Master is Always Here!

A man went in search of truth. The first religious man he met was sitting under a tree, just outside his own village. He asked, ”I am searching for a true master. Please tell me the characteristics of a true master.” The fakir told him the characteristics. His description was very simple. He said, ”You’ll find him sitting under such and such a tree, sitting in such and such posture, his hands making such and such gestures – that is enough to know he is the true master.”

The seeker started searching. It is said that thirty years passed while he wandered the whole earth. He visited many places, but never met the master. He met many masters, but none were true masters. He returned to his own village completely exhausted. As he was returning he was surprised, he couldn’t believe it: that old man was seated under the same tree, and now he could see that this was the very tree that the old man had spoken of ”... he will be sitting under such and such a tree.....” And his posture was exactly as he had described. ”It was the same posture he was sitting in thirty years ago – was I blind? The exact expression on his face, the exact gestures....!”

He fell at his feet saying, ”Why didn’t you tell me in the first place? Why did you misdirect me for these thirty years? Why didn’t you tell me that you are the true master?”

The old man said, ”I told you, but you were not ready to listen. You were not able to come home without wandering away. You had to knock on the doors of a thousand houses to come to your own home, only then could you return. I said it, I said everything – beneath such and such a tree. I was describing this very tree, the posture I was sitting in, but you were too fast, you couldn’t hear correctly, you were in a hurry. You were going somewhere to search. Searching was very important for you, the truth was not so important.

”But you have come! I was feeling tired, sitting continuously in this posture for you. You were wandering for thirty years, but think of me sitting under this tree! I knew some day you would come, but what if I had already passed away? I waited for you – you have come! You had to wander for thirty years, but that’s your own fault. The master was always here.”

* It happens many times in our life that we cannot see what is near, and what is far attracts us. The distant drum sounds sweeter, we are pulled by distant dreams.

A Serious Joke!

Mulla Nasruddin is a Sufi figure, one of the oldest figures of Sufi anecdotes. He is a very serious joker, and if we can penetrate him and understand him, then many mysteries will be revealed to you.

Below is one anecdote from Nasruddin:-

Once it happened that Nasruddin and his friend Sheikh Abdullah lost their way in a forest. They tried and tried to find their way but then evening came, the night was descending, so they had to wait for the whole night under a tree. It was dangerous ground, there were many wild animals, and they had to keep awake because any moment they could be killed.


They tried every way to keep awake, but Mulla was tired, yawning, feeling sleepy, so he said to Sheikh Abdullah, "Invent something, because I am feeling sleepy and it seems impossible now to stay awake. The whole day we were traveling, and I am tired."


Sheikh Abdullah asked, "What should I do?"
Nasruddin said, "We should play a game, a game of guessing. You describe a film actress -- just become the film actress and describe -- and I will guess who this film actress is. Then I will do the same and you guess."


Even Abdullah became interested, it seemed to be a good game. So Abdullah said, "Okay." He contemplated and then he said, "My eyes are like Noor Jahan, my nose is like Cleopatra, my lips like Marilyn Monroe," and so on and so forth.


Mulla Nasruddin became very excited, his blood pressure rose high. Even in the dark you could have seen his eyes, they became so fiery. And then when Sheikh Abdullah said, "Now the measurements of my body -- thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six." Nasruddin jumped over to Sheikh Abdullah. Sheikh Abdullah said, "Wait, guess!"

Nasruddin said, "Who is bothered about guessing? I don't care who you are. Quick! Kiss me!"

* The human mind is such -- imagination, desire, passion, projection. You project, you imagine, and then you become the victim. 

And this is not a joke, this is reality -- and this is about you and me.!

Life is a Dream~

You do not exist even in dream. You must sometimes have dreamed a dream within a dream. You dream that you are going to bed, you have fallen asleep and you are dreaming a dream.

There is an old Chinese story: A woodcutter was cutting wood in a jungle. He was tired, so he came down from the tree and fell asleep. He dreamed that nearby lay buried a great treasure of diamonds and gold in huge pots that were lightly covered with dirt. In his dream he thought that he would come at night and remove the treasure quietly.

If he removed it in the daytime he might be caught. Hewas a poor man and the treasure was worth millions. When he awoke, he buried a stick to mark the place and returned home. When it became dark, he went back to the spot. He found the stick in place but the pots had been removed. He went back and told his wife, ”I don’t understand whether I dreamed about the treasure or actually saw it. The stick is there all right, and there are holes where the pots were, so it is certainly not just a dream. But someone has removed the pots.”

His wife replied, ”It must be a dream. You must also have dreamed that you went out at night and saw the stick in the ground, and that there was an empty place where the pots were supposed to be. So go back to sleep and sleep in peace.” But it happened that another man also dreamed that he saw these very pots buried in the same place, and that a woodcutter had buried a stick to mark the place. When he got up from his sleep he ran to the place. He found the stick in the ground and also the vessels underneath!

He removed the pots and brought them home. He told his wife, ”I cannot understand whether I dreamed a dream or I actually saw a vision. Whatever it is, I have brought the pots home. They are proof that it is not just a dream. I must actually have seen the woodcutter burying the stick and therefore I knew where the treasure was.” His wife said, ”The pots are here. That much is clear. But if you actually saw the woodcutter marking the spot, it isn’t right that we should keep this treasure.

Take the pots to the king and let him decide.” He was an honest man, so he took the pots to the king’s court where the woodcutter had already lodged a complaint. The king was perplexed. Finally he told them, ”It is very difficult to decide whether you were asleep or awake, so I shall divide the treasure equally between you both, for the pots are very much there.” So he divided the treasure between them. That night the king told his wife, ”A very strange thing happened today: Two men dreamed the same dream.

Now it is difficult to decide whether they dreamed or whether they really saw the treasure. But the pots of treasure were actually there, so I divided them equally between them.” The queen said, ”Go to sleep, you must be dreaming.” For thousands of years this was discussed in China – did they dream it or not? Who actually dreamed? But this is what happens by the time we reach the end of life. All of life seems like a dream. It is difficult to decide whether the stick was really there and whether the pots were really buried;

whether the wife and children ever existed, or friends and foes; whether there was poverty or riches; whether there was conflict and competition; whether we really lost or won, were successful or unsuccessful. At the time of death all events pass before a man like a dream. Did we really live, or was it only a dream? Those who have known say, ”This is a dream dreamed with open eyes.” It is a dream because it has no relation to that which is. This is an intermediary state of imagination; it is merely a thought.

It makes no difference whether you saw it when asleep or when awake. The characteristic of a dream is that it is here one moment and gone the next. At the time of death all is lost. Within this dream you see another dream that is called the ego. You consider yourself the doer, the author of the dreams. You are filled with conceit, which all the world can see; only you do not see it. Everyone else is in the same state, never seeing their own, but seeing everyone else’s ego.

Don't Judge!

There was one Mohammedan Sufi mystic. He used to sell small things in the village, and the people of that village became aware that he had no judgment. So they would take the things and give him false coins. He would accept them, because he would never say, ”This is wrong and this is right.” Sometimes they would take things from him and they would say, ”We have paid,” and he would not say, ”You have not paid.” He would say, ”Okay.” He would thank them.

Then from other villages also people started coming. This man was very good; you could take anything from his shop, you need not pay, or you could pay in false coins, and he accepted everything!

Then death came near to this old man. These were his last words: he looked at the sky and said, ”Allah, God, I have been accepting all kinds of coins, false ones also. I am also a false coin – don’t judge me. I have not judged your people, please don’t judge me.” And it is said that how can God judge such a person?

Jesus says, ”Judge ye not, so ye may not be judged.” (Do not judge others, and you will not be judged.)

* If judgment disappears, you have become innocent. If you don’t divide things into good and bad, ugly and beautiful, acceptable and nonacceptable; if you don’t divide things, if you look at reality without any division, your eyes will come into existence for the first time.

If you divide you will remain blind, if you judge you will remain blind, if you say this is bad and this is good, you will persist in your blindness... because existence knows nothing. There is nothing good and nothing bad – existence accepts everything. And when you also accept everything you have become existence-like.

:)

The Way Out!

Bees seem to have something like human minds, exactly the same kind of stupidity. The doors may be open, but if a bee is inside the room, caught inside the room... and she may have come from the open door but she will try to get out from the closed window. Not only bees but other birds also behave in the same way. Any bird can enter in your room; the doors are open, he has come from the door, but he cannot go back from the same door.

He starts trying to get through the wall, through the ceiling... and the more he tries, the more desperate he becomes, because there is no way to get through the ceiling or through the wall or through the closed window. And in that desperation, frustration he becomes more and more blind, afraid, scared. He loses all intelligence. And the same is the case with human beings.

One day Buddha came into his assembly of the monks. His sannyasins were sitting and waiting for him. They were puzzled because this was for the first time that Buddha had come with something in his hand – a handkerchief. They all looked at the handkerchief What was the matter? There must be something special in it. And Buddha sat on the platform and rather than starting speaking to the assembly he looked at the handkerchief, started tying a few knots in it, five knots in all.

The whole assembly watched – what is going on? And then he asked the assembly, ”Can anybody tell me: is this handkerchief the same as it was before the knots were tied?”

Sariputta said, ”This is a tricky question. In a way the handkerchief is the same because nothing has changed, in a way it is not the same because these five knots have appeared which were not there before. But as far as the inner nature of the handkerchief is concerned – its nature is concerned – it is the same; but as far as its form is concerned it is no more the same. The form has changed: the substance is the same.”

Buddha said, ”Right. Now I want to open these knots.” And he started stretching both ends of the handkerchief farther away from each other. He asked Sariputta. ”What do you think? By stretching farther will I be able to open the knots?”

He said, ”You will be making knots even more difficult to open because they will become smaller, more tighter. ’

Buddha said, ”Right. Then I want to ask the last question: what should I do so that I can open the knots, the tied knots? How I can untie them again?”

Sariputta said, ”Bhagwan, I would like first to come close and see how in the first place the knots have been tied. Unless I know how they have been tied it is difficult for me to suggest any solution.”

Buddha said, ”Right, Sariputta. You are blessed, because that is the most fundamental question to ask. If you are in a certain fix, the first thing is how you got into it rather than trying to get out of it. Without asking the most fundamental and the primary question, you will make things worse.”

* This is exactly what we are doing. We ask, ”How we can get out of our sexuality, greed, anger, attachment, jealousy, possessiveness, this and that?” without asking, ”How in the first place we get into them?”

Buddha’s whole approach is, first see how you get into anger. If you can see the entrance, the same door is the exit; no other door is needed. But without knowing the entrance if you try to find out the exit you are not going to find; you will get more and more desperate. And that’s what people go on doing. In the scriptures, what are you looking for? – solutions. You create the problems – and the solutions are in the scriptures! Why don’t you look at the problems yourself. How you create them?

Why don’t you watch when you are creating a certain problem? And you create every day, so it is not a question that you have to go back. Today you are going to be angry again, today you will feel again the sexual urge: see how it arises, see how you enter into it, how you get hooked into it, how it becomes so big like a cloud that surrounds you and you are lost in it. And then you go to ask others! You are functioning almost like a stupid bee. 

Bees can be forgiven, but you cannot be forgiven.!!!

:)

Knowledge is Trouble

     I have heard about a great warrior in Japan, a samurai, a very famous swordsman: One night when he came tired after the whole day’s fight in the fields and he was just going to fall into bed, he saw a rat. And the rat was looking at him ferociously! The samurai tried to kill the rat with his sword. He was one of the best swordsmen known, but somehow he missed. He hit many times, he broke his sword, and he could not kill the rat. He became really afraid: ”The rat seems to be very mysterious. This is no ordinary rat!”

