Short Wisdom Stories

To a disciple who was always at his prayers the Master
said, "When will you stop leaning on God and stand on your own two
feet"?

The disciple was astonished. "But you are the one who taught us to look
on God as Father"!

"When will you learn that a father isn't someone you can lean on but
someone who rids you of your tendency to lean"?

A woman in great distress over the death of her son came
to the Master for comfort. He listened to her patiently while she poured out
her tale of woe.

Then he said softly: "I can not wipe away your tears, my dear. I can
only teach you how to make them holy".

A zealous disciple expressed a desire to teach others the
Truth and asked the Master what he thought about this. The Master said,
"Wait".

Each year the disciple would return with the same request and each time the
Master would give him the same reply: "Wait".

One day he said to the Master, "When will I be ready to teach"?

Said the Master, "When your excessive eagerness to teach has left
you".

The Master always frowned on anything that seemed
sensational. "The divine", he claimed, "is only found in the
ordinary".

To a disciple who was attempting forms of asceticism that bordered on the
bizarre the Master was heard to say, "Holiness is a mysterious thing:
The greater it is, the less it is noticed".

"Is the path to Enlightenment difficult or easy?'

"It is neither".

"Why not"?

"Because it isn't there".

"Then how does one travel to the goal"?

"One doesn't. This is a journey without distance.

Stop traveling and you arrive".

"Of what use is a Master"? someone
asked.

Said the disciple, "To teach you what you have always known, to show you
what you are always looking at".

When this confused the visitor, the disciple exclaimed:

"An artist, by his paintings, taught me to see the sunset. The Master,
by his teachings, taught me to see the reality of every moment".

When a man whose marriage was in trouble sought his
advice, the Master said, "You must learn to listen to your wife".

The man took this advice to heart and returned after a month to say that he
had learned to listen to every word his wife was saying.

Said the Master with a smile, "Now go home and listen to every word she
isn't saying".

To the disciples' delight the Master said he wanted a new
shirt for his birthday. The finest cloth was bought. The village tailor came
in to have the Master measured, and promised, by the will of God, to make the
shirt within a week. A week went by and a disciple was dispatched to the
tailor while the Master excitedly waited for his shirt. Said the tailor,
"There has been a slight delay. But, by the will of God, it will be
ready by tomorrow".

Next day the tailor said, "I'm sorry it isn't done. Try again tomorrow
and, if God so wills, it will certainly be ready".

The following day the Master said, "Ask him how long it will take if he
keeps God out of it".

One disciple said:

"I have no idea of what tomorrow will bring, so I wish to prepare for it".

The master answered:

"You fear tomorrow - not realizing that yesterday is just as
dangerous".

The Master seemed quite impervious to what people thought
of him. When the disciples asked how he had attained this stage of inner
freedom, he laughed aloud and said:

"Till I was twenty I did not care what people
thought of me.

After twenty I worried endlessly about what my neighbors thought.

Then one day after fifty I suddenly saw that they hardly ever thought of me
at all".

A tourist looking at the portraits of former Masters in
the temple said: "Are there any Masters left on earth"?

"There is one", said the guide.

The tourist solicited an audience with the Master and started with the
question: "Where are the great Masters to be found today"?

"Traveler"! Cried the Master.

"Sir"! The tourist answered reverently.

"Where are YOU"?

"Please tell me, is salvation obtained through action
or through meditation"?

"Through neither. Salvation comes from seeing".

"Seeing what"?

"That the gold necklace you wish to acquire is hanging round your neck.
That the snake you are so frightened of is only a rope on the ground".

"What must I do to attain holiness"? said a traveler.

"Follow your heart", said the Master.

That seemed to please the traveler.

Before he left, however, the Master said to him in a whisper, "To follow
your heart you are going to need a strong constitution".

The Master had quoted Aristotle: "In the quest of
truth, it would seem better and indeed necessary to give up what is dearest
to us". And he substituted the word "God" for
"truth".

Later a disciple said to him, "I am ready, in the quest for God, to give
up anything: wealth, friends, family, country, life itself. What else can a
person give up"?

The Master calmly replied, "One's beliefs about God".

The disciple went away sad, for he clung to his convictions. He feared
"ignorance" more than death.

"May I become your disciple"?

"You are only a disciple because your eyes are closed. The day you open
them you will see there is nothing you can learn from me or anyone".

"What then is a Master for"?

"To make you see the uselessness of having one".

To a fearful religious visitor the Master said, "Why
are you so anxious"?

"Lest I fail to attain Salvation".

"And what is Salvation"?

"Moksha. Liberation. Freedom".

The Master roared with laughter and said, "So you are forced to be free?
You are bound to be liberated"?

At that minute the visitor relaxed and lost his fear forever.

An alcoholic said to the Master:

"What would spirituality give me"?

"Nonalcoholic intoxication", was the answer.

The visiting historian was disposed to be argumentative.
"Do not our efforts change the course of human history"? he demanded.

"Oh yes, they do", said the Master.

"And have not our human labors changed the earth"?

"They certainly have", said the Master.

"Then why do you teach that human effort is of little consequence"?

Said the Master, "Because when the wind subsides, the leaves still
fall".

The disciple was a Jew. "What good work shall I do to
be acceptable to God"?

"How should I know"? said the Master.
"

"Your Bible says that Abraham practiced hospitality and God was with
him. Elias loved to pray and God was with him. David ruled a kingdom and God
was with him too".

"Is there some way I can find my own allotted work"?

"Yes. Search for the deepest inclination of your heart and follow
it".

When it was certain that the Master was going to die, his
disciples wished to give him a worthy funeral. The Master heard of this and
said, "With the sky and the earth for my coffin; the sun and moon and
stars for my burial regalia; and all creation to escort me to the grave --
could I desire anything more ceremonious and impressive"?

He asked to be left unburied, but the disciples wouldn't hear of it,
protesting that he would be eaten by the animals and birds.

"Then make sure you place my staff near me that I might drive them
away", said the Master with a smile.

"How would you manage that? You will be unconscious".

"In which case it will not matter, will it, that I be devoured by the
birds and beasts".

Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more
than a description".

"Then how does one speak of God"?

"Through Silence".

"Why, then, do you speak in words"?

At that the Master laughed uproariously He said, "When I speak, you
mustn't listen to the words, my dear. Listen to the Silence".

The Master once told the story of a priceless antique bowl
that fetched a fortune at a public auction. It had been used by a tramp who ended his days in poverty, quite unaware of the value
of the bowl with which he begged for pennies. When a disciple asked the
Master what the bowl stood for, the Master said, "Your
self"!

Asked to elaborate, he said, "All your attention is focused on the penny
knowledge you collect from books and teachers. You would do better to pay
attention to the bowl in which you hold it".

The Master would often say that Silence alone brought
transformation. But no one could get him to define what Silence was. When
asked he would laugh, then hold his forefinger up against his tightened lips
- which only increased the bewilderment of his disciples.

One day there was a breakthrough when someone asked, "And how is one to
arrive at this Silence that you speak of"?

The Master said something so simple that his disciples studied his face for a
sign that he might be joking. He wasn't. He said, "Wherever you may be,
look when there is apparently nothing to see; listen when all is seemingly
quiet".

"What action shall I perform to attain God"?

"If you wish to attain God, there are two things you must know. The
first is that all efforts to attain him are of no avail".

"And the second"?

"You must act as if you did not know the first".

The Master was known to side with the revolutionaries,
even at the risk of incurring the displeasure of the government. When someone
asked him why he himself did not actively plunge into social revolution, he
replied with this enigmatic proverb: "Sitting quietly doing nothing.
Spring comes and the grass grows".

"What is the highest act a person can perform"?

"Sitting in meditation".

But the Master himself was rarely seen to sit in meditation. He was
ceaselessly engaged in housework and fieldwork, in meeting people and writing
books. He even took up the bookkeeping chores of the monastery.

"Why then, do you spend all your time in work"?

"When one works, one need not cease to sit in meditation".

A traveler in quest of the divine asked the Master how to
distinguish a true teacher from a false one when he got back to his own land.

Said the Master, "A good teacher offers practice; a bad one offers
theories".

"But how shall I know good practice from bad"?

"In the same way that the farmer knows good cultivation from bad".

Said a disappointed visitor, "Why has my stay here
yielded no fruit"?

"Could it be because you lacked the courage to shake the tree"? said the Master benignly.

"How shall we distinguish the true mystic from the
false"? asked the disciples who had an inordinate
interest in the occult.

"How do you distinguish the true sleeper from the one who is feigning
sleep"? asked the Master.

"There's no way. Only the sleeper knows when he is feigning", said
the disciples.

The Master smiled.

Later he said, "The feigning sleeper can delude others - he cannot
delude himself. The false mystic, unfortunately, can delude both others and
himself.

The Master had a childlike fascination for modern
inventions. He could not get over his amazement at the pocket calculator when
he saw one.

Later he said, good-naturedly, "A lot of people seem to have those
little pocket calculators, but nothing in their pockets worth
calculating"!

Weeks later, when a visitor asked him what he taught his disciples, he said,

"To get their priorities right: Better have the money than calculate it;
better have the experience than define it".

"Does God exist"? said
the Master one day.

"Yes", said the disciples in chorus.

"Wrong", said the Master.

"No", said the disciples.

"Wrong again", said the Master.

"What's the answer"? asked the disciples.

"There is no answer".

"Why ever not"?

"Because there is no question", said the Master.

Later he explained: "If you cannot say anything about Him who is beyond
thoughts and words, how can you ask anything about Him"?

To a woman who complained about her destiny the Master
said, "It is you who make your destiny".

"But surely I am not responsible for being born a woman"?

"Being born a woman isn't destiny. That is fate. Destiny is how you
accept your womanhood and what you make of it".

For all his holiness, the Master seemed vaguely opposed to
religion. This never ceased to puzzle the disciples who, unlike the Master,
equated religion with spirituality.

"Religion as practiced today deals in punishments and rewards. In other
words, it breeds fear and greed - the two things most destructive of
spirituality".

Later he added ruefully, "It is like tackling a flood with water; or a
burning barn with fire".

It intrigued the disciples that the Master who lived so simply
would not condemn his wealthy followers. "It is rare but not impossible
for someone to be rich and holy", he said one day.

"How"?

"When money has the effect on his heart that the shadow of that bamboo
has on the courtyard".

The disciples turned to watch the bamboo's shadow sweep the courtyard without
stirring a single particle of dust.

To a disciple who complained of his limitations the Master
said, "You are limited indeed. But have you noticed you can do things
today that you would have thought impossible fifteen years ago? What
changed"?

"My talents changed".

"No. You changed".

"Isn't that the same thing"?

"No. You are what you think you are. When your thinking changed, you
changed".

To a disciple who strained after Enlightenment till he
became physically weak the Master said, "A ray of light can be grasped
-- but not with your hands. Enlightenment can be attained -- but not by your
efforts".

The puzzled disciple said, "But did you not tell me to strive to become
empty? That is what I am attempting to do".

"So now you are full of effort to be empty"! said
the Master through his laughter.

To a visitor who asked to become his disciple the Master
said, "You may live with me, but don't become my follower".

"Whom, then, shall I follow"?

"No one. The day you follow someone you cease to follow Truth".

To the disciples who wanted to know what sort of
meditation he practiced each morning in the garden the Master said,
"When I look carefully, I see the rose bush in full bloom".

"Why would one have to look carefully to see the rose bush"? they asked.

"Lest one see not the rose bush", said the Master, "but one's
preconception of it".

The discussion among the disciples once centered on the
usefulness of reading. Some thought it was a waste of time, others disagreed.
When the Master was appealed to, he said, "Have you ever read one of
those texts in which the notes scrawled in the margin by a reader prove to be
as illuminating as the text itself"?

The disciples nodded in agreement.

"Life", said the Master, "is one such
text".

The owner of a Fun
Park commented on the
irony of the fact that while the kids had a great time at his park he himself
was habitually depressed.

"Would you rather own the park or have the fun"? said
the Master.

"I want both".

The Master made no reply.

When questioned about it later, the Master quoted the words of a tramp to a
wealthy landowner: "You own the property. Others enjoy the
landscape".

A debate raged among the disciples as to which was the
most difficult task of all: To write down what God revealed as Scripture, to
understand what God had revealed in Scripture or to explain Scripture to
others after one had understood it. Said the Master, when asked his opinion,
"I know of a more difficult task than any of those three".

"What is it"?

"Trying to get you blockheads to see reality as it is".

"When will I be Enlightened"?

"When you see", the Master said

"See what"?

"Trees and flowers and moon and stars".

"But I see these every day".

"No. What you see is paper trees, paper flowers, paper moons and paper
stars. For you live not in reality but in your words and thoughts".

And for good measure, he added gently, "You live a paper life, alas, and
will die a paper death".

Sometimes there would be a rush of noisy visitors and the
silence of the monastery would be shattered. This would upset the disciples;
not the Master, who seemed just as content with the noise as with the
silence. To his protesting disciples he said one day, "Silence is not
the absence of sound, but the absence of self".

