Osho on Sufi Master Junnaid – I have always loved to remember a Sufi master Junnaid. He was the master of al-Hillaj Mansoor. He had a habit: after each prayer… and Mohammedans pray five times a day. After each prayer he would say to the sky, “Your compassion is great. How beautifully you take care of us, and we don’t deserve it. I don’t even have words to show my gratefulness, but I hope you will understand the unexpressed gratitude of my heart.”
They were on a pilgrimage, and it happened that for three days they passed through villages where orthodox Mohammedans would not allow them even to stay in the villages; there was no question of giving them food or water.
For three days without food, without water, without sleep — tired, utterly frustrated… The disciples could not believe that this man Junnaid, their master, still goes on saying the same things. Before, it was okay — but still he goes on saying, “You are great, you are compassionate, and I don’t have words to express my gratitude.”
On the third evening when he had finished his prayer, his disciples said, “Now it is time for an explanation. For three days we have been hungry, we have not had water, we are thirsty; we have not slept, we have been insulted continually, no place has been given to us, no shelter. At least today you should not say, `You are great, you are compassionate.’ For what you are showing your gratitude?”
Junnaid laughed. He said, “My trust in existence is unconditional. It is not that I am grateful because existence provides this and that and that. I am — that’s enough. Existence accepts me — that’s enough. And I don’t deserve to be, I have not earned it. Moreover, these three days have been of tremendous beauty because I had an opportunity to watch whether anger would arise in me, and it didn’t arise; whether I would start to feel that God had forsaken me, and the idea did not arise.
There has been no difference in my attitude towards existence. My gratitude has not changed, and it has filled me with more gratitude than ever. It was a fire test, and I have come out of it unburned. What more do you want? I will trust existence in my life and I will trust existence in my death. It is my love affair.
Osho on Sufi Master Junnaid – It is reported of one of the Sufi masters, Junnaid, that he was working with a new young man. The young man was not aware of Junnaid’s inner wisdom, and Junnaid lived such an ordinary life that it needed very penetrating eyes to realize that you were near a buddha. He worked like an ordinary laborer, and only those who had eyes would recognise him.
To recognise Buddha was very easy — he was sitting under a Bodhi tree; to recognise Junnaid was very difficult — he was working like a laborer, not sitting under a Bodhi tree. He was in every way absolutely ordinary. One young man working with him, and that young man was continually showing his knowledge, so whatsoever Junnaid would do, he would say, “This is wrong. This can be done in this way, it will be better” -he knew about erverything. Finally Junnaid laughed and said:,” Young man, I am not young enough to know so much.”
Osho on Junnaid, Sufi Master Junnaid – I am reminded of a great Sufi master, Junnaid. One day one of his disciples — who had managed somehow to trust in Junnaid, who had with effort remained unskeptical — had gone hunting in the forest. And he saw Junnaid sitting by the side of a beautiful lake with a beautiful woman. From far away he saw, and from far away everything is beautiful — and particularly a Mohammedan woman.
No Mohammedan woman is ugly — her face is veiled. It is a great strategy of ugly women against the beautiful; in this way the beautiful are lost. All his repressed suspicions and doubts arose, surfaced — and it was not only that Junnaid was sitting with the woman; the woman was pouring wine from a flask into a cup for Junnaid.
All his trust was shattered, all his love was finished: “There is a limit to everything. This is going too far. This man is a fraud!” And if he had returned without going to Junnaid to say something, he would have remained with the idea that the man was a fraud. He had all the facts, he had seen with his own eyes, he was a witness. He needed no other evidence, no other proof. No argument would have convinced him that he could have been wrong.
But Junnaid shouted loudly, “Don’t go back! Come close, because when you come close many facts prove to be fictions. The closer you come, the more fictitious they are. Just come close.”
A little bit afraid, but he came.
Junnaid lifted the veil from the woman’s face. She was Junnaid’s mother, an old woman. And he said, “What about the beautiful woman you had seen? — and you had seen her with your own eyes. Could you have imagined an old woman, my own mother? It was beyond your imagination.
“And take this flask and look closely, taste it; it is pure water, not wine. Just the flask is of the wine.
“But you were going with absolute certainty: that this man is a fraud — women and wine in privacy, in the forest — and in public he has another face, of a great master.”
The disciple fell at his feet and said, “Please forgive me.”
Junnaid said, “It is not a question of forgiveness; it is a question of understanding. You have a trust which is forced, and a forced trust is bound to sooner or later go through a breakdown. Your love is an effort, and love cannot be an effort — either you love or you don’t, the question of effort does not arise. You were trying to imitate other disciples, and the path of the truth is not for imitators.
“I had come to this place only for you, knowing that you were going hunting and you were bound to come to this lake. You have to start from the beginning, and this time your love has not to be an effort and your trust has not to be something forced. These things are beautiful when they grow naturally — and when they grow naturally then no facts, no figures can destroy them. They have such tremendous energy of their own that all facts and figures simply evaporate.”