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Chapter 4 - This harvest moon
Have you watched sheep? They always move in a crowd, a big crowd, almost stepping on each other. Just the feeling that everybody else is there, there is no need to be afraid ... But nobody has seen a lion moving in a crowd of lions. A lion moves alone. The very word
'crowd' is dishonorable.
These scholars want you to understand that you can only be a follower. And of course to be a follower a master is needed. I want to tell you that a master is helpful, but is not an absolute necessity. A master is helpful only in the sense that seeing a bird fly, its small children gather courage and start fluttering their own small wings. They are sitting on the edge of their nest, the sky seems to be so vast and they are so small. But their parents flying around the nest are simply encouraging them, "Don't be afraid, if we can fly, you can fly also."
I used to live in a place where there was a mango grove. Cuckoos like mangoes very much.
In a mango grove you will find cuckoos singing day and night. When the newborn comes out of the egg -- I have watched -- trembling, hesitating, he wants to fly, just as the mother is doing, but he feels afraid because he has never done it, and who knows whether he will be able to do it or will fall to the ground and die?
The mother goes to a nearby tree and gives a call. Watching them I started learning their language. I could distinguish the call of a lover to his beloved, and the call from a mother to the child, and a call from the child to the mother -- small differences, but you can decipher them. The mother's call is simply to tell the child, "Come up close to me, it is not far away, just look!" She goes around the tree again. And I have seen that if the child cannot gather courage, just flutters but remains on the edge of the nest, the mother has to push him.
It is worth seeing when the mother pushes the child. He is so afraid, it is just as if somebody is pushing you into ice-cold water and you don't know swimming. But he flutters his wings, he cannot do anything else, he has to flutter; he has seen what the mother was doing. And within seconds the transformation -- he has
gone to the other tree from where the mother was calling him and gives a call in response, "Now you can come!"
Every day he goes farther and farther and a day comes that he says good-bye and never comes to the nest again, the whole sky is his.
The master is certainly a tremendous help. His very presence gives you a guarantee, his very authority takes away your fear of the unknown, but he is not absolutely necessary. You can take the jump without any master. Gautam Buddha did, then why can't you? Why does Dogen have to wait for Buddhism to spread all over the world to be able to become a buddha?
I don't want you to be a buddha tomorrow. There is no need to wait. The buddha is your nature. All that is needed is to be acquainted with it.
Now sitting here is Rajendra Anuragi. He has a high post in Madhya Pradesh, deputy-director of communications. And because he has come here ... He is only on leave; after the leave finishes he is going to take retirement.
But rumors must have spread, and the government is threatening his wife, "You vacate the government house," and, "We are going to cut off the electricity, telephone, water."
But Rajendra Anuragi is made of a different mettle. I know him from my very childhood. I have sent him a message, "Don't be worried by such political pressures, just tell your wife and your children that if the government takes the house, 'Here is your home, you can come here.'"
Osho - The Miracle 55
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