Tao Upanishad #121

It is difficult to find a subtler observer of life than Lao Tzu. Many observe life, but their observation lacks purity; their minds are not like a mirror, they are crowded with thoughts. So observation ceases to be observation and becomes interpretation; thoughts get mixed in. And thoughts destroy the purity of seeing.

There are two kinds of observation. One is when you look at life while filled with thoughts. Then you do not see life at all. You only see the projection of your thoughts on life. You impose your ideas upon existence. You end up seeing what you wanted to see—not what is, but what you had already assumed: your belief, your doctrine, your religion, your scripture. Then you are not a right observer of life.

Life should be seen the way a mirror sees—empty, void. With nothing to add of its own, it only reveals that which is. A silent lake; not a ripple. The moon rises, clouds move across the sky; a reflection forms. And there is another lake, rippled, full of waves. There too the moon’s reflection forms, but it shatters into a thousand fragments. You cannot find the moon. The moon is smeared across every ripple. You will feel moonlight spread over the whole lake; to catch the moon will be difficult.

Your mind is full of waves of thought. When you approach nature carrying scholarship, you miss. You will certainly see something—do not be deceived that what you see is truth. It is the echo of your thought, reflected back. What you had already accepted is what is returning to you. Lao Tzu is a supremely pure observer. He went to nature with no idea. He wanted to see facts directly. It is very difficult—perhaps nothing more difficult—because this is the way to the unveiling of truth.

Lao Tzu is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan, neither Jain nor Buddhist. Lao Tzu has no religion as a sect. Lao Tzu has no scripture. Whatever he saw, he saw without the screen of any shastra, any word; he put all aside. Therefore what appeared to Lao Tzu appears to very few.

Even in Mahavira’s words there is not such purity, because they rest upon a very ancient tradition. In Krishna’s words there is not such purity, for they are the essence of the Vedas and the Upanishads. Buddha’s words are purer than Mahavira’s and Krishna’s, yet even so they are not as pure as Lao Tzu’s. Buddha is rebellious. He denied the Vedas, denied the shastras, put aside the Upanishads. Still, if one searches carefully, one finds in Buddha’s very breath the lingering echo of the Upanishads; it has not vanished. In his words you will find the hidden Upanishad. In each word you will catch the color and fragrance of India’s entire past.

In human history it is almost impossible to find another like Lao Tzu. No echo of the past. No resonance of any scripture. As if Lao Tzu is the first man, and none came before. As if before Lao Tzu there was no culture, no civilization; no conditioning, no imprint. Lao Tzu looks at the world just like the first man.

And the day you too can look in such a way—as if there has been no past behind you, as if you have descended here and now for the very first time, empty and void—on that very instant you will understand Lao Tzu. Before that you will only understand interpretations of Lao Tzu, not Lao Tzu himself. To understand Lao Tzu, you have to become a little like Lao Tzu. Remember this first thing.

In trying to understand Lao Tzu, keep in mind that he has not set out to prove some doctrine. He has no doctrine. He is seeking the principle inherent in life itself. He is not imposing anything; he is trying to reveal whatever is there. He lifts the veil from facts. And even in lifting the veil, his art is unique. For the veil can be lifted in many ways. The veil of a woman walking on the road can be snatched away; you can strip her by force. But then you will only find the body; the grace hidden within that body will vanish. For beauty cannot be seen by force. Beauty is delicate; it breaks. Beauty is exceedingly soft; if you are aggressive, you will never know beauty’s secret. It is like leaping upon a flower, tearing off its petals, and then searching where the beauty went.

You can strip a woman, but you cannot make her naked. This is the sweet story of the Mahabharata: Duryodhana wanted to make Draupadi naked, and could not. Do not imagine some Krishna was sitting there to miraculously lengthen her garment. Who is sitting anywhere to lengthen anyone’s garment? But existence has this order: whenever you try by force to undress someone, the cloth lengthens—just as if it keeps lengthening. The more you force, the more the mystery hides. If you want to reveal a mystery, you must entice it—do not attack. If you want a secret to open, go with loving persuasion, not violent insistence.

Duryodhana symbolizes all who have tried to open life’s secrets by force. Duryodhana is a great scientist. This is the method of science. Science is violation, coercion. Hence the more science opens things, the longer the cloth becomes; the more it keeps lengthening. And it will go on lengthening.

