Chi Hsing Tzu was a trainer of fighting cocks for King Hsuan.
He was training a fine bird. The king kept asking if the bird was ready for combat.
“Not yet,” said the trainer. “He is full of fire. He is ready to pick a fight with every other bird. He is vain and confident of his own strength.”

After ten days he answered again, “Not yet. He flares up when he hears another bird crow.”
After ten more days, “Not yet. He still gets that angry look and ruffles his feathers.”
Again ten days. The trainer said, “Now he is nearly ready. When another bird crows, his eye does not even flicker. He stands immobile like a block of wood. He is a mature fighter. Other birds will take one look at him and run.”

The human mind always ends with the ego – that is its final growth. So first try to understand how the human mind becomes the ego.

The ego is the barrier: the more you are, the less the divine can be; the less you are, the more available you are for the divine. If you are totally empty the divine becomes the guest; and he can become the guest only when you are totally empty, when not even a fragment of you is left. Then you become the host and he becomes the guest. When you are not, you are the host; when you are, all your prayers are in vain, all your invitations false. When you are, you have not called him yet because your call can only be authentic when you are not. It is the silent thirst of an empty being, a silent prayer without any words of a mind which is no more, of an ego which is dissolved.

Once it happened that Mulla Nasruddin came to me, very much disturbed, sad, perplexed, and he said: “I am in deep trouble. A problem has arisen – and I am not a blind believer, I am a rational man.”

So I asked him, “What is the problem?”

He said, “Just this morning I saw a mouse sitting on the Koran, the Holy Koran! So I am disturbed: if the Koran cannot protect itself against an ordinary mouse, how can it protect me? My whole faith is shattered, my whole being is troubled. Now I cannot believe in the Koran anymore. What should I do?”

So I told him, “This is the logical step. Now you start believing in the mouse, because you have seen with your own eyes that the mouse is stronger than the Holy Koran.”

And, of course, strength is the only criterion for the mind; power is what the mind is in search of – Friedrich Nietzsche is right.

I told Mulla Nasruddin, “Man is nothing but a will to power. And now you have seen with your own eyes that a mouse is more powerful than the Holy Koran.”