Your Inner Master

A person who has achieved enlightenment, we may call „awakened“. It means that this person is awake. When we are in a dream, the things around us will not be clearly visible for us. When we wake up from sleeping, we often cannot remember the content of our dream, because the things in the dream are not clearly perceivable for us. It is the same with our day dream. If we live our life, and we are not able to see the things around us cleary, then we are actually dreaming – although we are awake (in the sense of not sleeping). How can we become truly awakened, like the Buddha? We call the Buddha an „awakened“ being. „buddh“ means „awake“, and the name „Buddha“ means „the awakened one“. The Buddha was also called „Gautama“ - that was his name.

As I am not an intellectual person, I don't have much knowledge. I am a lazy monk – I know that very well. I don't know how the right side and the left side of brain are working – maybe I will learn these things one day. But I know very well how our consciousness is working. Our consciousness is a very powerful tool. If we know it deeply, we can achieve a lot, and we can use our full potential.

In the spiritual tradition, there two names for a person who is teaching spirituality. Some of them we call a master, and some we call a teacher. What is the difference between a master and a teacher? A teacher can have a lot of knowledge about different things, and he can transmit that kind of knowledge to us. But some of the things he knows about, he has never experienced himself. The master has his own experience, and he can transmit that kind of experience to us. That is why we sometimes hear that some spiritual teachers are called a master, and some are called a teacher. How can we recognize a master? A master is someone who can use his words to wake up our own master within, so that we ourselves can also become a master. A teacher can only transmit knowledge to us, and as his student we have to build more and more knowledge in ourselves. Later, we will have a heavy package that we always carry around, because we have accumulated a lot of knowledge that we cannot digest. Knowledge is like a cake drawn on a piece of paper. We know it, we see it, but we can never try the taste. It cannot become our own blood, our flesh, the cells in our body. But we feel inspired, we feel satisfied when we have received the knowledge. The master is not only transmitting his words to us, but also his energy. When we are near a master, we can feel the difference. We feel peaceful, we have a sense of compassion and love in our heart. The qualities of non-fear and self-confidence are strengthened in us when we are near a master. If we are lucky, we will meet a master. In the spiritual dimension, it is important for us to have a master. When we meet a master, our own master within ourselves will wake up. If we are already satisfied with the knowledge, we will get heavy. In that case there will be many layers of knowledge that are covering our eyes, our eyes of insight. And our inner master will continue to sleep.

I often use an example in order to help people distinguish between a master and a teacher. Both are good, but if we are in the spiritual dimension, we should set the aim for us to one day meet a master, so that we can have the chance to become a master ourselves one day. I myself had the fortune to meet several masters in my life. Some of them are not famous in the world; they live in the high mountains in Vietnam, they live there in caves. I had the chance to meet some of them in the mountains, to speak with them and to sit near them. I could feel that their energy is very strong.

The Pond and the Well

I would like to share an image that can help us to understand the difference between a master and a teacher. We imagine a pond and a well. Looking at the pond, we see that it is bigger that the well. Looking from outside, it seems that there is a lot of water in the pond. The water in the pond is representing the knowledge, whereas the pond is representing the teacher. This teacher has a lot of knowledge about different realms of life. But what will happen to the water in the pond once the sun is shining on it for a longer time? The water in the pond will evaporate. And the pond will be an empty pond. If we accumulate more and more knowledge about many different topics, and one day we have to face a difficult situation, our knowledge will not be of great help. And when people come to take the water from the pond, and these people use it as their only source of water beacuse they don't know any other source, after some time the pond might get afraid of being empty one day, no longer having any water.

The well is like a master. It looks small if you look at it from the outside. The well also contains water, like the pond. But the pond is afraid that the people could take all the water contained in it, because the pond doesn't know any source from where it could take fresh water. For the well, this is different. When the people come to take water from the well, the well will be very happy. The master is happy when the people come to take his water, because then fresh water will come from below. The well is very deep, and it is rootedd in the earth. The pond looks big, but it is not as deep as the well. In the case the pond becomes deep like a well, it is not a pond any more. In that case the pond has turned into a well, a master. And because in the well the water comes directly from inside the well, we call this „insight“. Insight is a kind of „inner sight“, an „inner view“; we might also call it „wisdom“. This wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Wisdom is a kind of knowing that comes directly from inside, it cannot be gained from outside. In the teacher there is not what we call „wisdom“ - in the teacher there is just „knowledge“, because this knowledge is accumulated from many different sources.

There is one more quality in the well that we cannot find in the pond: The well looks small, but it is very deep. And deep down under the earth there might be a stream with running water. And this stream is connected via many other streams and rivers with the big ocean. So the well looks small, but its source of water is large like the ocean.

How can we dig our own well in order to let it become deeper, so that we can get get our own water from that source under the earth? Inly the people who made this experience themselves can show us the way how to dig our own well and scoop our own water. And what will happen once we have our own water? We will become a happy person, a successful person. We will become a wise person – we will be able to see things that the people around us don't see. We will also hear things that other people cannot hear. This is not because they don't have eyes or ears; they have eyes and ears, for sure. But they cannot see and hear clearly, because they are living in a day-dream. They only see what they are dreaming. They cannot see any other than that.

In order to dig our own well deeply, the first step is just to be ourselves. The Buddha was just as he was. Jesus was just as he was. All the enlightened beings are just as they are. That is why they are awakened, that is why they are enlightened. This shows that it is very important to be ourselves. And this is also the first step we can do in order to achieve whatever we wish for our life. If we have the opportunity to meet successful, happy people – there are also people who are successful, but not happy, but I speak here about the people who are successful and happy – we can see that all these people have one thing in common: They are all themselves; they are just as they are.