Master Lu's Teachings

Differences

One day Master Lu asked me:
- What do you think, what is the difference between a master and an ordinary man? Since I gave him no answer, he followed:
- A master says to himself: "Here I am, I'm 55 years old, my name is So and So, now I'm hungry, this man is asking me about Tao, it's raining, the grass is growing..." Meantime, the ordinary man thinks like this: "I'm dealing with a Master; therefore, he's good, calm, omniscient, having supernatural powers..."
The ordinary man is forever making up differences that he strives to compensate by being good, calm, all-knowing and so on. During this process he forgets about himself and tries to become a different person, a master! But the latter is merely a dream, a chimera.

The difference between the master and the ordinary man is that the master ceased to wish to be a master: he cares no more about differences and he doesn't try to fill up the gaps. Such ideas frequently recur in Chuang-tzu's works and you should better read them", Master Lu told me.

My Reflections

Many times Master's aphorisms are not aphorisms, namely wisdom summed up in a few words. No. Sometimes he seems to speak about all kinds of things without a specific purpose. Still, things do interweave somehow, because they are not disconnected in the last analysis. They are like the spokes of a wheel, which start from different directions to come together in the hub. The ordinary man's thought is confused, a contradiction endlessly reaffirmed. Master's thought is round like a hub: it's a winding up around the topic until it is scattered away. The topic is nowhere and a vague feeling of comfort is all that lasts: the emptiness! Jhian Yang

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