By Paulo Coelho
Love is only a small thing, enough for one person, and any suggestion that the heart might be larger than this is considered perverse.
(The Zahir)
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By Paulo Coelho
Nasrudin’s turban
Nasrudin appeared at court wearing a magnificent turban and asking for money for charity.
- you come here asking for money, but wear such an expensive ornament upon your head. How much was that extraordinary piece? - asked the sovereign.
- Five hundred gold coins - replied the wise Sufi.
The minister whispered: “That is a lie. No turban costs such a fortune.”
Nasrudin insisted:
- I have not come here only to ask for money, I am also here to negotiate. I paid that much money for the turban, for I knew that in the whole world only one king would be capable of buying it for six hundred coins, so that I can give the profit to the poor.
This sultan was flattered and paid the sum Nasrudin ask. On his way out, the wise man said to the minister:
- You may know the value of turbans, but I know how far vanity can lead a man.
Just like marriage
Nasrudin spent the entire autumn working his garden. The flowers had blossomed in the spring - and Nasrudin noticed a few dandelions appearing, which he hadn’t planted.
Nasrudin tore them up. But the pollen had already spread and others began to grow. He tried to find a weed killer which only killed dandelions. A specialist told him any type of poison would end up killing all the other flowers. In despair, he went to ask a gardener for help.
- It is like a marriage - said the gardener. - Along with the good things, a few little inconveniences always appear.
- What can I do? - insisted Nasrudin.
- Nothing. Although they are flowers you did not count on, they are still part of the garden.
Accepting compassion
- How do we purify the world?- asked a disciple.
Ibn al-Husayn replied:
- There was once a sheik in Damascus called Abu Musa al-Qumasi. Everyone honored him for his great wisdom, but no one knew whether he was a good man.
“One afternoon, a construction fault caused the house where the sheik lived with his wife, to collapse. The desperate neighbors began to dig the ruins; eventually, they managed to locate the sheik’s wife.
“She said: “Don’t worry about me. First save my husband, who was sitting somewhere over there.”
“The neighbors removed the rubble from the area she indicated, and found the sheik. He said: “Don’t worry about me. First save my wife, who was lying somewhere over there.”
“When someone acts as this couple did, he is purifying the whole world.”
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Today, In Digg - I’ve opened a profile there in order to digg news - came upon this following one on copyright.
Record companies sue Project Playlist on copyright
(Reporting by Leslie Gevirtz; editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nine major record labels filed suit against an online music provider on Monday, accusing Project Playlist Inc of a “massive infringement” of their copyrights to the songs of artists such as U2 and Gwen Stefani.
Project Playlist enables its users to easily find, play and share music with others for free, according to the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The website compiles a vast index of songs on the Internet and users can “quickly and easily search the index for recordings by their favorite artists. At the click of a mouse, Project Playlist instantly streams a digital performance of the selected recording to the user, who can listen to it on his or her computer or mobile device,” the lawsuit said.
(…)
The Beverly Hills, California-based company, an affiliate of KR Capital Partners LLC, also allows its users to embed their personalized playlists on social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Blogger, the lawsuit said. The record companies said projectplaylist.com gets more than 600,000 daily users, nearly 9.5 million average page views per day.
(…)
(Reporting by Leslie Gevirtz; editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
To read the full article please go here.
Ahabu, the founder of Viskosa, in your novel “The devil and Miss Prym”, needed to spend only one night with St. Saven to become a wise sovereign after being a road bandit. Can this happen in lives with ordinary people also?
Probably. We are always either giving or accepting examples from other persons – therefore, each act that we perform is a sacred one.
