A Zen story

Ken: How was your treasure hunt? Here’s a story.

Joe: May I answer before I get lost into the … [unclear]?

Ken: Go ahead.

Joe: I just wanted to comment on how struck I am by how much time and how much enjoyment I get out of reportage to continue this metaphor of the adventure.

I almost burst out laughing this morning during the second meditation session because I realized that I had spent, I don’t know how many minutes, coming up with a way to describe what had taken me a split second to experience, and which I was in fact no longer experiencing. Some of which you are hearing at this very moment.

I think to a certain extent that’s, first, to interpret it to myself so that I can use it. And secondly, to report to the folks back home exactly what had happened to me on Joe’s wonderful adventure. Part of which I realize is a creation of self. But it’s also, I think, partly why sangha is so important as we come back here and tell each other what we think happened to us.

Ken: Does anybody have a copy of my book here?

Rinzai, the founding master of the Rinzai tradition of Zen Buddhism, and his monks were hoeing the monastery’s fields. When he saw his teacher Obaku approach, he stopped working and propped himself up on his hoe. Obaku said, “Would this fellow be tired?”

Rinzai replied, “I have not yet even lifted my hoe. Why should I be tired?”

Obaku hit him with a stick. Rinzai grabbed the stick and gave Obaku a good blow knocking him over. Obaku called the superintendent to help him up. The superintendent, doing so, remonstrated, “Venerable, how can you permit the impudence of this madman?”

Obaku was hardly on his feet when he hit the superintendent. Rinzai, having started to hoe again, remarked, “Cremation is the custom everywhere but here I bury alive with a single stroke.”

Later, Issan asked his teacher Gyosan about this incident. “What is the meaning of Obaku’s beating the superintendent?”

Gyosan said, “The real robber ran off, the pursuer got the stick.”

The Zen Teachings of Rinzai, Imgard Schloegl (translator) quoted in Wake Up To Your Life, Ken McLeod, p. 392


Ken: Makes sense to you, Joe?

Joe: I’m sure it will.

Ken: Okay. One other comment on treasure hunting.

Student: The comment is related to last night, and then this morning I had an incredible hit in my meditation, I believe, but I’m not sure. We meditated 10 minutes more last night for some reason because we were waiting for you or something.

Ken: Mea culpa!

Student: Doesn’t matter. As a matter of fact, I went crazy. I was very, very upset. It was inside of me, I wanted to stop, I was tired and whatever. So I resisted. But this morning, it had a tail because I felt traumatized, so I couldn’t really sit. I was sitting and it was like when you’re on a computer and you have all these pop-ups coming up and you can’t control them. All these visions going on and on and on.

I tried to go to my body and I tried to go to my breath. Nothing was working. And so I said, “Okay, whatever. I’ll just enjoy the ride, whatever it is.” Then suddenly I realized that there’s this two-year-old little girl that protests inside of me and she gets really crazy.

I started kind of doing what she was saying. She had a tantrum basically. So I just held her. I thought this was a great treasure for me—going with the wave, which is what I really want. And then I also thought that even in science, when you have an experiment, unless you get the right parameters, you can’t really tweak the experiment and make it happen again and again in a consistent way. I didn’t have the right parameters. I am learning.

Ken: Okay, good. So these are two good experiences with treasure hunting. Here’s another one.

Two worthies of the Land of Fools heard that someone called the Polite Man was visiting their capital.

Desiring to meet him, they went to the city’s main square. Here they saw a stranger sitting on a bench.

“Do you think that’s him?” one asked the other.

“Why don’t you go and ask him?”

The first man went up to the stranger and said: “Excuse me, but are you the Polite Man?”

The stranger answered: “If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll smash your face in.”

The enquirer went back to his companion. “Well, was he the man we’re looking for?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

Unsolved, A Veiled Gazelle, Idries Shah, p. 74

Discovering the treasure: a leg exercise

Gail: Today is perhaps about discovering the treasure. We’ll see. So we’re going to start with an activity. I’m going to ask all of you to lay down on your back with your knees bent and your feet standing. And if for some reason laying on your back is uncomfortable, you could sit in a chair. And so you want to have enough room so you could extend your legs if you needed to and not hit somebody in the head or the shoulder or something.

Have your knees bent and your feet standing on the floor just comfortably. If that is an extremely uncomfortable position, you can have both of your legs long, resting. Your intention is to choose one of your legs and extend it along the floor. Try that out once or twice so you know what the movement activity is that we’re going to do.

