Does the honey make you forget the well, and everything else?

بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

كُلُّ نَفْسٍۢ ذَآئِقَةُ ٱلْمَوْتِ ۗ 

وَإِنَّمَا تُوَفَّوْنَ أُجُورَكُمْ يَوْمَ ٱلْقِيَـٰمَةِ ۖ

 فَمَن زُحْزِحَ عَنِ ٱلنَّارِ وَأُدْخِلَ ٱلْجَنَّةَ فَقَدْ فَازَ ۗ 

وَمَا ٱلْحَيَوٰةُ ٱلدُّنْيَآ إِلَّا مَتَـٰعُ ٱلْغُرُورِ

Kullu nafsin zaaa’iqatul mawt; wa innamaa tuwaffawna ujoorakum Yawmal Qiyaamah; faman zuhziha ‘anin Naari wa udkhilal Jannata faqad faaz; wa mal hayaatud dunyaaa illaa mataa’ul ghuroor.

Al-Imran 3:185 — Every soul will taste death. And you will only receive your full reward on the Day of Judgment. Whoever is spared from the Fire and admitted into Paradise has indeed triumphed, whereas the life of this world is no more than the delusion of enjoyment. (Quran.com)

There is an old story, known in many traditions, of a man who was walking through the wilderness.

Perhaps he was travelling.

Perhaps he was searching for something.

Perhaps, like most of us, he was simply passing through life without fully knowing how dangerous the terrain really was.

Suddenly, a fierce elephant began to chase him. The man ran in terror. He had no weapon, no shelter, no friend nearby, and no time for careful deliberation. In his panic, he saw an empty well. Beside it grew a tree, and from the tree a root hung down into the well.

So he grabbed the root and lowered himself inside.

For a moment, he must have felt relief.

The elephant was above him, but it could not reach him.

But then he looked down.

At the bottom of the well was a poisonous dragon, waiting with its mouth open.

Around the sides of the well were poisonous snakes.

Then he looked again at the root by which he was hanging. Two mice, one black and one white, were gnawing at it. They did not rush. They did not need to rush. They only had to continue doing what they were doing, and sooner or later the root would break.

Above him was danger.

Below him was danger.

Around him was danger.

Even the thing that held him was disappearing.

Then, from the tree above, a few drops of honey began to fall.

One drop landed near his mouth.

He tasted it.

It was sweet.

Then another drop came.

And another.

For a brief moment, the man forgot the elephant, the dragon, the snakes, the mice, the height, the well, and the fragility of the root.

He tasted the honey and became absorbed in its sweetness.

What a strange image.

And yet, what an accurate image.

This story is often called The Man in the Well. Its provenance is usually traced to an Indian-Buddhist moral parable, preserved in Buddhist textual and visual traditions, and later carried through Persian, Islamic, Christian, and other literary worlds. It is also connected, in its Persian and Sufi afterlife, with Rumi, though the details change from one telling to another. Sometimes the animal is an elephant. Sometimes it is a lion. Sometimes the sweetness is honey. In one Rumi-linked version, it is manna. The outer details shift, but the moral throughline remains.

And what is that moral?

That man is us.

The elephant represents impermanence — the inescapable movement of time, change, decline, and ajal approaching.

The root is life.

The snakes are the vulnerabilities of the body.

The dragon represents death itself — or, in an Islamic framing, the final threshold into death, grave, barzakh, and accountability.

The mice are day and night constantly gnawing and making us closer and closer to death.

And the honey is the sweetness of dunya when it becomes a veil.

This does not mean that honey is evil.

That is not the point.

Food is not evil.

Beauty is not evil.

Family is not evil.

Work is not evil.

Wealth is not evil.

Rest, laughter, friendship, clothing, houses, gardens, books, and the ordinary pleasures of life are not evil in themselves. Islam does not ask us to despise the gifts of Allah. It asks us to place them in their proper size.

The mistake of the man in the well was not that he tasted something sweet.

His mistake was that the sweetness caused him to forget where he was.

That is the subtle danger of dunya. It does not always come to us as a manifest sin. Sometimes it comes as a small pleasure, a little comfort, a moment of praise, a bit of influence, a new possession, a notification, a title, a grudge that feels satisfying, a public victory, a private indulgence, or the warm honey of being admired.

