Story No. 126
Who is the teacher?
A disciple asked Nasrudin: 'How did you become a spiritual teacher?' 'We all know what we should do with our lives, but we always reject it,' replied Nasrudin. 'In order to understand that truth, I had to go through a rather strange experience. One day, I was sitting by the roadside wondering what to do, when a man came over and stood in front of me. To get rid of him, I made a gesture, and he copied me. That amused me, so I made another gesture, which he again imitated, but this time adding another. Then we started to sing and to do all kindsof exercises. I felt better and better and I came to really love my new companion. A few weeks passed and one day I asked him: 'Tell me, Teacher, what should I do next?' And the man replied: 'But I thought you were the teacher!'
Story No. 127
A saint in the wrong place
'Why is it that some people can resolve the most complicated problems really easily, whilst others agonise over every tiny crisis and end up drowning in a glass of water?' I asked. Ramesh replied by telling the following story: 'Once upon a time, there was a man who had been the soul of kindness all his life. When he died, everyone assumed that he would go straight to Heaven, for the only possible place for a good man like him was Paradise. The man wasn't particularly bothered about going to Heaven, but that was where he went. Now in those days, service in heaven was not all that it might be. The reception desk was extremely inefficient, and the girl who received him gave only a cursory glance through the index cards before her and when she couldn't find the man's name, she sent him straight to Hell. And in Hell no one asks to check your badge or your invitation, for anyone who turns up is invited in. The man entered and stayed… Some days later, Lucifer stormed up to the gates of Heaven to demand an explanation from St Peter. "What you're doing is pure terrorism!" he said. St Peter asked why Lucifer was so angry, and an enraged Lucifer replied: "You sent that man down into Hell, and he's completely undermining me! Right from the start, there he was listening to people, looking them in the eye, talking to them. And now everyone's sharing their feelings and hugging and kissing. That's not the sort of thing I want in Hell! Please, let him into Heaven!' When Ramesh had finished telling the story, he looked at me fondly and said: 'Live your life with so much love in your heart that if, by mistake, you were sent to Hell, the Devil himself would deliver you up to Paradise.'
Story No. 128
I can't get in
Near Olite, in Spain, there is a ruined castle. I decide to visit the place and as I am standing there before it, a man at the door says: 'You can't come in.' My intuition tells me that he is saying this for the pure pleasure of saying 'No'. I explain that I've come a long way, I try offering him a tip, I try being nice, I point out that this is, after all, a ruined castle…suddenly, going into that castle has become very important to me. 'You can't come in,' the man says again. There is only one alternative: to carry on and see if he will physically prevent me from going in. I walk towards the door. He looks at me, but does nothing. As I am leaving, two other tourists arrive and they too walk in. The old man does not try to stop them. I feel as if, thanks to my resistance, the old man has decided to stop inventing ridiculous rules. Sometimes the world asks us to fight for things we do not understand and whose significance we will never discover.
Story No. 129
Wings and roots
'Blessed is he who gives his children wings and roots,' says a proverb. We need roots. There is a place in the world where we are born, where we learn a language, where we discover how our ancestors overcame their problems. At a given point, we become responsible for that place. We need wings. They show us the endless horizons of the imagination, they carry us towards our dreams, they lead us to distant places. They are the wings that allow us to know the roots of our fellow human beings and to learn from them. Blessed is he who has wings and roots,and wretched is he who only has one of the two.
Story No. 130
Just passing through
An American tourist went to Cairo to visit the famous Polish rabbi Hafez Ayim. The tourist was surprised to see that the rabbi lived in a simple, book-lined room, in which the only pieces of furniture were a table and a bench. 'Rabbi, where's all your furniture?' asked the tourist. 'Why, where's yours?' retorted Hafez. 'Mine? But I'm just passing through.' 'So am I,' said the rabbi.
Continued...