I was reading that great scientist Heisenberg. He writes: formerly we thought the atom was the ultimate. From Democritus on, the notion was that “atom” means indivisible. But then the cloth lengthened. The atom split; came the nucleus. Again it was thought: now we have reached the last word, the mystery is revealed. But the cloth lengthened. Whenever we thought the mystery had opened, the cloth lengthened. The nucleus split too. Now electron, neutron, proton. And Heisenberg says: we can no longer say with assurance that these are the last. Soon electrons too will split. The cloth continues to lengthen and will go on lengthening, because the mystery keeps receding.

I said: you can strip a woman, not make her naked. When you strip her, she hides in even more subtle garments. All her beauty disappears; her entire mystery withdraws into some deep cave. You can violate the body, not the soul. And to violate the body is like violating a corpse—she is not present there. You cannot even break virginity, for virginity is a very deep matter.

Lao Tzu did not go to life like a scientist to observe. He did not spread life out on a laboratory table. Nor did he dissect life, nor break it into parts. He did not tear life. Tearing is fanaticism; to tear is to become Duryodhana. Draupadi kept becoming naked before Arjuna; suddenly when it was Duryodhana, the story ended and the prayer arose for the cloth to lengthen. The scientist approaches nature’s Draupadi like Duryodhana; Lao Tzu approaches like Arjuna—love-struck; not aggressive, but prayerful; ready to wait, patient, full of supplication. Let it be the will of Draupadi—when within her too such a feeling arises that she wants to open, to reveal, to throw open the doors of her heart.

Thus the secrets Lao Tzu has known are not known even to the greatest scientists, because the very approach is different. Lao Tzu’s way is the way of pure Dharma. Dharma means love. Dharma means non-aggression. Dharma means waiting—with a slow, gentle wooing. Dharma is a kind of courting. As you woo a woman you love, you persuade her slowly; you do not assault her.

Science is over-eager, impatient. It attacks quickly. And then what falls into its hands is debris. However useful, it has little meaning. From it machines can be made, because machines are dead. In its violence science kills nature; thus it becomes master of death. So it knows the reign of death and can make machines—machines are dead things. But it cannot open the secret of life.

Lao Tzu goes near the facts of life as a bridegroom goes near his bride on the first night, lifts the veil softly—lifts it only to the extent he finds the bride consenting, and no more. Then slowly life opens all its secrets. Before Lao Tzu, life has opened such mysteries as have stayed hidden even before great scientists, philosophers, logicians. In front of Lao Tzu, small things have opened immense doors; stones by the roadside have become rubies and pearls.

If you understand Lao Tzu, you will find he speaks of very small things—but the small things become immense. Scientists speak of very big things, and the big things become small. Even if a scientist speaks of the moon and stars, they shrink. When Lao Tzu speaks of flowers and leaves, they grow vast. The touch of religion renders everything enormous. The touch of science renders everything petty.

And it is that touch which is worth seeking—by which every particle becomes Brahman. What will you do with that touch by which, even touching Brahman, it turns into an atom? What will you do by making the vast into the trivial? The more trivialities you accumulate around you, remember, you too will become trivial. What you seek will fashion you. What you uncover will remake you, for the revealer cannot remain outside the event. He who seeks the trivial, and keeps finding more and more trivial, becomes trivial. But the one who knows the art of rendering the small vast—whoever he touches, from there the door to the infinite begins to open—religion has come into his touch. His touch has become alchemical. And in that touch, he himself will slowly be surrounded by the vast; he will become vast.

Keep these facts in mind, then it will not be difficult to understand the great secrets hidden in Lao Tzu’s very small statements.

Lao Tzu says: When a man is born, he is soft and weak.

Children are born in every home. But have you ever seen that children are soft, weak? The old die in every home—have you observed that the old are hard and stiff? If you have seen this, you have found a great secret of life: if you want to remain ever-living, remain soft. For any reason, do not become hard. Hardness, under every circumstance, is the news of death.

And you are surrounded by a thousand forms of hardness. Then you writhe. And then you say, Where is life? You die by your own hand, commit slow suicide. Because you go on becoming hard. And then you ask, Where is life? You ask, There is no peace. You ask, There is no bliss. You ask, The thrill of life is lost; the dance is lost; there is no poetry. How could there be? You are hard—and hard in so many dimensions.

