Idries Shah Quotes

Biography

Type: Writer, Publisher

Born: 16 June 1924, Simla, India

Died: 23 November 1996 (aged 72), London, UK

Idries Shah also known as Idris Shah, and by the pen name Arkon Daraul, was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition who wrote over three dozen books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies.

Idries Shah Quotes

Saying of the Prophet
Food
Nobody has eaten better food than that won by his own labour.

In the realm of Greater Understanding, the workshop is dismantled after the work is finished.. Idries
In the realm of Greater Understanding, the workshop is dismantled after the work is finished.

You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long
You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to do, and you do know what that means.

Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.. Idries
Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.

The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the
The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the approximate and the Real.

You call me an unbeliever. I shall therefore call you a True Believer since a lie
You call me an unbeliever. I shall therefore call you a True Believer since a lie is best met with one of similar magnitude.

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza Poverty: The result of marriage.. Idries Shah
Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza
Poverty: The result of marriage.

Even if false gold makes a man happy: At the mint it will be identified.. Idries
Even if false gold makes a man happy:
At the mint it will be identified.

Opportunity's precious, and time is a sword.. Idries Shah
Opportunity's precious, and time is a sword.

THE BIRD AND THE WATER A bird which has not heard of fresh water Dips his
THE BIRD AND THE WATER
A bird which has not heard of fresh water
Dips his beak in salt-water year after year.
(Anwar-i-Suhaili)

THE HEAVENS To the mallet of the Highest Mind The heavens are the smallest possible ball.
THE HEAVENS
To the mallet of the Highest Mind
The heavens are the smallest possible ball.
(Akhlaq-i-Mohsini)

Knowledge. How curious that a man who closes his hand upon air so often thinks that
Knowledge. How curious that a man who closes his hand upon air so often thinks that he has a ruby within his grasp.

From the beginning, from the age of Adam to the time of kingship: from the powerful,
From the beginning, from the age of Adam to the time of kingship: from the powerful, pardon: from the poor, sins.

Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.

The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all. Ibn Arabi.. Idries Shah
The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all." Ibn Arabi.

Saying of the Prophet The Bequest I have nothing to leave you except my family.. Idries
Saying of the Prophet
The Bequest
I have nothing to leave you except my family.

Saying of the Prophet Love Do you think you love your Creator? Love your fellow-creature first..
Saying of the Prophet
Love
Do you think you love your Creator? Love your fellow-creature first.

Sufism is, in fact, not a mystical system, not a religion, but a body of knowledge..
Sufism is, in fact, not a mystical system, not a religion, but a body of knowledge.

A loan is the scissors of friendship. A man's own tongue may cut his throat. The
A loan is the scissors of friendship.
A man's own tongue may cut his throat.
The cage has no value without the bird.

Learn about hornets from those who have been stung by them.. Idries Shah
Learn about hornets from those who have been stung by them.

Saying of the Prophet
Oppression
When oppression exists, even the bird dies in its nest.

Saying of the Prophet
Women
Women are the twin-halves of men.

Saying of the Prophet
Privacy
Whoever invades people´s privacy corrupts them.

Saying of the Prophet
Reflection
The Faithful are mirrors, one to the other.

Distribuzione
E’ Dio che dà, io sono solo un distributore.

Three Things
Three things cannot be retrieved:
The arrow once sped from the bow
The word spoken in haste
The missed opportunity.

(Ali the Lion, Caliph of Islam, son-in-law of Mohammed the Prophet),

Saying of the Prophet
Some behaviour
I am like a man who has lighted a fire, and all the creeping things have rushed to burn themselves in it.

Saying of the Prophet.
Lies, promises, trust
He is not of mine who lies, breaks a promise or fails in his trust.

Saying of the Prophet
Understanding
Speak to everyone in accordance with his degree of understanding.

Saying of the Prophet
Ink and Blood
The ink of the learned is holier than the blood of the martyr.

Saying of the Prophet
Anger
You ask for a piece of advice. I tell you: 'Do not get angry.' He is strong who can withhold anger.

Saying of the Prophet
Envy
Envy devours good deeds, as a fire devours fuel.

Teaching
One hour's teaching is better than a whole night of prayer.

Saying of the Prophet
Monkishness
No monkery in Islam.