As you’re trying it out, see if you can experience the process of change that you go through from having a bent leg, and then it goes through a process, and you end at a straight leg. See if you can do this with the most amount of ease possible. How fast do you need to go to be completely aware of everything that you do in order to extend your leg? Rest with both legs bent.

Now I want you to put your attention on what you do right before you move. Place your attention there and then go ahead and move. Try that a few times. Where do you place your attention? Before you extend your leg? Do you have an image in your mind? Do you have a kinesthetic memory of what it’s like to extend your leg? Do you see a cartoon of somebody extending their leg? Do you have a place in your body that you go before you move?

Then come back to resting with both feet standing. I want you to place your awareness on exactly where you initiate in order to extend your leg. So the point of initiation, where does it start? Once you know where that is, go ahead and follow it through into the full action of extending.

Try that a few times. Each time reconnect with the place of initiation. Where does it initiate? Then extend the leg. Notice if this changes your experience of extending. If you get tired using one leg, you can certainly switch to the other leg, but go through that same process of finding the initiation point and initiating right from that point.

Then come back to resting with both of your feet standing. Now you know where you place your attention before you move and you know where you initiate in order to move. Now I want you to be aware of the space between: first I place my attention, then there’s a little space and then I initiate. Try that. Place your attention, find that space, initiate, and follow through.

What happens in that place between your attention, before you move, before you initiate? After you’ve placed your attention, before you initiate? What is that space like? Without moving, I’ll grab a microphone and if anyone can describe that space from that space, raise your hand and we’ll get a mic to. Justin, try to speak right from that space.

Student feedback

Justin: When you say from your head to your hips, I see, I feel almost a sense of—

Gail: Don’t think about it.

Justin: … a radio wave that goes swoosh!

Student: It was interesting for me. There’s a flash of a picture, which is the intent to extend my leg, and then there’s this open space, it just goes open, and then it initiates from my heel.

John: For me, that moment is a rhythm of silence. And then motion.

Student: For me, it’s also an open space with molecules of energy moving.

Student: It feels like a little breath, like a tiny little catch of breath in the middle.

Student: Am I going to hit the guy’s head in front of me?

A balancing exercise

Gail: Great. So in your own time, go ahead and roll to one side and return back to your seated position, being aware of how you do that.

Okay, we’re going to do one more tiny movement activity. I brought these along thinking I’d be able to use them. And here’s an opportunity if anyone wants to sit on one of these just for a moment, they are to help you feel unstable in case you’re having a hard time with that. If you don’t want to sit on one of these, just sit as you are.

And what I want you to do is get into a position that is unstable. That might be just tipping off to one side. If you really want to stand up, you could stand up and stand on one leg. Get into a position of being unstable. If you’re on one of these, it’s fairly easy to get into an unstable place. Feel what that’s like.

Then return to what you feel is a stable place, or a balanced place, or a place that might have more possibility for balance. Then go back to the place that seems maybe a little bit unbalanced.

Now I want you to place your attention on what you do right before you bring yourself back to what seems like balance, what do you do there? Then go ahead and follow it through and bring yourself back to balance.

Try that a few times. Go to somewhere that’s out of balance and then bring yourself back, being aware of what you do right before you move to bring yourself towards balancing. Go back to that unbalanced place again. Now place your attention on where you initiate to bring yourself back to balance.

It could be physical, it could be emotional, it could be something in the space. Find that initiation point and then follow it through to bringing yourself to what feels somewhat more balanced. And then go ahead and be unbalanced. Keep bringing your attention to that initiation point. Where do you initiate to bring yourself back? And what is the process of change that you go through to bring yourself back?

One last time go off to the unbalanced or out-of-balance place. And now I want you to place or notice where you place your attention right before you initiate? What do you do? What is that space like? Follow through the action and come back to balance, being aware of the process of returning and try that a few times. Again, going off balance. Notice where you place your attention or what your quality of attention is like when you’re out of balance.

That space right before you move, right before you initiate, find that and then return. Great. You can just relax, and let’s have a few comments on that.

Student feedback

Student: In both the balancing exercise and the leg moving exercise, I felt it very clearly right in the center of my abdomen that that’s where everything is initiated and helps me return to stabilization.

Student: I realize when I’m out of balance, my thought and attention are at the place where I’m out of balance. So it’s taking up a lot of my focus. And because I’m uncomfortable, my thought is to bring it back in balance. So once I’m back in balance, then my thought’s no longer there. My energy is freed almost so—

Student: I found the more subtly I was out of balance, the easier it was to feel what I did to come back to balance, which was interesting. I also was paying attention to how I recognized balance, and it was the cessation of effort.

