The Three Ducks: A Parable Told by 'Abdu'l-Bahá

Among the small parables that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá would tell in conversation with friends was the story of the three ducks. It appears, as the compilers note, in the recollections of more than one listener — recorded by visitors to the household in ‘Akká in the years before His passing.

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Three young ducks, the Master would say, had been told by their elders that beyond the meadow lay a great river — wide, deep, flowing — and that any duck who reached it would never want for water again. The three set off together at dawn.

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After an hour the first duck came upon a small puddle in a hollow. The water was cool and the duck was tired. *Surely this is the river of which the elders spoke,* it said, and settled itself in the puddle. It paddled in three feet of water and was content.

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The other two went on. After another hour they came upon a shallow pond at the edge of a field. The water was clearer than the puddle and reached almost to the ducks’ knees. *Surely this,* said the second duck, *is the river of which the elders spoke.* And it stopped.

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The third went on alone. The path was longer than it had expected. Other ponds appeared; the duck inquired of each, and each was kind, but no pond was the river. The duck went on. By evening the duck reached, at last, the bank of a great water — wider than its eye could see, deeper than its body could sound, flowing toward an even greater sea. The duck stepped in and was at home.

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The Master would close the story, the recorders say, with a quiet word. The seekers of the truth, He would observe, are many. Some take the first pond for the river; some take the second. Only those who refuse to settle short of the great flowing water arrive at it. The journey is longer than the seeker first expects. The water at the end is correspondingly greater.

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The parable was a teaching tool. It was used to encourage inquirers who had begun the search and were tempted to stop at some lesser teaching that flattered them. The Master would tell it gently. The listeners would understand. The work of finding the river, He suggested, did not get easier; it only grew more worthwhile.

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*Paraphrased from Stories Told by 'Abdu'l-Bahá (Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 2000); see original for full text.*

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