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Here, Nasrudin's anecdotes are seen to be parallel to the mind's working, designed to amuse the tea-house, but also intended for use on other levels.
--This text refers to the
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Nasrudin is a legendary figure of the "golden age" of Persian Islam, about whom many stories are told. These are in the form of humerous short stories (often little more than a paragraph) which carry a deeper meaning.
Idries Shah has transalated a number of Sufic works and is well respected for translating into English, whilst retaining wherever possible the humour contained in rhyme and the play of words. A superb book, serving as an introduction to the thinking of the Sufis
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
16 reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Much more than entertainment.
21 Aug 1999
Format:Paperback
Each one of Idries Shah's three delightful Nasrudin books - The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin, the Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin and the Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin - is not only the perfect gift for any thinking person with a sense of humor, but a fitting antidote to the stress, pressure and confusion of modern life. For beyond the laughter lie deeper levels of meaning that reveal themselves at their own pace and can help broaden our perception and increase our understanding. The bite-sized jokes center around Mulla Nasrudin, an age-old Middle Eastern teaching figure whose antics mirror those of the human mind as he juggles the roles of wise man, fool and our own self. Calling these jokes "perfectly designed models for isolating and holding distortions of the mind which so often pass for reasonable behavior," author Idries Shah notes that they have been used for centuries by the Sufis as teaching exercises. Other specialists - from physicists to psychologists - have employed them to illustrate concepts that defy more straightforward explanations. I've not seen anything like them anywhere else.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
A book that is a teacher
24 Mar 2000
Format:Paperback
I read this book many years ago wondering, 'What on earth do these tales mean?' I searched for meanings and morals in the jokes and situations the Mulla finds himself in. Only recently, upon rereading it, I saw what Shah has pointed out several times. The stories help pinpoint certain habits of mind including certain glitches in the thinking process that invalidate one's conclusions and ideas. Beyond that, I have found, upon examining these tales, a way of using the mind that avoids the glitches, the ditches, and the pitfalls to which human thought is often susceptible to. Do I recommend this book? Absolutely. It not only has shown my mind to me, it has shown the way to what my mind can become. The book is a teacher, a teacher that shows what's wrong, and in so doing, what may be the right way of using the mind and oneself.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
The Moslem answer to Yogi Berra?
3 Oct 2004
Format:Paperback
This is a collection of Sufi (Islamic mystics) teaching stories. Shah is famous for his many collections of them. I've read 10 of his books. They are invariably entertaining. The Sufi masters are referred to as idiots--they can appear as such to the uninitiated. Reminds one of some of the Hasidic and Elijah stories, Yogi Berra's quips, Tibetan Buddhists masters of Crazy Wisdom, and the Peter Sellers movie "Being There." It's sometimes hard to tell if the protagonist knows what he's doing or not. Some of the stories are easily understood by the reader; some are more like Zen koans. I found this book among the best of the ones I've read of his. You might also try his "Wisdom of the Idiots" or "The Dermis Probe." The latter is Shah's term for the dilemma of the 3 blind men differing over their descriptions of an elephant.
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