THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 The ...

372 THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12
Three hours passed and then the sun was rising, and Wu’s face was transformed. He had a new beauty, a new
grace. Bodhidharma laughed and he said, ”Now, open your eyes. You have not been able to find it... so I have
finished it forever.”
Wu opened his eyes, touched Bodhidharma’s feet and said, ”Master, you have not done anything and yet you
have finished it.” That’s the miracle of a master; he never does a thing, and yet the ultimate miracle happens in
his presence. His presence is the miracle, his presence has the magical quality.
Anand Vedant, you need not drop the ego. Just look in, search for where it is first find it. Don’t worry about
self-nature right now. Just go in, search for the ego, and you will not find it; instead you will find your self-nature,
luminous, fragrant like a lotus flower. One never comes across such beauty anywhere else. It is the most beautiful
experience of life. And once you have seen your own lotus of light, your own lotus blossoming, the ego is finished
forever. Then you will not ask such meaningless questions.
”How to distinguish,” you say, ”between what is the ego and what is my true nature?”
Either the ego is there, then the true nature is not known; or the true nature is known, then there is no ego left.
You cannot have both, hence you cannot make any distinctions; you cannot distinguish them, they can’t both be
present together. Only one can be present.
Right now, whatsoever you are is ego, so don’t be worried about distinguishing. If there were no ego the
question would not have arisen at all. Self-nature knows no questions, self-nature is ecstasy, not a problem.
The second question:
Question 2
BELOVED MASTER, PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE DIFFERENCE IS BETWEEN SURRENDERING
TO A MASTER AND FOLLOWING A MASTER?
Edward Kiefer, there is a great difference. They are poles apart. Surrendering to a master is something of the
heart, it is a love affair, it is not an intellectual conviction. It is not that you are convinced intellectually that
what the master is saying is right. It is not philosophical. What the master is saying may be absurd in fact, it
is bound to be absurd, because he speaks from a totally different kind of vision, from the peak where opposites
meet, where the ultimate synthesis has happened, where life and death are one, where man and woman are one,
where negative and positive are one. Hence whatsoever he says is bound to be paradoxical.
Surrendering to a master means you have felt his grace. It is not a question of his knowledgeability. He may
not be knowledgeable at all. Jesus was not knowledgeable. Mohammed was not even able to read or write, he was
not even able to sign his own name. But thousands fell in deep love with the man. He had no logical acumen. If
you go into the Koran you will not find great philosophy simple statements which can be refuted very easily. But
the man must have had something totally different. So many people gravitated towards him. Now you cannot
see gravitation; it is an energy, it is a force, invisible. It is a communion, heart-to-heart. The master’s presence
overwhelms you, then surrender happens.
It is not something that you do. You cannot do surrender, remember. Surrender done is not surrender at
all, because you can withdraw. Any day you can say, ”I take back my surrender.” Surrender is something that
happens. Sometimes it happens even in spite of you, you never wanted it to happen, you resisted it. People resist
to the very end; when it becomes impossible to resist, only then do they surrender, because surrender goes against
the ego, it shatters your ego. The very idea of surrendering to someone is against your whole upbringing, your
whole education, your whole psychology. You are brought up with the idea of having a strong ego.
Surrender means you are dropping your whole upbringing, you are pushing aside all your knowledge, you are
bypassing your mind, you are allowing the heart to say ”Yes!” a total yes. It is a happening, not a doing. It is
just like falling in love.
What is the difference between falling in love and marriage, an arranged marriage? Exactly that is the difference
between surrendering to a master and following a master. Surrendering to a master is like falling in love. The
force is irresistible. You are behaving like a madman. The master is mad, now you are becoming mad. The master
is like a flame, and you are moving towards the flame like a moth, to your own death.
Following a master is a safe phenomenon, like an arranged marriage. You are moving on safe ground. You
think about everything about the family of the woman or the man, about their economic status, about their
social prestige, about everything except love. It is a calculated phenomenon. There is no risk in it. And not to
take any chances you go to the astrologer so that he can even predict the future, how things will be going in the
future: ”Will I be sailing safely?”
You make everything safe before you take the plunge. It is not a jump, it is a calculated step. And that’s
what following a master is. It is intellectual, it is of the mind, it is of the head. You are trying to understand
intellectually, logically what he is saying. Does it appeal to you?