Idries Shah Quotes - Page 3

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaFlattery:One of the most promising of businesses: always brisk.

The Seeking of the Master. Musa Najib was asked why he charged a fee from those who came to his sessions; and why he often did not even address his audience. He said: 'I charge for this object lesson: people believe that knowledge must be given freely, and consequently mistake everything which is free for knowledge. I do not always lecture because, among Sufis, “The Master finds the pupil.” The pupil has to be physically present: but he may be absent in every other sense. When I discern that a pupil is “present” then I “find” him, for then his inner call is audible to me, even if it is silent to him.' 'Seek and you will be found.

The lightning said to the oak tree: ‘Stand aside, or take what is coming to you!

The skilled artisan uses the same iron to make a horseshoeAs he does for a polished mirror for the King.

When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.

What is sometimes thought to be clever is, significantly often, merely an advanced form of foolishness.

Sandals. The Sufi teacher Ghulam-Shah was asked what pattern he used in formulating his courses for disciples. He said: 'Barefoot until you can get sandals, sandals until you can manage boots.

The pathways into Sufic thinking are, it is traditionally said, almost as varied as the number of Sufis in existence.

You make me a sinner if you stop me giving you hospitality.

The Sufi is one who does what others do – when it is necessary. He is also one who does what others cannot do – when it is indicated.

Information about the activities of one body of Sufis may be harmful to the potential of another.

A man must be a Solomon before his magical ring will work

A man must be a Salomon before his magical ring will work. (Hafiz)

Talent is the presence of ability and absence of understanding about the source and operation of knowledge.

A loan is the scissors of friendship.A man's own tongue may cut his throat.The cage has no value without the bird.

The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.

The automatism of man is overcome, in the words of Dhun'Nun, by aiming for 'being as you were, where you were, before you were'.

Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.

I will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages.

Saying of the ProphetFoodNobody has eaten better food than that won by his own labour.

Show a man too many camels' bones, or show them to him too often, and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one. (Mirza Ahsan of Tabriz)

Even if false gold makes a man happy:At the mint it will be identified.

Any society which enjoins its members to adhere to both of these (politeness and truth) is a fraud.

All approaches to a study or an individual may start with a desire for attention. However they start, they must never end up in this manner.

If wine is the enemy of religion, I shall devour the enemy of religion.

You will never reach Mecca, I fear: for you are on the road to Turkestan.

If you do not understand, you cannot love. You can only imagine that you love.

Before the antidote arrives from Iraq The man with snake-bite will be dead.

People carry on whole conversations in proverbs. But they are not LIVING the proverbs.

EXPECTATION If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.

If I knew what two and two were – I would say Four!

When prayer, rituals and ascetic life are just a means of self-indulgence, they are harmful rather than beneficial. This is quite obvious to people nowadays, when it is widely recognised that fixations are not the same as valuable and laudable observances. One should not pray if that prayer is vanity; rituals are wrong when they provide lower satisfactions, like emotional stimulus instead of enlightenment; he or she should not be an ascetic who is only enjoying it.

The barren branches may appear inelegant: They are, to the cook, the means to make his fire.

StagesFirst I thought that a Teacher must be right in all things. Then I imagined that my teacher was wrong in many things. Then I realised what was right and what was wrong.What was wrong was to remain in either of the first two stages. What was right was to convey this to everyone.(Ardabili)

Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal.Interesting people can find something interesting in all things.

Because sugar is not arsenic, many graves are full.

What is humanity? To feel pain at the sorrows of our neighbours, to feel humiliated at the humiliation of fellow-beings.

Those who can’t, try: those who can, don’t have to.

The decline in the influence of religion has been due, in the main, not to religion itself, but to the very shallowness of many practitioners. People who are indoctrinated and mistake implanted obsession for faith, are themselves destroyers of the very thing which they imagine themselves called upon to try to protect.In fact, of course, they have no such call: and their capacity to protect something which is other than their imaginings makes for a comical situation.

People who speak or act in an ordinary fashion are most likely to be those who have been the recipients of higher experiences. But because they do not rage around, wild-eyed, people think that they are very ordinary folk and therefore not aware of anything unknown to the general run of man.

The door of illumination is open to those for whom other doors are closed.

For every Pharoah there is a Moses.

Saadi’s dictum, in the Bostan: ‘The Path is not in the rosary, the prayer-mat and the robe

Remember the proverb: 'A sign is enough for the alert, but a thousand counsels are not enough for the negligent.

You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean.

At His door, what is the difference between Moslem and Christian, virtuous and guilty? At his door all are seekers and He the sought.

He who is fortunately enlightened [the Sufi]Knows that sophistry is from the devil and love from Adam.

A Sufi is alive to the value of time, and is given, every moment, to what that moment demands.

The great poet Hafiz says that you should dye your prayer-carpet with wine if your teacher tells you to do so.

The Sufi saying has it: "God, to the bee, is something which has TWO stings!

None should say: 'I can trust' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.

In the realm of Greater Understanding, the workshop is dismantled after the work is finished.

Teaching:One hour's teaching is better than a whole night of prayer.Saying of the Prophet

Sufi secrets are perceived, not understood by words.

Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed. They attract you because... they appeal to your greed.

We and all our existences are non-entities. Thou art the absolute being whose appearance is transitory.

Hazrat Ali, in a saying attributed to him, says: ‘Man is in disguise, covered by his tongue’.

Scholars of the East and West have heroically consecrated their whole working lives to making available, by means of their own disciplines, Sufi literary and philosophical material to the world at large. In many cases they have faithfully recorded the Sufis' own reiteration that the Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.

One day the cub will become a wolf, even if it has been reared among the sons of man.

When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge