Conversation in heaven

Abd Mubarak was on his way to Mecca when one night he dreamed that he was in heaven and heard two angels having a conversation.
"How many pilgrims came to the holy city this year?" one of them asked.
"Six hundred thousand", answered the other.
"And how many of them had their pilgrimage accepted?"
"None of them. However, in Baghdad there is a shoemaker called Ali Mufiq who did not make the pilgrimage, but did have his pilgrimage accepted, and his graces benefited the 600,000 pilgrims".
When he woke up, Abd Mubarak went to Mufiq’s shoe shop and told him his dream.
"At great cost and much sacrifice, I finally managed to get 350 coins together", the shoemaker said in tears. "But then, when I was ready to go to Mecca I discovered that my neighbors were hungry, so I distributed the money among them and gave up my pilgrimage".


The beggar and the monk

A monk was meditating in the desert when a beggar came up to him and said:
"I need to eat".
The monk – who was almost reaching the point of perfect harmony with the spiritual world – did not answer.
"I need to eat", insisted the beggar.
"Go to the town and ask someone else. Can’t you see that you are bothering me? I am trying to communicate with the angels”.
"God placed himself lower than men, washed their feet, gave His life, and no-one recognized Him", the beggar replied. "He who says he loves God – who does not see – and forgets his brother - who does – is lying".
And the beggar turned into an angel.
"What a pity, you almost made it", he remarked before leaving.

The enemy without
My reader Murali from India tells the story of a girl who decided to climb a mountain to visit her grandmother. It was pouring with rain, a cold wind was blowing, and thunder rolled at each second.
When she was almost reaching her destination, she felt something brushing against her feet. Looking down, she saw that it was a snake.
“I’m almost dying,” said the snake. “It’s very cold and there’s no food up here on this mountain, please protect me! Put me under your coat, save my life, and I will be your best friend.”
Despite the storm, the girl stopped and began to reflect. She saw the snake’s green and gold skin and told herself that she had never seen anything so beautiful. She thought how her classmates would envy her if she showed up with a snake to defend her from everything. Finally she said:
“All right. I am going to save you because all living beings deserve care and affection.”
The snake became the girl’s friend, served to scare aggressive people at school, and kept her company on lonely days. Until one night when she was doing her homework and she felt a sharp pain in her right foot. On looking down, she saw that the snake had bitten her.
“You’re poisonous!” she cried. “I’m going to die!”
The snake said nothing.
“How could you do this to me? I saved your life!”
“On that day, when you bent down to save me, you knew I was a snake, didn’t you?”
And he slithered slowly away.

A man in quest of sanctity decided to climb a high mountain with just the clothes on his back and remain up there meditating for the rest of his life.

Soon he realized that one set of clothes was not enough, because it would get dirty very quick. He descended the mountain, went to the nearest village and asked for other clothes. Since everyone knew that the man was in quest of sanctity, they handed him a new pair of shoes and a shirt.

The man thanked them and climbed back up to the hermitage he was building on the top of the mountain. He spent the night putting up the walls and the days in meditation, eating the fruit of the trees and drinking the water of a nearby spring.

One month later he discovered that a mouse was chewing the extra clothes he had left to dry. Since he wanted to concentrate only on his spiritual duty, he went back down to the village and asked them to find him a cat.

The villagers, in respect for his mission, satisfied his request.

Another seven days and the cat was almost dying of starvation because it could not eat just fruit, and there were no more mice in the place. He went back down to the village for milk; as the villagers knew it was not for him – after all, he resisted without eating anything other than what nature offered him - once more they helped him.

The cat finished the milk quickly, so the man asked them to lend him a cow.

Since the cow gave more milk than was needed, he began to drink it too, so as not to waste it. In a short time – breathing the mountain air, eating fruit, meditating, drinking milk and doing exercises – he turned into a model of beauty. A lovely girl who climbed the mountain looking for her lamb fell in love with him and convinced him that he needed a wife to look after the house while he meditated in peace.

The man spent three days fasting, trying to know which was the best decision to make. Finally he understood that marriage is a blessing from above, and accepted the proposal.

Three years later, the man was married, with two sons, three cows, an orchard of fruit trees, and he ran a place for meditation, with a huge waiting line of people who wanted to know the miraculous “temple of eternal youth.”

When someone asked him how all that had started, he would say:

“Two weeks after I arrived up here, I had only two garments. A mouse began to chew one of them, and...”

But no-one was interested in the end of the story; they were sure that he was a wise businessman just trying to invent a legend to be able to raise even higher the price he charged the lodgers at the temple.

But like a good Warrior of Light, he did not bother about what others thought; he was happy because he was able to transform his dreams into reality.

Rebuilding the world
A father was trying to read the newspaper, but his little son kept pestering him. Finally, the father grew tired of this and, tearing a page from the newspaper - one that bore a map of the world - he cut it into several pieces and handed them to his son. 'Right, now you've got something to do. I've given you a map of the world and I want to see if you can put it back together correctly.' He resumed his reading, knowing that the task would keep the child occupied for the rest of the day. However, a quarter of an hour later, the boy returned with the map. 'Has your mother been teaching you
geography?' asked his father in astonishment. 'I don't even know what that is,' replied the boy. 'But there was a photo of a man on the other side of the page, so I put the man back together and found I'd put the world back together too.'

Thinking about death
Zilu said to Confucius (a Chinese philosopher, who lived in the sixth century B.C.):
'May I ask what you think about death?' 'You may ask,' replied Confucius, 'but if
you still don't understand life, why do you want to know about death. Leave thinking about death for when life is over.'

Paying the right price
Nixivan had invited his friends to supper and was cooking a succulent piece of meat for them. Suddenly, he realised that he had run out of salt. So Nixivan called to his son. 'Go to the village and buy some salt, but pay a fair price for it: neither too much nor too little.'
His son was surprised.
'I can understand why I shouldn’t pay too much for it, Father, but if I can bargain them down, why not save a bit of money?' 'That would be the sensible thing to do in a big city, but it could destroy a small village like ours.'
When Nixivan's guests, who had overheard their conversation, wanted to know why they should not buy salt more cheaply if they could, Nixivan replied:
'The only reason a man would sell salt more cheaply than usual would be because he was desperate for money. And anyone who took advantage of that situation would be showing a lack of respect for the sweat and struggle of the man who laboured to produce it.' 'But such a small thing couldn't possibly destroy a village.' 'In the beginning, there was only a small amount of injustice abroad in the world, but everyone who came afterwards added their
portion, always thinking that it was only very small and unimportant, and look where we have ended up today.'