crowd.
"Nobody was tempted by the shoes, nobody was not tempted by the shoes. The theoretical sinner did not pass by. Instead, another man, who had no shoes at all entered the mosque. Nobody noticed his conduct. He was not consious of the effect which he might be having on people who saw him or did not see him. But, because of his real sincerit, his prayers in this mosque today helped, in the most direct way possible, all the potential thieves who might or might not steal shoes or reform themselves by being exposed to temptation."
Do you still not see that the mere practice of self-consiousness conduct, however excellent in it's own realm, is a pale thing indeed when measured against the knowledge that there are real men of wisdom?
A conventionally-minded Dervish, from an austerly pious school, was walking one day along a river bank. He was absorbed in concentration upon moralistic and scholastic problems, for this was the form which Sufi teaching had taken in the community to which he belonged. He equated emotional religion with the search for ultimate truth.
Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by a loud shout: someone was repeating the Dervish call. "There is no point in that," he said to himself, "because the man is mispronouncing the syllables. Instead of intoning YA HU, he is saying U YA HU."
Then he realized that he had a duty, as a more carefull student, to correct this unfortunate person, who might have had no opportunity of being rightly guided, and was therefore probably only doing his best to attune himself with the idea behind the sounds.
So he hired a boat and made his way to the island in midstream from which the sound appeared to come.
Sitting in a reed hut he found a man, dressed in a Dervish robe, moving in time to his own repetition of the initiatory phrase. "My friend," said the 1st dervish, "you are mispronouncing the phrase. It is incumbant upon me to tell you this, because there is merit for him who gives and him who takes advice. This is the way in which you speak it." And he told him.
"Thank you," said the other Dervish humbly.
The 1st dervish entered his boat again, full of satisfaction at having done a good deed. After all, it was said that a man who could repeat the sacred formula correctly could even walk upon the waves: something that he had never seen, but had always hoped, for some reason, to be able to achieve.
Now he could hear nothing from the reed hut, but he was sure that his lesson had been well taken.
Then he heard a faltering U YA as the 2nd Dervish started to repeat the phrase in his old way...
While the 1st Dervish was thinking about this, reflecting upon the perversity of humanity and it's persistance in error, he suddenly saw a strange sight. From the island the other Dervish was coming towards him, walking on the surface of the water...
Amazed, he stopped rowing. The 2nd Dervish walked up to him and said: "Brother, I am sorry to trouble you, but I have to come out to ask you again the standard method of making the repetition you were telling me, because I find it difficult to remember it."
These and many more can be found in various books of Sufi Teaching, particularly "Tales of the Dervishes", and "The Way of the Sufi", by Idries Shah.