{"id":17318,"date":"2012-11-20T22:09:24","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T22:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=17318"},"modified":"2012-11-20T22:17:36","modified_gmt":"2012-11-20T22:17:36","slug":"the-sufism-of-zen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=17318","title":{"rendered":"The Sufism of Zen"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — double-quoting a remark taken from Zen’s most recent post with a Sufi teaching tale out of Idries Shah ]
\n.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n.<\/p>\n

Zen <\/strong>— Zenpundit<\/strong>, Mark Safranski<\/strong> (above) that is — had a powerful comment about “the emaciated Somali followers of a two-bit warlord, Mohammed Farah Aidid, gleefully swarming over and looting our military\u2019s former\u2026. garbage dump” tucked away in his recent post on Strategy, Power and Diffusion<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When the enemy has a land so poor that he treasures and makes use of the crap you throw away, the economic spillover of your logistical supply lines will fund his war against you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s a pretty profound statement about different levels of disparity<\/strong>, if you ponder it a bit. And worth pondering.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

And it reminds me of Idries Shah<\/strong>‘s lovely story The Food of Paradise<\/em>, in which a fellow named Yunus, son of Adam<\/strong> sets out to find the source, the original source, of food. <\/p>\n

Sitting by a riverbank to consider the matter, he spies a package floating downstream, rescues it, and find that it contains a delicious halwa “composed of almond paste, rosewater, honey and nuts and other precious elements” \u2013 surely a gift of providence — which he then eats. The next day, at the same time, a second package appears \u2013 and each day thereafter he wades further upstream, in search of the miraculous giver, each day receiving and appreciating the gift.<\/p>\n

In time he comes to an island with a high tower, from a high window of which a maiden is casting out, each day, the packaged halwa which is to him the food of paradise. After considerable efforts involving a mirror stone and an army of jinn, he manages to present himself to this princess, and asks her:<\/p>\n

How, and by what order, is the Food of Paradise, the wonderful halwa which you throw down every day for me, ordained to be deposited thus?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

to which she replies:<\/p>\n

Yunus, son of Adam, the halwa, as you call it, I throw down each day because it is in fact the residue of the cosmetic materials with which I rub myself every day after my bath of asses\u2019 milk.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

You can read the whole tale with many others in Idries Shah’s Tales of the Dervishes<\/a>, or here on the alhaddad blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — double-quoting a remark taken from Zen’s most recent post with a Sufi teaching tale out of Idries Shah ] . . Zen — Zenpundit, Mark Safranski (above) that is — had a powerful comment about “the emaciated Somali followers of a two-bit warlord, Mohammed Farah Aidid, gleefully swarming over and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[501,795,714,1,657],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-myth","category-story","category-sufi","category-uncategorized","category-zen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17318"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17336,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17318\/revisions\/17336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}