Day and Night
The night is long: do not shorten it by sleep. The day is fair: do not darken it with wrongdoing.

Saying of the Prophet
Humility
Humility and courtesy are themselves a part of piety.

Helping others
I order you to assist any oppressed person, whether he is a Moslem or not.

Saying of the Prophet
Distribution
God it is who gives: I am only a distributor.

… the Sufi attitude is: ‘Let the real truth, whatever it may be, be revealed to me’.

The existence of relative truth does not prove the non-existence of universal truth.

The Sufis,' runs the saying, 'understand with their hearts what the most learned scholars cannot understand with their minds

If you cannot laugh frequently and genuinely, you have no soul.

A Sufi is alive to the value of time, and is given, every moment, to what that moment demands.

All forms are limited. Some of the limitations are time, place, culture, language.

They say: 'Seek wisdom while you have the strength, or you may lose the strength without gaining wisdom.

You fear tomorrow: yet yesterday is just as dangerous.

However fast you run, or however skilfully, you can’t run away from your own feet.

They asked Abboud of Omdurman: 'Which is better, to be young or to be old?' He said: 'To be old is to have less time before you and more mistakes behind. I leave you to decide whether this is better than the reverse.

The important place held by Jesus among the world's six hundred million Moslems... and the agreement of both religions about the necessity for surrender to God as the means of salvation, thus makes it comparatively easy for a Moslem to address himself to Christians: the sympathy and the history are already there.

From imperial, economic and ideological causes, many cultures are the inheritors, and hence the prisoners, of attitudes of scorn and disdain for other faiths – outlooks which are not ennobling to anyone.

… when we are talking about 'Christians' and 'Moslems' we must first make sure that we are talking about people who have an idea, which should be more or less correct, as to what the other is supposed to believe and what he is expected to do as a consequence of that belief.

These lecture provide material for the consideration of common factors, in theory and in development, from the viewpoint of the idea of surrender to the Divine Will, reviewing some aspects of the interplay between Christians and Moslems, and introducing material from and about Sufis.

Many people who are in reality dead are walking in the streets; many who are in their graves are in reality alive.

When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.

Dramatic. A well developed sense of the dramatic has values beyond what people usually imagine. One of these is to realise the limitations of a sense of the dramatic.

People used to play with toys.
Now the toys play with them.

It is not always a question of the Emperor having no clothes on. Sometimes it is, 'Is that an Emperor at all?

Two people can illustrate crudity to you.
The first is the crude man, whom you see perceiving the diamond as a stone.
The other is the refined man, who makes clear to you the crudity of the first one.

I have heard all that you have had to say to me on your problems.
You ask me what to do about them.
It is my view that your real problem is that you are a member of the human race.
Face that one first.

There can be no spirituality, according to the Sufi masters, without psychology, psychological insight and sociological balance.

Like the bat, the Sufi is asleep to 'things of the day' - the familiar struggle for existence which the ordinary man finds all-important - and vigilant while others are asleep. In other words, he keeps awake the spiritual attention dormant in others. That 'mankind sleeps in a nightmare of unfulfillment' is a commonplace of Sufi literature

History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.

it was being written in the East that 'Sufism was formerly a reality without a name: now it is a name without a reality'.

The means through which people may perceive Truth have forms; Truth has no form.

Forms have changed through the centuries in obedience to the external world to which all forms belong.

Right time, right place, right people equals success.
Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.

But the minimum human duty is to serve others: it is no great attainment.

Premature independence is the daughter of conceit.

The word 'choice' is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose.

An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn't changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before.

A short time in the presence of the Friends (the Sufis) is better than a hundred years’ sincere, obedient dedication.

If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!

That which is capable of perceiving objective reality is, in Sufism, the human soul (ruh).

Forms are vehicles and instruments, and vehicles and instruments cannot be called good or bad without context.

Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed. They attract you because... they appeal to your greed.

...most systems end up by making imagined humility into a form of vanity, so they end up with vanity just the same.

You say that this society will come to an end, because societies always have done so.
I wonder whether they have ended because they were not really societies at all.

The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.

Because sugar is not arsenic, many graves are full.

Patience is bitter, but bears a sweet fruit.

If you have no troubles – buy a goat.

