Jalauddin Rumi and His disciples

Dear friends, I am introducing a section called “way of masters”, in which the inspiring stories and instances with spiritual teachers will be described. Way and character of masters is very difficult to predict. Superficially some seem to be quite harsh (like some of the Zen Masters) and others contrastingly soft and kind. They love to teach their students from the everyday life and environment rather than the sutra in the Holy books. Here is one instances with famous sufi mystic and poet Jalaluddin Rumi.

 

One day Jalaluddin Rumi took all his students, disciples and devotees to a field. That was his way to teach them things of the beyond, through the examples of the world. He was not a theoretician, he was a very practical man. The disciples were thinking, “What could be the message, going to that far away field... and why can’t he say it here?”

But when they reached the field, they understood that they were wrong and he was right. The farmer seemed to be almost an insane man. He was digging a well in the field – and he had already dug eight incomplete wells. He would go a few feet and then he would find that there was no water. Then he would start digging another well... and the same story was continued. He had destroyed the whole field and he had not yet found water.

The master, Jalaluddin Rumi, told his disciples, “Can you understand something? If this man had been total and had put his whole energy into only one well, he would have reached to the deepest sources of water long ago. But the way he is going he will destroy the whole field and he will ever be able to make a single well. With so much effort he is simply destroying his own land, and getting more and more frustrated, disappointed: what kind of a desert has he purchased?

It is not a desert, but one has to go deep to find the sources of water.”

He turned to his disciples and asked them, “Are you going to follow this insane farmer? Sometimes on one path, sometimes on another path, sometimes listening to one, sometimes listening to another... you will collect much knowledge, but all that knowledge is simply junk, because it is not going to give you the enlightenment you were looking for. It is not going to lead you to the waters of eternal life.”

 

--------------From Osho Discourses

In my case also I had dug lot of well here and there. Many things appeal simultaneously, energy got dispersed and getting none....:-)

 

What are your observations and experiences?

 

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