Teaching stories
Encyclopedia
Teaching stories is a term used by the writer Idries Shah
to describe narratives that have been deliberately created as vehicles for the transmission of wisdom. Whilst it is a term that has been used in a number of religious and other traditions, Shah's use of it was in the context of Sufi teaching and learning, within which this body of material has been described as the "most valuable of the treasures in the human heritage". The range of teaching stories is enormous, including anecdotes, accounts of meetings between teachers and pupils, biographies, myths, fairy tales, fables and jokes. Such stories frequently have a long life beyond the initial teaching situation and (sometimes in deteriorated form) have contributed vastly to the world's store of folklore
and literature
.
Thus these narratives also often have a wide circulation outside of any instructional function, where they frequently have cultural significance and entertainment value, or contain a moral answer or solution of some kind, or are put to use to reinforce belief. What makes them distincively teaching stories however is something different: they are likely to be open-ended, depending on the individual members of their audience for a variety of interpretations. Their purpose is ultimately to change the thinking process itself. They put at the disposal of those who know them an instrument for measuring themselves, the world and situations that they encounter. It is for this reason that the reading, rereading, discussion and interpretation of narratives in a group setting became a significant part of the activities in which the members of Shah's study circles engaged.
According to Doris Lessing
:
:
Without denying the entertainment or moral value in the stories, Shah emphasised that there is in such tales an often hidden dimension of instruction. Stories, such as those from the Thousand and One Nights and other collections of traditional myths and folktales, are considered to fall into this category. Modern examples (although maybe not generally recognized as such) are some of the stories that have been retold and adapted by Disney. These tales have been adapted and laid out in the simplest form of their wisdom, making them easily accessible for children in particular. As Robert Ornstein
has written:
of Aesop
, Shah insisted that there were levels of meaning hidden in them that lay beyond the merely didactic:
. Superficially, most of the stories may be told as jokes. They are told and retold endlessly in the teahouses and caravanserais of Asia and can be heard in homes and on the radio. But it is inherent in a Nasrudin story that it may be understood at many levels. There is the joke, but there is also the structure of the tale that functions as an analogy or metaphor for some aspect of human nature or learning.
includes the Tale of Two Brothers
, an ancient Egypt
ian story from around the 12th century BC. Jataka tales from India as far back as the 3rd century BC have travelled westwards via the Panchatantra
and have long been recognised as having a teaching function. An example is The Tiger, the Brahmin and the Jackal
which made its first appearance In Europe some 900 years ago in Petrus Alphonsi
's collection of tales, the Disciplina Clericalis (which, according to E.L. Ranelagh, could be translated as "a course of study for the reader").
The Blind men and an elephant
is a well-known tale that has been used among Jainists
, Buddhists
and Hindus
in India, as well as by Persian
Sufi writers Sanai
of Ghazni
, Attar of Nishapur and Rumi. Shah's Tales of the Dervishes
, a collection of narratives gathered from classical Sufi texts and oral sources spanning a period from the 7th to the 20th centuries, gives Sanai's version.
Parallels with other religious traditions are obvious, wherever narratives are used instructionally rather than to generate or perpetuate belief or conformity. Examples might be Zen
koans, Hasidic tales, and the parables of Jesus
. Sometimes, as in The Tiger, the Brahmin and the Jackal or The Blind men and an elephant, versions of the same story are put to use. Even the term teaching stories has begun to have some wider currency.
Idries Shah
Idries Shah , also known as Idris Shah, né Sayed Idries el-Hashimi , was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition who wrote over three dozen critically acclaimed books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies.Born in India, the descendant of a...
to describe narratives that have been deliberately created as vehicles for the transmission of wisdom. Whilst it is a term that has been used in a number of religious and other traditions, Shah's use of it was in the context of Sufi teaching and learning, within which this body of material has been described as the "most valuable of the treasures in the human heritage". The range of teaching stories is enormous, including anecdotes, accounts of meetings between teachers and pupils, biographies, myths, fairy tales, fables and jokes. Such stories frequently have a long life beyond the initial teaching situation and (sometimes in deteriorated form) have contributed vastly to the world's store of folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
and literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
.
Function
It is the teaching function of teaching stories that characterises them rather than any other categorisation, however much they may have other uses. Shah likened the Sufi story to a peach:- "A person may be emotionally stirred by the exterior as if the peach were lent to you. You can eat the peach and taste a further delight ... You can throw away the stone – or crack it and find a delicious kernel within. This is the hidden depth."