The Master was an advocate both of learning and of Wisdom.
"Learning", he said when asked, "is gotten by reading books or
listening to lectures".

"And Wisdom"?

"By reading the book that is you".

He added as an afterthought: "Not an easy task at all, for every minute
of the day brings a new edition of the book"!

To the woman who complained that riches hadn't made her
happy the Master said, "You speak as if luxury and comfort were
ingredients of happiness; whereas all you need to be really happy, my dear,
is something to be enthusiastic about".

The Master became a legend in his lifetime. It was said
that God once sought his advice: "I want to play a game of hide-and-seek
with humankind. I've asked my Angels what the best place is to hide in. Some
say the depth of the ocean. Others say the top of the highest mountain.
Others still the far side of the moon or a distant star. What do you suggest"?
Said the Master, "Hide in the human heart. That is the last place they
will think of"!

The following day the Master said, "It is, alas,
easier to travel than to stop".

The disciples demanded to know why.

"Because as long as you travel to a goal, you can hold on to a dream.
When you stop, you face reality".

"How shall we ever change if we have no goals or dreams"? asked the mystified disciples.

"Change that is real is change that is not willed. Face reality and unwilled
change will happen".

When one of the disciples announced his intention of
teaching others Truth, the Master proposed a test: "Give a discourse
that I myself shall be present at to judge if you are ready".

The discourse was an inspiring one. At the end of it, a beggar came up to the
speaker, who stood up and gave the man his cloak -- to the edification of the
assembly.

Later the Master said, "Your words were full of unction, son, but you
are not yet ready".

"Why not"? said the dispirited disciple.

"For two reasons: You did not give the man a chance to voice his need.
And you are not above impressing others with your virtue".

One day the Master asked, "What, in your opinion, is
the most important of all religious questions"?

He got many answers:

"Does God exist"?

"Who is God"?

"What is the path to God"?

"Is there a life after death"?

"No", said the Master. "The most important question is: 'Who
am I?'"

The disciples got some idea of what he was hinting at when they overheard him
talking to a preacher: Master: "So then, according to you, when you die
your soul will be in heaven"?

Preacher: "Yes".

Master: "And your body will be in the grave"?

Preacher: "Yes".

Master: "And where, may I ask, will you be"?

"What is the greatest enemy of Enlightenment"?

"Fear".

"And where does fear come from"?

"Delusion".

"And what is delusion"?

"To think that the flowers around you are poisonous snakes".

"How shall I attain Enlightenment"?

"Open your eyes and see".

"What"?

"That there isn't a single snake around".

"What is love"?

"The total absence of fear", said the Master.

"What is it we fear"?

"Love", said the Master.

"What is it you seek"? asked
the Master of a scholar who came to him for guidance.

"Life", was the reply.

Said the Master, "If you are to live, words must die".

When asked later what he meant, he said, "You are lost and forlorn
because you dwell in a world of words. You feed on words,
you are satisfied with words when what you need is substance. A menu will not
satisfy your hunger. A formula will not slake your thirst".

"What shall I do to love my neighbor"?

"Stop hating yourself".

The disciple pondered those words long and seriously and came back to say,
"But I love myself too much, for I am selfish and self-centered. How do
I get rid of that"?

"Be friendly to yourself and your self will be contented and it will set
you free to love your neighbor".

The disciples could not understand the seemingly arbitrary
manner in which some people were accepted for discipleship and others were
rejected. They got a clue one day when they heard the Master say, "Don't
attempt to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time -- and irritates the
pig".

A writer arrived at the monastery to write a book about
the Master.

"People say you are a genius. Are you"? he
asked.

"You might say so", said the Master, none too modestly.

"And what makes one a genius"?

"The ability to recognize".

"Recognize what"?

"The butterfly in a caterpillar; the eagle in an egg; the saint in a
selfish human being".

A young man came to the Master and said, "I wish to
be Wise. How can I achieve my wish"?

The Master sighed and said, "There was once a young man just like you.
He wished to be Wise and his wish had great power to it. One day he found
himself sitting exactly where I am. In front of him sat a young man on the
exact spot where you are now. And the young man was saying, 'I wish to be
Wise!'"

"The trouble with the world", said the Master
with a sigh, "is that human beings refuse to
grow up".

"When can a person be said to have grown up"? asked
a disciple.

"On the day he does not need to be lied to about anything".

For all his traditional ways, the Master has scant respect
for rules and for traditions. A quarrel once broke out between a disciple and
his daughter because the man kept insisting that the girl conform to the
rules of their religion in the choice of her prospective husband. The Master
openly sided with the girl. When the disciple expressed his surprise that the
holy man would do this, the Master said, "You must understand that life
is just like music, which is made more by feeling and by instinct than by
rules".

To a distressed person who came to him for help the Master
said, "Do you really want a cure"

"If I did not, would I bother to come to you"?

"Oh yes Most people do".

"What for"?

"Not for a cure. That's painful. For relief".

To his disciples the Master said, "People who want a cure, provided they
can have it without pain, are like those who favor
progress, provided they can have it without change".

To a disciple who was obsessed with the thought of life
after death the Master said, "Why waste a single moment thinking of the
hereafter"?

"But is it possible not to"?

"Yes".

"How"? "By living in heaven here and now".

"And where is this heaven"?

"In the here and now".

To a preacher who kept saying,

"We must put God in our lives: " the Master said,

"He is already there. Our business is to recognize this".

"There are three stages in one's spiritual
development", said the Master. "The carnal, the spiritual and the
divine".

"What is the carnal stage"? asked the
eager disciples.

"That's the stage when trees are seen as trees and mountains as
mountains".

"And the spiritual"?

"That's when one looks more deeply into things -- then trees are no
longer trees and mountains no longer
mountains".

"And the divine"?

"Ah, that's Enlightenment", said the Master with a chuckle,
"when trees become trees again and mountains, mountains".

Much advance publicity was made for the address the Master
would deliver on "The Destruction of the World" and a large crowd
gathered at the monastery grounds to hear him. The address was over in less
than a minute.

All he said was;

"These things will destroy the human race:

politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work,
learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without
awareness".

"I wish to see God".

"You are looking at him right now", said the Master.

"Then why do I not see him"?

"Why does the eye not see itself"? said
the Master.

Later the Master explained: "As well ask a knife to cut itself or a
tooth to bite itself as ask that God to reveal himself".

"How does one seek union with God"?

"The harder you seek, the more distance you create between Him and
you".

"So what does one do about the distance"?

"Understand that it isn't there".

"Does that mean that God and I are one"?

"Not one. Not two".

"How is that possible"?

"The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song
-- not one. Not two".