Student: I was equating out-of-balance with the place of discomfort. So I went to that place right before I moved into balance.

Student: I thought about the cessation of effort also, but then I thought it was a different kind of cessation. It was a cessation of the strain of being unbalanced, but then I felt, upon relaxation, I was lost for words. It was like work, but work focused in the wrong way. When I was unbalanced, yet I still felt the potential for work in release.

Student: I saw that there were two ways to come back into balance, at least one was to achieve bilateral symmetry and the other was to alter the weight on the other side of the body so it balanced the imbalance on the other side.

Moving in and out of balance

Ken: Okay. On these two seemingly simple exercises, there’s a wealth of information. I think it’s fair to say when we react to situations, there’s no awareness of the gap that Gail was pointing to—between the placing of attention and the initiation of activity. As Deborah was just pointing out, in that gap, there’s a possibility of sensing multiple ways, multiple possibilities.

Bringing that kind of attention or moving in that kind of attention means there are many more possibilities available to you in everything you do. Another distinction, which John was elaborating on, was the distinction between imbalance and balance.

They’re actually quite different experiences, but when we’re all caught up with ideas and stories about how things are meant to be and what we should be doing, etc., etc., we can’t make that distinction, we’re going.

In general, as you move in the direction of imbalance, things become harder and harder. You don’t need to do this, you can just imagine or you can do this sitting down. Lean slightly to one side. Now lean more to that side. And more. And more. How much more effort are you expending now? It’s getting harder and harder, isn’t it?

When you move in the direction of balance, what happens? Start moving from that tilted position, gradually straightening the body, and you notice how the effort becomes less.

I think John’s point was very important. There can still be activity and drive and, in one sense, effort being made, but that can be in balance or out of balance. And the term that I’ve started to use lately is the notion of struggle. When you move in the direction of imbalance, there’s more struggle. When you move in the direction of balance, even if you’re making a considerable effort, there isn’t any struggle.

Student: Going along with that, I found it interesting when I was standing that when I shifted grossly out of balance, it achieved its own stability in a way. It was the subtle out of balance that I could really notice, like I mentioned, and I equated that to: if my mind really takes over, it has its own stability. It’s noticing that I got a kinesthetic sense of something you’ve pointed out to me several times—noticing the point just before, just as you shift into distraction. It’s that subtle point where you can really tell for a second.

Luis: From music, there’s a different take too. If you have two tones and they’re directly in unison, that’s balance because there’s no dissonance. But what’s very interesting is the most dissonant is just those two sounds moving slightly out.

And a different take on what we’re saying here is that actually when you have the gross imbalance in music, that means that that has a tendency to resolve itself somehow. And in this case, the resolution would be you fall and go to the next place. So the resolution of that slight dissonance is almost impossible because it starts beating.

Student: I have an example from physics. When you go, there’s two points of balance. One is on top of a hill, so it just stays. But if you move a little bit, you tend to go to another point. Another one is downhill. So if you are there, it’s struggle to go out of balance because you have to go uphill.

Ken: One’s dynamic instability and the other dynamic stability.

Student: Exactly. So depending on that, you’re struggling against you. Otherwise you just let yourself go and go to another point of balance. I don’t know if this makes any sense.

Ken: I think we’re going to find analogies to all of these. Sometimes, and I know this from my own experience, you’re precariously balancing on top of something. You’re trying to get it just right. And if you move even a split, it falls apart. That’s that dynamic instability. And other times, you can be the mind at rest or you can be doing something. And even though there are distractions, you just keep coming back to that.

A meditation: exploring balance-imbalance

Ken: In the next period of meditation, the purpose of these instructions, or the examples that Gail was guiding us through, is exploring that experience of balance-imbalance and how do you move? There are a lot of different things that can happen here. We’re still hunting treasure, maybe we’re getting close to it.

What am I doing here? Why am I doing this? It can be sometimes quite difficult to recognize even when it’s staring you right in the face, like the polite man or the stranger, the answer can be right in front of you, and you can’t see it. In the Shangpa tradition, there’s a series of—one might call them instructions. They’re a bit more like descriptions of mind nature.

So close, you can’t see it.
So deep, you can’t fathom it.
So simple, you can’t believe it.
So fine, so noble, you can’t accept it.

