The Teachings of the Awakened Ones are not teachings at all because they cannot be taught — so how to call them teachings? A teaching is that which can be taught. But nobody can teach you the truth. It is impossible. You can learn it, but it cannot be taught. It has to be learned. You can absorb it, you can imbibe it, you can live with a master and allow it to happen but it cannot be taught. It is a very indirect process.

 

Teaching is direct: something is said. Learning is indirect: something is indicated, not said — rather, something is shown. A finger is raised towards the sun, but the finger is not the point; you have to leave the finger and look at the sun, or at the moon. A master teaches but the teaching is just like the finger: you have to leave it and look where it indicates — the dimension, the direction, the beyond.A teacher teaches, a master LIVES — you can learn from his life, the way he moves, the way he looks at you, the way he touches you, the way he is.

 

You can imbibe it, you can allow it to happen, you can remain available, you can remain open and vulnerable. There is no way to say it directly, that’s why those who are very intellectual miss it — because they know only one way of learning and that is direct. They ask, What is truth? — and they expect an answer.

 

This is what happened when Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, ‘What is truth?’ and Jesus remained silent — not even a flicker, as if the question had not been asked, as if there was no Pontius Pilate standing before him and asking. Jesus remained the same as he was before the question was raised, nothing changed. Pontius Pilate must have thought this man a little mad, because he had asked a direct question: ‘What is truth?’ and this man remained silent as if he had not heard.Pontius Pilate was a viceroy, a well-educated, cultured, cultivated man; Jesus was a son of a carpenter, uneducated, uncultivated.

 

It was as if two poles were meeting, two opposite poles. Pontius Pilate knew all philosophy — he had learned it, he knew all the scriptures. This man Jesus was absolutely uneducated, in fact he knew nothing — or, he knew ONLY nothing. Standing before Pontius Pilate, totally silent, he replied — but the reply was indirect: he raised a finger. That total silence was the finger raised towards truth. But Pontius Pilate missed. He thought, This man is crazy. Either he is deaf, cannot hear, or he does not know, is ignorant — that’s why he is silent.

 

But silence can be a finger raised towards truth — that is incomprehensible to the intellectual Pontius Pilate.He missed. The greatest opportunity! He may be still wandering somewhere in search of ‘What is truth?’ On that day truth was standing before him. Could he be silent for a moment? Could he be in the presence of Jesus, not asking? just looking, watching, waiting? Could he imbibe Jesus a little? Could he allow Jesus to work upon him?

 

The opportunity was there — and Jesus indicated it. But Pontius Pilate missed.Intellect will always miss the teaching of the awakened ones, because intellect believes in the direct way, and you cannot hit truth in such a direct way. It is a very subtle phenomenon, delicate, the most delicate possible; you have to move very cautiously, you have to move very indirectly. You have to feel it — it comes through the heart, it never comes through the head.

 

Teaching comes through the head, learning happens through the heart.Remember my emphasis. It is not the master who teaches, it is the disciple who learns. It is up to you — to learn or not to learn; it is not up to me to teach or not to teach. A master cannot help himself: because of the way he is, he goes on teaching. His every moment, his every breath is a teaching, his whole being is a teaching, a message.

 

The message is not different from the master. If it is different then the master is simply a teacher, not a master; then he is repeating words of others. Then he is not awakened himself, then he has a borrowed knowledge; inside he remains as ignorant as the student. There is no difference in their being, they differ in their knowledge.A teacher and a student are on the same level as far as their being is concerned; as far as their knowledge is concerned they are different: the teacher knows more, the student knows less.

 

Some day the student will know more, he himself will become a teacher, he can even come to know more than the teacher — because it is the horizontal line of accumulation. If you accumulate more knowledge, information, you can become a teacher, but not a master.A master is truth. He does not know ABOUT truth, he has become it, so he cannot help himself. It is not a question of to teach or not to teach, it is not a choice.

