Friends, relationships and stuff…..
Today was (is) one of those days where the ‘real world’ is trying to tell me something: synchronicity is everywhere.
Firstly, I have been pondering all week on the nature of friendship and the lack of it, of how difficult it is to be in harmony with people and meet others of ‘like-mind’ as the saying has it. I have struggled with this for a long time - even moving countries in part because of it and it is still ‘an issue’. All my best friends have somehow disappeared, think I’ve gone mad (which may be true) or just avoid me for unspecified reasons (although I am always careful to make a bad impression and one supposes this must get wearing....) and new ones seem in short supply. Moving country seven times in five years doesn’t help either.....
Anyway, after many experiences related to this issue, all of which are too tiresome to mention, I finally spend a lot of time the last few days pondering it and this morning reach certain conclusions - then as I am browsing Technorati Sufi tags I find a blog previously unknown to me that is discussing this very issue in almost the same way I had been experiencing.
Then, as I venture downstairs, I see there is a letter for me from an old friend. This makes me happy and I save it to relish reading later on a park-bench in the sun. Which I do. Only it doesn’t make me happy. It makes me feel we don’t understand each other over a relatively simple and obvious matter which is being misunderstood.
This last event made me a bit annoyed but I realized I could choose not to be and I was reminded of two stories - they may not make sense to anyone else in the context I have placed them but it is no matter. They will mean what they mean for any individual in their own particular situations. this is the first:
When the great Sufi mystic, Hasan, was dying, somebody asked “Hasan, who was your master?” He said, “I had thousands of masters. If I just relate their names it will take months, years and it is too late. But three masters I will certainly tell you about.
One was a thief. Once I got lost in the desert, and when I reached a village it was very late, everything was closed. But at last I found one man who was trying to make a hole in the wall of a house. I asked him where I could stay and he said ‘At this time of night it will be difficult, but you can stay with me - if you can stay with a thief’ ...And each night he would say to me, ‘Now I am going to my work. You rest, you pray.’ When he came back I would ask ‘Could you get anything?’ He would say, ‘Not tonight. But tomorrow I will try again, God willing.’ He was never in a state of hopelessness, he was always happy.
When I was meditating and meditating for years on end and nothing was happening, many times the moment came when I was so desperate, so hopeless, that I thought to stop all this nonsense. And suddenly I would remember the thief who would say every night, ‘God willing, tomorrow it is going to happen.’And my second master was a dog. I was going to the river, thirsty and a dog came. He was also thirsty. He looked into the river, he saw another dog there—his own image—and became afraid. He would bark and run away, but his thirst was so much that he would come back. Finally, despite his fear, he just jumped into the water, and the image disappeared. And I knew that a message had come to me from God: one has to jump in spite of all fears.
And the third master was a small child. I entered a town and a child was carrying a lit candle. He was going to the mosque to put the candle there.
Just joking, I asked the boy, ‘Have you lit the candle yourself?’ He said, ‘Yes sir.’ And I asked, ‘There was a moment when the candle was unlit, then there was a moment when the candle was lit. Can you show me the source from which the light came?’
And the boy laughed, blew out the candle, and said, ‘Now you have seen the light going. Where has it gone? You will tell me!’
My ego was shattered, my whole knowledge was shattered. And that moment I felt my own stupidity. Since then I dropped all my knowledgeability.
It is true that I had no master. That does not mean that I was not a disciple—I accepted the whole existence as my master. My Disciplehood was a greater involvement than yours is. I trusted the clouds, the trees. I trusted existence as such. I had no master because I had millions of masters I learned from every possible source. To be a disciple is a must on the path. What does it mean to be a disciple? It means to be able to learn. to be available to learn to be vulnerable to existence. With a master you start learning to learn.
The master is a swimming pool where you can learn how to swim. Once you have learned, all the oceans are yours.
And the second is from our mutual friend the good old sanctified and certified Mulla Nasrudin:
Nasrudin goes to a bath house one day. The attendant, who knows Nasruddin isn’t a wealthy man, points him at a heap of old, tattered bath towels. The new, soft ones are for the rich folks And the bath water’s cold.
“Hey! Can you bring some hot water in here?” Calls Nasruddin to the attendant. “Get it yourself” comes the reply.
So Nasrudin takes his bath in cold water, dries himself with an old towel, and on his way out tips the attendant with a gold coin.
Next week, Nasruddin is back at the bath house. Same attendant. But this time: “Please, Nasrudin, take a new towel. No, take two.” “I’ll bring hot water for your bath.” “Here, try this new scented soap.” “If you need anything, I’ll be right outside the door.”
So Nasrudin has a great bath, and this time he tips the attendant with a copper coin and heads out. The attendant follows shouting angrily “Hey! But you gave me a gold coin last time!”
“Oh,” says Nasrudin. “The gold coin was for this week. This,” he says, pointing at the copper coin, “was for last week.”