Using what Gail pointed out, see if you can experience that gap when something shifts in your experience. There’s placing of attention, space, and initiating a movement. One of the key distinctions here, and why this gap is so important: only by experiencing that gap, can you have any possibility of distinguishing between what the experience is pointing to and what your reactions are telling you to do.

As many of you know, I like to ski. When you’re on a very steep slope, what your body says to do is to stand up straight. This is disastrous when you ski because it puts all the weight on the back of your skis. They scoot out from under you, and if it’s a sufficiently steep slope, you’ll fall of course, but you won’t stop falling until you’re at the bottom of the hill.

What the actual experience is pointing to is being perpendicular to the hill. But if you’re on a steep slope, being perpendicular to the hill means that you feel like you’re falling. When you do that, it really becomes quite effortless. You fall, and the skis turn, and they catch you, and they keep catching you until you turn down the hill.

You actually have to do almost nothing, provided you have some strength in your legs. But it’s just one example. And if any of you have done any range of sports, there’s what the body says, or actually the mind, the picture you have reacting, where if you actually listen to everything, other possibilities open up. And as Deborah and Jeff were saying, when you move far out of balance, another whole process starts to take place to start trying to find balance within that imbalance.

If you keep entering into that gap, this is where those possibilities open up. So this is how you discover your treasure. This is how you open it. You sit and experience it. Letting you and the treasure become more and more intimate until it tells you how to open it. That requires deep listening of the kind that we did some work with on Thursday. It requires patience. It requires courage, which is the willingness to endure the discomfort of not knowing.

And this resonates with something I said yesterday. We can’t learn unless we can experience not knowing. T. S. Eliot said in Four Quartets: “In order to learn what you don’t know, you have to go by the way, which is the way of ignorance.” In other words, not knowing.

A Sufi story

Ken: Mullah Nasrudin had a student come to him, a potential student, full of ideas. Nasruidn saw that this was not going to be an easy case. So he said, “Would you like some tea?”

The person said, “Yes, I’d like some tea.”

So, Nasrudin prepared the tea and started to fill the person’s cup. When the cup was full, he just kept pouring and pouring.

And the person said, “You can’t put any more tea in the cup. It’s full!”

Nasrudin said to him, “And you can’t learn anything from me unless you come with an empty cup.”

So this is very important. Questions.

Student questions

Student: Would you recommend walking meditation for this kind of practice?

Ken: I wouldn’t recommend anything. What’s behind your question?

Student: Movement.

Ken: There’s no movement when you meditate? What’s the difference?

Student: Nothing.

Ken: Nothing will come of nothing. Say again. Other questions?

Student: I don’t think anybody’s going to risk it now.

Ken: Yeah. Hey, you got to take your chances.

Student: I wanted you to elaborate a little bit more on initiating a movement. What did you mean by that? No, in the meditation, obviously.

Ken: She knows how to meditate.

Gail: So what do you do when you feel yourself out of balance in your meditation?

Student: What do I do?

Gail: Yes.

Student: I resist. Sometimes. Some other times I just let it go, but mostly I resist. I want to be in balance.

Gail: Okay, so right before you resist, what do you experience there?

Student: Just right before? Because the problem is that when you’re really unbalanced, and that’s what I’m seeing with the body, that famous moment of openness is so short.

Gail: You know it? You can talk about it.

Student: Well, I can talk about it afterwards.

Gail: But you’ve had the experience?

Student: Intellectually.

Ken: Not true. What was your experience this morning?

Student: This morning? Yeah, I had a choice, but to me it’s just more like go with flow.

Ken: You answered Gail’s question. In that moment of choice, what did you do?

Student: What did I do? I let go. That’s what I did.

Gail: And where did that initiate?

Student: From here, with the heart. I know, but strangely enough, sometimes I can’t let go. It probably depends on my mood.

Gail: Out of the space right before that?

Student: Yeah, I got to note that more.

Gail: Okay, you just explained it.

Ken: Now I’m going to take this a little further. You say, “I can’t let go.” So, take this thing. Okay? I want you to hold it in your hand. Okay? Hold it very tightly. That’s right, Chuck, can you do a favor and just hold it with one hand? You’re going to have to hold onto your mic because you’re going to have to talk at the same time.

I want you to hold that in one hand. Hold the edge of it. Okay, Chuck, I want you to do me a favor and I want you to take another edge of it and just pull, not too hard, but you’re going to hold onto it tightly. Okay? Now I want you to pay close attention to what goes on in your hand. Just pull gently okay? What goes on in your hand?

