Editing Teaching stories (section)

==Function==
It is the teaching function of teaching stories that characterises them rather than any other categorisation, however much they may have other uses. Shah likened the Sufi story to a peach:

:"A person may be emotionally stirred by the exterior as if the peach were lent to you. You can eat the peach and taste a further delight ... You can throw away the stone – or crack it and find a delicious kernel within. This is the hidden depth."

Thus these narratives also often have a wide circulation outside of any instructional function, where they frequently have cultural significance and entertainment value, or contain a moral answer or solution of some kind, or are put to use to reinforce belief. What makes them distinctively teaching stories however is something different: they are likely to be open-ended, depending on the individual members of their audience for a variety of interpretations. Their purpose is ultimately to change the thinking process itself.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hardin |first1=Shields Nancy |date=October 1977|title= The Teaching Story and Doris Lessing|journal= Twentieth Century Literature |volume=23 |pages= 314–25 |doi=10.2307/441260|jstor=441260 }}</ref> They put at the disposal of those who know them an instrument for measuring themselves, the world and situations that they encounter.<ref>from Learning from Stories, A lecture by Idries Shah before a live audience in 1976 available as audio to download at {{cite web |url=http://ishk.net/sufis/shahaudio.html |title=Idries Shah Lectures Audio |accessdate=2010-03-21 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100328085109/http://ishk.net/sufis/shahaudio.html |archivedate=2010-03-28 }}. Accessed March 20, 2010.</ref> It is for this reason that the reading, rereading, discussion and interpretation of narratives in a group setting became a significant part of the activities in which the members of Shah's study circles engaged.<ref>{{cite book
  |editor-last = Malik
  |editor-first = Jamal
 |editor2=Hinnells, John R.
  | title = Sufism in the West
  | publisher = Routledge Taylor & Francis Group
  | year = 2006
  | location = London, UK/New York, NY
  | page = 32
  | isbn = 0-415-27407-9}}</ref><ref>On the ''Teaching Tales'' page in the misc. writing section of [http://www.tahirshah.com/ his website], [[Tahir Shah]], son of Idries Shah writes: "More often than not my father would reject requests from people seeking a teacher. He would say: ‘that person only wants a guru’, or ‘this person can’t be taught, because he isn’t ready yet to learn’. Those whom he accepted were directed to Sufi teaching-stories and other writing by the great masters – among them Omar Khayyam, Jalaluddin Rumi, Hakim Sanai, El Ghazali and Saadi of Shiraz."</ref>

According to [[Doris Lessing]]:
:"A real teaching story, whether thousands of years old, or new, goes far beyond the parables that are still part of our culture. A parable has a simple message: this means that. But in a Sufi teaching story, there may be layers of meaning, some of them not to be verbalized. Current ways of "teaching" literature in schools and universities may make it difficult for literary people to approach Sufi literature as it should be: Sufis do not pull apart a tale to find its meaning, but cite the case of the child who has dismantled a fly and, left with a heap of wings, a head, legs, asks "Where is the fly?" In other words, a student learns to use the mind in ways unfamiliar to us. They "soak themselves" in the material. They ignore the analytical approach, and the practice of memorizing and regurgitating. The meaning of a Sufi tale comes through contemplation, and may take years."<ref name="Lessing1" />