Again a well-known guru came to see him. We were sitting in a lovely walled garden; the lawn was green and well kept, there were roses, sweet peas, bright yellow marigolds and other flowers of the oriental north. The wall and the trees kept out the noise of the few cars that went by; the air carried the perfume of many flowers. In the evening, a family of jackals would come out from their hiding place under a tree; they had scratched out a large hole where the mother had her three cubs. They were a healthy looking lot and soon after sunset the mother would come out with them, keeping close to the trees. Garbage was behind the house and they would look for it later. There was also a family of mongooses; every evening the mother with her pink nose and her long fat tail would come out from her hiding place followed by her two kits, one behind the other, keeping close to the wall. They too came to the back of the kitchen where sometimes things were left for them. They kept the garden free of snakes. They and the jackals seemed never to have crossed each other, but if they did they left each other alone.
     The guru had announced a few days before that he wished to pay a call. He arrived and his disciples came streaming in afterwards, one by one. They would touch his feet as a mark of great respect. They wanted to touch the other man's feet too but he would not have it; he told them that it was degrading but tradition and hope of heaven were too strong in them. The guru would not enter the house as he had taken a vow never to enter a house of married people. The sky was intensely blue that morning and the shadows were long.
     "You deny being a guru but you are a guru of gurus. I have observed you from your youth and what you say is the truth which few will understand. For the many we are necessary, otherwise they would be lost; our authority saves the foolish. We are the interpreters. We have had our experiences; we know. Tradition is a rampart and only the very few can stand alone and see the naked reality. You are among the blessed but we must walk with the crowd, sing their songs, respect the holy names and sprinkle holy water, which does not mean that we are entirely hypocrites. They need help and we are there to give it. What, if one may be allowed to ask, is the experience of that absolute reality?"
     The disciples were still coming and going, uninterested in the conversation and indifferent to their surroundings, to the beauty of the flower and the tree. A few of them were sitting on the grass listening, hoping not to be too disturbed. A cultured man is discontented with his culture.
     Reality is not to be experienced. There's no path to it and no word can indicate it; it is not to be sought after and to be found The finding, after seeking, is the corruption of the mind. The very word truth is not truth; the description is not the described.
     "The ancients have told of their experiences, their bliss in meditation, their super consciousness, their holy reality. If one may be allowed to ask, must one set aside all this and their exalted example?"
     Any authority on meditation is the very denial of it. All the knowledge, the concepts, the examples have no place in meditation. The complete elimination of the meditator, the experiencer, the thinker, is the very essence of meditation. This freedom is the daily act of meditation. The observer is the past, his ground is time, his thoughts, images, shadows, are time-binding. Knowledge is time, and freedom from the known is the flowering of meditation. There is no system and so there is no direction to truth. or to the beauty of meditation. To follow another, his example, his word, is to banish truth. Only in the mirror of relationship do you see the face of what is. The seer is the seen. Without the order which virtue brings, meditation and the endless assertions of others have no meaning whatsoever; they are totally irrelevant. Truth has no tradition, it cannot be handed down.
     In the sun the smell of sweet peas was very strong.