A group of political activists were attempting to show the
Master how their ideology would change the world. The Master listened
carefully. The following day he said, "An ideology is as good or bad as
the people who make use of it. If a million wolves were to organize for
justice, would they cease to be a million wolves"?

The Master never wearied of warning his disciples about
the dangers of religion. He loved to tell the story of the prophet who
carried a flaming torch through the streets, saying he was going to set fire
to the temple so that people would concern themselves more with the Lord than
with the temple. Then he would add

"Someday I shall carry a flaming torch myself to set fire to both the
temple and the Lord"!

"How shall I attain Eternal Life"?

"Eternal Life is now. Come into the present".

"But I am in the present now, am I not"?

"No".

"Why not"?

"Because you haven't dropped your past".

"Why should I drop my past? Not all of it is bad".

"The past is to be dropped not because it is bad but because it is
dead".

After the Master attained Enlightenment, he took to living
simply -- because he found simple living to his taste. He laughed at his
disciples when they took to simple living in imitation of him.

"Of what use is it to copy my behavior", he would say,
"without my motivation. Or to adopt my motivation without the vision
that produced it"?

They understood him better when he said, "Does a goat become a rabbi
because he grows a beard"?

When a disciple came from a faraway country, the Master
asked, "What are you seeking"?

"Enlightenment".

"You have your own treasure house. Why do you search outside"?

"Where is my treasure house"?

"This seeking that has come upon you".

At that moment the disciple was Enlightened. Years later he would say to his
friends, "Open your own treasure house and enjoy your treasures".

The Master would insist that the final barrier to our
attaining God was the word and concept "God". This so infuriated
the local priest that he came in a huff to argue the matter out with the
Master. "But surely the word 'God' can lead us to God"? said the priest.

"It can", said the Master calmly.

"How can something help and be a barrier"?

Said the Master, "The donkey that brings you to the door is not the
means by which you enter the house".

It was impossible to get the Master to speak of God or of
things divine. "About God", he said, "we can only know that
what we know is nothing".

One day he told of a man who deliberated long and anxiously before embarking
on discipleship. "He came to study under me, with the result that he
learned nothing". Only a few of the disciples understood: What the
Master had to teach could not be learned. Nor taught. So all one could really
learn from him was nothing.

"Heavens, how you've aged"! exclaimed
the Master after speaking with a boyhood friend.

"One cannot help growing old, can one"? said
the friend.

"No, one cannot", agreed the Master, "but one must avoid
becoming aged".

When out on a picnic, the Master said, "Do you want
to know what the Enlightened is like? Look at those birds flying over the
lake".

While everyone watched, the Master exclaimed:

"They cast a reflection on the water that they have no awareness of -
and the lake has no attachment to".

On the question of his own Enlightenment the Master always
remained reticent, even though the disciples tried every means to get him to
talk. All the information they had on this subject was what the Master once
said to his youngest son who wanted to know what his father felt when he
became Enlightened. The answer was: "A fool".

When the boy asked why, the Master had replied, "Well, son, it was like
going to great pains to break into a house by climbing a ladder and smashing
a window -- and realizing later that the door of the house was open".

The Master claimed he had a book that contained everything
one could conceivably know about God. No one had ever seen the book till a
visiting scholar, by dint of persistent entreaty, wrested it from the Master.
He took it home and eagerly opened it - only to find that every one of its
pages was blank.

"But the book says nothing", wailed the scholar.

"I know", said the Master contentedly. "But see how much it
indicates"!

When a disciple came to take leave of the Master so that
he could return to his family and business, he asked for something to carry
away with him. Said the Master, "Ponder on these things: It is not the
fire that is hot, but you who feel it so. It is not the eye that sees, but
you. It is not the compass that makes the circle, but the draftsman".

"How shall I rid myself of fear"?

"How can you rid yourself of what you cling to"?

"You mean I actually cling to my fears? I cannot agree to that".

"Consider what your fear protects you from and you will agree! And you
will see your folly".

"How shall I forgive others"?

"If you never condemned, you would never need to forgive".

In keeping with his doctrine that nothing be taken too seriously, not even his own teachings, the
Master loved to tell this story on himself:

"My very first disciple was so weak that the exercises killed him. My
second disciple drove himself crazy from his earnest practice of the exercises
I gave him. My third disciple dulled his intellect through too much
contemplation. But the fourth managed to keep his sanity".

"Why was that"? someone would invariably
ask.

"Possibly because he was the only one who refused to do the
exercises". The Master's words would be drowned in howls of laughter.

"Is there a God"? asked
the Marxist.

"Certainly not the kind people are thinking of", said the Master.

"Whom are you referring to when you speak of people"?

"Everyone".

When a new disciple came to the Master, this is the
catechism he was usually subjected to: "Do you know the one person who
will never abandon you in the whole of your lifetime"?

"Who is it"?

"You".

"And do you know the answer to every question you may have"?

"What is it"?

"You".

"And can you guess the solution to every one of your problems"?

"I give up".

"You".

This is how the Master once explained the fact that
Enlightenment came not through effort but through understanding:
"Imagine all of you are hypnotized to believe there is a tiger in this
room. In your fear you will try to escape it, to fight it, to protect
yourselves from it, to placate it. But once the spell is broken there is
nothing to be done. And you are all radically changed:

"So understanding breaks the spell, the broken spell brings change,
change leads to inaction, inaction is power: You can
do anything on earth, for it is no longer you who do it".

Said a traveler to one of the disciples, "I have
traveled a great distance to listen to the Master, but I find his words quite
ordinary".

"Don't listen to his words. Listen to his message".

"How does one do that"?

"Take hold of a sentence that he says. Shake it well till all the words drop off. What is left will set your heart
on fire".

A man traversed land and sea to check for himself the
Master's extraordinary fame. "What miracles has your Master
worked"? he said to a disciple.

"Well, there are miracles and miracles. In your land it is regarded as a
miracle if God does someone's will. In our country
it is regarded as a miracle if someone does the will of God".

Again and again the Master would be seen to discourage his
disciples from depending on him, for this would prevent them from contacting
the inner Source. He was often heard to say:

"Three things there are that when too close are harmful, when too far
are useless and are best kept at middle distance: fire, the government and
the guru".

To the disciples who were always asking for words of
wisdom the Master said, "Wisdom is not expressed in words. It reveals
itself in action".

But when he saw them plunge headlong into activity, he laughed aloud and
said, "That isn't action. That's motion".

Each day the Master would be inundated with questions that
he would reply to seriously, playfully, gently, firmly. One disciple always
sat through each session in silence. When someone questioned her about it,
she said, "I hardly hear a word he says. I am too distracted by his
Silence".