 

Even if he is fast asleep, he goes on teaching. Buddha fast asleep — you simply sit near him, you can learn much; you can even become enlightened, because the way he sleeps is totally different. The quality differs because the being differs. Buddha eating — you just watch, and he is giving a message. The message is not separate, that’s why I say he cannot help himself. He IS the message.You cannot ask the question, ‘What is truth?’

 

Anyway, he will not answer you directly. He may laugh or he may offer you a cup of tea, or he may hold your hand and sit silently, or he may take you for a morning walk into the woods, or he may say, ‘Look! This mountain is beautiful!’ But whatsoever he is doing is an indirect way of indicating, indicating towards his being.All that is beautiful, true, good, is like happiness — I say ‘like happiness’ because you may be able to understand that.

 

You have known something of happiness. Maybe you have lived very miserably, as people live. But sometimes, even in spite of yourself, moments happen when happiness enters you — you are filled with an unknown silence, an unknown bliss; suddenly those moments come. You cannot find a man who has not had a few moments of happiness in his life.But have you observed one thing? — whenever they come they come indirectly.

 

Suddenly they happen, unexpectedly they happen. You were not waiting for them, you were doing something else, and suddenly you become aware. If you are waiting for them, expecting them, they never come; if you are directly in search, you will miss.Somebody says, ‘When I go swimming in the river I feel much happiness.’ You are also in search of it; you say, ‘Then I will come also,’ and you follow. You are seeking happiness — you are not concerned with swimming directly, you are concerned directly with happiness.

 

Swimming is just a means. You swim for hours; you are tired, you wait, you expect — and you are frustrated. Nothing is happening, the bliss is not there, and you tell your friend: ‘You deceived me. I have been swimming for hours, feel completely tired, and not a single moment of happiness has happened.’No, it cannot happen.

 

When you are lost in swimming so completely that there is nobody, the boat is empty, there is nobody in the house, the host is silent, swimming is so deep that the swimmer is lost in it and you simply swim, you play with the river, and the rays of the sun and the morning breeze, and you are simply lost in it… and there is happiness!

 

Swimming by the bank, swimming all over the river, spreading all over existence, jumping from one ray to another ray of light — every breeze brings it. But if you expect you miss, because expectation leads you into the future and happiness is in the present. It is not a result of any activity; it is a consequence, it is a byproduct. You are so deeply involved, it happens.It is a consequence, remember, it is not a result; a result can be expected.

 

If you put two plus two, the four, the result, can be expected; it is already there in the two plus two, it will come out. The result can be expected if things are mechanical, mathematical. But a consequence is not a mechanical thing, it is an organic phenomenon. It happens only when you are not expecting. The guest comes to your door and knocks when you were not thinking about the guest at all. It always comes like a stranger, it always surprises you.

 

You suddenly feel something has happened — and if you start thinking about what is happening, you will immediately miss. If you say, ‘How wonderful! How beautiful!’ it is already gone; the mind is back. Again you are in the same misery, thrown back.One has to learn deeply that all that is beautiful is indirect. You cannot make an attack upon it, you cannot be aggressive with it; you cannot snatch from existence.

 

If you are violent and aggressive, you will not find it.Move towards it like a drunkard, not knowing where, not knowing why, like a drunkard — lost completely, you move towards it.All meditations are subtle ways to make you drunk, subtle ways to make you drunkards of the unknown, drunkards of the divine. Then you are no longer there with your conscious mind functioning, then you are not there expecting, then you are not there planning for the future. You are NOT. And when you are not, suddenly flowers start showering on you, flowers of bliss.

 

Just like Subhuti, empty… you are surprised! You were never expecting, you never knew! You never felt that you ever deserved it; that’s how it is felt — like a grace, because it is not something YOU have brought on, it is something which has happened.So one thing: truth cannot be taught, bliss cannot be given to you, ecstasy cannot be purchased in the market.

 

But your mind continuously thinks in terms of getting, purchasing, collecting, finding; your mind never thinks in terms of happening because you cannot control happening — everything else you can control.I have heard: Once a man became suddenly rich. Of course, when it happened he collected all those things he had always been desiring — a very big house, a big car, swimming pool, this and that. And then he sent his daughter to college.

