The Light Is Better Over Here

Mullah Nasruddin is a character in the Middle East; they tell stories about him. In one of the stories, the Mullah was in the tavern all night, and he goes out in the early morning, the wee hours of the morning, and he is wandering around the city aimlessly. A policeman comes up and says: Mullah, what are you doing out at this time? And he said that if he knew the answer to that question, he would be at home in bed. The idea is that this is the state of many, many people. They are literally wandering around in a drunken stupor, and they do not know what they are doing. They do not know what they are doing, and there are many, many diversions. There are many ways to conceal the truth.

Rumi talks about the many wines that God has put on this earth to put people out of their misery. He said Jesus was drunk in the love of God, and his donkey was high on barley. There are many ways that we can deal with the human condition. As John Lennon said: whatever gets you through the night. There are many people who have that attitude — just get through this, whatever it takes. That, from a Muslim perspective, is a type of ingratitude, because the messengers have come. They have given people news. They have given people guidance. The guidance is there, and that is why the truth-concealer is the one who is an ingrate. He is an ingrate because he or she is not accepting that truth. And this is the Muslim view of looking at these two phenomena, of how we respond to revelation.

Now, another Mullah story, which is another way of looking at this: the Mullah was looking around one day for something, and somebody came by and said: Mullah, what are you looking for? He said: some keys I lost. So the man starts helping him, and after about an hour or two he is saying: listen, where exactly do you think you lost them? He said: oh, way over there. He said: well, what are you looking here for? He said: it is better — the light is better over here. So there is an idea also that people will go where it is easy instead of going where it is hard. And this is also a type of truth-concealment: to go where it is easy instead of going where it is hard.