The nafs does not always ask for disbelief.

Sometimes it asks only for one more drop.

And then another.

And then another.

Until a person becomes spiritually disoriented.

He is still hanging in the well, but he speaks as though he owns the earth.

He is still being pursued by death, but he behaves as though death is a rumour.

He is still watching day and night consume his life, but he says, “Let me just enjoy this little sweetness first.”

This is why the Qur’an’s wording is so piercing:

وَمَا ٱلْحَيَوٰةُ ٱلدُّنْيَآ إِلَّا مَتَـٰعُ ٱلْغُرُورِ

The life of this world is no more than the delusion of enjoyment.

Not enjoyment only.

The delusion of enjoyment.

Because the danger is not the honey itself, but the false meaning we give to it. We begin to think that sweetness is safety. We begin to confuse pleasure with success. We begin to treat a passing taste as though it were a permanent dwelling.

Rumi helps us here with great acuity. In the Mathnawi, he says in meaning that the world is not merely cloth, silver, measure, and women; the world is to be heedless of Allah. He also gives the image of water and the ship: water beneath the ship carries it, but water inside the ship destroys it.

That is a crucial distinction.

Dunya under your feet may become a means.

Dunya inside your heart becomes a flood.

A person may have wealth and not be owned by it.

A person may have status and remain humble.

A person may have knowledge and not become intoxicated by it.

A person may have beauty around him and still remember the One who made beauty.

But when the honey enters the heart as attachment, when it becomes the telos of life, when it becomes the reason we wake and the object we chase and the thing for which we neglect prayer, character, service, family, justice, truth, and accountability, then the honey has done its work.

It has not saved us from the well.

It has made us comfortable inside it.

There is a lesson here for all of us.

Many people are careful about obvious dangers. They do not want to lose money. They do not want to lose reputation. They do not want to lose an opportunity. They do not want to lose comfort.

But fewer people are careful about losing their spiritual attunement.

Fewer people ask: Is this pleasure making me more grateful or more heedless?

Is this success making me more generous or more arrogant?

Is this knowledge making me more humble or more argumentative?

Is this work serving my akhirah, or has my akhirah quietly become an adjunct to my work?

Is this relationship bringing me closer to Allah, or am I using the language of love to justify disobedience?

Is this public good truly for Allah, or am I merely eating the honey of influence, reach, approval, and applause?

These are not easy questions.

They require discernment.

They require a kind of moral acuity that is increasingly rare, because modern life is almost an engineered hive of honey. It keeps dripping. It gives us sweetness in small, quick, repeatable doses. It gives us entertainment without reflection, opinion without wisdom, speed without depth, information without transformation, and connection without true companionship.

And the mice keep gnawing.

Day and night.

Night and day.

The root does not become stronger because we ignore it.

The dragon does not disappear because we refuse to look down.

The elephant does not stop pursuing us because we have found something sweet to taste.

This is why remembrance of death is not pessimism. It is not morbidity. It is not a rejection of life. It is a restoration of proportion. It places the honey back into its proper meaning.

When a believer remembers death, he does not become useless. He becomes more truthful.

He eats, but with gratitude.

He earns, but with conscience.

He studies, but with humility.

He teaches, but with responsibility.

He enjoys, but with restraint.

He loves, but with fidelity.

He serves, but without turning service into self-worship.

He receives the world as a trust, not as an idol.

The real tragedy in the story is not that the man was in danger. Every human being is in danger. Every soul will taste death. The tragedy is that he allowed a little sweetness to make him forget the reality of his condition.

How many of us are doing the same?

We may not be hanging from a root in a well, but we are hanging from something just as fragile.

Health.

Youth.

Employment.

Family stability.

Public respect.

Political order.

Physical strength.

Mental clarity.

Time.

Any of these can weaken. Any of these can be gnawed by the black and white mice of day and night. Any of these can disappear sooner than we imagine.

So the question is not whether we should ever taste honey.

The question is whether the honey makes us forget Allah.

If it does, then even a small sweetness has become dangerous.

If it does not, then even the sweetness can become dhikr, gratitude, and lawful joy.

May Allah make us people of discernment. May He allow us to enjoy what is halal without becoming enslaved by it. May He protect us from the nafs that asks only for one more drop while the root of life is being consumed. May He make the remembrance of death a source of wisdom, not despair. May He make this world remain beneath our feet and not inside our hearts. And when our root finally breaks, may He admit us into His mercy, forgiveness, and pleasure. Ameen.

A brief source note: This retelling draws on the old parable known as The Man in the Well. In the Chinese Buddhist Fo shuo piyu jing, translated by Yijing, the story includes the elephant, empty well, black and white mice, poisonous snakes, poisonous dragon, and five drops of honey; the text itself interprets these as symbols of impermanence, birth-and-death, day and night, the body, sensual desire, old age, illness, and death. (Wikisource) Scholar Monika Zin summarizes the tale as originating in India, “in all probability” in Buddhist bearing, and traces its later travels through Persian and other traditions. She also notes the Rumi/Rückert connection, where the Rumi-linked version uses manna rather than honey. (Academia) The Rumi connection above is also anchored in the Mathnawi’s moral definition of dunya as heedlessness of God, not merely material objects, and in his image of water inside or beneath the ship. (ganjoor.net)

The Smell of Food and the Sound of Money

  بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

وَلَا تَأۡكُلُوٓاْ أَمۡوَٰلَكُم بَيۡنَكُم بِٱلۡبَٰطِلِ وَتُدۡلُواْ بِهَآ إِلَى ٱلۡحُكَّامِ لِتَأۡكُلُواْ فَرِيقٗا مِّنۡ أَمۡوَٰلِ ٱلنَّاسِ بِٱلۡإِثۡمِ وَأَنتُمۡ تَعۡلَمُونَ

Wa laa ta’kulooo amwaalakum bainakum bil-baatili wa tudloo bihaa ilal hukkaami lita’kuloo fareeqam min amwaalin naasi bil-ithmi wa antum ta’lamoon.

Al-Baqarah 2:188 — Do not consume one another’s wealth unjustly, nor bring it before the authorities in order to consume a portion of people’s wealth sinfully while you know.

In the old books of adab there is a small story preserved by Ibn ʿĀṣim, but like many small stories it contains a large mirror.

A man stood one day near a cook. The pot was boiling, and the smell of the food filled the air. Perhaps it was meat. Perhaps it was stew. Perhaps it was one of those simple dishes whose fragrance reaches the hungry before the food itself ever does.

The man had only bread with him. Dry bread is not easy to eat when the stomach is empty and the heart is longing for something more. So he stood there, near the pot, and ate his bread while smelling the food.

He did not put his hand into the pot.

He did not take a spoonful.

He did not carry away meat, broth, or grain.

He took only what the wind had already carried into the open air: the smell.

But the cook was not pleased.

He looked at the man and said, in effect, “You have eaten by means of my food. My cooking gave taste to your bread. You enjoyed what belonged to me. Therefore you must pay.”

So he took the man before the judge.

This is already a strange moment. A court of justice is meant to protect rights, not to help a man stretch his greed until even the air becomes an invoice. But human beings are like this. When the heart becomes hard, it begins to search for rights where there are no rights, and for payment where there was no sale.

The judge listened.

The cook made his complaint. The man had eaten his bread by the smell of the pot, and therefore the cook wanted payment.

The judge did not dismiss the matter with anger. He did not give a long speech. He understood the claim, and he answered it with the same kind of measure.

He told the man to take out a dirham and strike it against the marble.

The coin rang.

Then the judge said to the cook, “Take the sound of the money, and return.”

What a judgment.

Smell for sound.

Aroma for echo.

Something weightless paid for by something weightless.

The judge did not deny that the man had smelled the food. He did not pretend that the aroma did not exist. Rather, he placed the matter in its proper size. If the cook wished to charge for the smell of food, then let him be satisfied with the sound of money.

This story is humorous, yet sad. For it is not merely a joke. It teaches proportion. It teaches justice. 

There is a lesson here for all of us.

Many people are careful when someone steals from them openly. Fewer are careful when they themselves try to take from others through clever language, emotional pressure, or legal wording. Sometimes a person does not rob with his hand. He robs with a claim. He robs by exaggerating a right. He robs by turning a small inconvenience into a demand for payment. He robs by using authority to make another person feel guilty for something that was never truly owed.

The Qur’an warns us not only against theft in the obvious sense, but against consuming wealth through falsehood. It even mentions taking matters to rulers or judges in order to gain a portion of people’s wealth sinfully while knowing what one is doing. That is a frightening warning, because it means that a thing can wear the clothing of law and still be unjust before Allah.

A judge may hear a case.

A document may be written.

A person may win an argument.

People may even congratulate him for being clever.

But if he knows inside himself that he has taken what was not his, then the cleverness will not save him before Allah.

This is why the story matters.

The cook’s mistake was not that he valued his food. A worker has a right to the fruit of his work. A cook may sell his meal, and the buyer should pay honestly. Islam does not teach us to despise property or labor. It teaches us to honor them through truth.

His mistake was that he tried to sell what he had not given. He tried to turn the passing fragrance of his pot into a debt upon another man. He took the language of rights and used it to serve the desire of the nafs.

How often do we do something similar?

A person does a small favor and then behaves as though he owns the other person forever.

A parent gives to a child, then uses that giving as a chain.

A teacher helps a student, then expects praise beyond measure.

A leader serves the community, then quietly begins to believe that the community belongs to him.

A friend gives support, then demands payment in loyalty, silence, or obedience.

The thing given may have been small, but the claim placed upon it becomes heavy.

The judge in the story cuts through all of this. He teaches the cook, and he teaches us, that justice is not only about whether something happened. It is also about what that thing is truly worth.

If you gave food, you may ask for the price of food.

If you gave labor, you may ask for the wage of labor.

If you gave a loan, you may ask for the loan to be returned.

But if all that passed from you was a smell in the street, then do not demand the wealth of another person as your right.

There is also a lesson for those who judge between people, whether they are judges, parents, teachers, elders, or leaders. Justice sometimes requires more than knowing rules. It requires seeing the reality of a matter. It requires protecting the weak from false claims, and also protecting the claimant from his own greed.

The judge did not merely settle a dispute. He educated a soul. Hopefully.

He allowed the cook to hear the sound of the money, just as the man had smelled the aroma of the food. Perhaps in that ringing of the dirham, the cook heard his own foolishness. Perhaps he realized that greed had made him ridiculous. Perhaps he understood that when a person tries to monetize everything, he may end up being paid with nothing but an echo.

The Qur’an calls us to something higher.

It calls us to clean transactions.

It calls us to mutual consent.

It calls us to fairness in buying and selling.

It calls us to fear Allah in the rights of people.

It calls us not to use courts, status, cleverness, or pressure to take what our conscience already knows is not ours.

A believer should be careful not only with haram money, but with doubtful entitlement. Before asking, “Can I get this?” he should ask, “Is this truly mine before Allah?”

That question alone would purify many homes, many businesses, many institutions, and many communities.

This little story of the cook, the hungry man, and the judge has survived because it exposes something permanent in human nature. The nafs wants to expand its claim. It wants payment for the smell of its food, praise for the shadow of its work, control in return for a small favor, and obedience in return for what should have been given sincerely.

But the path of Allah is different.

May Allah protect us from consuming the wealth of others through false claims, hidden pressure, clever arguments, or unjust authority. May He make our dealings clean, our hearts spacious, and our sense of justice alive before we are made to stand on the Day when every right will be returned to its owner. Ameen.

I also have a different take on it, similar to the idea in the story about planting fruit bearing trees. If the focus of actions is not in really bringing change, or benefit to all creation. If the focus is merely our social media posts, and all our supposedly good deeds are just deeds of influence, reach or likes on social media, then for this "smell" or "steam", will Allah reward us with the highest Paradise, or a tik-tok video/youtube video/instagram reel of Paradise? Nauzubillah.

A brief source note: Ibn ʿĀṣim’s concise version says that a man stood before a cook and ate his bread “by the smell of the pot”; the cook brought him before the judge; the judge ordered that a dirham be struck against marble so the cook could take its ringing. López Bernal identifies this as ATU (Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index)1804B, “Payment with the Clink of Money,” and notes its wider Arabic adab and international folktale setting.  J1172.2, Ḥadāʾiq al-azāhir no. 217, “el tintineo de un dirham,” Juḥā/Yuḥā, Nasreddin Hodja “Smell of Soup and Sound of Money,” and Arabic phrases such as رائحة الطعام صوت النقود or من باع بخار الطعام يقبض رنين الدراهم.