Art of Acceptance: Is That So?

The term 'acceptance', though universally accepted as the fundamental ingredient of ascension, we often mess up with its paradox. Many times, we seek the excuse of our passiveness/laziness in name of acceptance. If you are going to accept whatsoever happens, why to choose the particular one? The question seems to be making sense. Ironically, we often are indifferent during the choice, and attaching with the results. What happens to the understanding during the unfavorable results?

photo courtesy:

I like to share a Zen Story.

The Zen Master Hakuin lived in a town in Japan. He was held in high regard and many people came to him for spiritual teaching. Then it happened that the teenage daughter of his next-door neighbor became pregnant. When being questioned by her angry and scolding parents as to the identity of the father, she finally told them that he was Hakuin, the Zen Master. In great anger the parents rushed over to Hakuin and told him with much shouting and accusing that their daughter had confessed that he was the father. All he replied was,

“Is that so?”

 

News of the scandal spread throughout the town and beyond. The Master lost his reputation. This did not trouble him. Nobody came to see him anymore. He remained unmoved. When the child was born, the parents brought the baby to Hakuin. “You are the father, so you look after him.”

 

The Master took loving care of the child. A year later, the mother remorsefully confessed to her parents that the real father of the child was the young man who worked at the butcher shop. In great distress they went to see Hakuin to apologize and ask for forgiveness. “We are really sorry. We have come to take the baby back. Our daughter confessed that you are not the father.”

 

“Is that so?” is all he would may as he handed the baby over to them.

 

The Master responds to falsehood and truth, bad news and good news, in exactly the same way: “Is that so?” He allows the form of the moment, good or bad, to be as it is and so does not become a participant in human drama. To him there is only this moment, and this moment is as it is. Events are not personalized. He is nobody's victim. He is so completely at one with what happens that what happens has no power over him anymore. Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness.

 

The baby is looked after with loving care. Bad turns into good through the power of nonresistance. Always responding to what the present moment requires, he lets go of the baby when it is time to do so.

What do you think?

 

Technorati Tags: Zen Masters,Is that so,Acceptance

 

Love Link: Eckhart Tolle: New Earth

The Zen Sage and Thieves : Way of Master

Sages are difficult to predict as there is no conditioned mind with them. The common psychology often fails. Sometimes you go with praises and windup with 'angry' responses. Other times, you mess up with condemnation and get bless in return. I have heard about such peculiar Zen masters. Once a student came to ask the suitable technique  him to follow. The master looked into his eyes and, all of sudden, caught him on arm and threw out of window from the first storey to ground. It caused serious physical injury but provided other understandings (known only to the student !?). Here, I am sharing an instance of another Zen sage who had diametrically opposite response. The exquisite story goes like this:

 Photo courtesy

It is said of one Zen master, one Zen sage.... He lived in a small hut three or four miles outside a village. One night he found that a thief had entered his hut. He was very much disturbed, because there was nothing in the house, and this thief had traveled for three or four miles in the night and he would have to go back empty-handed. The sage started weeping and crying. The thief also became concerned. He said, "What has happened? Why are you crying so much? Are you disturbed that I may take something from your hut?"

 

The sage said, "No, that is not the thing, I am disturbed because there is nothing here. At least you could have been a little more gentlemanly, you could have informed me before; I would have arranged something for you to steal. There is nothing – what will you think of me? And this is such an honor, that you traveled three or four miles in this night, this cold night, to come to my hut. No one has given such an honor to me before. I am just a beggar and you have made me a king, just by the idea that something can be stolen from me. And there is nothing, so I am crying. So what should I do now? You can take my blanket."

 

He had only one blanket, otherwise he was naked, just under his blanket he was naked. And the night was very cold. He said to the thief, "Please have some compassion on me and don’t say no, because I have nothing else to give to you. Take this blanket, and whenever you again think of visiting, just send a hint. I am poor, but still I will arrange something."

 

The thief could not understand what was happening, but he saw the man crying and weeping so he took compassion on him; he couldn’t say no. He took the blanket and disappeared. And that night this Zen monk wrote a small haiku, in which he said... he was sitting still at his window, the night was cool, cold, the full moon was in the sky, and he says in his haiku: 

God

if I could give this moon

to that thief....

This is the mind of a sage, or, the no-mind. With this same sage, again another thief happened to come to his hut. He was writing a letter, so he looked at the thief and said,

"For what have you come? What do you want?"

And this sage was so innocent that even the thief couldn’t tell a lie. So he said, "Looking at you, so mirror like, so innocent like a child, I cannot tell a lie. Should I tell the truth?"

The sage said, "Yes."

He said, "I have come to steal something."

The sage said, "There in that corner I have got a few rupees. You can take them" – and then he started to write his letter again.

 

The thief took the money, was trying to go out, and then the sage said, "Stop! When somebody gives you something you should thank him. The money may not be of much help, but thanking a person will go a long way and will be of help to you. So thank me!" The thief thanked him and disappeared into the dark.

 

Later on the thief was caught, and it was discovered that he had been to this sage’s hut also, so the sage was called to the court. The sage said, "Yes, I know this man very well – but he has never stolen anything from me. I gave him some rupees and he thanked me for them. It is finished, it was nothing wrong. The whole thing is finished, the account is closed. I gave him some money and he thanked me for it. He is not a thief."

 

This mind, or no-mind, of a sage is the base.

------------Love reference- Osho: Vedanta - Seven Steps to Samadhi

While writing this, I remembered a poetic piece:

किरणोका कोइ देश नही,
वायुका कोइ गाँव नही,
और, सन्तोंका कोइ विचार नही

( Rays are NOT of any  world

Breeze is NOT of any country

and, sages are of NO thoughts )

 

What do you think?

 

Technorati Tags: Way of masters,peculiar zen sages

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?

 

Technorati Tags: Sufi Masters,Spirituality