Poor greedy one, wherever he runs
He's after food, and death is after him.
(Saadi)

Patience is a garment which has never worn out.

What you are seeking in your retreat, I see clearly in every road and alleyway.

People who cannot trust are themselves not trustworthy, and therefore cannot be entrusted with important things.

Question 3: Why should a person study Sufism?
Answer: Because he was created to study it; it is his next step.

The tongue is the best masseur of furrowed brows.

The barren branches may appear inelegant: They are, to the cook, the means to make his fire.

Patience is the food of understanding.

Sufism, they say, is that which enables one to understand religion, irrespective of its current outward form.

The lightning said to the oak tree: ‘Stand aside, or take what is coming to you!

None should say: ‘I can trust,’ or ‘I cannot trust’ until he is master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.

The Sufi is one who does what others do – when it is necessary. He is also one who does what others cannot do – when it is indicated.

Most of the supposedly Sufi organizations, exercises and “orders” are in fact only of archaeological interest.

When people believe that the form is more important than the Truth, they will not find truth, but will stay with form.

if... says: 'Do not be greedy, be generous', you may inwardly interpret this in such a manner that you will develop a greed for generosity

Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why it has been said: 'Greed is the mother of incapacity'.

Remember the proverb: 'A sign is enough for the alert, but a thousand counsels are not enough for the negligent.

Laziness is always your fault. It is the sign that a man has persevered in uselessness for too long.

One of the great Sufis said: 'A saint is a saint unless he knows that he is one.

There is a saying that, according to what a person's mentality is, even an angel may seem to him to have a devil's face.

When humility is exercised, people begin to realise that they do not, as it were, exist at all.

It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.

Sufis are those who have expunged from their minds the human tendencies of envy and enmity.

Show a man too many camels' bones,or show them to him too often,and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one.

The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.

The institution of teachership is there for this reason, that the learner must learn how to learn.

Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.

The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?

Remedy
Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it.

Hazrat Ali

When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.

The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured

Saadi’s dictum, in the Bostan: ‘The Path is not in the rosary, the prayer-mat and the robe

HE is a Master who may teach without it being totally labelled teaching; HE is a student who can learn without being obsessed by learning.

Remember that greed includes greed for being not greedy.

Learning how to learn involves examining assumptions. Mulla Nasrudin tales very often fulfil this funcition.

If you seek small things to do, and do them well, great things will seek you, and demand to be performed.

Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.

If I knew what two and two were – I would say Four!

It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed

There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons.

Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the "veils" which have to be dissolved in the mind.

Q: What is a fundamental mistake of man's?
A: To think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life's waiting-room.

Real generosity is anonymous to the extent that a man should be prepared even to be considered ungenerous rather than explain it to others.

Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible.

The real generosity is when a man does something generous when nobody knows about it.

...action is in fact knowledge in operation. Right action stems from right knowledge. Right knowledge is acquired through the teacher.

Why did I do such-and-such a thing?' is all very well. But what about 'How otherwise could I have done it?

All approaches to a study or an individual may start with a desire for attention. However they start, they must never end up in this manner.

The person that you feel yourself to be, according to the Sufis, is a false person, which has no true reality.

He who knows himself, knows his Lord' means, among other things, that self-deception prevents knowledge.

Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings.

It has truly been said that 'Humility is not so much a virtue as a necessity, in order to learn.

Words have to die if humans are to live.

The Sufi is 'One who does not care when something is taken from him, but who does not cease to seek for what he has not.

Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.

To copy a virtue in another is more copying than it is virtue. Try to learn what that virtue is based upon.

Do not try to be humble: learn humility.

If you seek a teacher, try to become a real student. If you want to be a student, try to find a real teacher.

Assume that you are part-hypocrite and part heedless, and you will not be far wrong.

The man who knows must discharge a function. The one who does not, cannot arrogate one to himself; he can only try to do so.

If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.

There is no wisdom where there is no common sense: it cannot under those conditions find any expression.

None should say: 'I can trust' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.

Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.

You can learn more in half an hour's direct contact with a source of knowledge (no matter the apparent reason for the contact or the subject of the transaction) than you can in years of formal effort.

Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn?

One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.

The Sufis are unanimous that a Guide (Sheikh) is absolutely essential, though never available on demand: 'the Sufis are not merchants'.

If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?

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