A wandering dervish ran to where a Sufi sat deep in contemplation, and said: “Quick! We must do something—a monkey has just picked up a knife.” “Don’t worry,” said the Sufi, “so long as it was not a man.” When the dervish saw the monkey again, he found, sure enough, that it had thrown the knife away.

From Idries Shah’s Wisdom of the Idiots, London: The Octagon Press, 1970 (first published in 1969), p. 150.