The Robe

Master Waits

WHEN A MAN REALLY UNDERSTANDS AND KNOWS, HE ALSO KNOWS THAT EVERYTHING IS JOINED WITH ITS OPPOSITE, EVERYTHING IS MEETING AND MELTING INTO ITS OPPOSITE.

A man who is wise is not a teacher – he can be a Master but not a teacher. What is the difference between the two? A teacher is ready to teach – a Master is never ready to teach. A teacher is aggressive, active – a Master is non-aggressive, inactive. A teacher will follow you and force you, so that you can carry his knowledge on your shoulders. A Master waits. You have to snatch from him, you have to partake of him. He will not follow you, he will not force you. He will not even knock at your doors – he will simply wait. You can partake of his being. You can enter his inner emptiness, the inner palace of his being, his inner kingdom, but that is up to you. You will have to do all the work. The Master is only a presence. If you are attracted, you fall into the presence. A teacher calls, a teacher tries, a teacher makes all the effort so that you can understand. A Master simply is there – open of course, not closed, absolutely open for you to come in. But he doesn’t make even a gesture, because that gesture may be aggressive, that gesture may force you to come in without your own will. And then it will be bad, then you have been put on a wrong path.

A master does not teach

A Master is a silent presence. You can learn from him, but he will not teach. With a teacher you will be a student. There exists a relationship, a two-way relationship. With the Master you can be only a disciple, it is one-way – you have to learn. If you don’t learn you don’t learn, if you learn you learn. A Master is so happy with his own being he does not bother. If you learn he blesses you; if you don’t learn he also blesses you – he is a blessing, a benediction.

A man of knowledge becomes a teacher and millions of people are attracted towards him, because when you learn something your ego feels strengthened. Very few rare souls are attracted towards a Master because, in fact, with a Master you will have to unlearn, with a Master you will have to die. Your ego will be shattered completely – because only then can you enter into the temple, into the innermost shrine of the Master’s being.

A Master is a wise man but his understanding is so profound that you cannot understand it. You can only live it. A Master knows, but he knows in such depth – where opposites meet, where life and death become synonymous, where existence and nonexistence don’t mean opposites, where all rivers fall into the ocean – in that depth a Master exists.

It is difficult to understand him because understanding will be superficial and all understanding will be more or less misunderstanding. Don’t try to understand him. How can you understand him? How can you understand an infinite phenomenon? You can live it, you can dissolve into it, you can allow it to dissolve into you, that’s possible. It is like love: you cannot understand love, mysterious are its ways. You cannot understand it, you cannot pin down what it is. Thousands of definitions exist but love has not been defined yet and it will never be defined. Whenever you define, immediately you feel something is missing. And that something will always be missed, because that something is the depth. A definition cannot carry depth, it can only be on the surface.