Student: I’m just enhancing the force.

Ken: Right. Is it constant in your hand?

Student: Well, it’s a response for how hard it’s …

Ken: But is your hand contracting? Okay. So try to be aware of each of those contractions and tensions and letting go in your hand as he pulls, where does it initiate?

Student: Which one?

Ken: There’s so many in there, aren’t there?

Student: Yeah.

Ken: So when we say, “I can’t let go,” what we’re doing is repeating something over and over again, sometimes very quickly. There are all kinds of opportunities in there. So pull it again and see if she can find one to let go. Where did that initiate?

Student: A place of curiosity, just like saying, “Okay, let’s see what happens.” This case is damn easy.

Ken: Anybody else?

Student: I know I’m not going to get an answer to this …

Ken: She’s learning!

Student: How still is too still? I feel like there’s no end to this, minding the gap.

Gail: So what’s the question?

Student: There’s no question. I think it’s just really uncomfortable.

Ken: No, don’t stop there. So you’re experiencing discomfort. Can you feel a reaction to it?

Student: Yes.

Ken: Okay. Can you sense the space, which Gail was talking about, between the placing of attention on the discomfort and the initiation of the reaction?

Student: Yeah, it actually lets up on the pressure.

Ken: What happens if you hang out there?

Student: It’s more comfortable to see what’s going on because it’s not like I’m not pressing against it.

Ken: How still is too still?

Joe: I left the island I was on because it was a tourist trap and I went to another island, which was the island of severing the mind stream and the discursive thought. I realized that I might approach it by listening to things, just isolating listening. I realized that most of my listening or hearing was a memory of something that just happened. So I guess my question is, is that also the sort of gap that they were talking about, or a mind, or the world of the discontinuous universe?

Gail: I didn’t quite understand the question. Can you explain it again?

Joe: Yeah, I will hear something and it would be a memory of having heard something that have just happened. I will not have been there for the actual happening, the actual sound. I’ll remember having heard it a split second after it happened.

In that moment, there may be a body reaction such as fear, I mean such as that’s an earthquake, it’s going to fall, it’s a plane going into a building, I am in danger. But I’m not actually there for that. I am there a split second afterwards realizing I just heard something and had a reaction to it. That I recognize is a gap, but I don’t know how to bridge that gap or if it’s at all possible. That’s just physiology.

Gail: I have nothing.

Ken: Give it to him.

Gail: Okay. This gap that you’re describing between the memory of the reaction and the reaction itself is that what you’re describing? Here’s my question. Can you describe the experience of the gap that you’re trying to tell me about? Can you go there right now and describe that?

Joe: I don’t know the gap. All I know is the memory, which is I assume the reaction to something that has already happened. I don’t know the gap.

Gail: So right before the memory [claps]

Ken: Did you experience the gap?

Joe: I’m experiencing one now.

Ken: What does this tell you, Joe?

Joe: Stop thinking.

Ken: Okay. There’s another one question somewhere in here.

Carrie: Throughout the course of the past couple of days, I’ve been working with this image that I brought in and then it’s kind of evolved in the course of these sessions. Can I borrow your pelvis?

Gail: Oh sure.

Ken: That’s going to sound really weird on the recording.

Carrie: It’s too late. I can’t erase it! In order to get into my position, I came up with this idea that my head is a helium-filled balloon and that my spine is like the string on which it’s tethered. And a couple of things happened because as I thought about this image of riding the breath, I thought of that balloon riding my breath and kind of moving back and forth with the breath.

And then as I thought about what you said about how your body sits, I thought if that balloon and string are tethered like this and it’s kind of swaying like that, that feels like a way as I work with it to get in that kind of stasis but also still be moving with the breath.

Ken: Carrie’s raising a point, which is very important. I’m going to put it in different words. How long are you ever in balance? Anybody? Yeah, never. However, there’s always the possibility of correcting imbalance, and what we call “balance” is actually continuous and subtle correction of imbalance. And that’s what Carrie’s comment reminded me of. Do you want to say a word about that?

Gail: That’s what these do. If you have a chance in a break to sit on one of these.

Student: There’s a reflex action of the body just finding balance, and it’s not a stable place. It’s constantly changing.

A sufi story

Ken: At the risk of confusing everything, you didn’t think I was going to leave you on a nice one.

