Chapter 12: Right Questioning
If you go deeply into yourself to find a real question, you create a passage in you. That same passage can be used by me. If there is no passage in you, my answer cannot penetrate you more deeply than that from where your question has come. The layer of penetration will be the same. If your question is superficial, then any answer will just become a superficial thing to you.
Sometimes it has happened that the questioner was authentic and the teacher was not. Sometimes it has happened that the questioner was authentic and the teacher was not, but still the questioner could get the answer. The other way around has never happened: when the teacher is authentic but the questioner is not authentic, then nothing can be done.
Even a false teacher will do, because really the work is being done by you, not by a teacher. So even a stone image will do; if you are really concerned, then a stone image will give you the answer. And if you are not really concerned, then a living Buddha is dead, meaningless - because ultimately, it depends on you. It depends not on the teacher, it depends on the disciple, it depends on the questioner.
If you can ask a foundational question from the very heart of your being, the answer will come to you even if there is no one there - the vacuum will create the answer, existence itself will give you the answer. But with false questioning, nothing is possible and nothing can be done.
So try to formulate. Even if you fail in your effort, it is good. Try to formulate some problem which comes from you, not from the society, not from your teachers, not from your upbringing - just from you.
This is a meditation. This finding out is a meditation. So find some question!