Pretending Masters Harm You Spiritually - Osho

The enlightened masters have never used such phrases, such paragraphs, such long complicated sentences. This is the intellectual approach.

One Zen master was sitting on the seashore, and a man came and said to him, "I have been looking for you, but life has so many responsibilities that I could never come to you. It was just by coincidence I was passing and I saw you. I thought, `This is an opportunity I should not lose.' I want to ask -- just explain to me in a very simple way the master key of your religion."

The master remained sitting just like a marble statue, not saying anything, not even blinking his eyes. The man was a little bit afraid. He asked loudly, "Have you heard me or not?"

The master laughed and said, "This is the question I should have asked you. Have you heard me or not?"

The man said, "But you have not said anything."

The master said, "That's what my teaching is: there is nothing to say, but only to experience."

The man said, "That does not help me. Just give me a little more; I may not be able to come to you again."

So the master wrote in the sand with his finger: "DHYANA... `meditation.'" The man said, "That's perfectly right, but it doesn't make much sense to me. Can't you explain it a little bit more?" So the master wrote DHYANA, in bigger letters. The man said, "Smaller letters or bigger letters, it is not going to help me."

The master said, "I cannot lie just to help you. I have gone as far as truth will allow. Beyond that, you please forgive me. I have told you everything that my religion consists of: silence is its flowering, and meditation is its root. Now get lost!"

Zen masters, or any enlightened masters, don't speak like intellectuals, like the intelligensia. They have their own way... a very special way. Only those who are ready to open their hearts to them can be filled with their energy, can allow a few rays of light to enter into their being, may have some flowers showered on them -- because it is not in the words that the transmission happens. It is possible only when both persons, the master and the questioner, are moving on the same wavelength, in the same state of silence.


Ta Hui says, The great liberation, the great rest, the great surcease... And still he goes on: "There is not much to the Buddha Dharma, but it's always hard to find capable people."

He is expressing his own understanding. All that is possible in Gautam Buddha's approach to reality; in fact, it is the richest religion in the whole world. No religion has come to such heights, such peaks, and no religion has been able to produce so many enlightened beings in the world. Most of the religions have remained very mundane, very worldly.

Buddha stands out completely alone as far as the growth of human consciousness is concerned; he is the greatest contributor. Most of the enlightened people have come out of his insight, so it is stupid to say, "There's not much to the Buddha Dharma." And why is he saying this? Because buddha dharma, the religion of Gautam Buddha, does not have great philosophical treatises, but simple things: silence, no-mind, meditation, living totally, witnessing. Just on two hands... ten fingers may be enough to count the whole buddha dharma.

Naturally, to an intellectual this does not seem to be much. But the intellectual does not understand that you can have a huge mountain made only of rocks; it will be great as far as weight is concerned, but just one Kohinoor is enough... it is far more valuable than your whole mountain. Other religions have great doctrines...

Buddha has said again and again, "I am just a finger pointing to the moon, and my insistence is: `Don't look at my finger but look at the moon.' My finger does not mean anything; the reality is there in the moon. Forget my finger, and look at the moon." So even whatsoever little he has said, he has insisted that it is only an arrow showing you the path and the direction. Naturally, for an intellectual, a philosopher, this is not much.

Ta Hui's whole approach is such that it is mixed. To sort out what he has got from enlightened people, what he has got from learned people, and what he has made up himself is not difficult for me, but it will be difficult for you. And that's the reason I have chosen the book. This will give you the idea that whenever you are reading someone or listening to someone you must be very alert. Has the man the presence, the depth, the silence, the authority that comes out of one's own experience? Or is he just a knowledgeable person? And ask people, "Do you know it yourself?" and you will immediately find... if they hesitate even for a single moment or are taken aback, they were not expecting that you will ask this.

From my very childhood that has been the most interesting game that I have been engaged in. I have never played with the boys of my age. My whole time was involved in a different kind of game. One swami, Swarupananda, used to come to the town often, and he used to stay with one of my father's friends. The friend was very rich and was well known as a wise man; all the saints used to stay in his guest house. But he was very angry with me, because whenever he arranged a meeting for his saints, I was always in the front row.

I always used to take my grandfather with me, and my grandfather was really, even in his old age, a very juicy man. He would go on hitting me, saying "Start! Do something."

And I would suggest, "But let him speak, let him say something that I can find fault with." And in the middle I would stand up and ask just a single question, "Is this your own feeling, your own experience? And remember, you are in the temple of God" -- these meetings used to happen in the most beautiful temple in the city -- "so you cannot lie!" And the man would hesitate, and I would say, "Your hesitation is saying everything! Either you know, or you don't know. Where is the space for hesitation?"

Intellectuals can talk about all kinds of things. Catch hold of their necks and ask them, "Is it your own experience?" -- and just look in their eyes. You will be surprised that out of a hundred perhaps you may find one man who is speaking out of some experience; otherwise, all is borrowed. And all that is borrowed is simply crap. These people have harmed humanity more than anybody else because they speak beautiful words, but those beautiful words are dead. And because of these people it has become difficult to find a real master, because there are so many fake teachers all over the world.

This is the greatest dishonesty that man can do to humanity. You can cheat people out of money, there is nothing much in it; you can be a con-man and do all kinds of deceiving... it is all okay with me because it does not matter whether the money is in one's pocket or in somebody else's pocket; the money is in the pocket -- that's all. It is not a great loss in any way.

But the people without experience who are pretending to be masters are really harming you spiritually. They are giving you words which are dead -- they mean nothing -- and they are preventing you from finding the right man. When there are so many fake people, the greater is the possibility that you will get caught by some fake person. And the fake person is always nicer, more persuasive; he talks in a way that supports your prejudices.

The master does not care about your prejudices... he is out to destroy them. He cannot be nice like the fake people, he has to be hard. Only those who have a real longing -- like a thirst -- to become enlightened, to reach to the source of their life, can tolerate the hardness, the strange behavior of the master. He is not going to be according to you. You have to be according to him. The fake master is always ready to be according to you -- that fulfills your ego.

But the real master can not be according to you. He is bent upon destroying your ego completely, he is bent upon taking away your mind completely. He leaves you only a clean space. In that silent, clean space is your realization. It is not an achievement, it is only a discovery.

OSHO
The Great Zen Master Ta Hui # 5