March 26, 2015
This king entrusted his son to a team of learned scholars. In due course, they taught him the sciences of astrology, geomancy, and the interpretation of signs, until he became a complete master, despite his utter stupidity and dullness of wit.
One day the king took a ring in his fist and put his son to the test.
“Come, tell me what I am holding in my fist.”
“What you are holding is round, yellow, inscribed and hollow,” the prince answered.
“You have given all the signs correctly,” the king said. “Now say what it is.”
“It must be a sieve,” the prince replied. [* A sieve is a food strainer.]
“What?” cried the king. “You know all the minute details, which would baffle the minds of anyone. How is it that out of all your powerful learning and knowledge, the small point has escaped you that a sieve will not fit in a fist?”
In this same way, the great scholars of the age split hairs on details of all matters. They know perfectly and completely those sciences that do not concern Soul. But as for what is truly of importance and touches us more closely than anything else, namely our own Self, this your great scholars do not know. They make statements about everything, saying, “This is true and that is not true.
This is right and that is wrong.” Yet, they do not know their own Self, whether it is true or false, pure or impure.
(adapted from Fihi Ma Fihi,
translated by A.J. Arberry, p. 31 - 32)
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There is a great danger when spirituality and religion get reduced to stuff of the mind. It is not that the mind or the “mindstuff” are the problem, rather our use (or misuse) of these are at issue. Many spiritual people will set off in quest of “knowledge,” stuff to be known on the level of the mind: namely, the five senses and the “thinking” part of the mind that organizes what is perceived. This can include facts, rites, ceremonies, conceptual understandings of scripture and teachings. But to what end is this mindstuff being used? How is such being applied? Are these being pursued as goals unto themselves that sustain our ego / mind-based ignorance and the false self we contrive from such? Or are these genuinely being used to come to know our true Self, the Absolute? We can use the above story as a means to explore these questions.
The story begins with the king entrusting his son to a team of learned scholars. Some interpret the king (or sovereign) to be the spiritual master who takes on the duty of caring for its disciples like a dutiful parent. Others interpret the king to be the Beloved, we being Its created children. In either case, we are entrusted by our “spiritual” parent to “learned scholars” of this world. We need not limit scholars to just humans: whether through a teacher or other means, there are things for us to learn from this world, even for those on mystic paths.
Sometimes this includes sciences based on accumulated studies of this world or sometimes direct study of the world itself. For example, a river is a master “scholar” of the science of being a river and there are things we can learn from rivers (e.g. how it flows) that can support our spiritual unfolding. Also, just because we have things to learn from this world doesn’t mean we need to amass great volumes of knowledge: sometimes a little worldly knowledge will suffice.
The spiritual purpose of this learning is not for the sake of the learning itself, rather to support us coming to know our true Self, the Beloved. Note that Jalaal ud-Diin Rumi mentions the son’s utter stupidity and dullness of wit: this description applies to most humans, but not in the insulting manner we tend to use these words nowadays. Anyone who does not live the awareness of “knowing” (direct “experience” of the Beloved) would be regarded as stupid and dull-witted in Sufi terms -- let’s call it ignorance. And most of us ignore the Beloved, the only Reality that is, even if there are points of acknowledgment within our living. Ignorance affords us a sacred opportunity: only by being unknown can the Beloved can be known (or known again) and we experience the wonder and liberation of such (re)discovery. Then life is transformed as we live unendingly in the presence of the Beloved, a state that goes beyond ignorance and acknowledgment. Even the prophets and saints transgress through ignorance to arrive at remembrance to then deepen into the unending presence (of the Beloved) through which their service unfolds. Sciences are tools that can be used to move from ignorance to remembrance: particularly through cultivating and purifying the mind, since such a mind ceases to be a barrier to