The Traveller and the Robe

On 25 September 1912 in Denver, after telling a visitor that man must take flight from the cage of the body and become pure spirit, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá narrated a story about detachment. Maḥmúd recorded His words:

The Persian friends travel mostly on foot. They sleep whenever they get tired. They rest wherever they see a shady tree. Once a person came to an Amír. The Amír wished to present him with a gift and with insistence gave him a robe. Later, when he became tired, he lay down under a tree in the forest with the robe folded under his head. But he could not sleep as he repeatedly imagined that a thief was crouching nearby to take away the robe. At last he rose, threw the robe away and said, “As long as this robe is with me, I shall not find rest. To find rest I must give it up.” How long will you desire a robe for your body? Release your body that you may have no need for a robe.

Source: Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání, Maḥmúd’s Diary, 25 September 1912 (Denver); also quoted in Earl Redman, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Their Midst, p. 206.

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: detachment).

Various. *bahaistories.com archive*. https://bahaistories.com/subject/detachment