The Mind Is Mischievous
The mind is mischievous. It goes on befooling you; it plays so many mischiefs upon you that you are not aware of. The first mischief is: the wise man shares his wisdom and you immediately jump upon it and reduce it into knowledge. The second mischief is: the wise man helps you to be yourself and you start hard work in imitating the wise man – you try to be like him.
Nobody can put you right except you yourself.
The master simply teaches you to be a master of yourself – that is the true function of a master. He does not want you to depend on him. But the mind goes on playing these mischiefs. The mind wants you to depend. The mind is always in search of a father figure or a mother figure; you want somebody to hold your hand. You want somebody to guide, to lead.
The master can only indicate. He is a finger pointing to the moon. But the mind plays a mischief: it clings to the finger – you may even start sucking the finger.
A Zen master, Nan Yin, used to say to his disciples, “Please don’t bite my finger – look at the moon!”
But people are childish. Just like small children suck on their thumbs and believe that they are getting nourishment, grown-up children suck on the fingers of the masters and think they are being nourished. Beware of the mischief of the mind!
And the mind always tells you, “This is simple, to believe in the master. You need not work hard – what is the point of working hard? Just look: Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity, now nobody else needs to discover it again and again. Once he has discovered you can read it in the books. It took years for him; for you it may take only hours to understand it. Why bother to discover it again?”
That is true about outer knowledge, that is true about the outside, objective world; but it is not true about the subjective, inner world. There one has to discover again and again.
Buddha discovered, but that discovery is of no use to you. Jesus knew, but that cannot become your knowing. Mohammed understands, but there is no way to transfer it to you. These people can only indicate how they have attained; they can share their whole journey with you. But then you have to move on your own.
The mind is always for the shortcut; and the mind is always for the easier, for the cheaper way. And those are the things which drive you again and again into wrong paths. Beware! Mind always gives you sugar coated poison. But it tastes sweet only in the beginning; in the end it is going to poison you. Wisdom may not taste so sweet in the beginning – it in fact never tastes so sweet, it is bitter – but it purifies you.
Knowledge is sweet in the beginning, wisdom is sweet in the end. And whatsoever proves sweet in the end is the true thing.
