| |
the Master said, "If I tell you the first Principle it will become the second principle. You are asking the question from the head." The disciple was asking the question from the head. It was an intellectual question: "What is the first principle? " If the Master answers it, the head will take the answer -- and the head will spin philosophy around it and it will become the second principle.
The real, the true cannot be conveyed through words. It can be conveyed -- yes, it can be conveyed -- but the way to convey it is totally different. It is like measles: you catch them. Nobody can give them to you, but you can catch them. Truth cannot be taught but can be caught.
Look at me. I have the measles. Now, if you don't resist, you will catch it, so lower your resistance. If you resist, you may not catch it. If you are really stubborn and hard and you close your being utterly, totally, if you are not vulnerable at all, you will not catch it. But I cannot give it to you. You can catch it, or you can not catch it, but I cannot give it to you.
It cannot be given, but it can be taken, and that is the whole art of being with a Master: to learn how to take. Because he will not give. He cannot give. He makes it available. A Master is a catalytic agent, he is a presence. Something is possible around him. You have to be vulnerable, you have to be in an attitude of surrender, you have to be in an attitude of receptivity: you have to be feminine.
Hui-k'o, another Zen Master, made his way northward to H'sin-yeh, where he began teaching, and among those who came to hear him was Tao-ho, a noted teacher, a very well-known author, a famous scholar on Buddhist philosophy.
But Hui-k'o's teaching was not like that of any other Buddhist school's, and Tao-ho was very much disturbed....
The teaching was absurd, almost sacrilegious, because Huik'o used to say, "Kill your parents." A beautiful saying -- but don't take it literally. The parents are within you. You can ask the T.A. people -- Transactional Analysis people. The parents are within you. The mother, the father -- their conditioning is within you. They go on controlling you from within you.
|
|
|