gayatri

There is a wonderful story about the Sufi Master Junnaid (I guess I just put myself in the mishmash school because the Sufi's are muslim ) but it tells of how as he was dying his chief disciple asked him who his Master had been and he replies that he has learned from almost everybody and he preceded to tell three beautiful examples:
1. A dog jumped into the water and began to drink the water and Junnaid realized that he did not even need the material posession of his begging bowl and had become attached to it so he threw it away. The dog was his master.
2. A thief gave him a place to stay and every night the thief would go out and come back empty handed and say "No, not today, but maybe tomorrow". The thief taught him attentive patience in the search for attainment. The thief was his master.
3. Junnaid joked with a young child carrying a lit candle, asking where the light of the candle has come from. The child blew out the candle and replied "If you can tell me where it has gone then I will tell you from where it came because it has gone to the same place. It has gone back to the source". The child was also his master.

"Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness". -Kahlil Gibran