This is a new post, but of all my blog posts I rate this one fairly high up on the list of difficulties we encounter along the path. It’s expressing a problem that any persistent spiritual seeker is going to experience along the way. If it was written “back in the day,” and discovered in an ancient clay pot in China, I think it might qualify as a pretty good koan…

Years ago I first heard these sentiments, stated numerous times from a variety of people. Expressed in an assortment of ways, they continue to be repeated.

“Mark,” she said tolerantly, her pity dripping out from behind a thin slice of smugness, “of course you think he’s this great teacher. You are so eager to please, so quick to jump at anything he tells you to do, and so quick to agree with anything he says. You’ll do anything your almighty teacher tells you to do.”

Well now; that’s quite a problem to overcome.

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One day I was sitting with an enlightened master. There was a discussion taking place about the various human races, including how they had evolved, how climate had effected various physiological changes, why differences had developed, blending between races, and so on.

After a while the teacher interjected a question. “Do you want to know why there are different races?” The students looked towards him expectantly.

“Because they are in a race.”

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Koan

One day a woman was walking down the street and turned the corner. On the corner was a little park. Although it was small, it was peaceful with a few well-placed shade trees and benches.

She sat down under a huge umbrella of a tree. Nearby, within talking distance, was a man sitting on another bench. He was, at least by some accounts, an extraordinary man although he looked very normal. You’d hardly even look at him twice, unless, that is, you happened to look into his eyes.

One of the things that made him extraordinary was his secret. He had a secret.

His secret was SO secret that he could actually say it out loud and it would still be a secret. He could talk about it all day and it would remain a secret. In fact, he could go on for days, weeks, months, even years and it would still be a secret. Now, that’s a pretty amazing secret.

It wasn’t some secret complex scientific formula, undecipherable technical jargon, or anything like that. It was a secret that was explained with plain, everyday words, all of which were completely understandable and comprehensible. You’d hear him talk and find yourself thinking, “That makes perfect sense.” In fact you could listen to him talk for days, weeks, months, even years and it would all make sense. But in the end, you wouldn’t know the secret – even though that’s all he talked about.

Not to waste anytime, here is his secret: He had the secret to life. Not only that, he was willing to share it.

But he also had a problem. Even if he told people he had the secret to life, they wouldn’t believe him. After all, how could someone truly, really have the secret to life?

So, he was stuck in this odd dimension of the universe that gags and strangles the genuine teachers of deep inner understandings. People always thought the mystery schools were hidden away somewhere. Not so. They could be on the world’s busiest street and they would be completely invisible. Nobody takes that kind of teacher seriously. They don’t believe them. Why? Because it isn’t in the form they expect. In fact, it often doesn’t have a form.

The woman was a Seeker, constantly on a quest to find a teacher who could bring her to the deepest inner experiences. But over time she had become jaded and skeptical, having ran into a lot of charlatans, and also a lot of sincere teachers who simply didn’t have the depth she needed or the skills to teach her what she wanted to know. To make it worse, she didn’t know how to recognize the thing she was seeking. That’s a problem. A big problem.

The man sat there on his bench, aware of the woman’s quest and problem. He could tell at a glance. “Everyone is suffering from her problem, at least to some extent or another,” he thought to himself with a weary sigh. He’d seen it a million billion times.
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What should he do?

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A koan

One day there was a small girl walking through the forest on her way to a monk’s cave. Three thieves fell on her and stole the lunch she was bringing to the kind monk. Distraught, she scrambled up the hill to the monk’s dwelling, where she fell at his feet and told her story.Smiling, the monk licked his lips, and told how only a few minutes before her arrival he had entered his cave happy over his recent meal. He had been out walking, he said, and the same thieves had fallen on him to rob him of his torn robe and sandals.

He thrashed them with his walking stick, and beat them terribly. Crying out, they pleaded with him to spare them. “Please don’t kill us; tell us what you want, we’ll give you anything, anything,” they screamed.

“You don’t have anything I want,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I just kill you and send you back to heaven so you can realize the folly of your abusiveness?”

“No, no wise monk! Please, please don’t kill us! We know we are fools. Allow us to be your students. We will change our ways.”

The monk laughed and said, “You betray yourselves. Even now you are hiding something from me.” He struck the leader with a hard blow to the ribs. “You will kill me as soon as my back is turned.”

“It is only a meal we stole from a little girl, only minutes ago,” the thief gasped. “Please, forgiving monk, I beg you, accept her meal as our offering.”

“You ridiculous scoundrels. Your lives are on the line and you present stolen goods as an offering? I will kill you now, you stingy, pathetic, miserable selfish fleas.”

He beat them some more, and now with 10 broken bones between them, gasping in fear, soaked in profuse bleeding and empty of missing teeth, they lay on the ground moaning in agony, realizing that life was quickly slipping away.

“You are right, wise monk,” sputtered the leader. “We are selfish, lazy and terribly abusive. And we laugh at the pain and fear we put into others. We are pathetic cowards. We know we are. There is no doubt. Look at how we are whimpering as you are killing us.”

“Yes, you are whimpering. Like the young child you cowardly bandits terrorized only minutes ago. I felt her fear and came down to help her. Alas, I was too late, so I shall kill you now.”

“No, no!” screamed the leader. “We will serve you every day, and learn from you. Please spare us. Our lives our in your hands.”

“Indeed, they are,” replied the monk.

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What do you think happened? What should have happened? What would you do if you were the monk?

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