When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 9. DUKE HWAN AND THE WHEELRIGHT
Otherwise it never repeats. A cloud that you have seen this morning will never again be in the sky –
it cannot be. The sun that has risen this morning will not rise again, because the whole universe will
be different tomorrow morning. It is such a vast thing and everything is changing.
Everything goes on changing. Nothing is old ever, except the human mind. That is the only old thing
– the only museum in the world, a collection of fossils, the only graveyard. Otherwise everything
is new. Just look! Drop the human mind! Can you find anything old in this world? Everything is
changing, even the Himalayas. They go on changing; they say that they are rising, one foot every
year.
Everything goes on changing: the oceans change, the earth changes, even the continents go on
moving.
Now scientists have discovered the fact that the continents have moved much. Once Africa was
joined to India. Once Ceylon, Sri Lanka, must have been very near to India, otherwise the monkey
Hanuman could not have jumped across. There must have been just a small river, a stream between
the two. Now scientists have proved that continents move, they go on changing: everything is
changing, nothing is static.
Eddington is reported to have said that in his life he had come to understand that there was one
human word that was absolutely wrong and that was ’rest’, because there is no rest. Everything
goes on moving, nothing is in a state of rest, nothing can be – life is a flux. If life is a flux, then this
wheelwright is right, because he says that nothing can be said, with every wheel it is different: the
wood is different, the cart is different, the situation is different, the road is different – and one has to
be conscious about it: ’I cannot put it into words, I cannot even teach my own son.’
And it is really difficult to teach your own son. Have you ever heard that Buddha could teach his own
son? Have you ever heard what happened to Chuang Tzu’s own son, what happened to Lao Tzu’s
son? It is very difficult for a father to teach his own son because their egos are always antagonistic.
It is very difficult, because a son is always fighting with the father. He wants to prove something,
that he is better than the father. He thinks that his father is just an old fool. And the father cannot
believe that his son can learn anything. He is just a son and he remains a son. Even if the son is
seventy and the father is ninety he thinks that he is just a baby. It is very difficult to find a meeting
point between a father and son, the bridge is impossible, almost impossible.
This wheelwright says that he cannot teach even his son, who is so near to him. He cannot say what
he means and so here he is, seventy years old, and still making wheels. He is saying. It is time for
me to retire. I am old enough now. The body is in tatters and I cannot work any more. But what to
do? Nobody has been able to learn the art, and I am still here making wheels.
Remember that the Sufis are the only ones who have used this story very beautifully, because they
always teach through a craft – only Sufis. They teach through a craft. The craft may be anything:
the craft of a carpenter or a wheelwright, the craft of a painter, shoemaker, or anything whatsoever.
Sufis teach through crafts; first you have to learn the craft from the master and then he will teach
you the innermost thing. Why? This seems absurd!
For ten years the disciple learns how to make shoes, and then after ten years or twelve years or even
twenty years, when he has become a perfect master in making shoes, the master starts teaching
When the Shoe Fits 132 Osho