Pleasant Stories & Anecdotes — Page 10
10 story to his parrot and expressed grief for the dead parrot. On hearing this, his parrot also fell in the cage and fluttered to its death. The man was very grieved again that he had caused two deaths. He took the dead parrot out of the cage and threw it away. The parrot that was assumed dead and thrown out from the cage flew off and sat on a wall. The parrot said that in reality, neither that parrot nor I had died. I had asked the parrots for a way to be free from this prison. So, that parrot showed me that true free- dom is achieved through death. So, I assumed death and attained freedom. Thus, it is true that the one who is tangled in the urgings of the inciting self, cannot be free from [this prison] without death. (Malf ūzā t, vol. 6, p. 96) Only God Fills Hearts with Awe It is a vice for the religious scholars to wish for worldly fame. It is not the task of the human beings to place magnificence [of a sage] in someone’s heart. This magnificence is an attraction that emanates from the Will of God. What are we doing that thou- sands of individuals are attracted to us; it is only God’s attraction. Knowledge, wisdom, and understanding of these individuals had nothing to do with it. A story is written in Mathnawī that there was a wealthy man, but unfortunately, he had very little intellect. He was going on a journey. He loaded his donkey with a sack of jewels on one side of