One day finally he became enlightened, and Buddha said, “You have to go to preach. Now you are enlightened, there is no need for you to sit here by my feet.”

He said, “This was the trouble! I was ready to drop the idea of enlightenment. You forced me to go on deeper into meditation, and now I am in a fix. I knew that this was going to happen – once I become enlightened you will tell me to go to spread the word. I don’t want to go anywhere. While you are alive, I want to be just your shadow.”

Buddha persuaded him. Finally he agreed, when Buddha was so insistent, but he said, “I want one freedom….” Just see the use of the word freedom, and you can see the freedom that your so-called resentful and angry sannyasins have: “I want one freedom, that from a faraway distance, I should be allowed to bow down in your direction and touch your feet, wherever you are.”

Buddha said, “You are already enlightened – you need not touch my feet!”

He said, “You have to give me that freedom.” Love asks for a freedom which logic cannot understand.

Sariputra was asked again and again in his journeys…. Every morning he would get up, take his bath, and the first thing he would do was to bow down on the ground with folded hands towards the direction where he knew Buddha was dwelling.

They would say, “To whom are you praying this way?” – because there is no God in Buddhism.

And he would say, “I am not praying to any God, but Buddha is God to me; he is my master.”

They would say, “But you are enlightened!”

He said, “That does not matter. I am enlightened because of him. Without him I don’t think it would have happened in many lives’ time, I cannot conceive how it could have happened. So he may say he is not responsible for the happening, but I cannot accept the idea. This freedom I have asked from him, and this is a special privilege.”

I am feeling very relieved – relieved of all those who were not my people, but somehow were hanging around. Now I want only those who are really with me.

Yesterday while Vivek was reading the questions to me, when she read her own question she started crying. I said, “What is the matter? Whose question is this?”

She said, “It is my question.”

I know that is the situation of many hearts – but only those hearts who have learned to love a master.