Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’.

Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.

This week I bring to your attention a story titled ‘The Fisherman and the Genie’ from the book titled ‘Tales of Dervishes’ which is a compilation of tales recorded during the past thousand years. Here the stories contain several levels of meaning and work like psychological mirrors in which the reader may see himself and reality reflected, and come to better understand both.

The Persian word dervish is generally considered to be derived from the verb der-vekhtan to wait at a door. The reference is to waiting before the door of enlightenment.

The Fisherman and the Genie

A LONE fisherman one day brought up a brass bottle, stoppered with lead, in his net. Though the appearance of the bottle was quite different from what he was used to finding in the sea, he thought it might contain something of value. Besides, he had not had a good catch, and at the worst he could sell the bottle to a brass-merchant.

The bottle was not very large. On the top was inscribed a strange symbol, the Seal of Solomon, King and Master. Inside had been imprisoned a fearsome genie; and the bottle had been cast into the sea by Solomon himself so that men should be protected from the spirit until such time as there came one who could control it, assigning it to its proper role of service of mankind.

But the fishermen knew nothing of this. All he knew was that here was something which he could investigate, which might be of profit to him. Its outside shone and it was a work of art. “Inside”, he thought, “there may be diamonds.”

Forgetting the adage, ‘Man can use only what he has learned to use,’ the fisherman pulled out the leaden stopper.

He inverted the bottle, but there seemed to be nothing in it, so he set it down and looked at it. Then he noticed a faint wisp as of smoke, slowly becoming denser, which swirled and formed itself into the appearance of a huge and threatening being, which addressed him in a booming voice:

I am the Chief of the Jinns who knows the secrets of miraculous happenings, imprisoned by order of Solomon against whom I rebelled, and I shall destroy you!

The fisherman was terrified, and, casting himself upon the sand, cried out: ‘Will you destroy him who gave you your freedom?’

‘Indeed I shall,’ said the genie, ‘for rebellion is my nature, and destruction is my capacity, although I may have been rendered immobile for several thousand years.’

The fisherman now saw that, far from profit from this unwelcome catch, he was likely to be annihilated for no good reason that he could fathom.

He looked at the seal upon the stopper, and suddenly an idea occurred to him. ‘You could never have come out of that bottle; he said. ‘It is too small.’

What! Do you doubt the word of the Master of the Jinns?’ roared the apparition. And he dissolved himself again into wispy smoke and went back into the bottle. The fisherman took up the stopper and plugged the bottle w...