The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 10. WHOLENESS
Once there was a great zendo master. He was eighty, and tradition-ally, the disciple who could defeat
him would succeed him. So all the disciples hoped that someday he would accept their challenge,
because now he was getting old.
There was one disciple who was the cleverest, the best strategist, very powerful, but not a master
of zendo, just skilled in the art. Although he was a good warrior and he knew everything about
swordsmanship, he was not yet a pillar of energy, he was still afraid while fighting. The tathata had
not yet happened to him.
He went to the master again and again saying, ”Now the time has come, and you are getting old.
Soon you will be too old to challenge at all. I challenge you now. Accept my challenge, Master, and
give me a chance to show what I have learned from you.” The master laughed and avoided him.
The disciple started thinking that the master had become so weak and old that he was afraid, just
trying to evade the challenge. So one night he insisted and insisted and got angry and said, ”I will
not leave until you accept my challenge. Tomorrow morning you have to accept. You are getting old
and soon there will be no chance for me to show what I have learned from you. This has been a
tradition always.”
The master said, ”If you insist, your very insistence shows that you are not ready or prepared. There
is too much excitement in you, your ego wants to challenge, you have not yet become capable; but
if you insist, okay. Do one thing. Go to the nearby monastery where there is a monk who was my
disciple ten years ago. He became so efficient in zendo that he threw away his sword and became
a sannyasin. He was my rightful successor. He never challenged me, and he was the only one who
could have challenged and even defeated me. So first go and challenge that monk. If you can defeat
him, then come to me. If you cannot defeat him, then just drop the idea.”
The disciple immediately started out for the monastery. By morning he was there. He challenged
the monk. He couldn’t believe that this monk could be a zendo master – lean and thin, continuously
meditating, eating only once a day. The monk listened and laughed, and he said, ”You have come
to give me a challenge? Even your master cannot challenge me, even he is afraid.”
Listening to this, the disciple got completely mad! He said, ”Stand up immediately! Here is a sword
I have brought for you knowing well that you are a monk and might not have one. Come out in the
garden. This is insulting, and I will not listen.”
The monk looked absolutely undisturbed. He said, ”You are just a child, you are not a warrior. You
will be killed immediately. Why are you asking for death unnecessarily?”
That made him still more angry so they both went out. The monk said, ”I will not need the sword,
because a real master never needs it. I am not going to attack you, I am only going to give you a
chance to attack me so your sword is broken. You are not a match for me. You are a child, and
people will laugh at me if I take up the sword against you.”
It was too much! The young man jumped up – but then he saw that the monk was standing. Up until
now the monk had been sitting; now he stood up, closed his eyes, and started swaying from side to
side – and suddenly the young man saw that the monk had disappeared. There was only a pillar of
The Empty Boat 175 Osho