'The Story Of The Donkey' from 'Old Thinking, New Thinking' by Fazal Inayat Khan. (1978)

This text is out of print but I have typed it here for you: It might be described as a modern Sufi teaching story.  I first heard it from my father as he had it from Fazal.  Imagine it as a spoken text if you can.




Once upon a time there was a grave in Afghanistan, and that grave had become a shrine of pilgrimage - some wonderful saint was buried there.  After the saint died, his servant, his chela, his disciple built a little grave, prayed there, made a beautiful little garden and soon enough; through the saint's fame and through the loyalty of his disciple, people started coming there to seek solace, warmth, understanding and quietude - and so, over forty or fifty years it became a place of pilgrimage.

Now - and there is great symbology in this - the disciple who took care of the shrine married and had children and at a certain time his eledest son became of age and quite wisely the father, the disciple said to the son: "Now is your time to go into the world".  There comes a time for every father, for every relationship in a sense, for every leader to be able to say to ever follower: "Go".  That does not break the relationship.  There comes a time for every dependent relationship to be ripe enough so that the dominant factor in it can guide the disciple to the point of independene, otherwise the dependence is useless.  So in that same way, the father was very wise and thought that the son was ripe and the son was very wise and didn't revolt, he didn't need to, he didn't run away.  And the father gave his son a donkey and some food and a bit of money and sent him out into the world.

The son went out to meet the world  and, as you can imagine, it was difficult - there were many robbers and the desert and not enough food.  He met many difficult and dangerous things and realised that he wasn't yet so capable and didn't know so much and was not much respected being alone.  But his father had told him to travel far away, so he went on and on.  After a while his money ran out and then the last thing he had, his donkey, died. 

He buried his donkey and cried and felt very lonely and, since he had no money and nowhere to go, he just stayed where he had buried his donkey.  After a while some people came and saw him there and helped him.

Maybe ten or fifteen years later, an eternity later, stories started coming through to his old, wise father that somewhere else was a new shrine growing up. Now fewer people came to his shrine and more went to the new one.  The father decided that he would like to know what this was all about and who lived there, so he went to visit the new place of pilgrimage and there, he met his son who was now much more mature. 

The son told him of his travels and how terrible it had all been and that eventually the donkey had died and he had buried it and had just been sitting there crying his eyes out and people had come and he had called the donkey by its name and the people had thought it was a holy man who was buried there.  So the people helped him to build a grave, and then a hut, and he had looked after the grave - well, he knew how to do that from his father.  And people came back, and left again, and said what a wonderful meditation they had had there, and the son realised what a wonderful thing his father had taught him.  He asked his father not to tell anyone because no one knew that it was only a donkey buried there. 

The father looked at the son and after a while he said: "The same thing happened to me, son". There is a lot of symbology in that story.