At a discussion on the God experience, the Master said,
"When God is experienced, the self disappears. So who will do the
experiencing"?

"Is the God experience, then, a non-experience"?

"It is like sleep", said the Master. "The sleep experience is
only known when sleep is over".

"What does your Master teach"? asked a visitor.

"Nothing", said the disciple.

"Then why does he give discourses"?

"He only points the way -- he teaches nothing".

The visitor couldn't make sense out of this, so the disciple made it clearer:
"If the Master were to teach, we would make beliefs out of his
teachings.

The Master is not concerned with what we believe - only with what we
see".

A snake in the village had bitten so many people that few
dared go into the fields. Such was the Master's holiness that he was said to
have tamed the snake and persuaded it to practice the discipline of
nonviolence. It did not take long for the villager to discover that the snake
had become harmless. They took to hurling stones at it and dragging it about
by its tail. The badly battered snake crawled into the Master's house one
night to complain. Said the Master, "Friend, you have stopped
frightening people - that's bad"!

"But it was you who taught me to practice the discipline of
nonviolence"!

"I told you to stop hurting - not to stop hissing"!

An anxious couple complained to the Master that their son
had abandoned the religious traditions of the family and proclaimed himself a
freethinker. Said the Master, "Not to worry. If the lad is really
thinking for himself, the Mighty Wind is bound to arise that will carry him
to the place where he belongs".

To a pioneering spirit who was discouraged by frequent
criticism the Master said, "Listen to the words of the critic. He
reveals what your friends hide from you".

But he also said, "Do not be weighed down by what the critic says. No
statue was ever erected to honor a critic. Statues are for the
criticized".

The Master always left you to grow at your own pace. He
was never known to "push". He explained this with the following
parable: "A man once saw a butterfly struggling to emerge from its
cocoon, too slowly for his taste, so he began to blow on it gently. The
warmth of his breath speeded up the process all right. But what emerged was
not a butterfly but a creature with mangled wings.

"In growth", the Master concluded, "you cannot speed the
process up. All you can do is abort it".

It was the disciple's birthday. "What do you want for
a birthday gift"? said the Master.

"Something that would bring me Enlightenment", she said.

The Master smiled. "Tell me, my dear", he said, "when you were
born, did you come into the world like a star from the sky or out of it like
a leaf from a tree"?

All day long she pondered that strange question of the Master. Then she
suddenly saw the answer and fell into Enlightenment.

A disciple was one day recalling how Buddha, Jesus, and
Mohammed were branded as rebels and heretics by their contemporaries. Said
the Master,

"Nobody can be said to have attained the pinnacle of Truth until a
thousand sincere people have denounced him for blasphemy".

The Master was in a mellow mood and the disciples were
inquisitive. Did he ever feel depressed? they asked.

He did.

Wasn't it also true that he was in a continual state of happiness? They
persisted.

It was.

What was the secret? They wanted to know.

Said the Master, "This: Everything is as good or as bad as one's opinion
makes it".

The disciple was planning her wedding banquet and declared
that out of love for the poor she had gotten her family to go against
convention by seating the poor guests at the head of the table and the rich
guests at the door. She looked into the Master's eyes, expecting his
approval. The Master stopped to think, then said,

"That would be most unfortunate, my dear. No one would enjoy the
wedding. Your family would be embarrassed, your rich guests insulted and your
poor guests hungry, for they would be too self-conscious at the head of the
table to eat their fill".

The Master never ceased to attack the notions about God
that people entertain. "If your God comes to your rescue and gets you
out of trouble", he would say, "it is time you started searching
for the true God".

When asked to elaborate, this is the story he told:

"A man left a brand-new bicycle unattended at the marketplace while he
went about his shopping. He only remembered the bicycle the following day and
rushed to the marketplace, expecting it would have been stolen. The bicycle
was exactly where he had left it. Overwhelmed with joy, he rushed to a nearby
temple to thank God for having kept his bicycle safe only to find, when he
got out of the temple, that the bicycle was goner"

The Master welcomed the advances of technology, but was
keenly aware of its limitations.When an
industrialist asked him what his occupation was, he replied, "I'm in the
people industry".

"And what, pray, would that be"? said the
industrialist.

"Take yourself", said the Master. "Your efforts produce better
things; mine, better people".

To his disciples he later said, "The aim of life is the flowering of
persons. Nowadays people seem concerned mostly with the perfectioning
of things".

"Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it
so", the Master said.

When asked to explain he said, "A man cheerfully observed a religious
fast seven days a week. His neighbor starved to death on the same diet".

When the disciples asked for a model of spirituality that
they could imitate, all that the Master said was: "Hush! Listen".
And as they listened to the sounds of the night outside the monastery, the
Master softly intoned the celebrated haiku: "Of an early death showing
no awareness the cicada sings".

According to legend, God sent an Angel to the Master with
this message:" Ask for a million years of life and they will be given
you. Or a million million. How long do you wish to
live"?

"Eighty years", said the Master without the slightest hesitation.

The disciples were dismayed. "But, Master, if you lived for a million
years, think how many generations would profit by your wisdom".

"If I lived for a million years, people would be more intent on
lengthening their lives than on cultivating wisdom".

"Why is everyone here so happy except me"?

"Because they have learned to see goodness and beauty everywhere",
said the Master.

"Why don't I see goodness and beauty everywhere"?

"Because you cannot see outside of you what you fail to see
inside".

"I wish to become a teacher of the Truth".

"Are you prepared to be ridiculed, ignored and starving till you are
forty-five"?

"I am. But tell me: What will happen after I am forty-five"?

"You will have grown accustomed to it".

A visitor who was full of expectations was unimpressed by
the commonplace words the Master addressed to him. "I came here in quest
of a Master", he said to a disciple. "All I find is a human being
no different from the others".

Said the disciple, "The Master is a shoemaker with an infinite supply of
leather. But he does the cutting and stitching in accordance with the
dimension of your foot".

The Master insisted that what he taught was nothing, what
he did was nothing. His disciples gradually discovered that Wisdom comes to
those who learn nothing, unlearn everything. That transformation is the
consequence not of something done but of something dropped.

A gambler once said to the Master, "I was caught
cheating at cards yesterday, so my partners beat me up and threw me out of
the window. What would you advise me to do"?

The Master looked straight through the man and said, "If I were you,
from now on I would play on the ground floor".

This startled the disciples. "Why didn't you tell him to stop
gambling"? they demanded.

"Because I knew he wouldn't", was the Master's simple and sagacious
explanation.

While the Master seemed to relish life and live it to the
full, he was also known to take great risks, as when he condemned the tyranny
of the government, thereby courting arrest and death; and when he led a group
of his disciples to serve a plague-stricken village. "The wise have no
fear of death", he would say.

