Mystic Mantra: Joy of being ordinary

There are gurus and gurus in the world — so many of them. Sometimes the people who are searching for a guru become really confused about who would be a right guru for them. On the other side, the gurus are also searching disciples. And this is the reason some gurus prefer to declare themselves as “sadguru” or their disciples declare their master as sadguru. The word “Sadguru” means the true guru. The amazing thing is that every disciple considers his master as sadguru. This happens out of love for the guru or it could happen because of ignorance or blind faith. It could also happen out of the feeling of pride or the feeling of ego, that my guru has to be the greatest, he cannot be lesser than any guru. Generally speaking, this is the way we see the world of gurus and their disciples or followers.

But there is another world of gurus, which is very unknown, secret and mysterious — the world of Sufi gurus. Osho, in one of his discourses on Unio Mystica, talks about this phenomenon with an interesting story: An American seeker came to Dhaka, Bangladesh. He had heard about a great Sufi master. He was in a hurry to meet the master. He enquired from many people, but nobody had heard of this master. At the airport he went from one person to another but nobody had heard of him. He became suspicious and very depressed. He had come from so far, and he had heard so much about the Sufi master who lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh and nobody even knows his name! But as the last try, he asked a taxi driver. The taxi driver said, “Come, sit in the taxi and I will take you to him.” He could not believe it, so suddenly because nobody knew about the master the other moment.

The taxi driver said, “Don’t be worried, I know him. In fact, I am him.” And that’s how it turned out to be. He himself was the Sufi master, but he was working as a taxi driver — just an ordinary life. The Sufis function that way. Somebody is a weaver, somebody may be a potter, somebody may be making carpets. Do you know what Gurdjieff used to do in the West? His business was carpet selling He was a carpet salesman, that was his business. If you had seen him you would have never recognised that a great master was there. That’s how the Sufis have existed, down the ages. They don’t stand out, there is no need.

The same is the case with Zen. The Zen masters also are ordinary people and teach ordinariness. It is the ego which is always hankering to be extraordinary. The ego is always discontented with being ordinary; it wants to be extraordinary at any cost. It hurts to be ordinary. But once we learn to be happy being ordinary, we accept ourselves as we are, it stops hurting, we experience a certain joy in just being ordinary. Osho reminds us: Once you have accepted the ordinariness, in your very ordinariness arises an extraordinariness. Your ordinariness becomes luminous, radiant.  Then each moment is a gift, and each moment brings its own joy, its own peace, its own beautitude.