In the Chu Dynasty, there was a bloody commander who was famous for his ruthlessness and cruelty. This commander was so fearless and daring that people all over the dynasty shuddered with fear when they heard his name. But this supposedly fearless commander also had a weakness and a fear. A 3,000-year-old teacup, a family heirloom...

The bloody commander loved this cup, inherited from family to family, and was afraid of losing it.

One day, he returned home from a very bloody battle. He was very tired and exhausted. Just as he was taking off his jacket, the sleeve of the jacket touched the cup on a small chest of drawers and the cup slowly began to fall to the ground.

The bloody commander immediately jumped up, threw himself to the ground and caught the cup in mid-air. He was drenched in sweat and blood. His heart was pounding...

"Wow," he said to himself, "wow! The bloody commander! The commander famous for his fearlessness! So you were afraid too!"

He looked at the cup, which he was still holding tightly with both hands. "Take it then!!!" he said and slammed the cup against the wall...

The cup's gone cold. "Now you are free!!!"

This story, which I love very much, was told to me years ago by my close friend Zifan, who runs the Chinese Restaurant in Denizli, and I have told it many times everywhere. Everyone is born free, naked, but everyone dies a prisoner. No matter how natural and free life may be in the beginning, subsequent possessions and fears of loss make people prisoners. Freedom, spontaneity and spontaneous existence are lost. Man begins to build mountains, mountain ranges, circles around himself. He becomes more and more rigid, more and more afraid, the freedom of being is lost. It becomes more and more distant from its inner center, superficial, reactive...

I remembered a Sufi story told by Osho:

A Sufi was traveling. The night became dark and the dervish lost his way. It was so dark that he could not even see where he was going. Then suddenly he took a step and his foot came to nothing. He avoided falling by holding on to a branch, but he was very scared. It was dark, he didn't know what was going on down there, how deep the hole was. The night was cold. He shouted for help but no one heard him. His hands started to freeze and it was getting harder and harder to hold on. Gradually his hands began to loosen. Death was certainly very close; he could fall to his death at any moment. Finally, he felt the branch slowly slipping away from his hands. There was no way to hold on, there was nothing left to do but fall. But the moment he fell...

The dervish spun around and started dancing! There was no pit, he was stepping on the ground. But he had suffered all night...

This is our situation. We are afraid that if we let go of the surface we will get lost, so we keep holding on to the surface. In fact, as long as we hold on to the surface, we get lost. The depths are dark, we cannot see the ground; we cannot see anything but the surface.

Once we can go down into the depths of our being within ourselves without fear, once the quality of consciousness and awareness changes, once we discover that life is just a game, there is no more fear, no more conflict, no more egoic things...

As William Shakespeare said:" "The world is a theater stage, only the men and women who enter and leave it change." The world is just a playground and a school. As everyone graduates and leaves one day. And again, as he said, "we are made of the same stuff that dreams are made of", so when we wake up, it's all over...

Sometimes we have pleasant dreams, sometimes nightmares. It is as if a whole lifetime has passed there. We wake up sweating blood, even crying or screaming, but the dream didn't last a second. It is only our own inner being that is real in this world. At first, as in the story, one may think one is going to die of fear. But once you know the path, peace is there. You are not going anywhere but to yourself, and it is not a long way...

No matter how rough the surface of the oceans, the bottom is always calm. On the surface there are always waves, crazy noises, a constant struggle. The depths are like a calm, quiet, conflict-free, unforced river.

Once you learn how to go inward, how to take a step towards yourself, the fears and the surface disappear, only the interior and peace remain. All the outside sounds become harmonious now...

Mukaddes Pekin Başdil

Researcher-Author

Source: Denizli Haber