Once upon a time, a poor widow was looking out the window of her house when she saw a humble dervish coming along the road. He seemed weary beyond endurance and was covered in grime. It was evident that he needed some help. Running into the street, the woman called out, “Noble dervish! There must be times when even such an insignificant person as myself can be of use to the noble seekers. Come and have a rest in my house, for is it not said, ‘Whoever helps the Friends will himself be helped, and who hinders them will be hindered, although how and when is a mystery.’”

“Thank you, good woman,” said the dervish, and he entered the cottage, where in a few days he was rested and much restored.

Now this woman had a son named Abdullah, who had had few chances of advancement because he had spent most of his life cutting wood to sell at the local market and was not able to extend his experiences of life in such a manner as to enable him to help either himself or his mother. The dervish said to him, “My child, I am a man of learning, helpless though I may look. Come, be my companion and I will share great opportunities with you, if your mother agrees.” The mother was only too glad to allow her son to travel with the sage, and the two set off along the road together.

When they had travelled through many countries and endured much together, the dervish said, “Abdullah, we have reached the end of a road. I shall perform certain rituals which, should they receive favourable acceptance, will cause the earth to open and reveal something the like of which is given to few men. This is a treasure, concealed here many years ago. Are you afraid?”

Abdullah agreed to try, and swore to remain constant, no matter what might happen. The dervish now performed certain strange movements, and muttered many sounds, in which Abdullah joined him; and the earth opened. The dervish said, “Now, Abdullah, listen carefully, paying complete attention. You have to descend into the vault which is exposed before us. Your task is to possess yourself of a candlestick made of iron. You will see before you arrive at it treasures the like of which have seldom been revealed to man. Ignore them, for it is the iron candlestick alone which is your goal and aim. As soon as you find it, bring it back here.”

Abdullah went down into the treasure vault and sure enough there were so many sparkling jewels, so many plates of gold, such amazing treasures which cannot be described because there are no words for them, that he was completely bemused. Forgetting the words of the dervish he filled his arms with the most glittering prizes he could see. And then he saw the candlestick. Thinking that he might as well take it to the dervish, and that he could conceal in his wide sleeves enough gold for himself, he took it up, and remounted the steps which led to the surface of the earth. But when he came out of the hole, he found that he was near the cottage of his mother, and the dervish was nowhere to be found.

As soon as he tried to show his gold and ornaments to his mother, they seemed to melt away and disappeared. Only the candlestick was left. Abdullah examined it. There were 12 branches and he lit a candle in one of them. Suddenly, a figure like a dervish seemed to appear. The apparition gyrated a little and then put a small coin on the ground and disappeared again. Now Abdullah lit all 12 candles. Twelve dervishes materialized, moved in rhythm for an hour and threw him 12 coins before they vanished.

When they had recovered from their amazement, Abdullah and his mother realized that they could live quite well on the yield of the candlestick before they discovered that they could obtain 12 pieces of silver each day from the dance of the dervishes. But before long, Abdullah thought of the incalculable riches, which he had seen in the subterranean cavern, and decided to see whether he could have another chance of getting some real wealth for himself. He searched and searched but could not find the place where the entrance of the cave was. By now, however, he had become obsessed by the desire to become rich.

He set off, traveled through the world until he came to a palace, which was the home of the miserable dervish whom his mother had once found tottering near her home. The search had occupied many months. And Abdullah was pleased when he was ushered into the presence of the dervish whom he found to be dressed like a king and surrounded by a hoard of disciples. “Now,” said the dervish “you, ungrateful one, I’ll show you what this candlestick can really do.” And he took up a stick and struck the candlestick where upon each branch turned into a treasure greater than all that the boy had seen in the cavern. The dervish had the gold, the silver, and the jewels taken away to be distributed to worthy people. And lo the candlestick was seen to be standing there again. Ready to be used anew.

“Now,” said the dervish, “since you cannot be trusted to do things properly and because you’ve betrayed your trust, you must leave me. But because you have at least returned the candlestick, you may have a camel and a load of gold for yourself.”

Abdullah stayed at the palace overnight and in the morning he was able to hide the candlestick in the saddle of the camel. As soon as he got home, he lighted the candles and he struck the whole thing with a stick. But he had still not learned how the magic was accomplished. For instead of using his right hand to hold the stick, he used his left. The 12 dervishes immediately appeared, picked up the gold and jewels, saddled the camel, seized the candlestick, and vanished. And that blow was worse off than before for he still had the memory of his ineptitude, his ingratitude, his theft, and his nearness to riches.

The Candlestick of Iron, Tales of the Dervishes. Idries Shah.


Happy meditation.