A friend of mine who spent years in India with a great…

““A friend of mine who spent years in India with a great teacher from the ancient forest tradition tells a moving story... Years after his beloved teacher had died, he was back in India staying at the home of his guru's most devoted Indian disciple. "I must show you something," the disciple said to my friend one day. "This is what he left for me." My friend was excited, of course. Any trace of his teacher was nectar to him. He watched as the elderly man opened the creaking doors of an ancient wooden wardrobe and took something from the back of the bottom shelf. It was wrapped in an old, dirty cloth. "Do you see?" he asked my friend. "No. See what?" The disciple unwrapped the object, revealing an old, beat-up aluminum pot, the kind of ordinary pot one sees in every Indian kitchen. Looking deeply into my friend's eyes, he told him, "He left this for me when he went away. Do you see? Do you see?" "No, Dada," he replied. "I don't see." According to my friend, Dada looked at him even more intensely, this time with a mad glint in his eyes. "You don't have to shine," he said. "You don't have to shine." He rewrapped the pot and put it back on the bottom shelf of the wardrobe. My friend had received the most important teaching... He did not have to transform himself in the way he imagined: He just had to learn to be kind to himself. If he could hold himself with the care Dada showed while clutching the old pot, it would be enough. His ordinary self, wrapped in all of its primitive agony, was precious too.””

— Epstein Mark