VBT – Meditation 34.1
Waiting
Sometimes very trivial things work. For example, Lin Chi became enlightened while he was just sitting on his master’s verandah – on the verandah of his master, and the Master came out and just laughed. He looked at Lin Chi – into his eyes – and laughed uproariously. Lin Chi started laughing, bowed down, and left. But he had been waiting there for six years: that verandah was his abode for six years.
The master would come day after day, month after month, and he would not even look at him. And Lin Chi was waiting there. Then after two years, for the first time he looked at him. Then two more years passed, and for the first time he patted him. Then Lin Chi waited and waited, and after six years, one day suddenly he came out, stared into Lin Chi’s eyes, and Lin Chi must have done this technique: LISTEN WHILE THE ULTIMATE MYSTICAL TEACHING IS IMPARTED. EYES STILL, WITHOUT WINKING, AT ONCE BECOME ABSOLUTELY FREE.
The master looked and used laughter as a medium. He was a great master. Really, words were not needed, just laughter. Suddenly there was that laughter, and something happened in Lin Chi.
He bowed down, laughed, left, and told everyone that now he was no more, that he was liberated, free. He was no more: that is what liberation means. You are not liberated. You are liberated from yourself.
Lin Chi used to tell how it happened. For six years he was waiting. It was a long waiting, a patient waiting. He was just waiting on the verandah, and every day the master would come. And he would wait for the right moment – when he would become ready, then the master would do something.
Just by waiting for six years, you will fall into meditation. What can you do? He might have thought for a few days about old things, but if you do not give new food every day to the mind, by and by it stops. How long can you chew again and again on the same thing?
He might have been thinking about past things, and by and by, because no new stimulus was given, thinking stopped. He was not allowed to read, he was not allowed to talk, he was not allowed to move and meet anyone. He was just allowed to fulfill the basic bodily needs and wait on the verandah.
Silently he waited, day after day – day in, day out, day and night. Summer would come and pass away, and winter would come and pass away, and there would be rain and it would pass away: he must have forgotten time. He must have forgotten for how many days he had been there. And then one day suddenly the master appeared, and he looked deeply into his eyes. Lin Chi’s eyes must have suddenly become static, non-dynamic. This was the moment; six years were wasted for this.
There was no movement of the eyes, because a single movement and he may miss. Everything must have become silent – and then suddenly, the uproarious laughter: the master began laughing madly. That laughter must have been heard deep down at the very core; it must have reached.
So when Lin Chi was asked, “What happened to you?” he said, “When my master laughed, suddenly I recognized that the whole world is just a joke. In his laughter, this was the message: The whole world is just a joke, just a drama. An seriousness disappeared. And if the whole world is just a joke, who is in bondage? And who needs to be free?” So Lin Chi said, “There was no bondage at all. I was thinking that I was bound, and that is why I was trying to be free, and then suddenly the master laughed and the bondage fell away.”
Tags: Waiting
