A Life lesson and story from Baha-ud Din Naqshband

Friends,

At one point in life, I read an enormous amount of books. I was hungry for knowledge and to find answer. What I learned changed my life completely but it wasnt until I reached a point where I wanted to not just know the truth but feel it resonate within me.   Though I still read a lot its under a totally different compulsion and reason. But enjoy these words from Baha ud Din Naqshband.

Shah Baha ud Din Naqshband

If I give out an empty book, meaning, ‘You cannot yet profit from my book’, you will perhaps think, ‘He is insulting me.’

But if I give out a full and understandable book, all readers will take its superficialities for their stimulation exclaiming ‘how magnificent, how profound.’ People will follow these outward things after I am gone, making them a source of stimulation and debate. They will read didactics into them, or poetry, exercises or stories.

If I give out no books, or a small one, scholars will scoff and ruin the minds of potential and vulnerable students with alternative literature, even more than they do at present.

Baffled students become destructive, imagining solutions and then trying to impose them upon others.

If I give out a large book, some people will imagine that it is pretentious. All these suppositions are there, you notice, because the suit the people to have them, not because they are even likely to be true.    

If I give out a cryptic book, people will imagine that it contains strange secrets. Or they may become unnecessarily artful through trying to understand it.

And the more that you say these things, the more people petulantly or with disdain say: ‘You do not understand us. We have no such behavior. The lack of understanding is with you.’

But if I say all these things, and you will look at all of them, even for a time, giving each statement equal attention, I shall be content.