Master and Disciple: A mystery beyond explaining

Question 1:

Life is beautiful because there is so much which cannot be explained.

It would have been a disaster if life consisted only of things which can be explained.

Just think for a moment: if everything could be explained, then there would be no mystery, then there would be no poetry, then there would be no secret. Then everything would be utterly flat and boring.

Life is not a boredom because there are dimensions in it that you can go on exploring, yet you can never come to explanations. You can experience much, yet even that which you have experienced cannot be translated into words.

You fall in love. Since the very first man, millions of people must have fallen in love; yet love is still a mystery, you cannot reduce it to knowledge. The moment you try to reduce to knowledge, it slips out of your hands. And it is good that it is so miraculous that generation after generation, millions of people go through the experience; they know what it is, yet they cannot say what it is.

All that can be experienced is not necessarily explainable, and all that can be explained is not necessarily experienceable.

Mathematics can be explained easily, but there is no corresponding experience. Science can be explained easily, but even the greatest scientist is not transformed by his knowledge. But an anonymous poet not only gives birth to poetry, he also goes through a deep revolution, a rebirth. His poetry is not just a composition of words; it is the juice of his very life.

The greatest poets have not been able to explain their own poetry.

Once Coleridge was asked by a professor of literature.... The professor was teaching at the university and he came across a point in one of Coleridge's poems where he was doubtful about the meaning. He was a sincere man. He told the students, "You will have to wait at least one day. Coleridge lives in my neighborhood; I can ask him exactly what he means."

The professor went to Coleridge that evening. Coleridge said, "You have come a little late."

He said, "What do you mean a little late? You are still alive."

Coleridge said, "It is not a question of my being alive or not. When I wrote these lines, two persons knew the meaning; now only one knows."

Naturally, the professor inferred that that one person could not be anyone else but Coleridge. He said, "So I have not come too late. Tell me what the meaning is."

Coleridge said, "You have not yet got the point. When I wrote these lines, two persons knew the meaning -- Coleridge and God. Now only God knows!

"I myself have been wondering. Many times I have read it and wondered -- what is the meaning? It is groovy! -- but very slippery. You feel that you are just about to catch it and it is gone just like a breeze. I am sorry. I have certainly written these lines, and I know there is some meaning, and I feel it, but you will have to forgive me. I cannot even explain it to myself, how can I explain it to you?"

It is not only so about poetry. Anything significant in life....

Picasso used to get very angry whenever anybody would ask the meaning of his paintings. And he was not an angry man. He was a very beautiful, loving person. But the moment you ask the meaning of his painting, you have touched him from the wrong side.

He would immediately get very angry. He would say, "This is strange. Nobody asks a roseflower what its meaning is. Nobody asks the stars what their meaning is. Nobody asks a bird on the wing what its meaning is. Nobody asks a sunrise or a sunset what its meaning is. People simply enjoy the beauty; nobody bothers about the meaning. Why are people after me? I am a poor painter. All that I can say is that it is beautiful. But that is not its meaning, it is its impact on a sensitive being."

Meaning is rational. And the experience of mystery is supra-rational.

Your question is significant, and it must be the question of many other disciples.

People ask you what the relationship is between you and me. Just to say that I am your master neither satisfies them nor satisfies you. How can it satisfy them when it does not satisfy even you? -- because it is not just a relationship like somebody is your father and somebody is your mother and somebody is your brother. Once you have said that somebody is your father, everything is explained. Nobody bothers you anymore, that `What do you mean by father?' and....

The relationship with the master is not of the same category as all other relationships. It is intrinsically different.

It is love, but not only love.

It is love with a center of trust.

Love alone is unexplainable, and now it has joined hands with an even greater mystery.

Trust is absolutely something of another world.

In this world, there is distrust in everybody. Even in people who love each other, there is no trust. There are friends who can, if there is need, die for each other -- but there is no trust.

In the Middle Ages it used to happen....

A very strange and ugly thing was in existence in Europe. Whenever a warrior would go to war, he would put a lock on his wife so that she could not make love to anybody, and take the key with him. A strange device it was... those locks are still exhibited in the museums of Europe.

You cannot even trust your wife! And if you cannot trust your wife, do you think a master key cannot be found? The goldsmiths who made the locks also made extra keys!

One prince was going to war. His only fear was about his beautiful wife. He was afraid that if the key were lost in the war then for the rest of his life he wouldn't be able to make love to his own wife. So he thought it would be better to give the key to one of his best friends. They were so close that they would have died for each other, so there was no question of distrust.

He gave his friend the key and told him, "When I come back I will take it back. So keep it safe."

He had gone not more than a half mile out of the town on his horse when he heard a fast horse approaching him from behind. He looked back, and his friend was coming, shouting, "Wait!"

He said, "What has happened?" Just five minutes ago he had left him perfectly healthy, and there had been no problem.

The friend said, "You gave me the wrong key!"

In this world, there is no trust at all.

When love is joined with trust, it becomes even more difficult to explain it. It becomes more mysterious.

And thirdly, as love and trust grow to their optimum, something comes which can only be called `surrender'. It is not a good word, but there is no other word as a substitute.

Surrender makes the whole thing absolutely not of this world. You cannot give any reason, you cannot give any explanation. The only way is: whoever asks, tell him that it is something like a thirsty man finding water in the desert. His every fiber is just thirst, and the water quenches all thirst. A great peace descends.

The master is not a person.

The master is only a presence.

If you are thirsty enough for the unknown, you can drink out of this presence and be quenched.

Anybody who asks you the question, tell him, "Come with me. There are a few things which cannot be explained, but I can take you to the place where perhaps you may also experience them. Your question itself shows that there is some interest in you -- perhaps a deep, hidden desire. Who knows? -- it may become aflame in the presence of the master.

Who knows? -- surrounded by disciples and their love and their trust and their surrender, and the presence of the master, something may transpire in you. One thing is certain: if something transpires in you, you will become dumb the way I am dumb."

Accept your dumbness, but create a quest in the person who is asking only for a verbal answer. Use that situation. A verbal answer is of no use. You just say, "I have experienced something, which is untranslatable into any language, but I can take you to the river. You yourself can drink. Your experience will be the only explanation."

And I repeat again: Life is beautiful because there are so many unexplainable dimensions to it. That is its richness. If everything is explained, all juice will be lost; you will be fed up, bored to death with a life which is explained.

What transpires between a master and a disciple is one of the peaks of unexplainable experiences. Don't destroy it with any explanation.

It is a crime to destroy the unexplainable by bringing it to the level of explanations, because you have killed. It is almost like a bird on the wing in the sky... it is so beautiful in its freedom; the whole sky belongs to him, all the stars belong to him... no limits, no barriers. You can catch hold of the bird; you can make a beautiful golden cage and you can put the bird in the cage. But remember, it is not the same bird that was flying in freedom in the sky under the stars. Factually it is the same bird, but spiritually no -- because where is the freedom and where are the stars? Where is the sky? Your golden cage cannot replace what you have taken away from the bird. It has lost its soul.

The same happens when you try to explain something which is unexplainable. You bring it into the cage of language, of words -- beautiful words, but the soul has disappeared.

Don't do it. I know it feels a little awkward when somebody asks and you cannot answer - - you feel embarrassed.

It is better to feel embarrassed. But don't commit a crime against the mysteries of life.

Tell the person, "I am feeling embarrassed because I cannot say it. Not that I don't want to say it -- I would have loved to say it to you but I cannot, because saying it means killing it. I can take you to the window from where you can see the open sky, I can take you to the man. Perhaps your heart will start dancing in the same way my heart dances within me. And in deep silence, you will understand what it means to me.

But only when it starts to mean something to you."

People will be asking you many questions. Use their questions to invite them towards the same light, towards the same bliss, towards the same truth.

Don't answer -- because you cannot answer, and whatever you say will fall flat.

Resist the temptation of being knowledgeable. Accept your inarticulateness. But invite the person.

Perhaps out of ten, one may turn up. And one never knows -- by coming here, he may turn on!

Question 2:

Trust and belief have a very similar appearance, but they are diametrically opposite realities.

Belief is a false coin. It pretends to be real; it tries to play the role of trust.

Millions of people are caught in the net of belief, because it is cheap. Trust is costly, very costly.

Trust is costly because it is risky, it is dangerous. It means you are opening yourself, becoming vulnerable to somebody who can do you harm. You are dropping all your defense measures. You will be defenseless -- you can be exploited, cheated, destroyed.

Everybody has a defense system around himself, just to protect himself from others.

Life is competitive. Everybody is running after the same goals, and you cannot remain loving, compassionate, kind, in a competitive world or you are going to be a failure. In this competitive world, the people who succeed are the people who are ready to sacrifice anybody, to destroy anybody. They go on climbing on people as if people were stepping stones. They care about only one thing, and that is success.

Naturally, everybody has to be ready not to be trampled, killed.

Trust means going against the current of the competitive world. In the competitive world, trust is simply impossible.

Machiavelli, wrote one of the most significant treatises on diplomacy, THE PRINCE.

Strangely enough, his great great granddaughter is a sannyasin -- Machiavelli would have never dreamed that his blood would one day trust somebody.

Machiavelli has written in THE PRINCE -- it is a small treatise for every politician, maxims to be followed if you want to succeed -- "Don't trust anybody, but let everybody believe that you trust them. Don't say anything to a friend that you would not say to an enemy -- because no one knows, the friend may turn into your enemy tomorrow. Don't say anything against your enemy that you would not say against your friend -- because in this competitive world, the person who is an enemy may become a friend, the person who is a friend may become an enemy. Basically, keep yourself completely closed and secretive. If you say something, say it in such a way that it can be interpreted either way, for or against. Don't say anything which has only a single meaning, because every day you will have to face a new reality and you will have to change your meaning."

Machiavelli is the real leader of the world -- not Jesus Christ or Gautam Buddha. It is a strange world. Here, the real leaders are not worshipped, but they are followed. Here, the unreal leaders are worshipped... but not followed.

When love and trust meet, their ultimate byproduct is surrender. You relax into the master, into his being, without holding anything.

It is certainly only for those who are ready to take a risk.

But belief is very cheap. Everybody is a believer -- somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan, somebody is a Christian. Belief comes in all sizes, all shapes, all colors -- you can choose. And you don't have to pay anything for it. Generally you get it with your mother's milk, free of charge.

Secondly, belief is always in an idea, and trust is always in a presence.

That is a very delicate difference.

Belief is theoretical.

Trust is existential.

You can change your belief without any trouble; it is just like changing your clothes.

From a Hindu, you can become a Christian; from a Christian, you can become a Mohammedan; from a Mohammedan, you can become a communist. There is no problem, because belief is only of the mind. If anything is more convincing, more logical, you can change it. It has no roots in your heart.

Belief is like plastic flowers, which look like flowers from far away. They don't have any roots, they don't need any care -- no manure, no chemicals, no watering, no gardening, nothing is needed. And they are permanent people, they can remain with you your whole life long -- because they were never born, so they will never die. They are manufactured.

Unless you destroy them, they will remain.

Trust is a real rose. It has roots, and roots go deep into your heart and into your being.

Belief is just in the head.

Trust is in the heart, in your deeper world of being. To change trust is almost impossible - - it has never happened, it is not known to have happened in the whole of history. If you trust, you trust; there is no possibility of its changing. And it goes on growing because it has roots. It never remains static; it is dynamic, it is a living force, it goes on growing new foliage, new flowers, new branches.

Belief is a dead thing, a plastic flower -- it never grows.

Hindus may have believed in a certain thing for ten thousand years -- it is still there, the same; it never grows.

"The cow is the mother." Hindus have believed it for ten thousand years. The belief has not grown even to include the fact that the bull is your father. It is static. And if you mention to any Hindu that the bull is his father then he will become a bull, and prove that certainly the bull is his father! -- but he will not believe it. He will behave exactly like a bull, but he will not accept the fact.

All beliefs are old, all beliefs are dead. No belief grows even a single leaf.

Belief is ideological, philosophical, but it is not a force that transforms your being. It can make you a great scholar, it can make you a great philosopher, theologian -- but it can never make you a new man, young and fresh; it cannot give you any experience. It can bring you degrees from the universities and awards and Nobel prizes; it can do everything. But it will not change anything in your interior; it will remain empty.

The question is even more important because it is coming from a person who has been a Buddhist for thirty years.

After being a Buddhist for thirty years, the person comes to me, feels a certain trust in me, falls in love. Naturally, there is a conflict which is bound to happen. His mind is full of thirty years of Buddhist ideology -- that is the belief system -- and the heart is growing fresh sprouts of trust. The person is bound to be in a great difficulty. The beliefs are pulling in one direction and the trust is moving in another direction.

The beliefs have a certain weight because they are thirty years old, but the trust -- although it is new -- has a force of its own because it is alive. The beliefs are thirty-year- old corpses. They have weight, but they don't have any force. The person is bound to be split.

Things can be solved very easily.

