Enlightened VS Master

FROM OSHO

Once a disciple of Buddha was going to preach his word to the masses. He had become enlightened, and Buddha said, “Now you are ready to go, you need not accompany me any longer. Once in a while, you can come to see me; otherwise, you can help people on your own. Go and help people to become more aware, more meditative.”

But he said also, “One thing I would like to ask: What part of the country would you like to go to?” There was a part of Bihar, where Buddha lived, where no sannyasin of Buddha’s had ever gone. The name of the part was Suka. This newly enlightened sannyasin said, “I will go to Suka.”

Buddha said, “Please don’t go there. Nobody has gone there yet for a certain reason. The people there are very wild, uncultured, stupid, mischievous, murderous, and very violent. Don’t go there.”

But the disciple said, “If they are in such a bad situation they need us more than anybody else. The physician is needed only where people are ill.”

Buddha said, “That I can understand, but before you go, before I bless you to go, I will ask three questions. First: If they insult you, what will be your response?”

The young man said, “I will thank them, I will feel grateful that they are only insulting me. They could have beaten me. They are good people. They are not beating me; they are simply insulting me — and what can words do? Words are words, they can’t hurt me.”

Buddha said, “The second question: If they beat you, what will be your response?”

The young man said, “I will thank them, I will feel grateful that they are beating me. They could have killed me. They are only beating me — they are so compassionate, so kind. It would have been so easy for them to kill me.”

Buddha said, “Now, the last question. If they kill you, dying, in the last moments, what will be your response?”

The young man said, “Still I will be grateful and thankful to them because they are taking a life away from me in which I may have done something wrong. If I had lived more I may have committed some crime, some sin; I may have fallen from my peak of awareness. They are simply taking that life which is useless to me. I have attained the treasure, I don’t need life anymore. They are taking something useless away from me and I will be grateful because, who knows, if I had lived more, in some situation I may have gone astray.”

Buddha said, “Now you can go anywhere you like with my blessings. You have not only become enlightened, but you have also become capable of being a master.”

Remember that every enlightened person is not a master, although every master has to be enlightened. Many enlightened people have lived on the earth without ever becoming masters for the simple reason that to be a master needs certain qualities which are not necessary for being enlightened.

Enlightenment is an individual process; it is something inward, and subjective, it can happen within you. To be a master means the capacity to communicate, and not only to communicate but to commune with others, others who are almost mad, and others who are almost incapable of seeing things.

To communicate, to commune about the unknown, about the invisible, about the mysterious, is one of the greatest of arts. To help people to see that which they have never seen before although it is always around the corner, to help people to hear that which they have never heard before although it has been always there, to help people to be silent, to be meditative, is one of the most difficult arts because people are mad. They don’t know what silence is. To wake them up out of their sleep is almost a miracle.

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