They say that one day a man appeared in Bukhara dressed as a wandering dervish. He walked around the city and shouted:
- Is there anyone in glorious Bukhara who is ready to buy three wise sayings for a thousand gold coins?!
A certain merchant, whose entire wealth amounted to a thousand gold coins, invited the dervish to his house.
“Here are the coins,” said the merchant. - There are exactly a thousand of them here. This is all I own. What are your sayings?
“Here’s the first thing,” said the dervish. “You yourself are not blameless, and there is not a single virtuous person around you.” Here’s the second: “Although people are like that, you can’t get rid of them and you can’t do without them.” And here is the third: “One should know the degree of righteousness and depravity of everyone, in order to adhere to what is good and avoid evil.”
The merchant was amazed by what he heard. Those words penetrated like an arrow into his very heart. He silently pushed the dervish a thousand gold coins.
“No, I won’t take the money,” he said. “After all, I was looking for someone who was willing to pay in gold, and not for money itself.”
The man in the robes of a dervish rose and left the merchant's house, adding in parting:
“Think about what you heard, and then find me.”
Since then, thinking a lot about the sayings and trying to act in accordance with them, the merchant has changed a lot. Rumor said that he became a student of the Sufis.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru