Sufi parable from Rumi One grocer had a parrot and everywhere he could he praised it. According to him, the parrot guarded the store when he was away and entertained customers who came to buy goods. And so it really was.
But one day, when the grocer once again left his shop for the parrot, who was located on the counter among bags of cereals and bunches of grass, he suddenly saw a cat rushing near him. The parrot shuddered from fright, flapped its wings and jumped, catching a bottle of fragrant oil. The vessel fell, the oil spilled, and the owner, returning to the shop, heard its aroma and immediately understood what was wrong.
This incident made him terribly angry, and he beat the parrot so badly that it lost its crest, stopped eating and drinking, and most importantly, stopped talking. Having cooled down from his anger, the owner was very upset at the sight of the bald and silent parrot.
“It would be better if I went bald myself or even broke my arm when I was just about to beat you!”
He tried to find some medicine, turned to righteous people with a request to pray that the Lord would return speech to the bird, but nothing helped, and the parrot remained ominously silent.
This went on for several days and nights, until the parrot caught the eye of a dervish who entered the shop with a round bald patch on the top of his head. Seeing him and turning to him, the parrot shouted:
- You consoled me so much! Now I see that not only me, but also your hair was pulled out because you spilled oil somewhere!
Everyone who was in the shop, taking the bird’s words as a joke, laughed in unison: they found it funny that the parrot considered himself equal to the dervish.
Likewise, a sinful person sometimes imagines himself to be a saint only because he eats, drinks and sleeps in exactly the same way as righteous people do.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru