silence shared in words
presents
I am not a Teacher
I am not a teacher.
I am not teaching you anything at all.
I am not a bridge between you
and the Bible, between you
and the Gita,
between you and the Koran.
I am not even a bridge between you and God
no.
I am not
giving you a teaching, a dogma,
a creed, a philosophy,
a theology.
So understand the difference between a teacher
and a master.
In the old religions
the teachers are called masters.
They are simply teachers,
they know the teaching.
They have been handed down that
teaching by other teachers;
they will hand it over to you.
They have not experienced anything,
and
through their teaching you are not going to experience anything
either.
Those are just beautiful words,
and they can
give you
consolation
as if you know.
A master
is not a teacher in the first place.
A master
shares his being with you,
not his philosophy.
A master exposes himself to you,
allows you
closeness
so that you can see your face in his mirror.
A master is exactly a mirror.
He
never does anything to the disciple.
Let me emphasize it.
A master
is not a doer;
because
if
I start doing something to you
I may spoil your being.
I may
give you
a mask,
a discipline,
and I may change you into something else that you are not.
The master cannot do that.
The teacher
does that.
He gives you a teaching;
he teaches you
discipline
and then he enforces it
through greed,
persuasion,
fear,
in every possible way.
He tries
to fit you into a mold:
how a Christian should be,
how a Buddhist should be.
There are
thirty-three thousand
rules for a Buddhist monk.
I do not
think that I can remember
thirty-three thousand
rules
what to say about
following them,
I cannot remember them!
Copyright© OSHO International Foundation, Switzerland
www.OSHO.com/copyright
OSHO is a registered Trademark of OSHO International Foundation