All your training is to make you hard. The Hindu says, be a staunch Hindu—hard. The Mohammedan advises, be a rigid Muslim. Let no one shake you; become a rock. The Christian teaches: better die than ever abandon your doctrine. You praise such people: how firm a man! But do you know firmness means hardness? Hardness means death.

Lao Tzu catches a very small fact—but seen with very open eyes. He sees: when a man is born, he is soft and weak; by death he is hard and rigid. When things and plants are alive, they are soft and pliable; when dead, brittle and dry. Therefore hardness and inflexibility are companions of death, and softness and gentleness companions of life.

This is not a shastra-quotation. Have you seen such a sentence in any scripture? In any Upanishad, any Veda, any Bible, any Koran? If you search, you will find the opposite everywhere in the scriptures. This sentence you will find only in the scripture of life. Hence Lao Tzu is utterly fresh—like morning dew, like the night’s moon and stars, like new sprouts upon the trees. Completely fresh—bringing news straight from life. His message is alive. He is not bent on proving any scripture. He says only this much: look a little carefully at life, and you will find the keys.

If you have lost the keys, you lost them nowhere else but in scriptures. One sits down as a Hindu, one as a Muslim—both dead. Can a living man be a Hindu? Can a living man be a Muslim? Can a living man be a Jain? How can a living man be enclosed in a sampradaya? A sampradaya is the dead form of Dharma. Where the soul has departed and only the corpse remains—that is sampradaya.

Once Jainism was alive when Mahavira was alive. It was not alive because of you; it was alive because of Mahavira. Then Mahavira’s fragrance faded. You buried Mahavira’s body; but you go on carrying his words’ corpse. What you did with Mahavira’s body, you should have done with his words too, for words are corpses. Truth is nishabda—wordless. When Mahavira spoke those words, life was in them—because from the inner wordless those words arose. They were born from inner silence; suffused with inner awakening, they were fresh—flowers plucked just now from the garden, given to you by Mahavira. But how long will the flower live in your hands? From the moment it was plucked, decay began. A little greenness lingers for a while; soon that too is gone. When Mahavira is gone, the garden is gone, the source gone from where flowers came. You go on carrying those dead flowers.

People put flowers in their Bibles. Then the flowers dry; a small stain of color remains on the page—just a memory that once there was a living flower.

It is not only the flower in the Bible that is dead; the words kept in the Bible are just as dead—only a memory that once they were alive, a trace, a footprint. The river has merged into the ocean; only the dry bank, the spread of sand remains. You are informed that once a river flowed here—but now it is not here.

A sampradaya is a dead event. Hence the sectarian man you will always find rigid. The religious man you will always find soft. Know the difference by this. The religious man is pliable. You will find him humble. He will be willing to bend; willing to understand the other; willing to make room for new truths. If you show him a new sky, he will not close his eyes; he will add the new sky to his old one and become the master of a vaster sky. If you give him a new truth, he will not say: I cannot accept this, it is not in my shastra. How small are shastras; how vast is truth. Truth can never be contained in any scripture. The religious person is always pliant; he is childlike.

Lao Tzu says: soft and weak. Here lies the whole secret. Softness you might accept—but you will not accept weakness. And softness always comes with weakness. You do not want weakness; therefore you want to be hard. Hardness always comes with strength. The arithmetic is simple: why does man prefer hardness? Because hardness looks like strength; softness appears like weakness.

But Lao Tzu says: only life is weak; only death is strong.

Can you kill a dead man? There is no way. What can you do with a dead man? Can you change him? If he was a Hindu, can you make him a Muslim? How will you? With a dead man you can do nothing. He has become so hard—his firmness without end, his strength without limit. Bang your head a thousand times, your voice will not reach a deaf man’s heart; it will not reach a dead man. A living man is certainly weak. The mark of life is weakness. Weakness is a profound phenomenon. Weak means there is something that can break, that can be lost, that can vanish.

A flower blooms; a rock lies nearby. It was there yesterday, the day before, and will be there tomorrow and the day after. The flower has opened this morning; by evening it will be gone. Will you then say rock is superior to the flower because it is stronger? Crush the flower in your fingers, it becomes dust. To break a rock is not so easy—perhaps you may break before the rock does. And you need not even crush the flower—just wait. It came in the morning, by evening it will fall on its own. But the flower has life. The flower has beauty—granted, if only for a moment; but it is. Precisely because it has something, it is weak; it can be lost. The rock has nothing to lose. Remember: whoever has something will be weak; whoever has nothing will be strong. And the more your inner wealth grows, the more delicate you will become—for the greater the wealth, the greater the risk of losing it.

You will not find anyone weaker than Buddha or Lao Tzu. For they are soft, and possess the supreme treasure of life. Not one flower but thousands bloom within Buddha and Lao Tzu. Only he who has can lose; he who has nothing—what can be taken from him?

I have heard: In Japan there was a fakir. The old tale says: the emperor used to make rounds of the capital at night. Often he saw that fakir awake. Under a tree he would be sitting, or standing, or walking—but always awake. The emperor was puzzled. One day he could not restrain his curiosity and asked: Many times I pass here; what are you guarding? I see dry bread crumbs, a broken bowl. No one would even try to steal them. A torn quilt, tattered clothes—nothing I can see worth guarding. What are you guarding?

The fakir laughed and said: There is something within. Since that has been born, fear of losing has been born. I am very weak and soft. Within, something is blossoming—like a bud. I used to be a desert like you; I slept well—there was nothing to lose, no fear. Now a little oasis is forming; now there is fear. My hands and feet tremble. I fear the new possibility rising in my breath might be destroyed by a small mistake. The flower has not yet settled in my hand; only intimations have begun.

When you enter meditation, you will know: a flower begins to blossom within. Then every step is taken carefully. Then each word is uttered with awareness, fearing your own word might destroy the new possibility arising in your very being. Then you cannot be angry—not because you have become compassionate to others, but because now you possess a treasure that can be scorched in anger’s fire. You will not quarrel, you will not debate, for now there is something to safeguard that may be lost.

When something precious is born, you become weak—remember this. Like a woman when pregnant, when a new life is in her womb, she becomes delicate. But no woman is more beautiful than a pregnant woman. The aura of beauty around her face did not exist before. For the wasteland is becoming an oasis; life is flowering in her. But then she becomes gentle; she walks with care, rises with care. There is something to be protected—something more valuable than herself. Even at the cost of her life, a new life is beginning; that must be protected. A flower is blooming that can wither at any moment.

In this world, you will find rocks powerful, flowers weak. This creates a dreadful situation: you may begin to aspire to be a rock. Granted a rock is strong—but it is dead. What will you do with its strength? Its deadness will kill you. No naughty children will come to break that rock; no bird, no beast; no gardener will come to cut it. It is very safe. But what will you do with that safety? It is the safety of a tomb.

Life is soft, and life is weak. Only as long as you are willing to be soft and weak will you be the owner of life. The day you become hard and strong, the stream of life in your hands begins to dry up. Only death can be hard and powerful. And you all want to be powerful; therefore you have become tombs.

A religious person wants to be weak. The word weak in your mind is loaded with condemnation. But for a religious person this is the deepest treasure—that he wants to be weak. When he bows his knees and lifts his face to the sky in prayer, he is weaker than a small child. He trembles. His words emerge lisping—what can he say to Paramatma? He weeps. Kneeling in prayer, he has become a child again. A new child is being born within him. That is what we call dwija—the twice-born. When such a delicate new child is born within you again, your second birth has happened. Until then you were a desert; now you are pregnant with your own second birth. A womb has been initiated within you from which your eternal form, your Sanatan form will arise.

Lao Tzu has seized the point. You may want softness, but you do not want weakness—hence the trouble. And softness will always be weak. Can softness be hard?

In every way whenever you desire power—and you desire power—Nietzsche says: in man there is a single longing, the will to power. Nietzsche and Lao Tzu are two opposite poles. Read them together; then you will see things at their extremes.

Nietzsche says: the longing for power is the sole soul. He says: I have seen flowers, the moon and stars, waterfalls—but I did not find beauty there. Beauty appeared to me when I saw a troop of soldiers drilling, and the sun shining on their bayonets, and the strength in their feet, and the rhythm created by their march, and the gleam of sun on steel—then I knew beauty.

This is a hard beauty. To know it, one needs a stony heart. No wonder Nietzsche went mad. And no wonder Lao Tzu died supremely wise.

The will to power leads to derangement. And from all sides you seek power. You gather wealth because wealth is a medium of power. The more money, the more power. If there are millions in your pocket, then by those millions you become powerful; you can do what you wish—buy women, buy servants. Wealth has made great convenience. Without money a man cannot be very powerful. When there was no money and no medium of exchange, people could not be as powerful as they became through money. That is why money has gained such value in minds. Everything seems to be money.

If there is a rupee in your pocket, it is not just a rupee—there are thousands of things hidden in it. You can say to a man, massage my feet—and he will. That possibility is in the rupee. You can say to a woman, come make love—and she will. That too is in the rupee. If hungry, there is food; if thirsty, there is water. How many things are contained in a single rupee! Without it, how would you carry all these in your pocket? Therefore the rupee becomes the symbol of power. It hides many things. You can have whatever you want, whenever you want. So forget everything else, earn money.

The worshiper of power says: earn money. Everything else will follow.

Jesus has a saying: First seek the kingdom of God; then all else will come automatically by itself. First find the kingdom of Paramatma, and everything else will follow.

The worshiper of power says: first seek the kingdom of the rupee; then everything will follow automatically. Find the kingdom of money; then all comes of itself. No need to seek anything else. Want position? You will get position. Want prestige? You will get prestige. The seeker of money says: want religion? That too can be bought—build a temple, a dharmashala, donate. If you have money, you can have anything.

The seeker of power seeks money—or politics. The higher the post, the more thousands will be in his hands—their life and death in his control. What pleasure is there in being a president? For the sake of presidency, what nightmares people endure! What suffering! Thousands of abuses, sieges, disturbances—and still they cling to the office. When they get there, what do they get? Power. If the nation is of four hundred million, then the lives and deaths of four hundred million are in his hand. If he plunges the country into war, millions may die; if he averts war, millions may live. Great power.

The seeker of power seeks power in every way. If he marries, it is to have power over a wife. If a woman marries, it is to make a husband a slave. If such a man has children, it too is for power. For where will you find beings more helpless than your own children? Over them you can exercise a mastery you cannot over anyone else in the world. If you cannot be the lord of a great society, at least you can be lord of a small family. It may be difficult to be a Stalin, but in your own house every man can be a dictator—there his command will prevail.

But the more power you gather, remember, the more you die—the harder you become. You lose your flexibility; you cannot bend. How can the rich bow? They remain stiff. How can the renunciate bow? He too remains stiff.

It happened. A Jain monk, Acharya Tulsi, years ago organized a conference. I was invited. Morarji Desai was then in power; he too came. Naturally, Acharya Tulsi sat on a high seat and made everyone sit below. It pricked Morarji. He was no small mahatma either. Two aspirants of office confronted each other. Otherwise, having invited guests, Acharya Tulsi should have sat alongside; they were guests, and equality was expected. But he sat on his high seat and made all sit below. No one else minded, but Morarji was hurt. He asked first: since this meeting has been called, let us begin with this question—why are you seated above and we below?

Two aspirants for status collided. Tulsi was a little uneasy; he found no answer. Had it been a matter of doctrine, he could have explained; but life—then it is difficult. He looked around, and could only say: because tradition is that the guru sits above. Morarji said: you are not our guru. Sit above with those who are your disciples; we are guests and expect equality.

I saw things going awry; there would be no way to proceed. I said to Acharya Tulsi: if you allow, I can answer Morarji. And if Morarji is willing to listen. Otherwise I will not speak. Tulsi wanted the fuss to subside; he said: certainly. Morarji said: fine, answer me; I want an answer.

I asked him: let us find the answer in the question itself. Why did it hurt you? Tulsi is sitting above; look at the lizard—she sits higher still; a crow is sitting higher. Would you go quarrel with them? Neither with lizard nor crow. Why quarrel with Tulsi? Let him sit. Why this pain? Where is the wound? You too wanted to sit above; that ambition was hurt. And if you had been seated where Tulsi is, would you have asked this question? If we all were below and you were above with him, would you still have asked? So do not say: why are we made to sit below? Say only: why am I made to sit below? Do not hide your ‘I’ behind ‘we’; bring it into the open. And if you understand your ‘I’, there will be no difficulty in understanding Tulsi’s ‘I’. You are fellow travelers on the same path. You are hurt at being placed below; he rejoices that Morarji is made to sit below. Both speak the same language. There is no real question. If we, who are sitting below, sit in such a way that whether we are below or not makes no difference, the joy of making you sit below will vanish for Tulsi. His relish is precisely that he has made India’s finance minister sit underneath. And your pain is precisely that India’s finance minister has been made to sit underneath. Your pain and his pleasure are the two sides of the same coin. Either he must drop his pleasure and come down—or you drop your pain and be content to sit below.

But man’s blindness has no boundary. Morarji at least understood—often I feel politicians are not as political as your so-called holy men. Morarji said: I will think over this, reflect on it. The matter was smoothed over and the discussion moved on. When all were departing and I went to take leave of Tulsi, he put his hand on my shoulder and said: you gave a fine reply—shut his mouth. I was surprised! A reply to Morarji only—not to Tulsi? It was a reply to both.

Aspirants to position seek position even through renunciation. The ambitious—whether they gather wealth or throw it away—their craving for status operates in every case.

Just last week I received a letter from three nuns of Tulsi’s order: because they read my books, he expelled them from the order. They wrote: we are in great difficulty—what shall we do? And he says: how did you dare read those books without my permission!

This is not sainthood; it is worse than being a soldier. Even a soldier has the freedom to read any book he wishes. To be dependent even for reading a book! Permission required! And because it was forbidden, still they read—and were thrown out. Old nuns, who have done nothing else in life and can do nothing else; one is ill, cannot even walk; no family. To throw them out thus is not the sign of saintliness. There is deep unholiness hidden there.

But the ambitious are always unholy. Their desire is that none be above them.

Acharya Tulsi wanted to understand from me about meditation. He said: we shall talk in absolute privacy. I said: why privacy? Others can be present. Because all other matters you discussed with me in public. He said: no, this is a deep subject, only in private. The sole reason: if his followers came to know that even regarding meditation he asks someone else, that he himself does not know meditation, then his status would be at risk.

Never meditated, never known meditation—learned shastras and became a pandit; known nothing. Skillful only with words; but no movement within. And there cannot be any movement, because movement within happens only when you accept being soft and weak.

The will to power means you want to possess the other. Look carefully, very carefully: only the truly weak want to possess the other. Now you will be in a complex tangle. He who consents to be weak is the truly powerful—because he has no fear. If softness and weakness are the signs of life, he is content. He is ready to perish, but not ready to lose life. He is not prepared to become a rock—he chooses to be a flower. Granted, by evening the flower will fall—let it fall. But while it is, it brings an infinity into the world of matter; it descends as beauty into form from the formless. If only for that while—let the veena of life sound that long; that is enough. If even for a moment it sounds, it is infinite. You can lie like a stone for eternity and it has no value.

When a man is born, he is soft and weak; by death he is hard and rigid. When things and plants are alive, they are soft and pliable; when dead, brittle and dry.

Go, look, test life, and you will find Lao Tzu right. Small plants survive; when the storm comes, the great trees fall. The great trees stand stiff, wanting to fight the storm with their strength. The small trees are weak; they do not fight—they simply bend. The storm comes and passes; the small trees stand up again. The big trees fall—and once they fall, there is no way to rise again. When the hard falls, it only dies. When the soft falls, it makes no difference: it rises again. The soft is elastic, resilient; it can bend. The more resilient you are, the more alive you are.

Are you resilient in your principles? Are you a theist and can you listen calmly to an atheist? He may be right. If you are resilient, the stream of knowledge within will remain alive. Can you listen to your opponent’s statement as calmly as to your own? If you are hard you will say: why listen to the opponent at all?

It is written in scriptures—Hindu shastras and Jain shastras as well. In Hindu shastras it is written: if a mad elephant is chasing you and a Jain temple is nearby where you could take shelter and save yourself, do not go into the Jain temple. Better be crushed under the elephant’s feet than take refuge in a Jain temple even in danger. The same sentence is written in Jain scriptures too. Very rigid people—rigidity near madness. How can such people ever know living knowledge?

The stream of life is very soft, very flexible. Do not be hard in principles, beliefs, faiths. Only then will you see knowledge growing within you each moment. The moment you become hard, growth stops. If knowledge is to be born moment by moment, then its child will be born each moment; you will remain pliant. To your last breath remain pliant. Do not insist that only what I say is right. Always say: thus I have known—but otherwise may also be right, for I have not known the whole of life. Life is vast; I am very small. I have known one shore of the ocean; it is not necessary that all shores be the same. Somewhere there will be rocks, somewhere a spread of sands, somewhere trees, somewhere mountains. Shores will be different, a thousand forms. It will be the same ocean. What I have known—my corner—is like this. Of the other corners I know nothing. The one speaking in absolute contradiction to me may also be right; life is so vast it contains all contradictions within itself.

This is the meaning of the immensity of life—it absorbs all discords into one harmony. Heraclitus has a very lovely sentence: God is summer and winter, day and night, life and death, hunger and satiety. God is all. He is summer and He is winter; day and night; defeat and victory; hunger and fulfillment.

If by some shore you have known God as light, and another comes and says God is the great darkness, do not jump to quarrel. God is both. Otherwise where would the great darkness be?

Most scriptures of the world say God is light. But the sect in which Jesus was initiated—the method by which he realized God—was the Essenes. They are almost lost now. In their ashrams Jesus was raised. In their sayings it is written: God is great darkness. The Essenes have their arguments: such peace as is in darkness is not in light; light is agitation. If there is too much light, you cannot sleep. How then will you rest in the Ultimate? He is great darkness. And light always has a limit; darkness has none. And God is the infinite. Light must be brought into being; when the fuel is spent it is gone. It has a beginning and an end. Darkness is beginningless and endless; none brings it into being, none has ever dispelled it; it simply is.

The Essenes’ statement has meaning. Those who say God is light—their statement too has meaning, from another angle. They say: God is light, for when God is, everything becomes as clear as in light. True—one goes blind in darkness; in light one sees, there is darshan. In darkness there is fear; in light one becomes fearless. Their statement too has truth. In fact, if you are pliant, you will not find untruth anywhere; you will find truth everywhere. And only when you begin to find truth everywhere have you learned the lesson of life.

Do not become stiff, do not become hard—else you are inviting death. Remain flexible until your last breath; then you will defeat death. Death will certainly come, but it will not be able to kill you. Death only kills the one who has become hard. Death will come—this body will go—but you will remain untouched. Death will not be able to touch you. You will be like a lotus; the water of death will not even touch you—if you are resilient. If you are hard, only then do you die. You die not by your own nature, but by your hardness. The shell of stiffness tightens around you and squeezes you—and you die.

So do not become hard in sampradaya, in doctrine, in shastra—in anything. But hardness comes in very strange ways. You listen to me, you love me. If someone speaks against me, instantly you become hard. You are finished—you gained death from me, not life.

He too may be right; remain pliant. Listen to him carefully—more carefully than to those who love me. Because with those who love me you will meet more often, you will move among them; you will befriend them. But the one who hates me—listen to him very carefully. He reveals another aspect. And truth is vast. Do not say: you are wrong. He may be right. Listen carefully and try to extract what truth there is from him.

The seeker of truth seeks truth—what does it matter from where it comes? The thirsty longs for water—what does it matter if it is from a river or a well or a tap or rain? The thirsty wants water. The thirsty for truth wants truth. He does not close his doors; he remains open on all sides. Whoever comes—he extracts the water of truth and thanks him.

If you can thank even the one who abuses me, then you have begun to transform him too. He could not kill you; you have begun to give him life. He will be startled; he will not be able to believe; you will have shaken him. Do not build a sampradaya around me. Love me—but do not turn me into your prison. Love can become a temple or a jail. It is in your hands. If love remains pliant, it is a temple; if flexibility is lost, it becomes a prison. The distance is very thin. You will save yourself only if each step is taken with care. Otherwise, to avoid a sampradaya is very difficult—almost impossible. For whomever we love, we become blind.

You will recognize others’ blindness—but not your own. You will recognize: this man is insane after Mahavira; that man after Buddha; that man after Krishna. You will recognize others. It is of no use recognizing others. Keep an eye on yourself—do you bind yourself to any sampradaya? Do you make my words into shastra?

That is why daily I speak even in opposition to myself—so you cannot make a scripture out of me. If you attempt, you will be in great trouble. I have said almost everything that could be said. Krishna said one aspect—his words can become scripture. Lao Tzu another—his too can become scripture. Krishnamurti, who is utterly anti-scriptural—his scripture is certain to be made, for a more consistent man is hard to find. In forty years he has said nothing but one thing, repeating it. You cannot make a scripture out of me, because I have said all that could be said. I have not worried at all about contradicting myself—today this, tomorrow that. If you try to make a scripture, you will go mad. You will not be able to extract any doctrine from me. I have arranged this deliberately.

