Editing Teaching stories (section)

A '''teaching story''' is a narrative that has been deliberately created as a vehicle for the transmission of wisdom. The practice has been used in a number of religious and other traditions, though writer [[Idries Shah]]'s use of it was in the context of [[Sufi]] teaching and learning, within which this body of material has been described as the "most valuable of the treasures in the human heritage".<ref name="Lessing1">{{cite web 
 |url= http://ishk.net/sufis/lessing_commandingself.html
 |title=On Sufism and Idries Shah's The Commanding Self (1994)
 |author=Doris Lessing
 |date= January 31, 1999
 |publisher= Sufi Studies Today
 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070718020932/https://www.ishk.net/sufis/lessing_commandingself.html
 |archive-date = 18 July 2007
 |url-status = dead
 |accessdate=20 March 2010}}</ref> The range of teaching stories is enormous, including anecdotes, accounts of meetings between teachers and pupils, biographies, [[myths]], [[fairy tales]], [[fables]] and [[jokes]]. Such stories frequently have a long life beyond the initial teaching situation and (sometimes in deteriorated form) have contributed vastly to the world's store of [[folklore]] and [[literature]].