"Why would a man risk his life so easily"? he
was once asked.

"Why would a person care so little about a candle being extinguished
when day has dawned"?

"What did Enlightenment bring you"?

"Joy".

"And what is Joy"?

"The realization that when everything is lost you have only lost a
toy".

"Make a clean break with your past and you will be
Enlightened", said the Master.

"I am doing that by degrees".

"Growth is achieved by degrees.

Enlightenment is instantaneous".

Later he said, "Take the leap!

You cannot cross a chasm in little jumps".

"I wish to learn. Will you teach me"?

"I do not think that you know how to learn", said the Master.

"Can you teach me how to learn"?

"Can you learn how to let me teach"?

To his bewildered disciples the Master later said: "Teaching only takes place
when learning does. Learning only takes place when you teach something to
yourself:"

The Master always insisted that we must learn by ourselves
- teach ourselves - rather than depend on other people's authority. This had
its limits, of course, as when a bright young fellow was convinced he ought
to try drugs as a means to mysticism - and "take the risk, for one can
only learn by trial and error".

That moved the Master to tell the old story of the nail and the screw: "Here
is one way to find out whether what you need in a plank is a nail or a screw:
Drive the nail in. If it splits the plank, you know you needed the
screw".

As the Master grew old and infirm, the disciples begged
him not to die. Said the Master, "If I did not go, how would you ever
see"?

"What is it we fail to see when you are with us"? they asked.

But the Master would not say.

When the moment of his death was near, they said, "What is it we will
see when you are gone"?

With a twinkle in his eye, the Master said, "All I did was sit on the riverbank handing out river water. After I'm
gone, I trust you will notice the river".

"What kind of a person does Enlightenment
produce"?

The Master said:

"To be public-spirited and belong to no party,

to move without being bound to any given course,

to take things as they come,

have no remorse for the past,

no anxiety for the future,

to move when pushed,

to come when dragged,

to be like a mighty gale,

like a feather in the wind,

like weeds floating on a river,

like a mill stone meekly grinding,

to love all creation equally

as heaven and earth are equal to all

- such is the product of Enlightenment".

On hearing these words, one of the younger disciples cried, "This sort
of teaching is not for the living but for the dead", and walked away,
never to return.

The governor on his travels stepped in to pay homage to
the Master. "Affairs of state leave me no time for lengthy
dissertations", he said. "Could you put the essence of religion
into a paragraph or two for a busy man like me"?

"I shall put it into a single word for the benefit of your
highness".

"Incredible! What is this most unusual word"?

"Silence".

"And what is the way to silence"?

"Meditation".

"And what, may I ask, is meditation"?

"Silence".

The Master had been on his deathbed in a coma for weeks.
One day he suddenly opened his eyes to find his favorite disciple there.
"You never leave my bedside, do you"? he
said softly.

"No, Master. I cannot".

Why?

"Because you are the light of my life.''

The Master sighed. "Have I so dazzled you, my son,
that you still refuse to see the light in you"?

The Master set out on a journey with one of his disciples.
At the outskirts of the village they ran into the governor, who, mistakenly
thinking they had come to welcome him to the village, said, "You really
didn't have to go to all this trouble to welcome me".

"You are mistaken, your highness", said the disciple. "We're
on a journey, but had we known you were coming we would have gone to even
greater pains to welcome you".

The Master did not say a word. Toward evening he said, "Did you have to
tell him that we had not come to welcome him? Did you see how foolish he
felt"?

"But had we not told him the truth, would we not have been guilty of
deceiving him"?

"We would not have deceived him at all", said the Master. "He
would have deceived himself".

The Master was exceedingly gracious to university dons who
visited him, but he would never reply to their questions or be drawn into
their theological speculations. To his disciples, who marveled at this, he
said,

"Can one talk about the ocean to a frog in a well - or about the divine
to people who are restricted by their concepts"?

The Master had an allergy for people who protracted their
stay at the monastery. Sooner or later each disciple would hear the difficult
words: "The time has come for you to go. If you do not get away, the
Spirit will not come".

What was this "Spirit",

one particularly smitten disciple wished to know.

Said the Master:

"Water remains alive and free by flowing. You will remain alive and free
by going. If you do not get away from me, you will stagnate and die - and be
contaminated".

"Calamities can bring growth and Enlightenment",
said the Master. And he explained it thus:

"Each day a bird would shelter in the withered branches of a tree that
stood in the middle of a vast deserted plain. One day a whirlwind uprooted
the tree, forcing the poor bird to fly a hundred miles in search of shelter -
til it finally came to a forest of fruit-laden
trees".

And he concluded: "If the withered tree had survived, nothing would have
induced the bird to give up its security and fly".

The Master would frequently assert that holiness was less
a matter of what one did than of what one allowed to happen. To a group of
disciples who had difficulty understanding that - he told the following story:

There was once a one-legged dragon who said to the centipede, "How do
you manage all those legs? It is all I can do to manage one".

"To tell you the truth", said the centipede, "I do not manage
them at all. "

"How shall I get the grace of never judging my
neighbor"?

"Through prayer".

"Then why have I not found it yet"?

"Because you haven't prayed in the right place".

"Where is that"?

"In the heart of God".

"And how do I get there"?

"Understand that anyone who sins does not know what he is doing and
deserves to be forgiven".

A man of spiritual repute came to the Master and said,
"I cannot pray, I cannot understand the Scriptures, I cannot do the
exercises that I prescribe to others.

"Then give it all up", said the Master cheerfully.

"But how can I? I am supposed to be a holy man and have a following in
these parts".

Later the Master said with a sigh: "Holiness today is a name without a
reality. It is only genuine when it is a reality without a name".

The Master frequently reminded his disciples that holiness,
like beauty, is only genuine when unselfconscious. He loved to quote the
verse:

"She blooms because she blooms,

the Rose:

Does not ask why,

nor does she preen herself

to catch my eye".

And the saying:

"A saint is a saint until he knows that he is one".

The Master was always teaching that guilt is an evil
emotion to be avoided like the very devil -- all guilt.

"But are we not to hate our sins"? a
disciple said one day.

"When you are guilty, it is not your sins you hate but yourself".

It always pleased the Master to hear people recognize
their ignorance.

"Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's
ignorance", he claimed.

When asked for an explanation, he said, "When you come to see you are
not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser
today".

"How shall I help the world"?

"By understanding it", said the Master.

"And how shall I understand it"?

"By turning away from it".

"How then shall I serve humanity"?

"By understanding yourself".

