The Wise Man and the Fool: A Story 'Abdu'l-Bahá Told

Among the parables ‘Abdu’l-Bahá would tell, the visitors record a short one about a wise man and a fool. He used it, several listeners noted, when an inquirer arrived in some haste with a question that had not yet been quite formed.

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A wise man and a fool, the Master would say, met one another at a crossroad in the country. The fool was striding briskly. The wise man was walking slowly, looking up at the signposts and down at the dust. The fool, observing the older man’s slowness, hailed him with cheerful contempt. *I am making excellent time, sir,* he said. *Why do you walk so slowly?*

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The wise man looked at him and smiled. *I am going,* he said, *to a particular village three miles south of here. Are you going to that village?*

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The fool considered. *I am going,* he said, *very fast. I am not certain in what direction. But I am making excellent time.*

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The Master would let the parable rest there. Sometimes He would add a single observation. Speed, He would note, is little use to the man who has not asked where the road is going. The foolish often appear, on first encounter, more energetic than the wise; they cover ground faster. They cover, however, the wrong ground. The wise are slow because they have first paused to ask which road, of the many available, in fact reaches the village.

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Once they have asked, they walk to it; and at the end of the day they are there, while the rapid traveller is still hurrying down some other road.

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The teaching was offered, the listeners noticed, with great gentleness. The Master did not rebuke the fool. He did not flatter the wise man. He simply showed, in the brief image of the crossroad, the condition that He had spent His ministry trying to bring inquirers into: the condition of asking, before hurrying, what road the soul is in fact on.

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The friends who heard the parable carried it away. Several wrote it down in their journals. It belongs, the compilers note, to the small repertoire of teaching parables by which the Master shaped the inward attention of those who came to Him in the imprisonment-city.

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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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