4 ideas
Hodja arrives at a feast in shabby clothes and is ignored, then returns in a fine fur coat and is seated at the head of the table. He dips the coat's sleeve into the soup and says 'Eat, my coat,' since the coat, not the man, was the invited guest. The tale exposes how social esteem attaches to visible markers of status rather than to the person wearing them.
A cook demands payment from a poor man who warmed his bread in the steam of the cook's soup. Hodja, acting as judge, jingles coins by the cook's ear and declares that the sound of money is fair payment for the smell of food. The verdict shows justice as proportionality: an insubstantial benefit can only be charged at an insubstantial price, and absurd claims are defeated by applying their own logic consistently.
Hodja returns a borrowed pot with a small pot inside, claiming the pot gave birth, and the greedy neighbor happily accepts. Later Hodja keeps the pot and announces that it died, and when the neighbor protests that pots cannot die, Hodja replies that he believed it could give birth. Someone who accepts an impossible premise because it benefits him forfeits the right to reject the same premise when it costs him.
Hodja is found searching the street for a key he lost inside his house, and explains that he is looking outside because the light is better there. The joke describes the habit of searching where looking is easy or comfortable rather than where the answer is actually likely to be.