1
In a village where everyone has only one leg, the biped will hop about more lamely than anyone else, if he knows what is good for him.Idries Shah
2
One day we will all wear a garment which has no pockets...Idries Shah
3
Wisdom is when you understand what, previously, at best you only knew.Idries Shah
4
SAYING OF SHEIKH ZIAUDIN:Self-justification is worse than the original offence.Idries Shah
5
It is not Sufism if it does not perform its function for you. A cloak is no longer a cloak if it does not keep a man warm.Idries Shah
6
If wine is the enemy of religion, I shall devour the enemy of religion.Idries Shah
7
The function of a nutrient is to become transmuted, not to leave unaltered traces.Idries Shah
8
Haste is from the Devil.Idries Shah
9
Fettered feet in the presence of friends is better than living in a garden with strangers.Idries Shah
10
If you really want to learn, do not be surprised if someone tries to teach you. And do not lightly reject the method.Idries Shah
11
Most people, whatever their opinions and protestations, do not want to learn.Idries Shah
12
One of the basic Sufi needs is to enable people to see themselves as they really are.Idries Shah
13
The Sufi teacher’s mission is to be in the service of those who can learn.Idries Shah
14
The teacher works in accordance with the prospects of his students and the possibility of maintaining the community of Sufis.Idries Shah
15
The Sufis regard systems which treat everyone alike as mechanical and degenerate.Idries Shah
16
The candle burned the moth: But soon it will vanish in its own fat.Idries Shah
17
Yes, the world is an illusion. But Truth is always being shown there.Idries Shah
18
If you want special illumination, look upon the human face: See clearly within laughter the Essence of Ultimate Truth.Idries Shah
19
The question of divine knowledge is so deep that it is really known only to those who have it.Idries Shah
20
It is your duty to do your best. It is not, however, your birth-right to prevail.Idries Shah
21
A man must be a Solomon before his magical ring will workIdries Shah
22
Any society which enjoins its members to adhere to both of these (politeness and truth) is a fraud.Idries Shah
23
A man must be a Salomon before his magical ring will work. (Hafiz)Idries Shah
24
Imagination blocks you like a bolt on a door. Burn that bar. (Rumi)Idries Shah
25
Our objective is to achieve, by the understanding of the Origin, the Knowledge which comes through experience.Idries Shah
26
ScrapsThe scraps from the meal of the Emir are larger than the gifts of halwa from the merchant. Timur FazilIdries Shah
27
As swords were designed to kill They did well to make them tongue-shaped.( Anwar-i- Suhaili)Idries Shah
28
Superior experience and knowledge will be made available to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth, capacity and earning of itIdries Shah
29
Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.Idries Shah
30
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.Idries Shah
31
Three ThingsThree things cannot be retrieved: The arrow once sped from the bow The word spoken in haste The missed opportunity.( Ali the Lion, Caliph of Islam, son-in-law of Mohammed the Prophet),Idries Shah
32
Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.Idries Shah
33
Knowledge is something which you can use. Belief is something which uses you.Idries Shah
34
Sufism, " according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure.Idries Shah
35
Religion, for instance, cannot be accepted or rejected out of hand, until the student knows exactly what religion means.Idries Shah
36
People in this civilization are starving in the middle of plenty. This is a civilization that is going down, not because it hasn't got the knowledge that would save it, but because nobody will use the knowledge.Idries Shah
37
Knowledge cannot be attained except through humility.Idries Shah
38
Knowledge gives nothing to a man until he gives everything to it.Idries Shah
39
Sufis (the name for the realised individual, not the learner or follower) are reunited with objective Reality and Unity.Idries Shah
40
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaFlattery:One of the most promising of businesses: always brisk.Idries Shah
41
The teaching must, of course, work with the best part of the individual, must be directed to his or her real capacity.Idries Shah
42
The clothes may vary, but the person is the same.Idries Shah
43
Why did I do such-and-such a thing?' is all very well. But what about 'How otherwise could I have done it?'.Idries Shah
44
Is your division of Understanding into Greater and Lesser common to all Sufis? Nothing which is put into words is common to all Sufis.Idries Shah
45
If you assume that it is there, you will generally not be far off the truth.Idries Shah
46
Man thinks many things. He thinks he is One. He is usually several. Until he becomes One, he cannot have a fair idea of what he is at all.Idries Shah
47
Correct teaching brings out human excellence.Idries Shah
48
Sufis deny the absolute reality of time, space and physical form. These things are both relative and local. They only appear to be absolute.Idries Shah
49
The Sufi saying has it: "God, to the bee, is something which has TWO stings!Idries Shah
50
The object of Sufi preparatory study, however, being to illustrate, expose and out-manoeuvre superficial ambition.Idries Shah
51
Right time, right place, right people equals success. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.Idries Shah
52
History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.Idries Shah
53
What is humanity? To feel pain at the sorrows of our neighbours, to feel humiliated at the humiliation of fellow-beings.Idries Shah
54
Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza.Poverty: The result of marriage.Idries Shah
55
A man's capacity is the same as his breadth of vision.Idries Shah
56
A donkey eats a melon, it remains a donkeyIdries Shah
57
Words, they say, are the food of minds. But, like other foods, they can do little by themselves.Idries Shah
58
When the mind is full of established biases, it will not be able to graft Sufism on top of them.Idries Shah
59
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaEmotionalist:A man or woman who thinks he has experienced the divine.Idries Shah
60
You call me an unbeliever. I shall therefore call you a True Believer since a lie is best met with one of similar magnitude.Idries Shah
61
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaIntellectual: One who knows no craft.Idries Shah
62
People who cannot trust are themselves not trustworthy, and therefore cannot be entrusted with important things.Idries Shah
63
Patience is the food of understanding.Idries Shah
64
You fear tomorrow: yet yesterday is just as dangerous.Idries Shah
65
Saadi’s dictum, in the Bostan: ‘The Path is not in the rosary, the prayer-mat and the robeIdries Shah
66
The existence of relative truth does not prove the non-existence of universal truth.Idries Shah
67
When people believe that the form is more important than the Truth, they will not find truth, but will stay with form.Idries Shah
68
Remember that greed includes greed for being not greedy.Idries Shah
69
There is a saying that, according to what a person's mentality is, even an angel may seem to him to have a devil's face.Idries Shah
70
Learning how to learn involves examining assumptions. Mulla Nasrudin tales very often fulfil this funcition.Idries Shah
71
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.Idries Shah
72
It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.Idries Shah
73
The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.Idries Shah
74
Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.Idries Shah
75
If you seek small things to do, and do them well, great things will seek you, and demand to be performed.Idries Shah
76
Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.Idries Shah
77
Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.Idries Shah
78
The institution of teachership is there for this reason, that the learner must learn how to learn.Idries Shah
79
If I knew what two and two were — I would say Four!Idries Shah
80
They asked Abboud of Omdurman: 'Which is better, to be young or to be old?' He said: 'To be old is to have less time before you and more mistakes behind. I leave you to decide whether this is better than the reverse.Idries Shah
81
It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeedIdries Shah
82
The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers. The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this.Idries Shah
83
There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons.Idries Shah
84
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)Idries Shah
85
Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the "veils" which have to be dissolved in the mind.Idries Shah
86
Saying of the ProphetDesireDesire not the world, and God will love you. Desire not what others have, and they will love you.Idries Shah
87
Two people can illustrate crudity to you. The first is the crude man, whom you see perceiving the diamond as a stone. The other is the refined man, who makes clear to you the crudity of the first one.Idries Shah
88
The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the approximate and the Real.Idries Shah
89
The Sufis, ' runs the saying, 'understand with their hearts what the most learned scholars cannot understand with their mindsIdries Shah
90
When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.Idries Shah
91
Ali, Son of the Father of the SeekerAli said: 'None may arrive at the Truth until he is able to think that the Path itself may be wrong. This is because those who can only believe that it must be right are not believers, but people who are incapable of thinking otherwise than they already think. Such people are not men at all. Like animals they must follow certain beliefs, and during this time they cannot learn. Because they cannot be called “humanity”, they cannot arrive at the Truth.Idries Shah
92
Almost every day I am reminded of Saadi's reflection that there is no senseless tyranny like that of subordinates.Idries Shah
93
Inheritance and culture obscure people’s higher capacities.Idries Shah
94
Be a dog, but don't be a younger brother. Proverb.Idries Shah
95
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaBribe Substitute for law, which is a substitute for justice.Idries Shah
96
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaSupporter: Someone who will say anything.Idries Shah
97
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaAdherent:Someone who will believe anything except what he should.Idries Shah
98
Causes: As important a fact as any individual cause on earth is the vital incapacity of the human individual to distinguish between genuine cause and one which is foisted upon him by pressure, environment, propaganda, conditioning. If people had the sense they pretend to have, they would seek this fundamental distinction perceptible. Hardly anyone makes this effort. This is partly because it is an invisible but powerful part of their culture to teach that conditioned emotionality and ‘causes’ whose necessity, urgency or rightness is only conditioned into them, are necessarily, right. .Idries Shah
99
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaPatience: A support for the disappointed.Idries Shah
100
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaCommunity: Irrationals unified by hope of the impossible.Idries Shah