Page 25 - The Book of Rumi

iNTroDUCTioN

ur essential need to gather together, paired with our compelling desire
Oto share our experiences, thoughts, dreams, and entertainment, ulti-
mately culminates in the act of storytelling. Stories are an ingrained part of
lives everywhere, and in fact life is a series of successive stories with endless
changing promises and surprises. Every experience in life embraces a backstory
that may illumine and interpret the meaning of our lives. Like all skillful and
worthwhile stories, ancient Sufi stories continue to be relevant to our lives
today, because they’re universal and timeless. The universality of a good story
serves to demonstrate that we’re not so different from our counterparts across
the globe, which in turn prompts us to empathize with the “other” to the
extent that we will eventually feel as the “other”; thus, respect and empathy are
the inevitable by-products of this process.
Rumi’s stories are a prime example of the perfectly timeless Sufi story,
with a core message that is unvaried and that remains pertinent to us even in
the mad rush of today’s technologically driven world. Rumi’s teaching stories
are the core of his Masnavi, in which he raises commonsense issues that people
grapple with regularly, but he concentrates on their hidden spiritual aspect,
transforming them into profound Sufi lessons. In the Masnavi, Rumi includes
many animal stories as well, mostly derived from other literary traditions, but
he alters them somewhat to suit his purpose and prove his point.
We live in a fast age; everything moves more quickly—our cars drive
faster, our appliances work more effi ciently, we can access people across the
globe on our mobiles for free, and of course we have the Internet, which
itself transmits at ever increasing speeds. Living in rapidly evolving societies,
where every minute counts and people never seem to have enough downtime,
one can’t expect that many people would choose to read long, unfamiliar, and

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