Treasures: A story of how George Gurdjieff prepared J.G. Bennet for Zen

So, this is a time when I'm going back to my core values and ensuring that the content of The Zen Master Newsletter is aligned with those values.
Why? I recently learned that:

When The Values Create The Goals,
The Goals Stay Aligned To The Purpose,
The Mission Stays Aligned To The Vision.

That is as simple as I can articulate the idea:
When goals are created directly from values, a platform unfolds in an aligned way.

So as I was looking back over this, I looked over to my desk at a copy of a text I acquired: "This. This. A Thousand Times This. The Very Essence of Zen."
The very essence!

What is Zen? In my words, Zen is an essence found in the silent place in your being.
I'd like to share this story with you today.

A story of how George Gurdjieff prepared the prominent intellectual Bennet for This, in comparison to an ancient Zen Master.

This story was told by Osho in: This. This. A Thousand Times This: The Very Essence of Zen.

The Zen Master Hyakujo used to prepare his people by saying,

"Go and work in the field. You cannot work with the trees and with the grass and with the roses for long without yourself becoming as silent as they are."

George Gurdjieff, without knowing Hyakujo, used to use the same method, and the people who came to him were very different than the people who came to Hyakujo.

Gurdjieff was working in the West. Intellectuals would come and Gurdjieff would ask them to go and dig a ditch in the field, but they would say,

"We have come here to learn something, not to dig a ditch."

Gurdjieff was very hard. He would say,

"First do what I say if you want to hear the answer."

In one particular case, Bennet reached Gurdjieff: Highly educated, cultivated and the answer to him was the same. He had come to ask about God and the meaning of life. Gurdjieff said, "These things leave for the moment, just go and dig the ditch in the field.

Bennet hesitated for a moment, but then thought, "I have come from so far, let us see what happens. What am I going to lose?" He started digging the ditch; Gurdjieff came with his cigar, watched him digging, told him that, "Before sunset this certain area has to be prepared."

The sunset came, Bennet was utterly tired, – an intellectual who has never worked, and particularly not this kind of work. And seeing the sun setting there was a great relief... "Now refill the ditch completely, bring it back to its original state, throw all the mud back in its place."

Bennet was so tired, but he was also a man of integrity. He said, "Let us see what happens."

Without food, without rest, without even a coffee break he filled the ditch again. It was almost the middle of the night and Gurdjieff was standing the whole day just watching and smoking his cigar. The moon was full, at the highest peak of the night; it was a beautiful silence and Bennett remembers that,

"I was so tired... I don't know from where – a tremendous silence descended over me."

In his autobiography he says, "I was simply astonished."

Gurdjieff laughed and said, "Have you heard? Now go and rest."

But what was said? Nothing was said. The question is not that the master should say anything. The question is that the disciple should be so silent...and he was silent because he was so tired that he could not even think, the mind became utterly empty. In that silence there is no need for the master to say anything, he can just indicate it as This, and the sermon is over.