One day, a group of Sufis went to their shaykh to complain about one of their fellow dervishes. “Master, we need your help,” they pleaded. “Please save us from this man’s company, for he’ll soon put an end to us all.”
“What’s your complaint, dear fellows?” asked the shaykh sympathetically. “This chap is supposed to be a proper Sufi, but he suffers from three major character flaws,” one of the dervishes protested.
“When he speaks, it’s like a siren going off, loud and unremitting. When he eats, he polishes off the portions of twenty men! And when he sleeps, oh my God when he sleeps, it’s as if he’ll never wake up again!” The shaykh listened to his students patiently and in due time called the unpopular man to his presence. He kindly advised him to change his ways and always adopt the middle path, never exaggerate in his behavior. The man listened to his spiritual master quietly, trying to grasp the essence of what he was being told. The master shaykh realized that this was a great opportunity to impart essential Sufi teachings, interweaving them with his advice.
“When people exaggerate, they eventually become ill,” said the shaykh with gravity. “One must always cooperate with one’s fellow Sufis; otherwise, separation and alienation will result. With the masses, Moses always spoke just enough, but with close friends he elaborated his thoughts much more freely. Once when he rambled on a bit too long with the prophet Khidr, he was scolded and sent away, rebuked for having spoken far too much! If he wanted to stay in Khidr’s company, he was told that he would have to remain mute and blind. Now, my good man, if you, too, continue with your excessive behavior, you’ll ultimately alienate all your friends!”
The shaykh felt that his words were slowly penetrating the young Sufi’s consciousness and decided to seize the moment and continue with his spiritual advice. “You’re still a young Sufi; choose your companions carefully. Find the ones who thirst for your words. Try to live like a naked man, without any embellishment or decoration. Seek the company of those who are free of these vanities, too. And if you can’t completely strip naked, then at least lighten your load, remove your extra layers and adopt a balanced state of being.”
The young Sufi expressed his gratitude and paid his shaykh great courtesy, and then he asked permission to speak. “The middle path, my great shaykh, is relative,” he said. “The water in a shallow stream may seem hardly an obstacle to the camel, but to the mouse it’s a vast and swollen sea. When someone has an appetite for four loaves of bread, he must consume at least two or three loaves. For someone who can only appease his hunger with ten loaves, he can perhaps manage with a minimum of six. I personally can easily eat fifty loaves of bread, so six loaves seem like nothing to me.
“One man may tire after saying ten prayers, but I’ve the stamina to recite, without a break, at least five hundred prayers. One person might be brave and selfless and give up his life willingly for a worthy cause, while another man will give up his life before submitting to part with a single loaf of bread!”
The young man fell silent and lowered his head respectfully before his shaykh. The shaykh, too, remained silent. “Ah, and when it comes to sleep,” remembered the Sufi, “I may sleep for hours on end, but my heart is perpetually awake. One should be wary of those whose bodies are restless but whose hearts are chronically numb. My heart gazes into both worlds, and I can clearly see how many people get stuck in the mud while I glide over it with ease. I may be cohabiting with them on the earth, but I walk in the heavens.
“I’ve surpassed plain thoughts and have gone far beyond. As I take to the air, I leave mundane ruminations behind. It is I who choose to descend, so that these lame devotees of yours may benefit from my presence.” He kissed the edge of his shaykh’s robe, stepped away without showing his back to his master, and quietly walked out of the room.
The END
Learnings
1: Our mind looks at things in a binary way. It has a habit of seeing things as good and bad, as more and less, as happiness or pleasure. We might look at someone and say that he is doing something excessively but for that person, it is a normal thing. If we look closely, we might be doing things which appear normal to us but to other people it will appear as an excess done by us. For a person who is working for 20 hours on his own accord (without any pressure from outside), it will feel normal but others will feel it is very excessive! It is our mind which creates relativity.
2: The person who is still in the clutches of mind (the relative instrument) will always try to see good and bad and try to judge the behavior of others from his own point of view. However, who is gone beyond mind and who is one with God, will not try to see tings this way because for him everything exists within the God and there is nothing like good or bad. He looks at things from an absolute perspective.
3: What the Saint coaches the Darvish, he is not wrong because he was not aware of the state of being of the Darvish and he was trying to advise him on the moderate path which most great teachers have advised humanity to tread on. So, when we are walking on the path and we are getting nearer to the God, it is always advisable to follow the moderate path. This ensures that we don’t overdo it and start harming our bodily system.
4: The dervish demonstrates that what is abnormal to others is normal to him. His body can easily take 50 loaves of bread, he can speak 500 prayers at a time and he can sleep for any length of time. It shows that his system is capable of taking up the humongous load which he himself is subjecting himself to! One needs to be aware of the capacity of his/her own system. And once one knows his own system and capabilities, he doesn't need to be impacted by the views of the crowd. Of course, this works only when one can objectively access his own self and is not vain.
5: Similarly, when we are talking about the moderate path, we should know the person who is taking up the austerity, how much he can take and what is his capability as a traveler on this path. The moderate term is very relative and it should be prescribed based on the system/capabilities of the person. So the teachers who are looking forward to advising their student must try to understand how much load the student can take up and methods should be advised based on their capacity. It can't be one method for all. And bodily capacities should be slowly increased if the work undertaken by the aspirant requires him to be so.
STORY CREDIT: This story has its source in the six volumes of Masnavi by Jalalu'din Rumi, translated by Maryam Mafi
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