A fakir once set out on a long journey, carrying with him a bundle filled with bread to eat on the way. At the end of the first day on the road he came to a small mosque, and there he rested for the night. Resuming his journey early the next morning, he walked at a brisk pace for about ten miles and then decided to have a bite to eat. But when he opened his bundle, he found that his bread was full of ants. “Ah, that is too bad,” he thought. “For I have taken these poor ants a long way away from their home in that mosque. How they must be longing to see their parents, children and friends." Filled with solicitude for the welfare of the ants, the fakir retraced his steps and took the ants back to their home in the little mosque. “The heart in which love and compassion for all living beings resides, can have no room for seeking after personal pleasures.”
taken from the tales of the Mystic East, 1977, page 135
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