'WHAT DO YOU THINK
Buddha says:
THE LORD ASKED:
'WHAT DO YOU THINK, SUBHUTI, IS THERE ANY DHAMMA WHICH THE TATHAGATA HAS LEARNED FROM DIPANKARA?'?
He is asking, "Have I learned anything from Dipankara?" There is nothing to learn. Truth is a given fact. Whatsoever you learn will be lies. Truth need not be learned. Truth has not to be invented but only discovered, or more right will be to say it has only to be rediscovered. And the word learning is dangerous. Learning is accumulating information. The more you accumulate information the deeper your reality goes into the unconscious. You become burdened, you become too top-heavy. Your head starts clamouring with knowledge, becomes very noisy, and then you cannot hear the still small voice of your heart. That silence is lost in the noise of knowledge. That's why even sinners achieve but scholars miss -- because the sinner can be humble but the scholar cannot be humble. The sinner can cry and weep, but the scholar knows. He is adamant in his knowledge; he is egoistic in his knowledge. He is hard, he cannot melt. He is not open, he is closed. All his windows and doors are blocked by his knowledge, his scriptures that he has accumulated. To come to truth means unlearning rather than learning. You have to unlearn that which you have known. It is not a becoming but an unbecoming, it is not a learning but an unlearning. To unlearn is the way. If you can unbecome then you will be capable of becoming. If you are capable of unlearning, if you can drop all knowledge utterly, unconditionally, without any clinging, you will become innocent -- and that innocence brings you home.
SUBHUTI REPLIED: 'NOT SO, O LORD, THERE IS NOT.'
Between a master and a teacher what is transferred? Not truth, not knowledge -- then what is transferred? In fact, nothing is transferred. In the presence of the master something arises in the deepest core of the disciple, not that it is transferred. Nothing travels from the master to the disciple, nothing at all, but the presence of the master, the very presence of the master, and something that was deep inside starts surfacing. The presence of the master calls forth the being of the disciple -- not that something is given or transferred. Just the very presence of the master becomes a catalytic presence and the disciple starts changing. Of course, a disciple will think that something is being done by the master. Nothing is being done. No real master ever does anything. All his doing consists of is being present to you, is being available to you. All his work consists of one simple thing -- that he should be there, just like the sun.