Thus these narratives also often have a wide circulation outside of any instructional function, where they frequently have cultural significance and entertainment value, or contain a moral answer or solution of some kind, or are put to use to reinforce belief. What makes them distincively teaching stories however is something different: they are likely to be open-ended, depending on the individual members of their audience for a variety of interpretations. Their purpose is ultimately to change the thinking process itself. They put at the disposal of those who know them an instrument for measuring themselves, the world and situations that they encounter. It is for this reason that the reading, rereading, discussion and interpretation of narratives in a group setting became a significant part of the activities in which the members of Shah's study circles engaged.
According to Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
:
- "A real teaching story, whether thousands of years old, or new, goes far beyond the parables that are still part of our culture. A parable has a simple message: this means that. But in a Sufi teaching story, there may be layers of meaning, some of them not to be verbalized. Current ways of "teaching" literature in schools and universities may make it difficult for literary people to approach Sufi literature as it should be: Sufis do not pull apart a tale to find its meaning, but cite the case of the child who has dismantled a fly and, left with a heap of wings, a head, legs, asks "Where is the fly?" In other words, a student learns to use the mind in ways unfamiliar to us. They "soak themselves" in the material. They ignore the analytical approach, and the practice of memorizing and regurgitating. The meaning of a Sufi tale comes through contemplation, and may take years."
Folktales
Shah described many of the folktales widely dispersed across the world as teaching stories, writing in the introduction to one such tale, The Lost Camel , collected in his World TalesWorld Tales
World Tales, subtitled "The Extraordinary Coincidence of Stories Told in All Times, in All Places" is a book of 65 folk tales collected by Idries Shah from around the world, mostly from literary sources...
:
- "Most of the instrumental and interpretative function of the folktale have tended to be overlooked in the literature, which still usually concentrates upon origins, upon fragmentary beliefs enshrined in the tales, and upon the light which is cast by plots and treatments on the attitudes of the people among whom the story is told."
Without denying the entertainment or moral value in the stories, Shah emphasised that there is in such tales an often hidden dimension of instruction. Stories, such as those from the Thousand and One Nights and other collections of traditional myths and folktales, are considered to fall into this category. Modern examples (although maybe not generally recognized as such) are some of the stories that have been retold and adapted by Disney. These tales have been adapted and laid out in the simplest form of their wisdom, making them easily accessible for children in particular. As Robert Ornstein
Robert Ornstein
Dr. Robert Evan Ornstein is a psychologist, researcher and writer.He has taught at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute, based at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco, and been professor at Stanford University and chairman of the Institute for the Study of Human...
has written:
- "On the surface teaching stories often appear to be little more than fairy or folk tales. But they are designed to embody - in their characters, plots and imagery - patterns and relationships that nurture a part of the mind that is unreachable in more direct ways, thus increasing our understanding and breadth of vision, in addition to fostering our ability to think critically."
Fables
Though a "moral" is appended to many fables, for instance the fablesAesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
of Aesop
Aesop
Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a...
, Shah insisted that there were levels of meaning hidden in them that lay beyond the merely didactic:
- "The fables of all nations provide a really remarkable example of this, because, if you can understand them at a technical level, they provide the most striking evidence of the persistence of a consistent teaching, preserved sometimes through mere repetition, yet handed down and prized simply because they give a stimulus to the imagination or entertainment for the people at large."
Nasrudin Stories
Shah published four books of tales of the Mulla Nasrudin. These stories are known throughout the Muslim worldMuslim world
The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a religious sense, it refers to those who adhere to the teachings of Islam, referred to as Muslims. In a cultural sense, it refers to Islamic civilization, inclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization...
. Superficially, most of the stories may be told as jokes. They are told and retold endlessly in the teahouses and caravanserais of Asia and can be heard in homes and on the radio. But it is inherent in a Nasrudin story that it may be understood at many levels. There is the joke, but there is also the structure of the tale that functions as an analogy or metaphor for some aspect of human nature or learning.
Worldwide dispersal and diffusion
It is impossible to say how far back in time teaching stories go. Shah's collection World TalesWorld Tales
World Tales, subtitled "The Extraordinary Coincidence of Stories Told in All Times, in All Places" is a book of 65 folk tales collected by Idries Shah from around the world, mostly from literary sources...
includes the Tale of Two Brothers
Tale of Two Brothers
The Tale of Two Brothers is an ancient Egyptian story that dates from the reign of Seti II, who ruled from 1200 to 1194 BC during the 19th Dynasty of the New Kingdom. The story is preserved on the Papyrus D'Orbiney, which is currently preserved in the British Museum. The British Museum dates the...
