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happened in that moment?' A disciple stood, danced, ran out. And the master said, 'Right. Exactly this is what it is. '
But another master in the same monastery came to see this master in the night and said, 'You should not agree so soon; your agreement was too early. I suspect.'
So the master went to the disciple who had danced and to whom he had said, 'Yes, this is it.' In the night he went there and he asked the same question again: 'What was it that Buddha gave in the lotus to Mahakashyapa? What was it that Mahakashyapa understood when he smiled? What was it? Tell me the answer.'
And the young man danced. And the master hit him hard. And he said, 'This is wrong, absolutely wrong.' And the disciple said, 'But just in the morning you said it was right.' And the master said, 'Yes. In the morning it was right, in the night it is wrong. You are repeating. In the morning I thought it was a response. Now I know it was a reaction.'
The answer has to change, if it is a response, each time the question is put. The question may be the same, but nothing else is the same. In the morning the sun was rising and the birds were singing, and the assembly, and a thousand monks were sitting in meditation -- it was a totally different kind of world. And the master asked....
Yes, the question is the same, the linguistic formulation is the same. But the whole has changed, the gestalt has changed. In the night it is totally different, the master is alone with the disciple in his cell. The sun is no more there in the sky, and birds are no more singing, and there is nobody else to see. The master has changed. These few hours, the river has flowed, has entered into new pastures, has entered into new territories. The question only APPEARS as the same. But the disciple got fixed. He thought, 'So I know the answer.'
No, in real life nobody knows the answers. In real life you have to be responsive. In real life you cannot carry answers ready-made, fixed, cliches. In real life you have to be open. That disciple missed. A characterless man is a man who has no answers, who has no philosophy, who has no particular idea how things should be. Howsoever
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