The Haji who lived at the
outskirts of the town was said to perform miracles, so his home was a center
of pilgrimage for large crowds of sick people. The Master, who was known to
be quite uninterested in the miraculous, would never reply to questions on
the Haji. When asked point-blank why he was opposed
to miracles, he replied,

"How can one be opposed to what is taking place
before one's eyes each moment of the day"?

The disciples were absorbed in a discussion of Lao-tzu's dictum:

"Those who know do not say;

Those who say do not know".

When the Master entered, they asked him exactly what the words meant. Said
the Master, "Which of you knows the fragrance of a rose"? All of
them knew. Then he said, "Put it into words". All of them were
silent.

A young man squandered all his inherited wealth. As
generally happens in such cases, the moment he was penniless he found that he
was friendless too. At his wit's end, he sought the Master out and said,
"What is to become of me? I have no money and no friends".

"Don't worry, son. Mark my words: All will be well with you again".

Hope shone in the young man's eyes. "Will I be rich again"?

"No. You will get used to being penniless and lonely".

The young disciple was such a prodigy that scholars from
everywhere sought his advice and marveled at his learning. When the governor
was looking for an adviser, he came to the Master and said, "Tell me, is
it true that the young man knows as much as they say he does"?

"Truth to tell", said the Master wryly, "the fellow reads so
much I don't see how he could ever find the time to know anything".

The Master gave his teaching in parables and stories,
which his disciples listened to with pleasure - and occasional frustration,
for they longed for something deeper. The Master was unmoved. To all their
objections he would say, "You have yet to understand, my dears, that the
shortest distance between a human being and Truth is a story".

Another time he said, "Do not despise the story. A lost gold coin is
found by means of a penny candle; the deepest truth is found by means of a
simple story".

"I am in desperate need of help - or I'll go crazy.
We're living in a single room - my wife, my children and my in-laws. So our
nerves are on edge, we yell and scream at one another. The room is a
hell".

"Do you promise to do whatever I tell you"? said
the Master gravely.

"I swear I shall do anything".

"Very well. How many animals do you have"?

"A cow, a goat and six chickens".

"Take them all into the room with you. Then come back after a
week".

The disciple was appalled. But he had promised to obey! So he took the
animals in. A week later he came back, a pitiable figure, moaning, "I'm
a nervous wreck. The dirt! The stench! The noise! We're all on the verge of
madness"! "Go back", said the Master, "and put the
animals out".

The man ran all the way home. And came back the following day, his eyes
sparkling with joy. "How sweet life is! The animals are out. The home is
a Paradise, so quiet and clean and
roomy"!

To a visitor who claimed he had no need to search for
Truth because he found it in the beliefs of his religion the Master said:
"There was once a student who never became a mathematician because he
blindly believed the answers he found at the back of his math textbook -and, ironically, the answers were correct".

A disciple fell asleep and dreamed that he had entered Paradise. To his astonishment he found his Master and
the other disciples sitting there, absorbed in meditation.

"Is this the reward of Paradise"? he cried. "Why, this is exactly the sort of thing we
did on earth"!

He heard a Voice exclaim, "Fool - You think those meditators are in Paradise? It is just the opposite Paradise
is in the meditators".

The disciple couldn't wait to tell the Master the rumor he
had heard in the marketplace.

"Wait a minute", said the Master. "What you plan to tell us,
is it true"?

"I don't think it is".

"Is it useful"?

"No, it isn't".

"Is it funny"?

"No".

"Then why should we be hearing it"?

The disciples were involved in a heated discussion on the
cause of human suffering. Some said it came from selfishness. Others, from
delusion. Yet others, from the inability to distinguish the real from the
unreal.

When the Master was consulted, he said,

"All suffering comes from a person's inability to sit still and be
alone".

The Master demanded seriousness of purpose from those who
sought discipleship. But he chided his disciples when they strained
themselves in spiritual endeavor.

What he proposed was lighthearted seriousness or serious lightheartedness --
like that of a sportsman in a game or an actor in a play.

And much, much patience. "Forced flowers have no fragrance", he
would say, "Forced fruit will lose its taste".

A disciple confessed his bad habit of repeating gossip.

Said the Master wickedly, "Repeating it wouldn't be so bad if you did
not improve on it".

The Master would laugh at those of his disciples who
deliberated endlessly before making up their mind.

The way he put it was:

"People who deliberate FULLY before they take a step will spend their
lives on one leg".

When it became clear that the Master was going to die, the
disciples were depressed.

Said the Master smilingly,

"Don't you see that death gives loveliness to life"?

"No. We'd much rather you never died".

"Whatever is truly alive must die.

Look at the flowers; only plastic flowers never die".

"Help us to find God".

"No one can help you there".

"Why not"?

"For the same reason that no one can help the fish to find the
ocean".

To a group of his disciples whose hearts were set on a
pilgrimage the Master said: "Take this bitter gourd along. Make sure you
dip it into all the holy rivers and bring it into all the holy shrines".

When the disciples returned, the bitter gourd was cooked and served as
sacramental food.

"Strange", said the Master slyly after he had tasted it.

"The holy water and the shrines have failed to sweeten it"!

Said the jilted lover, "I have burned my fingers
once. I shall never fall in love again".

Said the Master,

"You are like the cat who, having burned itself
from sitting on a stove, refused to sit again".

All questions at the public meeting that day were about
life beyond the grave. The Master only laughed and did not give a single
answer. To his disciples, who demanded to know the reason for his
evasiveness, he later said, "Have you observed that it is precisely
those who do not know what to do with this life who want
another life that will last forever"?

"But is there life after death or is there not"? persisted
a disciple.

"Is there life before death? - that is the question"! said
the Master enigmatically.

To a disciple who was always seeking answers from him the
Master said, "You have within yourself the answer to every question you
propose -- if you only knew how to look for it".

And another day he said, "In the Land of the spirit, you cannot walk by
the light of someone else's lamp. You want to borrow mine. I'd rather teach
you how to make your own".

The Master was strolling with some of his disciples along
the bank of a river. He said, "See how the fish keep darting about
wherever they please. That's what they really enjoy".

A stranger overhearing that remark said, "How do you know what fish
enjoy? You're not a fish".

The disciples gasped at what they took for impudence. The Master smiled at
what he recognized as a fearless spirit of inquiry. He replied affably,
"And you, my friend, how do you know I am not a fish? You are not
I".

The disciples laughed, taking this to be a well-deserved rebuff. Only the
stranger was struck by its depth. All day he pondered it, then
came to the monastery to say, "Maybe you are not as different from the
fish as I thought. Or I from you".

The Master ordinarily dissuaded people from living in a
monastery.

"To profit from books you don't have to live in a library", he
would say.

