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 distincively 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. They put at the disposal of those who know them an instrument for measuring themselves, the world and situations that they encounter. 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.
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."
Read more about this topic: Teaching Stories
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“Uses are always much broader than functions, and usually far less contentious. The word function carries overtones of purpose and propriety, of concern with why something was developed rather than with how it has actually been found useful. The function of automobiles is to transport people and objects, but they are used for a variety of other purposes—as homes, offices, bedrooms, henhouses, jetties, breakwaters, even offensive weapons.”
—Frank Smith (b. 1928)
“Of all the inhabitants of the inferno, none but Lucifer knows that hell is hell, and the secret function of purgatory is to make of heaven an effective reality.”
—Arnold Bennett (1867–1931)
“Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.”
—Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985)