Talking is just a bait. Through talking you are caught, you cannot understand anything else. Talking is just giving sweets to children. Then they start coming to you, blissfully unaware that talking is not the point; blissfully unaware they come for the sweets, they come for the toys. They are happy with the toys. But the master knows that once they start coming, by and by the toys can be taken away, and by and by they will start loving the master without the toys – and once that happens, words can be dropped.
Whenever a disciple is ready, words can be dropped. They are just a way to bring you closer because you cannot understand anything except words. If somebody speaks, you understand; if somebody is silent you cannot understand. What will you understand? Silence is just a wall for you, you cannot find your way in it. And silence carries a deep fear also, because it is deathlike. Words are lifelike, silence is deathlike. If somebody is silent you start feeling afraid and scared – if somebody goes on being silent you will try to escape from there because it is too much, the silence becomes so heavy for you.
Why? – because you cannot be silent, and if you cannot be silent you cannot understand silence. You are a chattering; inside a monkey is sitting, continuously chattering. Somebody has defined man as nothing but a monkey with metaphysics, with some philosophy, that’s all. And that philosophy is nothing but a better way of chattering, more systematic, more logical, but still chattering.
A master has to talk to bring you nearer. The nearer you come, the more he will drop it. Once you are in the grip of his silence there is no need to talk. Once you know what silence is, once you have become silent, a new rapport exists. Now things can be said without any saying, messages can be given without ever giving them – without him giving them you can receive them. Now the phenomenon of discipleship has happened.
One of the most beautiful phenomena in the world is that of being a disciple, because now you know what rapport is. Now you breathe, inhale, exhale with the master; now you lose your boundaries and become one with him. Now something of his heart starts flowing towards you; now something of him comes into you.
A monk asked Nansen: “Is there a teaching no master ever preached before?”
Nansen is one of the most famous Zen masters. Many stories are told about him; one I have been telling you many times. I will repeat it again, because stories like that are to be repeated again and again, so that you can imbibe them. They are a sort of nourishment. Every day you have to take nourishment; you won’t say, “Yesterday morning I took breakfast so now there is no need.” Every day you have to eat; you don’t say, “Yesterday I took food, now what is the need?”
These stories – they are a nourishment. There exists a special word in India, it cannot be translated. In English the word reading exists, in India we have two words for it: one means reading, the other means the reading of the same thing again and again. You read the same thing again and again and again – it is like a part. Every day you read the Gita in the morning; then it is not a reading, because you have read it many times. Now it is a sort of nourishment. You don’t read it, you eat it every day.