Or, even more forcefully, "You can read books without ever stepping into
a library; and practice spirituality without ever going to a temple".

The Master once asked his disciples which was more
important: wisdom or action.

The disciples were unanimous: "Action, of course. Of what use is wisdom
that does not show itself in action"?

Said the Master, "And of what use is action that proceeds from an
unenlightened heart"?

The Master was asked by what criterion he selected his
disciples.

He said, "I act in a submissive and humble manner. Those who become
haughty in response to my humility I immediately reject. Those who revere me
because of my humble demeanor I reject with equal speed".

"How can I be a great man - like you"?

"Why be a great man"? said
the Master.

"Being a man is a great enough achievement".

The Master sat in rapt attention as the renowned economist
explained his blueprint for development. "Should growth be the only
consideration in an economic theory"? he asked.
"Yes. All growth is good in itself". "Isn't that the thinking
of the cancer cell"? said the Master.

Before the visitor embarked upon discipleship, he wanted
assurance from the Master.

"Can you teach me the goal of human life"?

"I cannot".

"Or at least its meaning"?

"I cannot".

"Can you indicate to me the nature of death and of life beyond the
grave"?

"I cannot".

The visitor walked away in scorn. The disciples were dismayed that their
Master had been shown up in a poor light. Said the Master soothingly,
"Of what is it to comprehend life's nature and life's meaning if you
have never tasted it? I'd rather you ate your pudding than speculated on
it".

"Why are you so wary of thought"? said the philosopher. Thought is the one tool we have for
organizing the world".

"True. But thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer
able to see it".

To his disciples he later said, "A thought is a screen, not a mirror;
that is why you live in a thought envelope, untouched by Reality".

"If you make me your authority", said the Master
to a starry-eyed disciple, "you harm yourself because you refuse to see
things for yourself".

And, after a pause, he added gently, "You harm me too, because you
refuse to see me as I am".

"Why do you need a Master"? asked
a visitor of one of the disciples. "If water must be heated, it needs a
vessel as an intermediary between the fire and itself", was the answer.

To a visitor who described himself as a seeker after Truth
the Master said, "If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must
have above all else".

"I know. An overwhelming passion for it".

"No. An unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong".

To a shy disciple who wanted to become self-confident the
Master said, "You look for certainty in the eyes of others and you think
that is self-confidence".

"Shall I give no weight to the opinion of others, then"?

"On the contrary. Weigh everything they say, but do not be controlled by
it".

"How does one break the control"?

"How does one break a delusion"?

"Of what use is your learning and your devotions?
Does a donkey become wise through living in a library or a
mouse acquire holiness from living in a church"?

"What is it, then, we need"?

"A heart".

"How does one get that"?

The Master would not say. What could he say that they wouldn't turn into a
subject to be learned or an object of devotion?

To a disciple who depended overmuch on books the Master
said:

"A man came to the market with a shopping list and lost it. When to his
great joy he found it again, he read it eagerly, held on to it till he had
done his shopping -- then threw it away as a useless scrap of paper".

He was a religious writer and interested in the Master's
views. "How does one discover God"?

Said the Master sharply, "Through making the heart white with silent
meditation, not making paper black with religious composition".

And, turning to his scholarly disciples, he teasingly added, "Or making
the air thick with learned conversation".

The Master was never impressed by diplomas or degrees. He
scrutinized the person, not the certificate.

He was once heard to say,

"When you have ears to hear a bird in song, you don't need to look at
its credentials".

Each day the disciple would ask the same question:
"How shall I find God"?

And each day he would get the same mysterious answer: "Through
desire".

"But I desire God with all my heart, don't I? Then why have I not found
him"?

One day the Master happened to be bathing in the river with the disciple. He
pushed the man's head underwater and held it there while the poor fellow struggled
desperately to break loose.

Next day it was the Master who began the conversation. "Why did you
struggle so when I held your head under water"?

"Because I was gasping for air".

A lecturer explained how a fraction of the enormous sums
spent on arms in the modern world would solve all the material problems of
every member of the human race.

The inevitable reaction of the disciples after the lecture was: "But why
are human beings so stupid"?

"Because", said the Master solemnly, "people have learned to
read printed books. They have forgotten the art of reading unprinted
ones".

"Give us an example of an unprinted book".

But the Master wouldn't give one.

One day, in response to their persistence, he said: "The songs of birds,
the sounds of insects are all trumpeting forth the Truth. The grasses and the
flowers are all pointing out the Way. Listen! Look! That is the way to
read"!

To a man who hesitated to embark on the spiritual quest
for fear of the effort and renunciation the Master said: "How much
effort and renunciation does it take to open one's eyes and see"?

There were rules in the monastery, but the Master always
warned against the tyranny of the law. "Obedience keeps the rules",
he would say. "Love knows when to break them".

"What must I do for Enlightenment? "

"Nothing".

"Why not"?

"Enlightenment doesn't come from doing - it happens".

"Then can it never be attained"?

"Oh yes it can".

"How"?

"Through non doing".

"And what does one do to attain non doing"?

"What does one do to go to sleep or to wake up"?

The Master's expansive mood emboldened his disciples to
say, "Tell us what you got from Enlightenment. Did you become
divine"?

"No".

"Did you become a saint"?

"No".

"Then what did you become"?

"Awake".

An easygoing disciple complained that he had never
experienced the Silence that the Master frequently commended.

Said the Master, "Silence only comes to active people".

A grocer came to the Master in great distress to say that
across the way from his shop they had opened a large chain store that would
drive him out of business. His family had owned his shop for a century - and
to lose it now would be his undoing, for there was nothing else he was
skilled at.

Said the Master, "If you fear the owner of the chain store, you will
hate him. And hatred will be your undoing".

"What shall I do"? said the distraught
grocer.

"Each morning walk out of your shop onto the sidewalk and bless your
shop, wishing it prosperity. Then turn to face the chain store and bless it
too".

"What? Bless my competitor and destroyer"?

"Any blessing you give him will rebound to your good. Any evil you wish
him will destroy you".

After six months the grocer returned to report that he had had to close down
his shop as he had feared, but he was now in charge of the chain store and
his affairs were in better shape than ever before.

The disciples would frequently be absorbed in questions of
right and wrong. Sometimes the answer would be evident enough. Sometimes it
was elusive.

The Master, if he happened to be present at such discussions, would take no
part in them.

Once he was confronted with this question: "Is it right to kill someone
who seeks to kill me? Or is it wrong"?

He said, "How should I know"?

The shocked disciples answered, "Then how would we tell right from
wrong"?

The Master said, "While alive, be dead to yourself, be totally dead.
Then act as you will and your action will be right".