The first thing to remember is: if Buddhism was enough, there would have been no need to come to me. Being a Buddhist for thirty years has not done anything to you. You can be a Buddhist for thirty lives, but a belief never changes your reality. The length of time makes no difference.

So the first question you have to ask yourself is why, after thirty years, you had to seek and search for some new source, for some new light, for some new indication.

If you are courageous, you need not get into a conflict; you can simply see that those thirty years have gone to waste. But what is gone is gone; now don't waste any more time on it.

And remember: I am not saying that Buddha is wrong.

I am simply saying that Buddha was right only to those people who could drink out of his presence, for whom he was a master.

But for you, he is only a belief.

It is better to get rid of those thirty years and whatever information you have collected in you, because that is a burden and a hindrance in your spiritual growth.

If you can dare not to be a Buddhist, I promise you that there is a possibility of your being a buddha. Why be a Buddhist when there is a possibility of being a buddha? Why settle for such dead theories when living waters are available?

To be a buddha is a beauty.

To be a Buddhist is stupidity.

Buddha was not a Buddhist, remember; he never heard the word. Nobody called him a Buddhist.

Jesus was never a Christian. So one thing is certain, that no Christian remaining a Christian can find the experience that Jesus found. If any Christian wants to experience what Jesus experienced, the first thing to do is to get rid of Christianity -- because Jesus was not a Christian.

Your belief system has to be completely thrown out, so that your juices are not divided and your whole energy moves into your trust.

Your trust is growing, but under a heavy burden, under a tension. It can grow in a relaxed way, under open sky. Just say goodbye to those beliefs that you have been carrying, and let your trust grow.

What Buddha has been to his disciples, his theories cannot be.

Theories are mere words. They don't have the charm and the grace and the charisma; they don't have that magnetism.

And when you are here and the possibility is available for you to become awakened, to become a buddha, I don't think that it is a bad bargain... dropping Buddhist theories in favor of becoming Gautam Buddha himself.

In twenty-five centuries, how many buddhas have been produced by the Buddhists?

One English Buddhist -- Bhikku Dharm Rakshita, a very devoted man -- dropped Christianity, was converted to Buddhism and became one of the topmost scholars of Buddhist literature. He had an ashrama in Kalimpong. He used to go once in a while to attend Buddhist conferences, and he made it a point that whenever he came down from the Himalayas he would find me and come to be with me for a day or two.

He was an internationally known Buddhist scholar. His books are rare as far as the accuracy of his translations is concerned.

I used to ask him, "Dharm Rakshita, you have devoted almost fifty years to learning Buddhist theology, translating Buddhist literature -- but have you got any taste of buddhahood?"

And tears would come to his eyes. He would say, "Please, don't ask that question. You are the only person who asks that. Nobody else seems to be interested. They ask about literature, they ask about principles, philosophies and everything, but nobody asks, `Has fifty years' concentrated effort brought anything to your being? -- or has it brought only a dozen books and world fame? Are you satisfied?'" One night he said to me, "You met me too late. I am old, I have wasted my whole life.

And now it is very difficult for me to drop all that garbage that I learned with great effort, and to begin from ABC, from the very scratch. But whenever I can manage it, I just come to be near you. And whenever I am near you.... I don't know how it would have been to be with Gautam Buddha, but I feel it must have been something like this -- the same taste. Now it is too late for me to change, but at least at the very end of my life I will not be dying just a scholar, I will be dying as a seeker. I could not do that in this life, but you have created a thirst. Perhaps in my next life I may not get lost in the jungle of theories, and I may try to enter into myself."

You have a rare opportunity here.

Nothing like this has ever existed in the world before. Because I don't have any prejudice -- you can become a Christ here, you can become a Buddha here, you can become a Mahavira, you can become a Lao Tzu. I don't have any prejudice because I know these are only different names. Behind them is the same universal consciousness.

So don't be bothered about your beliefs; just drop them.

Trust is enough, more than enough. For your pilgrimage, it is enough nourishment.

Question 3:

It is very simple.

You don't have a question; you have a quest. And you are not aware of the distinction.

Your quest is not clear to you, it is clouded. You think perhaps there is some question -- so you make many questions and they disappear but you are left with a vague feeling that something similar to a question is still there. What is it?

All questions are like leaves.

The quest is like the roots.

You are fortunate, because at first people have to ask thousands of questions; then, by and by, one by one, the leaves disappear. Then branches come, then the trunk, and then finally they realize that the real thing is the quest.

