According to Osho, to call Lao Tzu total means he embodies wholeness beyond the mind’s perfectionism and ego; he contains and reconciles opposites—wisdom with foolishness, knowledge with acknowledged ignorance—choosing nothing, excluding nothing. In such inclusiveness, the living whole appears; perfection’s selective cutting disappears. Hence Lao Tzu’s innocence may look foolish, yet it is consummate, paradoxical wisdom.
Being total means welcoming all of you—smart and silly, knowing and not knowing—without picking sides.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
You say that lao tzu is for the rarest of seekers. Then how do you call him total?
This is a wise and foolish man -- he looks foolish but he is very wise in his foolishness; he looks very wise but he is behaving like a fool. If you understand life, the deeper you go the deeper you will understand that the whole is worth choosing. That means there is no need to choose. Choice will dissect the whole and whatsoever you get will be fragmentary and dead. Wisdom and foolishness are together in life; if you dissect them then wisdom will be separate and foolishness will be separate, but both will be dead. The greatest art of life is to let them grow together in such a balance that your wisdom carries a certain quality of foolishness, and your foolishness carries a certain quality of wisdom. Then you are total. That's why: rarest are the seekers who will go to Lao Tzu. He will seem to…
Question: ON THE ABSOLUTE TAO THE TAO THAT CAN BE TOLD OF IS NOT THE ABSOLUTE TAO ON THE RISE OF RELATIVE OPPOSITES WHEN THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH ALL KNOW BEAUTY AS BEAUTY, THERE ARISES (THE RECOGNITION OF) UGLINESS. WHEN THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH ALL KNOW GOOD AS GOOD, THERE ARISES (THE RECOGNITION OF) EVIL. THEREFORE: BEING AND NON-BEING INTERDEPEND IN GROWTH; DIFFICULT AND EASY INTERDEPEND IN COMPLETION; LONG AND SHORT INTERDEPEND IN CONTRAST; HIGH AND LOW INTERDEPEND IN POSITION; TONES AND VOICE INTERDEPEND IN HARMONY; FRONT AND BEHIND INTERDEPEND IN COMPANY. THEREFORE THE SAGE: MANAGES AFFAIRS WITHOUT ACTION; PREACHES THE DOCTRINE WITHOUT WORDS; ALL THINGS TAKE THEIR RISE, BUT HE DOES NOT TURN AWAY FROM THEM; HE GIVES THEM LIFE, BUT DOES NOT TAKE POSSESSION OF THEM; HE ACTS, BUT DOES NOT APPROPRIATE; ACCOMPLISHES, BUT CLAIMS NO CREDIT.
This energy comes from the ego’s struggle. That is why you see a certain glow on the faces of fighting sannyasins—not from tapascharya. They are engaged in such a battle where the ego finds great nourishment. Your battles are petty; whenever you go to them, they say, ‘What are you doing? What are you gathering—perishable wealth? What is there in this life? Come to us. We are seeking the eternal life; the treasure that never perishes.’ He is fighting a big battle. In that big battle there is a glow, a freshness; he remains steady. But that battle is constructing the ego. And remember, the ego’s glow is diseased, and the ego’s glow is poisonous. Lao Tzu says: Tao is the flow of all things; like a flood, Tao is streaming in every direction. Everything is to be accepted; there is nothing here to be rejected.
Do they simply have to be endured? They do have to be endured. So his freedom is not license. There is a deep check upon it. He is free in that he can act contrary to nature. But whatever consequences arise from acting contrary—painful ones—he will have to endure them.
This kind of man is not what we ordinarily call a “seeker.” The seeker we speak of is usually a reaction to the householder. If the householder runs a shop, the seeker does not; if the householder earns wealth, the seeker renounces it; if the householder marries, the seeker does not. But his rules are derived from the householder—he is only a reaction. Lao Tzu says, “I am no one’s reaction. It does not matter what others do. I neither follow anyone to do as he does, nor go against anyone to do the opposite. I let happen what arises from within.” Allowing nature to happen means not imitating anyone, not copying anyone, not building one’s personality in opposition to anyone. Whatever can happen from within, whatever wants to happen—we allow it. No obstruction, no condemnation, no opposition, no struggle, no conflict. Let what happens, happen. This means dropping notions…
Osho, from the exposition of Lao Tzu’s nondual philosophy it is clear that he had attained supreme knowing. Then why is it that only a handful in the world have taken his vision of life as their guiding light? Is this very lack of acceptance not a harsh criticism of his standpoint? And does the wide adoption of Aristotle not prove the excellence of his science? Please throw light on this!
These statements of Lao Tzu are among the finest ever uttered by man. He stands on the last frontier where nothing more can be said—beyond is silence. On that ultimate boundary he says a few things. Only when someone reaches there can he understand; if he does not, he cannot. In that, there is no fault of Lao Tzu. And there are some things you will not know until they become part of your own experience. A small child—if you tell him things that are not part of his experience—will hear like a deaf person; he will forget. They will not even be imprinted on his memory, because only that is imprinted which matches experience. Our experience must resonate somewhere. What Lao Tzu says does not match our experience anywhere. That his book survives at all—is that not something! His words do not meet our experience anywhere. Lao Tzu says:…