One day, Jalaluddin Rumi, the great Sufi mystic, led his disciples to a field where a farmer had been trying to dig a well for many months. The disciples didn’t really want to go there: what was the point? Whatever the master wanted to say, he could say here. However, Jalaliddin insisted:
- Come with me. Without this you will not be able to understand what I am talking about.
It turned out that the farmer did the following: having started digging in one place, he walked away five to ten steps and started digging again. Not finding water, he began to dig in a new place. The farmer had already dug eight holes and was digging a ninth. He ruined the whole field.
Rumi told his disciples:
- Don't be like that idiot. If he had devoted all his energy to digging one well, he would have found water long ago, no matter how deep it was. He wasted his energy uselessly.
The rest do the same. You start, move forward a little, stop, then start moving again after some time or even after a few years. You start moving a little from the other end. These hesitations are dangerous. You need to concentrate your efforts, and once you start with a master whom you trust, in whom you see the incarnation of Buddha, you can no longer go back. Keep digging, even if it takes thirty years.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru