When and how does understanding become being?

Osho, Lao Tzu says, nothing needs to be done; understanding is enough. Explain when and how understanding becomes being?

Your inner attachments to anger are intact. You have not yet seen anger’s poison. For if poison is seen, you won’t say, “Granted, it is poison, but to reform the child a little dose may be given.” Who gives poison to reform anyone? Has anyone ever been improved by poison? Has any child ever been improved by anger? You know the truth: he can be spoiled, yes; he is never improved by anger. Has any order ever been truly established by anger? It may be disturbed—that is likely; how will it be created? And even if some order is produced by anger, it will be deception, false. If your wife becomes quiet out of fear of your anger, that quiet is not peace; inside her fire will go on burning. From such quietness no love can be born. She may become your slave, but not your beloved. And a slave…

Osho, “understanding” — what kind of phenomenon is it?

On the second day he saw—he is doing it all day; three or four times a day, for an hour each time—he saw that this anger is toward no one; this anger is within me. And today was his third day. He came and said, “I am astonished: the moment it became clear that it is toward no one, that it is within me, it was as if something inside took its leave—everything has become quiet. I am utterly unable now: if someone abuses me at this moment, I will not be able to get angry. At least not at this moment. Because it is as if a great weight inside has been thrown out. Everything is empty.” Understanding means: whatever happens within you happens knowingly, in your awareness, in your wakefulness, in your consciousness. Whatever! And then much will stop happening by itself. And what stops—that is sin. And…

Osho, we have understood that you are continuously clapping with one hand and we are not hearing it. But how will our clap sound with one hand?

The answer is with you—you are the answer. So when you say, “We have understood that you are continuously clapping with one hand and we are not hearing it,” you have not understood. If you had, then listen. Nothing would remain to be asked. In the very listening, the happening would occur. Here I will speak; there you will listen. Here there will be no one speaking; there no one listening—the happening will happen. In the moment of listening, you will not be. If you are, how will you listen! You will dissolve completely; you will not be. You will remain a hollow, empty temple in which my voice will echo. In that very listening the one-hand clap will begin to sound. In that listening you will find that what we groped for outside is present within. But every question of yours shows that you take some raw understanding to…

Osho, you say the same thing in countless ways. But when I listen to you, it feels as if I am hearing it for the first time. And I feel so much joy that I don’t feel like going back home. What should I do—what can I do—so that I can just keep listening to you!

You will feel as if you have been made to rise out of season, before time—as if you were not yet to go and yet had to go. And if you go in that way, your home will become even more desolate than before. I do not want to make your home desolate; I want to make your home a temple. I want that when you go home, your home’s new form is revealed. I do not want to tear you away from home, from the world, from family life. That is the newness of my sannyas: I do not want to sever you from the world; I want to join you to the world in such a way that your connection with the world becomes a connection with the Divine. Let the world no longer be a barrier between you and the Divine; let it become a means. If…

Why is it that no revolution takes place even after understanding? If we practise non-action, what will happen to labour? How is perfection in emptiness attained? If the vessel is empty, it will also disintegrate? What is the way to empty the mind? Question: lao tzu says that understanding is enough and that transformation takes place together with understanding. We feel that we have understood well but feel no transformation within us. What is the reason? Kindly explain.

Bhagwan Sri: Lao Tzu says that once a matter becomes perfectly clear, there is nothing more to be done, for then the understanding leads all our actions and makes us do what is worth doing. What is not worth doing, falls of its own, just as dry leaves fall from a tree. Nothing is required to be done in order not to do what should not be done. What should be done, happens on its own, and what should not be done, stops happening also. What is this understanding? Since you say that you feel you understand and yet the transformation that Lao Tzu talks of, does not take place! This then can mean only two things: either what Lao Tzu says is wrong or what we call understanding, is not understanding. What Lao Tzu says is not wrong because not he alone but all those who have ever known…