Teaching Stories

I carry around in my head several stories that I consult from time to time. The sufi stories about the Mulla Nasrudin are some of my most prized possessions. What is interesting about these stories is that they are like onions. Over the years of thinking about them, they keep revealing layer after layer of meaning. Their first layer will pop to mind instantly. But if you keep thinking about them, you may be surprised how valuable they are in revealing more and more. Here's one of my favorites:

A man was walking home late one night when he saw the Mulla Nasrudin searching under a street light on hands and knees for something on the ground. "Mulla, what have you lost?" he asked.

"The key to my house," Nasrudin said.

"I'll help you look," the man said.

Soon, both men were down on their knees, looking for the key.

After a number of minutes, the man asked, "Where exactly did you drop it?"

Nasrudin waved his arm back toward the darkness. "Over there, in my house."

The first man jumped up. "Then why are you looking for it here?"

"Because there is more light here than inside my house."

A few things this may suggest...

• Looking outside for something that is inside ("for if what you seek you find not within, you will never find it without.")
• Looking for answers in places we know because at least there we will recognize them
• The question from his "helper" could be very revealing if he actually thought about it; instead he already had an obvious answer
• How the mind creates illusions, which then pass for reasonable behavior
• How we sometimes focus on what's easy rather than what's right and rationalize it to ourselves
• Others?