What About My Wood! 101 Sufi Stories

By Taner Ansari

What About My Wood: 101 Sufi Stories is designed and written to present the authentic, centuries-old Sufi tradition of storytelling to the contemporary readership first-hand, from a living Sufi shaykh, or teacher. This strongly appealing and marketable collection is unique in that it represents the distilled wisdom of a tradition as well as a spiritual teaching method. The stories in What About My Wood are funny, poignant and transformative all at the same time. They provoke thought and inspire contemplation in a simple but powerful way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780984962259

Book preview

What About My Wood!

101 Sufi Stories

The Ayni Ali Baba Tekke of the Qadiri Rifai Tariqa

Istanbul, Turkey

Editors: Es-Sharifa Es-Shaykha Muzeyyen Ansari and Elizabeth Muzeyyen Brown

Cover, Book Design and Illustrations: Elizabeth Muzeyyen Brown

Layout: Elizabeth Muzeyyen Brown with Shaykha Sheila Khadija Foraker and Shaykh Kevin Germain

eBook Editors: Es-Sharifa Es-Shaykha Muzeyyen Ansari and Shaykha Sheila Khadija Foraker

This book does not imply any gender bias by the use of feminine or masculine terms, nouns and/or pronouns.

What About My Wood! 101 Sufi Stories

A Qadiri Rifai Book of The Holy Trail Series

Copyright © by Es-Seyyid Es-Shaykh Taner Ansari Tarsusi er Rifai el Qadiri

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. Requests for permission to make copies of any part of this publication should be mailed to:

Shaykh Taner Ansari c/o Ansari Publications

202 China Hill Road

Nassau, NY 12123 USA

eISBN: 978-0-9849622-5-9

202 China Hill Road, Nassau, New York 12123, USA

[phone]

www.ansaripublications.com

[e-mail]

First eBook edition, 2018

Bismillah er Rahman er Rahim

In the Name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate

For my beloved Shaykh Muhyiddin Ansari

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Being in the Presence of the Shaykh

Editor’s Note

Part One: Traditional Stories

Prophet Abraham in the Fire

How to Pray

Moses and Pharaoh

Unity

Would You Like That Well-Done?

Wheat from Chaff

A Merciful Misrepresentation

Some Teeth for Allah

Don’t Jump

Nothing but Allah

Allah’s Will

Balance Due

Accepting Allah’s Decree

Junayd and Rabia

Beloved Yunus

Only the Sincere Need Apply

A Tale from Mathnawi

The Real Question

Bread

Kismet

Kochek Osman

Be Paid to Learn

A Subtle Hint

Wudu

Ya Wadud

The One and Only Love

Eywallah

Rabita

The Price of Obedience

No Tea for Me

Fast Food

Rain

Trust

Can You Swim?

Who Is Hu?

No Easy Jihad

A Successful Failure

Elephants

Allah’s Thief

Fear and Hope

Milk

Wali in the Country, Wali in the City

Softy-Freeze

How Much Knowledge?

Once More, with Feeling

Dung Beetle

Abdal

Do You Want to Be a Donkey?

Qutb

Go with the Flow

Allah’s Gift

Preventive Medicine

Fate

Death Angel

Ma’abud and Mahmud

The Carpets That Didn’t Fly

No Strings Attached

Ism-i-Azam No. 1

Ism-i-Azam No. 2

The Golden Needles

No Objections

Part Two: Modern Stories

What About My Wood!

Whose Tomb It May Concern

The Biggest Sacrifice

Haji Hamza

Shaytan As Shaykh

A Generous Pilgrim

Heart Is Sultan

Wrong Place, Right Time?

Time to Go

Revelation

Running

Illustrations

Es-Seyyid Es-Shaykh Muhyiddin Ansari

Shaykh Haji Hamza

Shaykh Sabri Hoja

Shaykh Ali Baba

Stories from Ali Baba

Traveling with Your Shaykh

Third Class

A Dervish in Jail

Ali Baba and His Wife

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

A Lesson from Ali Baba

Stories from Qadiri Rifai Shaykhs and Dervishes

Clean or Dirty?

The Cost of Chicken

Love Is Fire

A Pir’s Mercy

Our Prophet’s Hand

Shaykh Muhyiddin Ansari’s Miracle

Shaykh Muhyiddin’s Treasure

Even If Your Shaykh Is Wrong, He Is Right

A Word with the Shaykh

Who Is Me?

Dispatcher of Walis

Who’s Driving?

