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Main Index
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I don't have any shirt.'
'Then why are you happy?' the minister asked 'then how are you happy?'
And the man said 'The day I lost all -- shirt and all -- I became happy... the day I lost all. In fact I don't have anything, and I don't have even myself. I am not playing this flute, the whole is playing through me. I am a nonentity, a nothingness, a nobody....'
This is the meaning of 'the poor in spirit': one who possesses nothing, who has nothing, who knows nothing, who is nothing. Tao says: When you are nothing you will become all. Dissolve and you will become whole. Claim that you are and you will be miserable.
This Tao, this merging with the whole, this disappearing into the cosmos, cannot be taught. You can learn it, but it cannot be taught. So Lieh Tzu and other Taoist Masters don't preach anything; they don't have anything to preach. They talk in parables. You can listen to the story, and if you really listen, something... something will burst open in you. So the whole thing depends on how you listen.
Lieh Tzu himself was with his Master for many years, just sitting silently, not doing anything, just learning to be silent, learning to be passive, learning to he receptive, learning to be feminine -- that is how one becomes a disciple. Let me tell you: there are no Masters, there are only disciples -- because it cannot be taught, so how to say that there are Masters? Buddha cannot teach you, Lieh Tzu cannot teach you, so why call them Masters? But if there is a disciple, he learns.
So a Master is not one who teaches you, a Master is one in whose presence you can learn. Let the difference be known: a Master is not one who teaches you -- because there is nothing to teach. a Master is one in whose presence it is possible to learn.
A seeker came to Jalaluddin Rumi, the Sufi mystic, and said Will you teach me? Will you teach me, Master?'
Jalaluddin looked at him and said 'Will you allow me to teach?'
The man said 'Why should I not allow you to teach? I have come to learn.'
Jalaluddin said 'Because that is the main thing -- will you allow me to teach? Otherwise I cannot teach, because in fact teaching
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