When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 9. DUKE HWAN AND THE WHEELRIGHT
BUT IF I AM NEITHER TOO EASY NOR TOO VIOLENT THEY COME OUT RIGHT. THE WORK IS
WHAT I WANT IT TO BE.
YOU CANNOT PUT THIS INTO WORDS, YOU HAVE TO KNOW HOW IT IS.’
The wheelwright was saying: I don’t know about authorities and experts. Let us look from my view
point. Yes, I am just a wheelwright, but I know my craft, and I have learned something from it. And
that is this: it is a skill, and so subtle and delicate that it cannot be put into words.
If you move to the extremes the wheel never comes out as it should. You have to remain just in the
middle. And how can you put it into words? Ask a tight rope-walker, how can he put it into words?
How does he walk on the rope stretched between two hills over a valley, where if he falls he falls
forever, he will be dead? How does he walk on the rope? Can he put it into words? He will say: If I
lean too much toward the right immediately I have to balance, and lean towards the left. If I lean too
much to the left again I have to lean towards the right, towards the opposite direction, to balance.
This can be written, but just by reading it, don’t stretch a rope and go for a walk; you will never come
back. Because it is not a question of knowing intellectually, it is a question of feeling through your
whole being – how much to lean? And there cannot be any fixed formula, each person is different.
It will depend on the person, on the weight, the height, and the situation, the wind blowing. And it
will depend on the inner mind. You will have to feel it, you cannot have a fixed formula and follow it.
You will have to learn through a master; you cannot go to a college and learn it.
In college, you can learn philosophy, you can learn mathematics, you can learn science – everything,
but you cannot learn a skill. A skill is learned only through a master who knows, and simply by
watching him, you start feeling him. And you have so much trust in him, that if he moves to the right,
your inner being also moves to the right. If he moves to the left, your inner being feels it, and you
move to the left. You become his shadow, and by and by you start.
THE WHEELWRIGHT SAID: LET US LOOK AT THE AFFAIR FROM MY POINT OF VIEW. WHEN
I MAKE WHEELS, IF I GO EASY, THEY FALL APART, AND IF I AM TOO ROUGH, THEY DO
NOT FIT. BUT IF I AM NEITHER TOO EASY NOR TOO VIOLENT THEY COME OUT RIGHT. THE
WORK IS WHAT I WANT IT TO BE.
YOU CANNOT PUT THIS INTO WORDS, YOU HAVE TO KNOW HOW IT IS. I CANNOT EVEN
TELL MY SON EXACTLY HOW IT IS DONE, AND MY OWN SON CANNOT LEARN IT FROM ME.
SO HERE I AM, SEVENTY YEARS OLD, STILL MAKING WHEELS!
What is he saying? He is saying one of the most profound truths: that there are things which can
be learned only through your totality; intellect alone will not help. You can make a formula but then
you will miss, because in every changed situation you will be carrying a dead formula, and it will not
help. In every changed situation a changed response is needed. That means only consciousness
will help, not knowledge. You have to carry a light within you so that in every situation you can feel
the situation that is here and now. And you need not fix the situation in a formula; rather, on the
contrary, you have to discover the formula every time there is a new situation.
Life goes on moving, it never repeats itself; even if it appears to be repeating, it never repeats itself.
It cannot. If you feel that life repeats, it is only because you cannot feel the new, you are so dead.
When the Shoe Fits 131 Osho