Ugly Question Fair Answer
If you entrust your garden to a gardener, and you smell a disagreeable odor, suspect the gardener and not the garden.
A king read three letters from the same man, but did not answer. The subject wrote a complaint, saying, “Three times now I have petitioned your majesty. Let your majesty at least say whether my petition has been accepted or rejected.”
The king wrote on the back of the letter, “Do you not know that refusing an answer is an answer itself, and that the answer to a fool is silence?”
A tree’s not growing is a refusal to answer, and is an answer itself. Every motion people make is a question. Whatever happens to them, whether sorrow or joy, is an answer. If they hear a pleasant answer, they show their thanks. Thanks is expressed by asking the same kind of question again. If they hear an unpleasant answer, they quickly ask God’s forgiveness and do not repeat that kind of question.
“If only, when Our might came upon them, They had been humble! But their hearts were hard.” In other words, they did not understand that the answer they received came from the question they asked. “And Satan decked out fair to them What they were doing.” This means they saw the answer to their question but said, “This ugly answer is not appropriate to our fair question.” They did not realize that smoke comes from the fuel, not the fire. The drier the fuel, the cleaner the flame. If you entrust your garden to a gardener, and you smell a disagreeable odor, suspect the gardener and not the garden.
Fihi Ma Fihi - Discourse 40
A king read three letters from the same man, but did not answer. The subject wrote a complaint, saying, “Three times now I have petitioned your majesty. Let your majesty at least say whether my petition has been accepted or rejected.”
The king wrote on the back of the letter, “Do you not know that refusing an answer is an answer itself, and that the answer to a fool is silence?”
A tree’s not growing is a refusal to answer, and is an answer itself. Every motion people make is a question. Whatever happens to them, whether sorrow or joy, is an answer. If they hear a pleasant answer, they show their thanks. Thanks is expressed by asking the same kind of question again. If they hear an unpleasant answer, they quickly ask God’s forgiveness and do not repeat that kind of question.
“If only, when Our might came upon them, They had been humble! But their hearts were hard.” In other words, they did not understand that the answer they received came from the question they asked. “And Satan decked out fair to them What they were doing.” This means they saw the answer to their question but said, “This ugly answer is not appropriate to our fair question.” They did not realize that smoke comes from the fuel, not the fire. The drier the fuel, the cleaner the flame. If you entrust your garden to a gardener, and you smell a disagreeable odor, suspect the gardener and not the garden.
Fihi Ma Fihi - Discourse 40
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