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Millions of people have tried to write books so that they can express the inexpressible, but they have utterly failed. I know only one book, THE BOOK OF MIRDAD, which has not failed; and if you cannot get to the very essence of it, it will be your failure, not his.
He has created a perfect device of words, parables, situations.
"There are millions of books in the world, but THE BOOK OF MIRDAD stands out far above any other book in existence.
It is unfortunate that very few people are acquainted with THE BOOK OF MIRDAD for the simple reason that it is not a religious scripture. It is a parable, a fiction, but containing oceanic truth.
It is a small book, but the man who gave birth to this book... and mind my words, I am not saying "the man who wrote this book." Nobody wrote this book. I am saying the man who gave birth to this book -- he was an unknown, a nobody. And because he was not a novelist, he never wrote again; just that single book contains his whole experience.
The name of the man was Mikhail Naimy.
It is an extraordinary book in the sense that you can read it and miss it completely, because the meaning of the book is not in the words of the book. The meaning of the book is running side by side in silence between the words, between the lines, in the gaps.
If you are in a state of meditativeness -- if you are not only reading a fiction but you are encountering the whole religious experience of a great human being, absorbing it; not intellectually understanding but existentially drinking it -- the words are there but they become secondary. Something else becomes primary: the silence that those words create, the music that those words create. The words affect your mind, and the music goes directly to your heart.
And it is a book to be read by the heart, not by the mind. It is a book not to be understood, but experienced. It is something phenomenal.
Millions of people have tried to write books so that they can express the inexpressible, but they have utterly failed. I know only one book, THE BOOK OF MIRDAD, which has not failed; and if you cannot get to the very essence of it, it will be your failure, not his.
He has created a perfect device of words, parables, situations. If you allow it, the book becomes alive and something starts happening to your being. And naturally, because you have never come to such a state, you are puzzled about what it is -- sadness? blissfulness? There are tears, but those tears can be either of sadness or they can be of immense joy.
You have come to a point where you have never been before, so naturally you cannot categorize it. You cannot put a label on it according to your old experiences. But the name does not mean anything. What matters is that you have taken a step beyond yourself. You have never been in this space; you have entered into the unknown, and it is so unknown that you don't have the vocabulary even to give it a name.
Just see the point: It may look like sadness... because for the first time in your life you will become aware that up to now you have not been alive. Life has happened today.
And it brings a great sadness... you were alive -- but knowing this new experience, your whole life becomes so mundane, so meaningless, that it is better to say that it was more death than life. And a sadness arises that, "Why could I not reach this space before?" It is so close -- just a step beyond the boundaries of your old mind and the whole sky with all its stars becomes available. You were confined in such a small prison -- and nobody was imprisoning you. You were the prisoner and you were the imprisoned. You were the jailer and you were the jailed. Naturally... a sadness, looking to the past.
But looking to the present... a great blissfulness, a peace that passeth understanding, a silence that is not just the opposite of sound... a silence which is absence of sound, not the opposite of sound. A music without any instruments, a song without any words....
For the first time you start feeling that, "Up to now I have been living in the head; and only this moment the doors of my heart are open."
There is an old Chinese story. Because of the story a proverb has come into existence -- that when the musician becomes perfect, he burns his instruments; they become not only useless, they become a nuisance because they only create noise. Only between the noise are there a few moments of music -- why not have it all?
And when the archer becomes a perfect master, he drops his bow and his arrows and forgets all about it. A strange proverb -- because ordinarily we think that when we become perfect our instruments will also attain a perfection with us; their working will also become perfect.
The proverb comes from a story: A man had become a great archer, and he was confident that he had attained perfection. He never missed any target. He was able to kill flying birds without fail. He appeared before the emperor and told him, "It is time that you should declare me the greatest, the master archer of the empire. Otherwise I am ready for any challenge. If somebody doubts it, I am ready for a competition."
The king knew the man, and knew that what he was saying was not bragging, it was a simple fact. But the old servant of the king said, "Wait a minute before you say anything, because I have something to say before you decide." He was so old that he had served the grandfather of the king, the father of the king, the king himself, and there was a possibility that he would serve the fourth generation also.
The king had tremendous respect for the man. He said, "If you have something to say, you say it."
The old servant said, "This man knows nothing of archery yet. He can kill animals, he can kill birds, flying birds; he never misses any target. That's all okay, but that is not perfection and mastery. I know a man who is a perfect archer. He lives in the mountains, and because he became a perfect archer thirty years ago, he has completely forgotten about archery. After perfection, what is the point of remembering?"
