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the tremendously beautiful story of Hyakujo I would like to tell you something about a contemporary master, George Gurdjieff. He used to use -- without knowing Hyakujo -- the same method, and the people who came to him were very different than the people who came to Hyakujo.
Gurdjieff was working in the West. Intellectuals would come and Gurdjieff would ask them to go and dig a ditch in the field, but they would say, "We have come here to learn something, not to dig a ditch." Gurdjieff was very hard. He would say, "First do what I say if you want to hear the answer."
In one particular case, Bennet reached Gurdjieff: highly educated, cultivated and the answer to him was the same. He had come to ask about God and the meaning of life. Gurdjieff said, "These things leave for the moment, just go and dig the ditch in the field."
Bennet hesitated for a moment, but then thought, "I have come from so far, let us see what happens. What am I going to lose?" He started digging the ditch; Gurdjieff came with his cigar, watched him digging, told him that, "Before sunset this certain area has to be prepared."
The sunset came, Bennet was utterly tired -- an intellectual who has never worked, and particularly this kind of work. And seeing the sun setting there was a great relief..."Now, at last Gurdjieff will start having the dialogue I have come for." Gurdjieff was walking just by the side, watching all the time.
Then Bennet said, "The ditch is ready."
Gurdjieff said, "Now refill the ditch completely, bring it back to its original state, throw all the mud back in its place."
Bennet was so tired, but he was also a man of integrity. He said, "Let us see what happens."
Without food, without rest, without even a coffee break he filled the ditch again. It was almost the middle of the night and Gurdjieff was standing the whole day just watching and smoking his cigar. The moon was full, at the highest peak of the night; it was a beautiful silence and Bennet remembers that, "I was so tired... I don't know from where -- a tremendous silence descended over me." In his autobiography he says, "I was simply astonished."
Gurdjieff
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