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“When your excessive eagerness to teach has left you.”

Anthony de Mello

Aggression
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Context: A zealous disciple expressed a desire to teach others the Truth and asked the Master what he thought about this. The Master said, "Wait."
Each year the disciple would return with the same request and each time the Master would give him the same reply: "Wait."
One day he said to the Master, "When will I be ready to teach?"
Said the Master, "When your excessive eagerness to teach has left you."

“The Master in these tales is not a single person. He is a Hindu Guru, a Zen Roshi, a Taoist Sage, a Jewish Rabbi, a Christian Monk, a Sufi Mystic. He is Lao-tzu and Socrates; Buddha and Jesus; Zarathustra and Mohammed.”

Anthony de Mello

Introduction
One Minute Nonsense (1992)
Context: The Master in these tales is not a single person. He is a Hindu Guru, a Zen Roshi, a Taoist Sage, a Jewish Rabbi, a Christian Monk, a Sufi Mystic. He is Lao-tzu and Socrates; Buddha and Jesus; Zarathustra and Mohammed. His teaching is found in the seventh century B. C. and the twentieth century A. D. His wisdom belongs to East and West alike. Do his historical antecedents really matter? History, after all, is the record of appearances, not Reality; of doctrines, not of Silence.

“The master made it his task to systematically destroy every doctrine, every belief, every concept of the divine, for these things, which were originally intended as pointers, were now taken as descriptions. He loved to quote the Eastern saying: "When the sage points at the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger."”

Anthony de Mello

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 132

“What kind of a person does Enlightenment produce?”

Anthony de Mello

Said the Master:
"To be public-spirited and belong to no party,
to move without being bound to any given course,
to take things as they come,
have no remorse for the past,
no anxiety for the future,
to move when pushed,
to come when dragged,
to be like a mighty gale,
like a feather in the wind,
like weeds floating on a river,
like a mill-stone meekly grinding,
to love all creation equally
as heaven and earth are equal to all
— such is the product of Enlightenment."
On hearing these words one of the younger disciples cried, "This sort of teaching is not for the living but for the dead," and walked away, never to return.
Rejection
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

“Ideas kill people.”

Anthony de Mello

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 180

“If you search within your heart, you will find something there that will make it possible for you to understand: a spark of disenchantment and discontent, which if fanned into flame will become a raging forest fire that will burn up the whole of the illusory world you are living in, thereby unveiling to your wondering eyes the kingdom that you have always lived in unsuspectingly.”

Anthony de Mello

The Way to Love (1995)

“All I did was sit on the riverbank handing out river water. After I'm gone, I trust you will notice the river.”

Anthony de Mello

Source: Anthony De Mello : Writings (1999), p. 82

“No one is exempt from talking nonsense. The great misfortune is to do it solemnly.”

Anthony de Mello

Introduction
One Minute Nonsense (1992)

“What is my identity?"
"Nothing," said the Master.
"You mean that I am an emptiness and a void?" said the incredulous disciple.
"Nothing that can be labeled.”

Anthony de Mello

said the Master.
Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 109

“"What is the work of a Master?" said a solemn-faced visitor.
"To teach people to laugh," said the Master gravely.”

Anthony de Mello

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 85

“Said the self-righteous preacher, "What, in your judgment, is the greatest sin in the world?"
"That of the person who sees other human beings as sinners," said the Master.”

Anthony de Mello

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 139

“The Master is not concerned with what we believe — only with what we see.”

Anthony de Mello

Non-Instruction
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

“The Master was exceedingly gracious to university dons who visited him, but he would never reply to their questions or be drawn into their theological speculations. To his disciples, who marveled at this, he said, "Can one talk about the ocean to a frog in a well or about the divine to people who are restricted by their concepts?"”

Anthony de Mello

Restriction
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

“When God means you to be a healer he sends you patients; when he makes you a teacher he sends you pupils; when he destines you to be a Master he sends you stories.”

Anthony de Mello

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 112

“The Master would insist that the final barrier to our attaining God was the word and concept "God."”

Anthony de Mello

Incompetence
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

“Charity is really self-interest masquerading under the form of altruism.”

Anthony de Mello

"The masquerade of charity," p. 19
Awareness (1992)

“You will seek for God in vain till you understand that God can't be seen as a "thing"; he needs a special way of looking — similar to that of little children whose sight is undistorted by prefabricated doctrines and beliefs.”

Anthony de Mello

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 8

“The master never let a statement about God go unchallenged. All God statements were poetic or symbolic expressions of the Unknowable; people, however, foolishly took them as literal descriptions of the divine.”

Anthony de Mello

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 95

“Those who make no mistakes are making the biggest mistakes of all — they are attempting nothing new.”

Anthony de Mello

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 20