Truth in a Nutshell

Listening and Learning

Sadik Hamzawi, the Muslim sage, was asked: “How do you come to succeed, by his own wish, the sage of Samarkand, when you were only a servant in his house?”

Sadik Hamzawi replied: “He taught me what he wanted to teach me, and I learned it. My Master said once: ‘I cannot teach the others, the disciples, to the same degree because they want to ask questions, they demand meetings, they improve the framework, they therefore only teach themselves what they already know.’”

But I said to him: “Teach me what you can and tell me how to learn. This is how I became his successor. People have cherished notions about how teaching and learning should take place. They cannot have the notions and also learn.”
_{Idries Shah, The Way of the Sufi}

The path of knowledge
  I travelled intensely.
In the circle of mystics
  I have been elevated.
But unveiling the heart
  I finally came to see – really –
  that I know nothing.
_{Kwaja Nasir al-Din Tusi, in Love’s Alchemy}