“The most powerful storyteller these kids have ever heard”
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07 May 17
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“What an incredible way to close DA’s Authors Week. Aubrey Davis is the most powerful storyteller these kids have ever heard.” Jocelyn Harrison, Teacher Librarian D.A. Morrison Middle School, Toronto
Find Aubrey on Facebook…
Because the average person thinks in patterns and cannot accommodate himself to a really different point of view, he loses a great deal of the meaning of life. He may live, even progress, but he cannot understand all that is going on. The story of the smuggler makes this very clear:
Nasrudin used to take his donkey across a frontier every day, with the panniers loaded with straw. Since he admitted to being a smuggler when he trudged home every night, the frontier guards searched him again and again. They searched his person, sifted the straw, steeped it in water, even burned it from time to time. Meanwhile he was becoming visibly more and more prosperous.
Then he retired and went to live in another country. Here one of the customs officers met him, years later.
"You can tell me now, Nasrudin," he said. "Whatever was it that you were smuggling, when we could never catch you out?"
"Donkeys," said Nasrudin.
This story also emphasizes one of the major contentions of Sufism — that preternatural experience and the mystical goal is something nearer to mankind than is realized. The assumption that something esoteric or transcendental must be far off or complicated has been assumed by the ignorance of individuals. And that kind of individual is the least qualified to judge the matter. It is "far off" only in a direction which he does not realize.
The Sufis
Paperback, eBook, audiobook, and Free online book, here:
idriesshahfoundation.org/books/the-sufis/
With the support of local tribal leaders, Matiullah Wesa and Attaullah Wesa of #penpath helped open a school in Arghastan District of #Kandahar In an area where there is little literacy, boys and girls will now have the opportunity to attend school.
Each week we use our #BookoftheWeek to dive deep into our personal library and provide a peek into the books we are sharing with our learners.
This week's Book of the Week is "The Farmer's Wife" by Idries Shah with Illustrations by Rose Mary Santiago.
"For more than 30 years Idries Shah's collections of teaching stories and narratives have captivated the hearts and minds of people from all walks of life. The Farmer's Wife and how she retrieves an apple from a hole in the ground is one of the many stories for children. For over a thousand years it has entertained young people who join in the chant of this cumulative tale and, at the same time, learn its valuable lessons about the nature of problem-solving and discovering."
"The Famer's Wife" will engage the reader with bright, distinct style while they get caught in the rhythm. Go on, give it a try!
#children #books #reading #learning Idries Shah #RoseMarySantiago
Reality and Imagination
Q: Are people really as stupid as the Sufis make out? If they were, how could society function as well as it does? How can one test whether people really do behave in such an absurd manner as some of the people in Sufi stories and teaching narratives do?
A: People really are as stupid as the Sufis make out. Society works as well as it does because not everyone is stupid all the time. The Sufi enterprise helps them by showing up stupidity to forestall its appearance at times when it blocks understanding. There is little need to test whether people really do behave as the ones in stories and narratives, because the newspapers are full of accounts of this behaviour, and hence it is displayed everywhere all the time. You do not need, after all, to ‘test’ whether a cherry is red – you can see it easily, once you know what red is.
There are, however, many people who like for one reason or another to demonstrate human stupidity. Jaroslav Hasek (author of The Good Soldier Schweik) was one of these. He wrote an article in a zoological journal, which was highly thought of, asserting that elephants liked recorded music while tigers did not. When he published a treatise on prehistoric fossilized fleas, it was such a success that many European learned journals reprinted it. When he advertised ‘thoroughbred werewolves’ for sale, he was inundated with orders for them. He put on a police uniform and told the Rector of a Prague Academy that he was under arrest, whereupon the man obediently followed him to a police station.
By these means Hasek showed that people will obey the symbols of authority, that they accept what is written in academic journals, that they will accept even ‘werewolves’ if they are offered them, that they will publish tripe at the drop of a hat.
And may I ask you a question? If people were not as stupid as they are made out to be, would they tolerate the kinds of individuals and organisations which exploit them? Who votes for the lying and improbable politicians who, remember, actually rule over so many of us?
Seeker After Truth
Read the book, online, for free:
idriesshahfoundation.org/books/seeker-after-truth/