Chapter 22 A Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose

One of his disciples said to Mav Karkosi, “I have spoken of you to many people. Jews say you are Jewish; Christians venerate you as a saint; Muslims consider you a great man.”

Malaf replied, “It is kind of the people of Baghdad to say that. When I was in Jerusalem, Jews said I was a Christian, Muslims said I was a Jew, and Christians said I was a Muslim.”

"So what do you think you are?" the man asked.

Malaf said:

"Some people respect me even though they don't understand me, while others insult me even though they don't understand me. That's what I'm saying, and you should consider me as someone who said those words."

The man who came to see Maraf must be a student. He's not a disciple, because a disciple is someone who comes to trust their master. A student is still searching for a teacher. A disciple wouldn't ask questions like this. The student isn't there to surrender, but simply to learn, observe, see, and draw conclusions. This man is just an ordinary person asking a question: "I've heard many people talk about you. Jews say you're Jewish; Christians venerate you as a saint; Muslims consider you a great man." He must have met Maraf's disciples, who are filled with love for their master. Maraf lived near Baghdad, and during his time, Baghdad became a religious capital. If his disciples were Jews, they loved Maraf and said, "He is the most perfect Jew." If he met a Buddhist who also loved Maraf, he would surely say, "He is the most exemplary Buddhist!" Because of love, he would find many reasons to prove this is true.

Malaf replied, “It’s so kind of the people in Baghdad to say that.” He meant that the community was being incredibly humane, because these people loved him. “When I was in Jerusalem, Jews said I was a Christian, Muslims said I was a Jew, and Christians said I was a Muslim.” Enemies are different. For a religious person, Jerusalem is the easiest place to find enemies. Because there are die-hards of all religions there; many dead religions still exist, their corpses continued to be decorated to deceive believers into thinking they are not dead. If you want to find the most religiously opposed people, then go to the holy sites. In fact, those are the least holy places in the world, because the mummies of religion still lie there. Malaf meant that his situation in Jerusalem was completely different in Baghdad, where every church considered him an enemy.

The man who came to ask Maraf must have been very confused: which sect does he belong to? He must have wanted to see if he was part of the sect he already believed in before he planned to follow him. He actually only wanted to follow himself, not his master. If you come here only because some of what I say makes sense, then you are not following me; what I say is merely the voice in your head. Some people only want to see if I am a Jain—when I talk about Mahavir, some people straighten their backs and their eyes light up, and I know they are Jains; only at that moment are they awake, the rest of the time they are asleep; the same is true when I talk about Judaism. If I cannot determine where you belong, then you are truly with me. Otherwise, my words only reinforce your existing beliefs, and you do not allow me to enter you. Many people come to me and say, “What you say is wonderful! Because you say what I was thinking; I believed it all along.” What he hears is only his voice within my voice; he only believes his ego; he hasn’t discarded his old garbage, and he only uses it to strengthen his ego. Remember: I am here only to make you a religious person, not a Judaist, Hindu, or Christian!

The man was confused, so he asked Malaf, "Then what do you really want to be?" Truly religious people want to uproot you, not just repaint you; they must completely destroy you for you to be reborn. Nothing is possible until you die. The Master is both death and rebirth. Listen to the following sentence; it is very meaningful: Malaf said, "Some people respect me without understanding me, and some people insult me without understanding me." They respect him without understanding because they feel he is mysterious; they think, "Even people as intelligent and wise as themselves don't understand him, there must be some mystery about him"; many people think this way.

A religious person is always misunderstood. Human nature holds a non-religious attitude towards life; what they hold in their hearts are sectarianism, not religion. A religious person is like a stranger; you will always think he is wrong because you are viewing him from the wrong perspective. Whether you support him or oppose him, what you say about him is wrong, unless you yourself have developed a religious consciousness. Before that, your respect or contempt is false; treating him as a saint or a criminal is a misunderstanding.

So first, remember this: unless you are right, everything you say is wrong; a religious person is a powerful and peculiar phenomenon, and you are speechless before them. All language exists because of right and wrong; therefore, your own language is meaningless and useless to them, because they have transcended right and wrong. You say he is good, but that's wrong, because he is also bad; you say he is bad, but that's also wrong, because he is also good. You cannot imagine a good person being bad; you can only understand one part of a whole, because the other part must be the opposite. A religious person is a miniature God, and like God, he is contradictory; like God, he has summer and winter, day and night, life and death, good and evil. He makes your reason hesitate.

Reason is only effective when judging things in a clear-cut black-and-white way; it understands whether something is right or wrong. But if you say yes and no simultaneously, it goes beyond its comprehension. Unless you say yes and no at the same time, you won't feel what religious consciousness is.

A religious person cannot be accepted by any church; they can only be accepted by a loving heart. These institutions have no heart, so they cannot accept him, nor can he be absorbed by established systems. Only a loving heart is his shrine.

If you read Hegel's books, you'll find that's exactly what he is; he tries to make things difficult. He's considered the greatest thinker in contemporary Germany, but as time goes by, his status declines—because his mystique diminishes. It's all nonsense; he uses a hundred pages when a single word can suffice. His sentences are long, sometimes a single sentence takes up a whole page, and by the time you reach the end, you can't remember the beginning. You have to read it again and again because he deliberately obscures things. It exposes people's folly: believing what they don't understand. People always think that what they don't understand is supreme and most worthy of respect, while true wise men speak plainly and clearly, understandable to anyone of average intelligence, without obfuscation. Their words are simple, as simple as life, as simple as existence, as simple as mountains and rivers, as simple as birds and trees.

Wise men are simple. The more you understand them, the more you discover their simplicity, and the more you discover their simplicity, the more mysterious new layers of meaning are revealed. Their words are simple, but what they express is mysterious. You often respect many people and many precepts because you don't understand them. Gotschfolk had many followers who didn't understand him. He wasn't as deliberately obscure as Hegel, but he didn't want people to get close to him, so reading his books requires patience to understand his meaning. He was simple, but his method was to delay you; it's difficult to read more than a few pages. I haven't met anyone who has finished reading his "All and Everything." He writes very dullly; he bores you—a method he carefully considered. He delays you. It's said that when the book was first published, only the first hundred pages were cut apart; the rest were not. The book reminded you: read the first hundred pages before cutting the rest apart, otherwise you could return the book for a refund. Many people returned the book; those who didn't weren't truly understanding it, but rather they were curious enough to cut apart the back pages to see what kind of joke it contained. I've never seen anyone read it from cover to cover, only skim through it. But people miss the fact that the book's diamond-like words could fill just a postcard, and yet it has a thousand pages! Many people follow him because they understand him, but you don't, so it feels mysterious. In fact, truth is the simplest thing; you must be in stillness, you must be prepared, to see it.