Pleasant Stories & Anecdotes — Page 11
Pleasant Stories—Pretentious Show On The Deathbed 11 the saddle and added a bag of sand on the other side of the saddle to balance the load. On the way, a wise man met him who was famished, wearing ragged clothes and no turban on his head. He advised the wealthy man, ‘Why did you not load half the jewels on each side? You are hurting the animal unnecessarily’. The wealthy man replied, ‘I do not wish to use your intellect. Misfortune is associated with your intellect. Therefore, I do not accept the advice of an unfortunate person like you’. (Malf ūzā t, vol. 5, p. 384) Pretentious Show on the Deathbed Until a person becomes a true believer, their acts of virtue, irre- spective of how magnificent they may be, cannot be free from the gild of ostentation… On one occasion, Khawaja Sahib related a narration to me and I have read this story myself as well. When Sir Philip Sidney was wounded in the siege of the fort at Zutphen in the Netherlands during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in his throes of death, at a time of intense thirst, a small vessel of water was brought for him. At the time, water was scarce. Another wounded soldier lay nearby and he too was terribly thirsty. The soldier began to look at Sir Philip Sidney with intense longing and desire. Upon noticing the soldier’s wish, Sidney did not drink the water himself, but rather gave it to the solider as an act of selfless- ness, saying: ‘Thy necessity is yet greater than mine. ’ Even in the face of death people do not refrain from