The archer was puzzled: "What kind of archery is this, that the man has even forgotten archery? For thirty years he has not practiced -- if I don't practice a single day, the next day I can see mistakes happening. Within two days, critics will see that mistakes are happening, and within three days anybody will be able to see that there are mistakes. Thirty years!"
And the old man said, "Unless you go to the forest and meet the great archer.... If he approves there is no question of any competition -- I will ask the emperor to declare you the champion master of the whole kingdom."
The archer had to go and search in the mountains. On a very high peak, in a small cave, he found the old man. The archer was carrying his bow, his arrows. The old man looked at the bow, looked at the arrows, and he said, "These things I have seen once, I remember. What do you call these things?"
The man said, "You are a great archer? You don't even know the name of the bow and the arrows!"
The old man said, "This is a bow and arrows... and what is the function of it? What do you do with it?"
The archer said, "Come out and I will show you." And he killed with one arrow a faraway flying bird -- just one arrow and the bird was on the earth.
The old man said, "This you call archery? I remember, when I was young I used to call this archery too. Now, come with me."
The old man must have been nearabout one hundred and twenty years old, not less than that -- very frail. He took the young archer to a cliff which was hanging over a valley thousands of feet deep.
The archer stopped. He said, "I cannot go on that cliff! Just a small mistake and you are finished forever."
But the old man went to the very edge -- his feet were half hanging off the edge of the cliff. He was standing with just half his feet on the edge and he said, "Come on -- you are a great archer; you should know balance, because the secret of archery is balance. And if you are trembling so much inside, your arrow cannot be perfect, because your arrow will be going through your hands. And you are trembling. Come on! You are young, and as you see I am old, one hundred and twenty years old."
The man tried, one or two feet... and fell down on the rock. He said, "I have never been afraid of death. But I cannot do that."
That old man came back and he said, "If you cannot do this, forget all about archery. The day you can do this you will throw away the bow, you will throw away the arrows. Now look...." There were seven birds flying far away. And the old man simply looked at those seven birds one by one, and they all fell down on the earth.
He said, "When you have no trembling inside, just your eyes are enough; no arrows are needed. So go back, you are an amateur. I will come when the time has come, I will keep watch on you. I have my people in the city, in the capital; it was one of my people who sent you here. He was one of my disciples and I have a few more disciples who will keep watch. And if I am not alive, then I will tell them to inform the king when you are a perfect archer."
The young man was simply in great despair. He proved to be an amateur; he was thinking himself to be a champion master.
After five years.... The old man had said, "Learn inner balancing." I call it meditation; these are different names, in different countries. `Inner balancing' means you are so balanced at your innermost center that there is no trembling at all. You are in such a silent, unmoving space, as if you are not.
After five years a man visited the archer. As they were entering the archer's house, he saw a big bow hanging on the wall. The guest asked, "What is that?"
And the archer said, "I used to remember, but fortunately I met an old man... now I have completely forgotten what it is."
But the guest said, "I have heard that you are an archer."
The man said, "Forget all about it. When a man is young he has all kinds of stupid ideas. I also had my stupidities, but due to the compassion of the old man in the mountains I survived, I moved on."
That very day the king called him and declared him to be the champion master archer of the kingdom.
"But," he said, "I know nothing of archery. What are you doing?"
The king said, "I am not doing anything. These are instructions from your master. Of course you could not be the champion master. The old man has left his body, with the message, `While I am alive he cannot be a champion. And the poor fellow wanted to be a champion so desperately, but if I am alive in the kingdom it is impossible. I will never come to the capital to contest; the whole idea is childish. But there are my disciples who will not allow it to happen any other way. Only my death... and it is worth it, to make him happy.'
The old man is dead. The message has come that you should be declared the champion."
The king said, "Just out of curiosity I would like to see how far your eyes can function as arrows." The man looked into the sky. Nine birds -- a whole flock -- came down to the earth.
And the king said, "That old man was never wrong."
This is archery.
A musician when he is perfect forgets his instruments; now silence is his music.
THE BOOK OF MIRDAD is one of the greatest devices that have been created down the ages. Don't read it like any other book. Don't read it like SHRI BHAGAVADGITA or THE HOLY BIBLE. Read it as beautiful poetry, as music spread on the pages. Read it as a message from a master of meditation.
The words are code words.
Don't look for their meaning in the dictionary.
Their meaning is when they strike something in your heart."
Yahoo! The Mystic Rose
# 18
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