He started, perspiring – he had never perspired. He had been a fighter his whole life and now a rat had defeated him. He ran out, asked his wife what to do. The wife said, ”You are a fool! You need not kill a rat. Have you ever heard of anybody killing a rat by a sword? You just take our cat inside.” And the cat was brought inside. It was no ordinary cat, it was the great warrior’s cat. She was also trained in many things; she was one of the most famous rat-catchers.She came with all her art, with all her skill.

She tried, but the rat was really extraordinary. He jumped exactly into her eyes! And the cat escaped out. She had never seen such a rat – attacking the cat?! And she was also trembling like the warrior. The warrior said, ”This is too much!” Then the king’s cat was called. She was a master cat, very well-known all over the country; ofcourse, she was the king’s cat. The king’s cat came and she was also defeated by the rat. She went in, tried hard, used all her skill, but the rat was just too much.

Then the king’s cat suggested a cat she knew who was not famous at all. ”You have tried with famous cats, now you try with an ordinary one... just ordinary, plain ordinary.”

The warrior said, ”But what can a plain, ordinary cat do?”

The king’s cat said, ”You just try. I know this cat. She is so ordinary, she does not know a thing. The whole day she sleeps. But there is one thing about her: cats know, the whole country’s cats know that she is very mysterious. The mysterious thing is that she knows nothing about rats, rat-catching, the art, the technique, the methodology, the philosophy – she knows nothing; she has never been to any school or college or university. She is a plain, ordinary cat, but rats are so afraid of her!

Wherever she sleeps... no rat ever enters that house! Just her presence is enough. And she goes on sleeping, and nobody knows when she kills and how she kills.

”Once I went to that cat and I asked, ’What is your art?’ She simply looked at me, and she had no words to say, and she closed her eyes and went to sleep. And I woke her again and asked, ’What is your art?’

”She said, ’I don’t know. I am a cat, that’s enough. A cat is a cat and IS MEANT to catch a rat. What art? What nonsense are you talking about?”’

The cat was brought, and the samurai was not very hopeful because she was really very ordinary, just like any vagabond cat.

She came in, and without any skill she simply went in, caught hold of the rat and brought it out. All the cats gathered together and asked her, ”What is your art?” And she said, ”I don’t know any art. I am a cat! Is not that enough?”

* You have been spoiled. Rats have been around you too much, and you have become afraid of the rats – not only afraid, you have started learning how to catch these rats. You have become very skillful, artificial; you know the know-how and that is your trouble. 

Your knowledge is your trouble.

:)

Paid In Full

A young man was getting ready to graduate college. For many months he had admired a beautiful sports car in a dealer's showroom, and knowing his father could well afford it, he told him that was all he wanted.

As Graduation Day approached, the young man awaited signs that his father had purchased the car. Finally, on the morning of his graduation his father called him into his private study. His father told him how proud he was to have such a fine

son, and told him how much he loved him. He handed his son a beautiful wrapped gift box.

Curious, but somewhat disappointed the young man opened the box and found a lovely, Bhagavad-gita. Angrily, he raised his voice at his father and said, "With all your money you give me a Bhagavad-gita?" and stormed out of the house, leaving the holy book.

Many years passed and the young man was very successful in business. He had a beautiful home and wonderful family, but realized his father was very old, and thought perhaps he should go to him. He had not seen him since that graduation day. Before he could make arrangements, he received a telegram telling him his father had passed away, and willed all of his possessions to his son. He

needed to come home immediately and take care things. When he arrived at his father's house, sudden sadness and regret filled his heart.

He began to search his father's important papers and saw the still new  Bhagavad-gita, just as he had left it years ago. With tears, he opened the Bhagavad-gita and began to turn the pages. As he read those words, a car key dropped from an envelope taped behind the Bhagavad-gita. It had a tag with the dealer's name, the same dealer who had the sports car he had desired. On the tag was the date of his graduation, and the words...PAID IN FULL.

How many times do we miss God's blessings because they are not packaged as we expected?

:)