Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Master




When one Guru was dying, one of his deciple asked him”Guruji, who was your master?”He said, “I had   thousands of masters. If I just relate their names it  will take months, years and it is too late. But three masters I will certainly tell you about.

One was a thief. Once I got lost in the desert, and
  when I reached a village it was very late, everything  was closed. But at last I found one man who was trying  to make a hole in t he wall of a house. I asked him  where I could stay and he said ‘At this time of night  it will be difficult, but you can say with me - if you  can stay with a thief’.And the man was so beautiful. I stayed for one month! And each night he would say to  me, ‘Now I am going to my work. You rest, you pray.’  When he came back I would ask ‘Could you get anything?’ He would say, ‘Not tonight. But tomorrow I  will try again, God willing.’ He was never in a state of hopelessness, he was always happy. When I was  meditating and meditating for years on end and nothing was happening, many times the moment came when I was so desperate, so hopeless,that I thought to stop all  this nonsense. And suddenly I would remember the thief  who would say every night, ‘God willing, tomorrow it 
is going to happen.’

And my second master was a dog. I was going to the river, thirsty and a dog came. He was also thirsty. He
  looked into the river, he saw another dog there — his  own image — and became afraid. He would bard and run  away, but his thirst was so much that he would come  back. Finally, despite his fear, he just jumped into  the water, and the image disappeared. And I knew that  a message had come to me from God: one has to jump in  
spite of all fears.

And the third master was a small child. I entered a town and a child was carrying a lit candle. he was
  going to the mosque to put the candle there.’Just  joking,’ I asked the boy, ‘Have you lit the candle  yourself?’ He said, ‘Yes sir.’ And I asked, ‘There was a moment when the candle was unlit, then there was a moment when the candle was lit. Can you show me the source from which the light came?’ And the boy  laughed, blew out the candle, and said, ‘Now you have seen the light going. Where has it gone? You will tell  me!’ My ego was shattered, my whole knowledge was 
shattered. And that moment I felt my own stupidity.
Since then I dropped all my knowledgeability.

It is true that I had no master. That does not mean
  that I was not a disciple — I accepted the whole  existence as my master. My Disciplehood was a greater involvement than yours is. I trusted the clouds, the  trees. I trusted existence as such. I had no master because I had millions of masters I learned from every  possible source. To be a disciple is a must on the  path. What does it mean to be a disciple? It means to be able to learn. to be available to learn to be  vulnerable to existence. With a master you start   
learning to learn.

The master is a swimming pool where you can learn how
  to swim. Once you have learned, all the oceans are yours.”
 

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