You are fortunate that you have only roots. But with roots the difficulty is that they are always underground, so you don't see where they are. You try somehow to make questions, but they disappear because they are not connected with your roots.

A quest is the most significant thing for a seeker.

A quest means you want to know, you want to experience, you want to be the truth itself.

A question wants to be answered.

A quest wants to become the answer itself.

Questions are many; the answer is one.

And you are in a position... if you simply meditate, you will not come across a question, you will come across the answer. And the answer is not something separate from you.

You are the answer.

Just go to your very center. It is there for you, waiting for thousands of lives. Don't let it wait anymore. Sometimes it also gets impatient. Because of that impatience, it starts creating questions.

Questions only show impatience.

But your position is very clear: you don't need to ask anything; you simply have to go deeper and deeper into silence, and you will find it.

Question 4:

Arun, it is not a question of long association.

It is a question of deep insight. You don't have that meditative perspective. You can see only what the ordinary eyes can see.

But as a person becomes more meditative, he starts growing his sensitivities to such depth and such height that he is able to see things which are invisible to us.

Life is not only what is available to our five senses.

Just think.... For example, if you were all blind, you would never come to know that there is something like light -- although the light will be all around you. But just the existence of light is not enough; you need something to perceive it.

One fact scientists have been concerned about is that on at least fifty thousand planets there is a possibility of life. One thing is certain: that on these different planets, life must have grown in different ways -- because the climate would be different, the whole situation would be different.

It is possible that on some planet there may be animals who have more than five senses.

Right now it is only a hypothetical question, but it is significant; the possibility is there. If there are animals on some planets who have seven senses or eight senses, then they must be able to perceive two or three things more than we can perceive. And we cannot even imagine what those things might be -- because even in imagination, we can only imagine that which we have seen. We cannot even dream about it, because our dreams are only reflections. You cannot be so creative in your dreams to create something new: all that will be reflected are those five senses.

Before x-rays were developed, we had no idea that there are rays which can enter into your body and photograph your insides.

The people who have been working on meditation for centuries have come to know many things, but because they are not scientists they have never tried to prove them objectively.

For example, in the East it has been known for centuries that a man of meditation can see if somebody is going to die within six months or not. And the thing is so simple that it need not be even a question of meditation; you yourself can know whether you are going to die within six months or not. The day you stop seeing the tip of your nose, that means only six months are left -- because at the time a person dies, his eyes turn up, and they start turning up six months before that, very slowly, very slowly. From six months beforehand till his death, he cannot see the tip of his nose. Now, that is known to villagers who have no meditation or meditative understanding.

The lama has been meditating for forty years.

He can see in my picture things which you cannot see.

I am reminded of Ramakrishna. A painter made his portrait, and he brought the painting to show Ramakrishna -- to see whether he liked it or not. The disciples were also gathered there.

Ramakrishna looked at the painting and touched the feet of the painting. His disciples -- Vivekananda and others -- felt embarrassed -- "What to do with our master? -- because he does such things that even we look like fools. Now it is his own picture, and he is touching its feet. We had no idea that he would do this; otherwise, we would have prevented him. And now he has done it, and people are laughing and smiling and looking at each other."

There were many observers there who were not disciples. They said, "They think this man is a realized soul? He seem to be insane! Even an insane person will not touch his own feet; at least he will recognize that `This is my own portrait; I cannot touch its feet.'" The painter was also shocked, but he was not a disciple. So he gathered courage and asked Ramakrishna, "I cannot believe my eyes. This is your own portrait and you are touching your own feet! It looks a little awkward."

And Ramakrishna's eyes were full of tears of joy. He said, "It is my picture, I know, but I am not touching the feet because it is my picture. I am touching the feet because you have caught my state of samadhi in the picture. And when I see a picture of someone in samadhi... it does not matter whether that picture is of me or somebody else -- that is irrelevant. What matters is that the picture is of a self-realized consciousness, then I have to touch its feet. And I cannot see why you are all looking so embarrassed."

Now they all felt more embarrassed: "We are such idiots. We don't understand; we should at least keep quiet. If we don't understand, then it is better not to show any emotion. He has done something which nobody has done before, but his reason is so valid."

Arun, the lama must be going well in his meditations. If he can see what he has seen in my picture, that validates that he is on the right path, that his meditation is bringing flowers, that he is very close to the home.

Question 5:

Do I have to tell you the truth?

It is a little bit difficult for me because it is not my habit... but the truth is there is no love, no hate.

Up there is absolute silence.

Beyond Enlightenment