Customer Reviews

The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Each one of Idries Shah's three delightful Nasrudin books - The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin, the Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin and The Pleasantries of the Incredible 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.

This book is the perfect antidote for a mind that is caught up in its own world, ignorant of the possibilities that lie beyond its confines. The delightful stories bring to light those antics of the mind that distort vision. Once these inadequate mentations are exposed, the process of thinking becomes clearer and less muddled with speculation and confusion. I think any one who is interested in discovering within oneself the method for sifting fact from fiction will find these stories invaluable. In addition, the reader, freed from the strictures that bind ordinary thought, gets a glimpse of a greater world with greater freedom and greater potential.

I'm just back from a trip to Turkey, where I discovered that Mulla Nasrudin is almost as popular as PEANUTS is in the United States. In addition to providing amusement, however, the Nasrudin stories are also used there as exercises for spiritual development with children and adults alike, since they externalize in joke form common patterns of human thought and behavior that need to be identified and understood in order for a human being to make progress. Thus, the Turks, and interested Western readers as well, can laugh and learn, both at once, from these ancient Middle Eastern anecdotes.

Mulla Nasrudin is akin to a Central Asian Charlie Brown or Dilbert. If you like humor that's funny, relevant and meaningful, this is for you.

Idries Shah is the most articulate of those writing about the tradition and work of the Sufis. Should you read other of his books, you will learn that Nasrudin is much more than the town clown or the butt of the ordinary man's humor. In the Sufi sense that "wisdom is hidden" from those who lead somewhat superficial lives, Nasrudin's form of wisdom is especially obscure. You see, according to Shah, Nasrudin IS a joke! He is not the object of jokes nor the teller of jokes. Rather, as the Court Jester of another era, the FOOL is the only one in many situations who is able to see the "truth." By understanding Nasrudin, the seeker adds a deeper grasp of reality, the way things really are, to his or her own perception. Failing that, the reader simply has a ball reading these wonderful anecdotes. It is not Nasrudin who is revealed in this book. It is the reader. Because there are even better stories in other of Shah's books, I rate this collection "Four Stars" rather than five. Who knows, the laugh may be on me?

This book suffers from a very poor translation to English. I think it has a lot to do with the choices of words. Many times I found that if the author rephrased certain sentences then a joke and a moral would make much more sense. Also, some of the short stories contain illogically connected sentences thus really doing a trick on the meaning of a joke that author was trying to translate. All these is very sad because the stories of Nasrudin can be a real delight. I guess I will have to find a better book.

I very much enjoyed this book and its illustrations. I could have done without some of the modern input. The Mullah Nasrudin lived many centuries ago and is credited with a collection of humorous stories about the mundane aspects of life. These stories could be compared somewhat to the Zen koans, only I found them more enjoyable. My favorite Nasrudin stories, however, are those that were told to me. This book is also available in Spanish as Las ocurrencias del incredible mula Nasrudin.

Each one of Idries Shah's three delightful Nasrudin books - The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin, The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin and The Pleasantries of the Incredible 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.

Mulla Nasrudin entertains and keeps the spirits light while his actions and inactions, sayings and things left unsaid work on your mind and your views. Reading this book is an exercise that feels like indulgence. Each trip through the book brings different impacts and meanings to you. Enlightening, while inconspicuous.

This book is a compilation of funny anecdotes and jokes compiled through the ages. The choice of words and sentence structures clearly shows the difficulty in translating such text. In these regards the book is fine.

This book fails mightily when talking about Mulla Nasuraddin. I understand that Mulla at this stage is mostly considered somewhat fictitious figures and stories about him probably have different origins which are attributed over the times to a single person. At the same time, the author has completely take a leap of faith and almost any anecdote even modern ones about trains and machines had been assigned to Mulla. I was really looking for the charm of those old time stories not a general anecdote. In that sense, this books disappointed me.