version. original: The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin
Tag Archives: Nasruddin
Dream Remix: The Dive
Week before last I had a marvelous dream. It was the first dream about my being in the Community of Practice of Experiential Learning practitioners. In the dream, several colleagues were personified as dream characters. The dream seemed to wrestle on my behalf with some fairly charged psychological aspects of my involvement over the past year and a half.
Because of the concrete personifications, I can’t offer as I usually do the unfettered dream. I have come up with an alternative that doesn’t replay the dream as much as recontextualize and remix it while versioning it as a tale about the wise fool of Middle Eastern folklore, Nasruddin. There was no donkey in the actual dream.
***
The Dive
Nasruddin had been asked to present his “Theory of Yin & Yang” to a group of eager students.
Nasruddin, standing in front of the group, waits for the cue to begin his presentation. But, something is wrong. His donkey has not arrived with important books and materials.
A student raises her hand, and interrupts to tell Nasruddin:
“Sir, we’ve already been talking about this because your donkey was last seen walking around the reflective pool by the museum.”
Nasruddin asks her, “Did the donkey have the books?”
“Yes, the donkey had the books. But, I know the donkey will be late too because she got half way around the pond, stopped, and dove right in and made a bee line toward pure experience.
NAsruddin is taken back and starts to feel confused. But, at that moment, the donkey walks in, dry, and happy to see Nasruddin.
The donkey walks up to Nasruddin.
He leans over and whispers to the donkey “Did you really dive in?”
The donkey shakes her head, “No.”
Nasruddin asks her, “Do you have the books?”
The donkey whispers back, “What books?”
Filed under adult learning, analytic(al) psychology, self-knowledge
Two Teaching Cartoons
Filed under experiential learning
Thinking About Tomorrow
As Nasrudin and a friend walked, it suddenly began raining hard. The friend noticed that Nasrudin was carrying an umbrella, and said,
“Open your umbrella to prevent us from getting soaked.”
“No,” said Nasrudin, “that won’t do us much good. This umbrella is full of holes.”
“So then why did you bring it?” the friend curiously asked.
“Well,” explained Nasrudin, “I didn’t really think it would rain today.”
Filed under adult learning
The impossibility of education
Once, the villagers invited Mulla Nasruddin to deliver a lecture on spiritual matters.
When he got on the pulpit, he found the audience was not very enthusiastic, so he asked “Do you know what I am going to say?”
The audience replied “No”, so he announced “I have no desire to speak to people who don’t even know what I will be talking about” and he left.
The people felt embarrassed and called him back again the next day.
Once again he asked the same question – “Do you know what I am going to say?”
This time when he asked the same question, the people replied “Yes” So Mullah Nasruddin said, “Well, since you already know what I am going to say, I won’t waste any more of your time” and he left.
Now the people were really perplexed. They decided to try one more time and once again invited the Mullah to speak the following week.
Once again he asked the same question – “Do you know what I am going to say?”
Now the people were prepared and so half of them answered “Yes” while the other half replied “No”. So Mullah Nasruddin said “The half who know what I am going to say, tell it to the other half” and he left!
(Carried over from Transformative Tools blog; part of the process of transitioning its content to squareONE explorations.
Filed under education, experiential learning, sufism
Teaching Cartoon: What’s Good For You
Fast Freddie’s cat stands in for Nasruddin here. This falls into the class of teaching stories in which the person doesn’t know any better.
(Gilbert Shelton of course, from The Further Adventures of Those Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Issue #2)
Filed under experiential learning, humor
Teaching Cartoon: Paranormal
Story from The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin, (Idries Shah.) h/t Max Cannon’s cartoon franework Build Your Own Meat.