A Teacher is Not a Master

I can understand where you are coming from but I see a difference between just teacher and a true Master. A True Master, a student will never surpass, unless the Master dies an untimely death. A true Master Masters himself, and he is living the way, he doesn't speak about the Way, he simply lives it. The student then just follows without being forced to follow. The student can surpass many teachers because anybody can be a teacher but the student can never surpass the Master. It's like trying to catch up in age to your own father, you can't, unless he dies an untimely death. But if he lives a long life till 100, you will never catch up, you might even die before him. He has experienced so much more than you in your life, he already walked the path that you are walking now, he knows the way, you are just trying to learn it.

A true Master never stops growing, he is constantly bettering himself, if he is 50 years old, he has been putting in 50 years of hard work, if you are just 20 years old, you cannot meet his level of expertise and experience, you will always be behind him because he will not stop his own growth even when he is assisting you. If you find a true Master, you will never have to seek any further. If you encounter a teacher or a false Master, you can be searching for endless lives.

How can a student possibly claim he is better than a Master? What is being assessed? An entire person's life is being assessed, not just a small aspect of it. Any student that claims himself to be better than a Master is already at fault. A student who tries to compete with a Master has not truly surrendered to the Master, his ego is still in the way of him learning, he is not truly open to learning, he is not there for the family, he is not there as a disciple to the Master, he is there to take what he can in which to compete with the Master to find his own students. He is like a person who applies to work at a company, gets hired in, and then starts stealing from the company, even though he has the uniform and customers think he is on the side of the company, he is not really there for the company, he is there for himself, he doesn't want to see the company grow, he wants to steal from the company to eventually start his own company. A true Master can identify this fraudulent employee, the true Master can install hidden cameras to identify this fraudulent employee and get rid of him. He does not belong in the company.

A student to a Master is similar to applying to work for a very successful firm. You have the CEO of the company, you as new employee will never be the CEO of the company, even if the CEO dies, only one person is needed to replace him, not any more than that. A student has to agree to surrender to the Master and be a true disciple or he cannot surrender and go about his own path without the help of the Master. He cannot be half hearted, a half hearted student will be identified by the Master and terminated, he will never learn the inner teachings of the school.

A true Master needs no students, the students come to him, they seek him out and they have to beg for the Master to accept them as disciples. A real Master will never beg for students. It's like a father who has more children than he can even handle, he truly wants no more, but then more come begging to convince him to expand his family. A true Master doesn't care to obtain more and more students, he does not obtain students for the fulfillment of his ego, he only accepts students because he is following the Tao or the way of God, if God tells the Master to accept the student he will, he will follow his heart, he follows the order of God, not the order of his ego.