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and time make a difference. They don't make any difference as far as love is concerned, but your love is not just love; it has many more things involved in it. Even the expectation of enlightenment is enough to destroy its purity.
The principle is about the pure love -- love that is simply happy for no reason at all, love that has already joined the dance of the master in the heart. Then the master is not outside you; you carry him within yourself, wherever you are. That's why space and time don't make any difference. But if the master is still outside -- an object of love -- then certainly, space will make a difference, time will make a difference. The difference comes in through impurities, and the impurities are such that it is almost unavoidable in the beginning, because you cannot think of the desire for enlightenment as an impurity.
In fact, for you the great love affair between the master and the disciple is happening only because of your longing for enlightenment. Naturally, when you are close you feel more confident. The closer you are, the more you feel the presence of the master. The further you go away, your confidence starts shaking because the master is still only a means to a certain end.
The day Gautam Buddha died... there were ten thousand disciples who always followed him on his long journeys. In that great crowd of disciples, there were people like Sariputta, Maudgalyan, Mahakashyapa, Manjushri, Vimal Kirti, and many more who had already become enlightened, who had already crossed the barrier between the master and the disciple, who had entered into the world of the devotee.
When Gautam Buddha died it was a great shock to everyone -- even to his closest disciple, Ananda; he burst into tears. He was older than Gautam Buddha -- Buddha was eighty-two; Ananda must have been nearabout eighty-five or even more -- he burst out just like a small child whose mother has died. But Manjushri, Vimal Kirti and Sariputta remained utterly silent, as if nothing was happening, or whatever is happening does not matter.
Many disciples were shocked by the coldness of Sariputta and others -- they could not understand. They could understand
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