Figure 1: Blind Man’s Buff by the Alpha Seer
A master is one who has arrived. He is the one you should surrender to if you want to understand a discipline.
What is to be surrendered?
Your own ego!
In Japan, the Zen practice may show a master relentlessly beating an inattentive initiate with a cane. Folks here in the West are shocked, and think that is barbaric, unbecoming, or rude….one man beating another with a cane as though he were just an animal? That is unsightly!
It is NOT rude, unbecoming, nor barbaric at all! On the contrary, that is precisely where the beauty lies,–the surrendering of your ego,– precisely there is this exuberant beauty in the surrender of your ego!
In a master-disciple communion, surrender is a most subtle thing!
You cannot surrender even if you have wanted to. You cannot simply say to yourself, “I want to surrender!” or “I desire to learn, so I must surrender!”
Well, it just never happens in the way you want it! You cannot surrender even if you have a desire to do so. It is not a question of what you want, or what you desire,…You cannot desire a mountain to be moved, or an ocean emptied,…. If it is ever moved, or the ocean emptied, it is a happening!
When an initiate surrenders to the master, it cannot be his will- power in play! Only if you have total trust in your master, with a beating heart vulnerable and innocent like a new-born baby, then and only then is this most beautiful thing in life called surrender extending its welcome to you, like a lovely breeze in Spring filtering into the entire fiber of your being!
When it is there, you and the surrender melt into one.
You are the surrender!
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This Alpha Seer surrendered to the great master Knox Martin as a young man. He had become a disciple. Disciple comes from the word “discipline” and it is one step closer than simply just a student, as he is getting closer to the truth, which is the discipline, or the inner working of Truth.
Because I have not been a particularly brilliant learner, and a rather lazy one for that matter, –always lacking in attention or awareness,(– imagine that!)– many outstanding issues, like hanging chads, had resulted in my career as disciple, the learner of Truth. But as IÂ was gradually maturing, they had managed to resolve by themselves. And today I could still, fairly legitimately, proclaim myself a real master in painting,– with confidence !
Again, it has nothing to do with the ego! All realized masters are aware of how fictitious the ego is!
The academia continues to hand out the so-called “Master of Fine Art” degrees every year,–to thousands of young people, but the recipients of that degree are hardly masters! That is the irony of it!
I have an MFA degree myself, owing to an ill-advised decision to go back to graduate school,– out of the shabbiest of intentions, i.e. to be able to teach art one day in college, with an horrendous lack of awareness,–and if you care to check my recycle bin, it is still lying around inside somewhere,–and if I ever have the desire to fool those who are stupid enough to believe in its magic, I can always say,
” Hey, I am Mr. Ben Lau, MFA, from such and such college,… And by implication there is clearly, without a doubt my authority, over the rest of the world on art…!”
That is exactly how societies in the West have fed young people’s ego and tricked them into compounded fools.
Hey, I may even be inclined to think that the rest of the world will be fooled by the MFA title,– but that is basically self-deception backfiring on the self!
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There are other kinds of genuine masters,– being a real master in painting you have to be born with certain attributes,– something granted to you by Mother Nature. Your DNAs have to be in the right configurations ! Yet there are other disciplines too, where the prerequisites are less stringent, and conditions certainly not as demanding, for example, a Shiatsu master, a master chef, or a Karate master!
And I actually know a certain Shiatsu master myself,–those who had experienced her splendid administering of Shiatsu have reported back that,– Wow, what a wonderful, healing touch….! Her finger- works can easily melt you into a meditative mode, the experience of which wondrously resembles a fetus fully secure of love, resting in its mother’s womb…. As I had that experience myself I can testify to the amazing quality of her practice. Her Shiatsu is pure compassion! Her mastery truly impeccable!
When you are capable of transforming energy like that, which is both magical and mysterious, then you can be called a master too, with real mastery.
What about “Master of Fine Art” ?
For crying out aloud, where is such “Mastery”, and where on earth is the “Art” part…?
Unfortunately, it is both a fiction and a fraud! It is the stupidest lie that the academia has come up with for deceiving the public and self-delusion.
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If you have come in with your ego, with all kinds of conditioning, (for example, you hate explicit sexual expressions in a piece of work,)Â or your mind is essentially a querulous, argumentative, or agitating one, that is often prone to the influence of emotions or the sway of moods, you will miss out in a big way and you won’t be able to feel the significance of this, which is indeed the holy grail of universal harmony. But if your mind is pure, innocent, malleable, or vulnerable, then even though you may be just a kindergartener, there is always the window of opportunity for you! So this master-disciple communion is designed to help you enter the portal of a discipline and guide you through its inner workings and informing you on how much you have become enlightened.
Intuition is the highest form of intelligence! You must rely fully on that, not the cognitive part of your brain.