Daily Meditation: Saturday, June 22, 2002

You have a master, you follow his teaching, but do not …

06/22/2002

You have a master, you follow his teaching, but do not imagine that you will retain anything if you do not make an effort to make this teaching an intrinsic part of you. It is no good repeating: 'Our master is good, our master is wise ...' and cite all kinds of quotations in support of what you are saying. Your master's goodness and wisdom are his, not yours. And so long as you do not endeavour to possess them as well, they will be almost useless to you. A true disciple does not content himself with praising his master's qualities and quoting him. He makes his master's teaching his own, he merges with him to such an extent that one day, when he is talking, he no longer knows whether it is his own thought or that of his master he is expressing. This is what the ideal of a true disciple must be. If he does not work towards achieving this, he may spend twenty or thirty years with a master and retain nothing. And when he comes back in a subsequent incarnation, he will have to start from scratch, as if he had never had a master or followed a master's teaching.