The Face of the Shaykh

Sheyhim

Ya Hayy

A Car Story

The Well-Protected Dervish

Pay Attention

The Fire Solution

A Test

A Friend in the Cemetery

Acceptance

The Idiot Dervish

Acknowledgement

About the Author

Preface

We learn in three ways. Ilm-al-Yaqin is learning by reading and listening. Ayn-al-Yaqin is learning by observation. Haqq-al-Yaqin is receiving knowledge directly from Allah. Sufis use the telling of the stories as the perfect vehicle to teach lessons on the spiritual path, because a simple story engages all three methods of learning.

Storytelling is a Sufi way of teaching and learning at the same time. Stories are a means to momentary illumination in the realm of observation. They allow us to learn from others and instantly experience an emotion, a reaction.

These stories are true accounts of experiences by Sufis on the spiritual path. Shaykh Taner Ansari has provided most of the stories with a moral lesson as a postscript, though the reader is likely to find many more as s/he reads and contemplates. All thoughtful readers, Sufi or not, will appreciate the wealth of insight derived from these points of contemplation. The author encourages each reader to look within for his/her unique understanding of the stories and, for that reason, has not added points of contemplation to some of the stories.

—Es-Sharifa Es-Shaykha Muzeyyen Ansari

Introduction

Being in the Presence of the Shaykh

The stories in this book are part of the spiritual tradition of Sufism. As the reader moves through them, he or she may find a sense of being carried by a presence that continues beyond the page. One is not merely contemplating these stories but being moved by them.

Far from simple morality plays, they go beyond the heroic spiritual feats of their characters to show humanity in the various stages of its journey to Allah. And they do all this with humor and compassion.

Love is the subject here. The underlying question is, What does it take for a person to change, so that he or she can find love? Allah’s love comes in at least as many forms as there are beings in the universe, especially human beings. Divine love comes through people who are on the journey to find their true beloved. The people on this path are all at different stages or levels, and those who have passed through the levels of the self to realize the presence of Allah in everything are called walis, or friends of Allah. The wali who is assigned to teach others on this path is called a shaykh. All walis are not shaykhs, but all shaykhs are walis.

Sufi stories come from an oral context. That is, they emerge from the environment of a Sufi teaching lineage known as a tariqa. The central element of the tariqa is not a set of doctrines, but a relationship between the shaykh and the students (known as murids, or seekers). Many of the stories in this collection reflect this relationship.

Storytelling and Sufism

Because Sufism is concerned with finding Allah rather than with religious forms, shaykhs often teach with stories rather than with doctrines. Sufi stories come through a tradition in which teachers extend in a lineage all the way back to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). The story form is particularly suited for Sufi teaching, which considers the meaning of religious teaching more important than fixed dogmas and rituals. Without cluttering the mind with such forms, stories can describe the trials of the path of self-purification, and how to pass through them.

The reader will find throughout these stories many foibles that are universal to the human condition. Human flaws, mistakes and ignorance are so lovingly and charmingly woven into the stories that one cannot help but get a sense of the mercy that infuses the robust discipline of the Sufi path. Mistakes and weaknesses are in a way the nuts and bolts of learning for those on the path. One recognizes that one’s own life is told, too, in these stories. In fact, because the stories are rooted in real events in people’s lives, they are an ever expanding index. We know each other through our stories, and through this knowledge of other lives and experiences on the way to Allah, we gain a greater sense of Allah’s reality than we could fathom in our own existence. Because our stories may one day be told to others to help them learn, we find ourselves flowing along as part of a vast river of experience. The meaning is like an unseen presence which we discover and get to know over time.

The stories in this book, and by extension the Sufi path as a whole, are about this sense of presence and connection. The divine presence is manifested and suffuses human reality until the nafs (the human self) is no longer the governing principle of our consciousness. For a Sufi tariqa, or teaching tradition, the teacher or shaykh is the locus and connecting point of the presence.

Just as a story embodies a meaning beyond the plot and characters, the presence of the shaykh, we find, is not simply a physical presence. It is a unified energy field. As you enter this field, your own inner experience is joined with the spiritual bedrock of existence. This connection is referred to in Islam as the rope of Allah. Through this rope, Allah’s presence, in the form of guidance, protection, love and other qualities, is manifested in human beings. Simply put, we know Allah’s attributes by seeing them in what He creates. However, Allah’s essence itself is secret, and is only present in the human spirit, which is breathed into Adam. In the realm of the spirit, all is one. So the presence of the shaykh is experienced as an extension of Allah’s essence through Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and his family, and all his spiritual descendents.

"My servant does not come near me with anything more loved by me than the obligations I have prescribed for him. And my servant does not cease to come near me with voluntary devotions until I love him. And when I love him I become his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he grasps and his foot with which he walks.

—Hadith Qudsi (Holy Narration)

Entering and becoming absorbed in this presence is what Sufism is all about. The genuine Sufi tariqa presents an environment for the divine presence to extend itself and be housed in a heritage of teaching. Its method is a process of gradual inculcation in which a consciousness of oneness and