, an ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
ian story from around the 12th century BC. Jataka tales from India as far back as the 3rd century BC have travelled westwards via the Panchatantra
Panchatantra
The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma...
and have long been recognised as having a teaching function. An example is The Tiger, the Brahmin and the Jackal
The Tiger, the Brahmin and the Jackal
The Tiger, the Brahmin and the Jackal is a popular Indian fairy tale with a long history and many variants. A version was included in Joseph Jacobs' collection Indian Fairy Tales.-Synopsis:...
which made its first appearance In Europe some 900 years ago in Petrus Alphonsi
Petrus Alphonsi
Petrus Alphonsi was a Jewish Spanish writer and astronomer, and polemicist, who converted to Christianity....
's collection of tales, the Disciplina Clericalis (which, according to E.L. Ranelagh, could be translated as "a course of study for the reader").
The Blind men and an elephant
Blind Men and an Elephant
The story of the blind men and an elephant originated in India from where it is widely diffused. It has been used to illustrate a range of truths and fallacies...
is a well-known tale that has been used among Jainists
Jainism
Jainism is an Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence towards all living beings. Its philosophy and practice emphasize the necessity of self-effort to move the soul towards divine consciousness and liberation. Any soul that has conquered its own inner enemies and achieved the state...
, Buddhists
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
and Hindus
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
in India, as well as by Persian
Persian people
The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...
Sufi writers Sanai
Sanai
Hakim Abul-Majd Majdūd ibn Ādam Sanā'ī Ghaznavi was a Afghan Sufi poet who lived in Ghazna, in what is now Afghanistan between the 11th century and the 12th century. Some people spell his name as Sanayee. He died around 1131.-Life:...
of Ghazni
Ghazni
For the Province of Ghazni see Ghazni ProvinceGhazni is a city in central-east Afghanistan with a population of about 141,000 people...
, Attar of Nishapur and Rumi. Shah's Tales of the Dervishes
Tales of the Dervishes
Tales of the Dervishes was first published in 1967. Together with The Exploits of Mulla Nasrudin,published the year before, it represented the first of several books of practical Sufi instructional materialsto be released by Idries Shah....
, a collection of narratives gathered from classical Sufi texts and oral sources spanning a period from the 7th to the 20th centuries, gives Sanai's version.
Parallels with other religious traditions are obvious, wherever narratives are used instructionally rather than to generate or perpetuate belief or conformity. Examples might be Zen
Zen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...
koans, Hasidic tales, and the parables of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
. Sometimes, as in The Tiger, the Brahmin and the Jackal or The Blind men and an elephant, versions of the same story are put to use. Even the term teaching stories has begun to have some wider currency.
Some examples of teaching stories
- Narratives from Sufi writers, to name a few: SanaiSanaiHakim Abul-Majd Majdūd ibn Ādam Sanā'ī Ghaznavi was a Afghan Sufi poet who lived in Ghazna, in what is now Afghanistan between the 11th century and the 12th century. Some people spell his name as Sanayee. He died around 1131.-Life:...
, Attar, Rumi, SaadiSaadi (poet)Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī better known by his pen-name as Saʿdī or, simply, Saadi, was one of the major Persian poets of the medieval period. He is not only famous in Persian-speaking countries, but he has also been quoted in western sources...
, Amir Khusrow - Stories from the Canterbury Tales such as The Franklin's Tale, The Pardoner's Tale and The Merchant's Tale
- The Hymn of the Pearl
- CinderellaCinderella"Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper" is a folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world. The title character is a young woman living in unfortunate circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune...
- Tales from One Thousand and One Nights
- AladdinAladdinAladdin is a Middle Eastern folk tale. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , and one of the most famous, although it was actually added to the collection by Antoine Galland ....
- Myths such as Cupid and PsycheCupid and PsycheCupid and Psyche , is a legend that first appeared as a digressionary story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the 2nd century CE. Apuleius likely used an earlier tale as the basis for his story, modifying it to suit the thematic needs of his novel.It has...
- Tales collected by the Brothers GrimmBrothers GrimmThe Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
, such as The Water of LifeThe Water of Life (German fairy tale)The Water of Life is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 97.It is Aarne-Thompson type 551.John Francis Campbell noted it as a parallel of the Scottish fairy tale, The Brown Bear of the Green Glen.-Synopsis:...