Tag: Anthony de Mello

There was an old Zen master called Nonoko who lived alone in a hut at the foot of a mountain. One night while Nonoko was sitting in meditation, a stranger broke into the hut and, brandishing a sword, demanded Nonoko's money. Nonoko did not interrupt his meditation while he addressed the man...

A Sufi of forbidding appearance arrived at the doors of the palace. No one dared to stop him as he made his way right up to the throne on which the saintly Ibrahim ben Adam sat. "What is it you want?" asked the King. "A place to sleep in this inn." "This is no inn. This is my palace..."

A miser had accumulated five hundred thousand dinars and looked forward to a year of pleasant living before he made up his mind how best to invest his money, when suddenly the Angel of Death appeared before him to take his life away. The man begged and pleaded and used a thousand arguments to be allowed to live a little longer, but the angel was obdurate...

A miser hid his gold at the foot of a tree in his garden. Every week he would dig it up and look at it for hours. One day, a thief dug up the gold and made off with it. When the miser next came to gaze upon his treasure, all he found was an empty hole. The man began to howl with grief...

There was once a hard-working and generous farmer who had several idle and greedy sons. On his deathbed he told them that the would find his treasure if they were to dig in a certain field. As soon as the old man was dead, the sons hurried to the fields, which they dug up from one end to another, and with increasing desperation and concentration when they did not find the gold in the place indicated.

A mouse was in constant distress because of its fear of the cat. A magician took pity on it and turned it into a cat. But then it became afraid of the dog. So the magician...

A man came upon a tall tower and stepped inside to find it all dark. As he groped around, he came upon a circular staircase. Curious to know where it led to, he began to climb, and as he climbed, he sensed a growing uneasiness in his heart...

A priest walked into a pub, indignant to find so many of his parishioners there. He rounded them up and shepherded them into the church. The he solemnly said, "All those who want to go to heaven, step over here to the left." Everyone stepped over except one man, who stubbornly stood his ground...

Two jewel merchants arrived at a caravanserai in the desert at about the same time one night. Each was quite conscious of the other's presence, and while unloading his camel, one of them could not resist the temptation to let a large pearl fall to the ground as if by accident. It rolled in the direction of the other who, with affected graciousness, picked it up and returned it to its owner saying, "That is a fine pearl you have there, sir. As large and lustrous as they come."

In the last century, a tourist from the States visited the famous Polish rabbi Hafez Hayyim. He was astonished to see that the rabbi's home was only a simple room filled with books. The only furniture was a table and a bench. "Rabbi, where is your furniture?" asked the tourist.