In Search of a Master: A Short Sufi Story

One of the Sufis, Junaid, came to an old fakir, and he asked him, “I have heard that you know. Show me the path.” The old man said, “You have heard that I know. You don’t know. Look at me and feel.” The man said, “I cannot feel anything. Just do one thing: show me the path where I can find my Master.” So the old man said, “You go first to Mecca. Have the pilgrimage and search such and such a man. He will be sitting under a tree. His eyes will be such: they will be throwing light, and you will feel a certain perfume like musk around him. Go and seek.”

And Junaid traveled and traveled for twenty years. Wherever he heard a Master is, he will go. But neither the tree was there, nor the perfume, the musk, nor those eyes the old man has described. The personality was not there. And he had a ready-made formula, so he will judge immediately, ”This is not my Master,” and he will move ahead. After twenty years he reached under a tree.