On Spiritual Leadership

Once upon a time, over two thousand years ago, there was a man in China who worked as a lowly clerk in the government offices. For him, it was just a job that supported him while he tried to fulfill his desire to become enlightened.

He studied all the great masters and he had numerous mystical experiences and eventually became quite enlightened. Those around him noticed this and word of mouth soon spread far and wide. Before long people were coming from all corners of the country to seek him out and learn from him. They all wanted to become enlightened by sitting at his feet and learning from him.

The man did not care for this. He never wanted to be a spiritual teacher or a spiritual leader. He merely wanted to find enlightenment for himself. So he retired from his position with the courts and planned to disappear so that he could be free from all the people coming to him for enlightenment.

So he packed his meager possessions and headed south without telling anyone where he was going. His destination was a mountainous country to the south where no one knew who he was. He wanted to be free.

But when he came to the gateway out of the country it turned out that the gatekeeper had heard of him. The gatekeeper told him that he would not allow him safe passage out of the country unless he wrote down his wisdom on paper. So the man stopped and wrote down what he had learned and gave it to the gatekeeper. He was then allowed passage out of the country and he was never heard from again.

That man was Lao Tzu and the writings of his wisdom that he gave the gatekeeper turned into the book called the Tao te Ching; the seminal teachings that the philosophy of Taoism is founded upon. It is one of the most profound and most celebrated books of wisdom the world has ever been gifted with. It is still studied today well over two thousand years later.

The world has seen many spiritual teachers and spiritual leaders. Lao Tzu is considered one of the greatest among them. But he was luckier than all the rest. Why? Because he never had to go through being a great spiritual teacher or spiritual leader. He never had to go through that personally. He merely left his words behind and those words did that for him. Personally, he was a great spiritual teacher and leader by NOT being a great spiritual teacher and leader. And this may be one of his greatest teachings.