When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 9. DUKE HWAN AND THE WHEELRIGHT
to be imbibed, eaten. He becomes your blood and bone, he flows within you. His presence has to
be absorbed and you have to carry it within you.
This is the greatest skill in the world – to make a god out of a man – a man who is always prone
to become an animal – to make a god out of him, to change the mind, to drop the ego, to allow the
ultimate to happen in him. It is bringing the ocean to the drop, it is dropping the ocean into the drop.
It is the highest, supreme-most skill. No scriptures can carry it, they can only indicate. You have to
be near a living Buddha to know what it means. And it happens only once in a thousand years, in
two thousand years, that a person like Buddha is there. And then dead cults are born, and people
go on worshipping without knowing what they are doing.
Now try to understand these words of Chuang Tzu. It is a beautiful parable.
DUKE HWAN AND THE WHEELWRIGHT.
DUKE HWAN OF KHI, FIRST IN HIS DYNASTY, SAT UNDER HIS CANOPY READING HIS
PHILOSOPHY. AND PHIEN THE WHEELWRIGHT WAS OUT IN THE YARD MAKING A WHEEL.
He is a craftsman.
PHIEN LAID ASIDE HIS HAMMER AND CHISEL, CLIMBED THE STEPS AND SAID TO DUKE
HWAN: ’MAY I ASK YOU, LORD, WHAT IS THIS YOU ARE READING?’ THE DUKE SAID: THE
EXPERTS, THE AUTHORITIES.’
Remember well that all your experts and authorities are always dead, because by the time the news
reaches you, the person has disappeared. By the time you come to know that there is a Buddha,
the Buddha is dead. Your consciousness is such a lazy and lousy affair, you are so unaware of what
is happening that by the time you come to know that the flower has flowered, and you rush to the
garden, the flower has disappeared.
It takes time for you to realise somebody is there – and it takes so much time! Sometimes centuries
afterwards you come to feel that Buddha was there, but then nothing can be done. Be more alert,
be more conscious, so that you catch the train in time. You have always been missing the train. You
are not here for the first time, you were there when Gautama became Buddha. Somewhere on this
earth you were there; it cannot be otherwise, because nothing dies. You missed him. Somebody
must have told you, you must have argued. You must have said: We have heard many stories, these
are just stories. You must have thought: How can somebody else become enlightened when I have
not become enlightened? How can somebody else be superior to me? And faith? You must have
said: I am a rational man and I cannot believe so easily. There is doubt and first I have to satisfy my
doubt....
It takes time, sometimes centuries, and even then the doubt is not satisfied. Remember, one has to
take the jump, even with the doubt. If you wait to let the doubt subside first, then the time will never
come for you to take the jump because doubt is a self creating process. One doubt creates another;
another doubt creates another. And the same happens with faith – one faith creates another, another
faith... then a chain is created. When you start there is always a wavering. Nobody can start with a
total heart because then there would be no need. One has to start with doubt, but don’t pay much
When the Shoe Fits 126 Osho