One young man always spoke ill of the Sufis. One day a Sufi sheikh approached him, took a ring with a stone from his finger and said:
“Oh, young man, go and sell this ring in the market for the price of a gold coin.”
Taking the ring, the young man tried to sell it for one gold tanga. But none of the people at the market wanted to give more than half a ruble for the ring. When they heard the price set by the young man, they laughed or got angry, but they always drove him away.
The young man came to the Sufi sheikh and complained with resentment in his voice:
- You gave me a worthless product! He's worth nothing.
“Go to the goldsmith’s shop, I ask you,” the sheikh said softly. — Try to evaluate the ring there.
The young man left and came back amazed:
- Here is your ring, venerable one! The jeweler valued it at one thousand tangas in gold!
“My child,” the sheikh said then, “you know as much about Sufis as the people in the bazaar knew about this ring.”
The young man repented of his speeches and thoughts and from then on began to revere the Sufis.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru