Imagine two men, one who is wise and reasonable and one who is a foolish idiot. Both of them enter the public bathhouse. In the midst of their bathing, the water suddenly stops flowing from the spigot. The wiser man knows that there is a channel behind the wall that brings the water from its source to the spigot, as well as a caretaker who oversees its flow. He walks out of the bath to check out what might be obstructing the flow of water in the channel beyond the wall, and to tell the caretaker to look after the problem.
Meanwhile, the idiot kneels down in the bathhouse and yells at the spigot, “Woe O’Spigot! Pour out some water for us! What’s wrong with you that you’ve cut off your water?”
Would not the wiser one say to him, “You are an absolute idiot! Can the spigot hear a word you say? Can the spigot do anything to help you?”
The spigot, the wiser one would tell him, is only a particular thing with a specific function that lets flow from it what flows through it. The spigot is neither the actual source nor originator of anything.
Ibn ‘Ata’Allah al-Iskandari, The Book of Illumination (Kitab al-Tanwir fi Isqat al-Tadbir)
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