Theos-Talk Archives (March 2003 Message tt00044)

Hi all of you,


Here is part 4 of 4. (about 1.5 pages).
The article by Idries Shah "The Wisdom of Sufic Humor", taken from "Human Nature" April (1978)

Americans have an excellent home-grown example of lucidity in a tale 
about the statesman Daniel Webster. He was being sued by a butcher for a 
debt when he ran into the butcher on the street. Webster immediately asked 
the butcher why he had not come for any order lately. The butcher said he 
had thought that Webster would not, under the circumstances, want to deal 
with him. But Webster, showing this perfectly lucid attitude said, "Tut, 
tut. Sue all you wish -- but, for Heaven's sake, don't try to starve me to 
death."

The argument that spiritually or mystically minded people should not 
think lucidly, a proposition often advanced by confused thinkers, is an 
absurd misunderstanding. A confused person will, and often does, choose a 
confused and confusing series of inapplicable techniques to approach higher 
understanding.

The wisecrack aspect of jokes is, of course, a degeneration, perhaps due 
to surfeit -- which is one reason why Sufi masters have actually given and 
withheld permission to jest from their disciples, as Ghazali reminds us in a 
major book written almost a thousand years ago.

There are affinities among the wisecrack, ignorance, and the 
stream-of-consciousness approach that I do not yet find clearly understood in 
the West, though I came across a combination of all three when I last went to 
Jerusalem.

A man with a curio shop was trying to sell to a female tourist what he 
described as "a very important embossed-metal picture of the Last Supper." I 
stood riveted to the spot when I heard her say, "What's so wonderful about 
the Last Supper, anyway? Now if you had a picture of the First Supper, that 
might be something. Besides, when is the Next Supper?"

Rationalizations, association of ideas, and lack of humor often go 
together and can usually be disentangled. I was once standing at a corner of 
the huge market street called the Bhindi Bazaar in Bombay, when a bus stopped 
and a troop of determined Western seekers-after-truth descended and clustered 
around an old man who was squatting on the side of the road. They 
photographed him and chattered excitedly. One of the visitors tried to start 
a conversation with him, but he only stared back, so she remarked to the 
guide, "What a sweet old man; he must be a real live saint. Is he a saint?"

The Indian, who had a sense of humor as well as an interest in not 
wanting to tell a lie and a need to please his clients, said, "Madam, saint 
he may be, but to us he is the neighborhood rapist."

She immediately replied, "Oh, yes, I've heard of that; it involves their 
religion. I guess he must be a Tantrist!"

In Sufi study and understanding, ignorance is crippling, paranoia is 
ridiculous, right alignment and respect (for materials, for students and 
teachers) are essential; servility and vanity are harmful. The proper focus 
is almost everything. A comprehensive understanding is essential. Offering 
premature "enlightenment" is irresponsible. Paradoxically but inalienably, 
the fact is that only by wanting to serve each other can the two elements -- 
the teaching and the learning -- be harmoniously, and therefore correctly, 
brought together. 

IDRIES SHAH is director of studies at the Institute for Cultural Research in 
London, and an advisory editor of HUMAN NATURE. He was born in India in 1924 
of an Afghan family and many of his ancestors have been among the Sufi 
masters of Central Asia. For 20 years he has been relating the Sufi heritage 
to contemporary Western thought, and in the process he has written more that 
20 books. In 1966 Shah introduced the study of Sufism into English 
universities when he lectured at the University of Sussex. In the United 
States his best known books are the volumes of Sufi teaching tales that 
describe the adventures of Mulla Nasrudin.

>From "Human Nature" April 1978





from
M. Sufilight with peace...and love...

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