 

He had always wanted to be educated but he could not be; now he wanted to fulfill all his desires, and whatsoever HE couldn’t do he wanted his children to do. But after a few days the dean of the college wrote a letter to him, and in the letter wrote: ‘To be frank, we cannot admit your girl to the college because she has no capacity to learn.’The father said, ‘Just capacity? Don’t bother! I will purchase the best capacity available in the market for her.’How can you purchase capacity?

 

But a man who has become suddenly rich thinks only in terms of purchasing. You think in terms of power — power to purchase, power to get something. Remember, truth cannot be got through power; it comes when you are humble. You have nothing to purchase it with, it cannot be purchased. And it is good that it cannot be purchased; otherwise no one would be able to give the cost. It is good that it HAPPENS; otherwise how would you purchase it? All that you have is rubbish. Because it cannot be purchased, that’s why sometimes it can happen. It is a gift.

 

It is a sharing of the divine with you — but the divine can share only when you allow. Hence I say you can learn it but it cannot be taught.In fact in the spiritual world there are only disciples, not masters. Masters ARE there but they are inactive, passive forces. They cannot DO anything, they are just there — like a flower: if nobody comes, the flower will go on spreading its fragrance into emptiness. It cannot help itself.

 

The whole thing is decided by the disciple: how to learn? how to learn from a flower? And a flower shows something but doesn’t say it. It cannot be said. How can the flower say what beauty is? — the flower IS beauty. You have to gain, attain, eyes to see, a nose to smell, ears to hear the subtle sound that comes to the flower when the breeze passes by.

 

And you need a heart to feel the throbbing of the flower, because it throbs also — everything alive throbs, the whole existence throbs.You may not have observed this because it is impossible before you go into deep meditation; you cannot observe the fact that the whole universe breathes. And just as you expand and shrink the whole existence shrinks and expands. Just as you inhale and the chest fills, and then you exhale and the air goes out and the chest shrinks, the same rhythm exists in existence.

 

The whole existence breathes, expands, inhales, exhales — and if you can find the rhythm of existence and become one with the rhythm, you have attained.The whole art of ecstasy, meditation, samadhi, is: How to become one with the rhythm of the universe. When it exhales, you exhale. When it inhales, you inhale. You live in it, are not separate, are one with it. Difficult, because the universe is vast.

 

A master is the whole universe in miniature. If you can learn how to inhale with the master and how to exhale with the master, if you can learn simply that, you will learn all.At the moment when Pontius Pilate asked, ‘What is truth?’ if he had known anything, even the ABC of disciplehood, the next thing would have been to just close his eyes and inhale and exhale with Jesus… just inhale and exhale with Jesus.

 

The way he inhales, you inhale, and in the same rhythm; the way he exhales, you exhale, and in the same rhythm — and suddenly there is oneness: the disciple has disappeared, the master has disappeared. In that oneness you know what truth is because in that oneness you taste the master.And now you have the key — and this has not been given either, remember, it has been learned by you. It has not been given to you; it cannot be given, it is so subtle.

 

And with this key now every lock can be opened. It is a master key, no ordinary key — it doesn’t open one lock, it opens all locks. Now you have the key, and once you have the key you use it with the universe.Kabir has said, ‘Now I am in much difficulty. God and my guru, the whole existence and my master, are standing before me; now to whom do I bow first? To whose feet now do I go first? I am in deep trouble!’

 

And then he says, ‘Forgive me, God. I will have to go to my master’s feet first, because he has shown you to me. I come to you through him. So even if you are standing before me, excuse me, I have to touch my master’s feet first.’

 

Beautiful… this has to be so, because the master becomes the door to the unknown, he becomes the key to the whole existence. He is the truth.

 

Learn how to be in the presence of the master, how to breathe with him, how to silently allow him to move in you, how to silently merge into him, because the master is nothing but God who has knocked at your door. He is the whole universe concentrated. Don’t ask questions, LIVE with him.

 

- Osho, “And the flower Showered, #11”