“A master is not a teacher. A master shares his being with you, not his philosophy.”
I am not a teacher. I am not teaching you anything at all. I am not a bridge between you and the Bible, between you and the Gita, between you and the Koran. I am not even a bridge between you and God – no. I am not giving you a teaching, a dogma, a creed, a philosophy, a theology. So understand the difference between a teacher and a master.
In the old religions teachers are called masters. They are simply teachers, they know the teaching. They have been handed down that teaching by other teachers; they will hand it over to you. They have not experienced anything, and through their teaching you are not going to experience anything either. Those are just beautiful words, and they can give you consolation – as if you know.
A master is not a teacher in the first place. A master shares his being with you, not his philosophy.
A master exposes himself to you, allows you closeness so that you can see your face in his mirror. A master is exactly a mirror.
He never does anything to the disciple. Let me emphasize it. A master is not a doer… because if I start doing something to you I may spoil your being. I may give you a mask, a discipline, and I may change you into something else that you are not. The master cannot do that.
The teacher does that. He gives you a teaching; he teaches you discipline and then he enforces it through greed, persuasion, fear, in every possible way. He tries to fit you into a mold: how a Christian should be, how a Buddhist should be. There are thirty-three thousand rules for a Buddhist monk. I do not think that I can remember thirty-three thousand rules – what to say about following them, I cannot remember them! And anybody doing that will be in the same situation as it happened in one of Aesop’s fables.
A centipede is just going for a morning walk. Now, a centipede has one hundred legs. A frog looks at him, cannot believe his eyes, blinks his eyes, looks again… a hundred feet! How does he manage? Which one to raise first, then the second, then the third, then the fourth…? One hundred legs! If you forget the number you will be caught in your own legs and fall down.
He rushes up to him, jumps, stops the centipede and asks him, “Uncle, I should not stop you on your morning walk, but a very philosophical question has arisen in my mind, which I cannot solve – I am just a frog, you know. Only you can help.”
The centipede says, “What is the problem?”
The frog explains to him, “This is the problem. I saw your hundred legs, I counted them; and the problem is, how do you manage?”
The centipede said, “I had never thought about it. I will try and see how I have been managing. I have never thought about it – I really have never looked down and counted the legs. You are great; you are a mathematician and a philosopher!”
The centipede tried, and you can visualize what must have happened. He fell immediately, all his hundred legs entangled in each other. He was very angry at the frog and said, “Never again ask anybody such questions. Keep your philosophy to yourself! You idiot – I have been managing my whole life, and not only I, millions of centipedes are managing perfectly well. Nobody has fallen like me. But now I am afraid: you have created such a question in my mind that if I don’t get rid of this question I may not be able to walk at all. Now tell me how to get rid of this question.”
The frog said, “I don’t know. I am myself puzzled. I asked you because you are an experienced person, an old centipede, and you go every day for a morning walk; if you cannot solve it, how can I? I am just a poor frog.”
I don’t know what happened to that centipede afterwards, but I can imagine that his whole life must have become a mess. Again and again the question would have come to him, “A hundred legs! Am I putting the right leg in the right place?”
Life has its own ways. The moment you start managing everything, you spoil it.
Allow life its freedom.
About love, allow freedom, and don’t be guided by fixed ideas.
Experience – don’t go with the idea that love is permanent or not permanent.
Experience, and you will know it, what it is.
Don’t take the criterion from others about what is true and what is not true. These are the teachers who have been spoiling the whole of humanity. They tell you how to walk, which leg first and which leg second, and if you put them in some other order you are a sinner, you will fall into hell. Hell is far away; you will fall here! You may not be able even to reach hell, because one needs legs. It is a long journey. Only very expert teachers, professors, philosophers, have been able to reach there. It is no ordinary person’s business to reach hell. It is a long, long journey, and very complicated.
The master’s function is not to mold you into a certain idea, but to withdraw all the crutches, all the supports that the society has given to you. Of course in the beginning you will feel very much afraid – all supports gone, crutches gone, the very earth you were standing on is no longer there. There will be great fear, but it has to be faced. Only by facing it, going through it, will you be able to overcome it.
Osho, From Unconsciousness to Consciousness, Ch 18, Q 1 (excerpt)
Series compiled by Shanti
All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales
Featured image: commons.wikimedia.org
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