But love is so blind it can break even my arrangement. Because when you love someone you cannot see his contradictions; you cannot even see his paradoxes. You cannot see that he himself speaks against his own earlier statements. You trust that whatever he says must be right, consistent; all must be fine. For love first assumes correctness, and only then thinks. I fear you may make a shastra. It will not harm me—I gain or lose nothing. But you will die. Many have been crushed beneath scriptures; do not die. Be alert to this.

When things and plants are alive, they are soft and pliable; when they die, they are brittle and dry.

Therefore you will always find pundits dry—juiceless. There you will find plenty of argument, but no poetry. The pundit is utterly dry, for what is more dead than a pundit? In Buddha there is poetry; in his words a rhythm, a beauty. You will feel his words are moist, coming from some inner spring; the dew has not yet dried. But the pundit’s words are parched; if you burned Buddha’s words, smoke would arise—too moist with love. If you burned the pundit’s words, the fire would burn clean—no smoke; too dry, no inner sap. Borrowed—never arising from his own life, never steeped in existence. He has not known life’s waters, only the dry heat of argument.

Remember: whenever you speak, do not speak from scholarship. If it is only scholarship, better remain silent. Whenever you speak, see that it comes soaked from your heart. Then you will find it has rasa; it will moisten the other too, it will drown the other in itself. A pundit may convince another, may prove a doctrine—but he never converts. He may argue so the other has no answer, is embarrassed—and still never transforms the other’s heart. Because words that do not arise from one’s own heart never reach the other’s heart. As deep as the words arise, that deep they enter the other. From head, they reach head; from throat, throat; from heart, heart; from soul, soul. The movement is exactly proportionate to the depth from which they arise.

Whenever something dies, it becomes dry. You have seen a corpse—how it stiffens! The pundit’s words are like that; so are the sectarian’s beliefs.

Hardness and inflexibility are companions of death.

You want to escape death, yet you cultivate hardness. You want to escape death, yet you cultivate rigidity. With one hand you guard what, with the other, you destroy. Your situation is like the result to which Western brain surgeons have come: man has two brains joined in the middle. If they are cut in the middle, one person begins behaving like two. His left hand picks up something—his right hand does not know, and puts it back where it was. As if two people. A foolish situation is created. With one hand he eats because one brain feels hunger; with the other he washes his hands and rises from the meal, while the first hand continues to eat. In life, generally, your state is like this: with one hand you build, with the other you break; with one hand you ask, with the other you refuse; with one you open doors, with the other you close them.

Hence so much anxiety in your life. Anxiety means: you are doing something self-opposed. Anxiety means only this—that you are engaged in your own contradiction. You may not know it. The greatest contradiction is this: who wants to die? No one. Yet everyone becomes hard, inflexible; practices rigidity lifelong. Then death is natural. If you do not want to die, if you want to know the nectar, do not lose flexibility.

Socrates was dying. Even at the time of death his flexibility remained. At the very moment of dying, friends and disciples were weeping. Socrates said: be quiet. There is no need to weep now, for I am still alive. And besides, it is not yet certain I will die. A disciple said: how long will it be? The sun is near setting—and when it sets you will be given the poison. They are pounding the hemlock outside; the sound is heard. Are you not anxious? Socrates said: there are only two possibilities. One, I will truly die. If I truly die, what is there to fear? When I am no more, who is there to be afraid? If I die utterly, as the atheists say, then why fear? Before birth you were not—does that create any anxiety? After death I will be as I was before birth. What is there to worry about? Did you ever sit thinking, I was not before birth—what suffering! Non-being—who suffers? Socrates said: it may be the atheists are right and I die utterly—then what fear? As long as I lived, fine. Then it ends. No one remains to carry on. Or it may be the theists are right—that I will survive death. If I survive, then I do not die—why be anxious?

This is the mark of an open man—so pliant, even at the moment of death.

Out of fear many become theists at death’s door; they think perhaps there is a God—let us pray. As death nears, more atheists turn theist. Before death, in youth, men are more atheist; as old age comes, they turn theist. Therefore in temples, mosques, churches, you will find the old sitting. The young you will find in the tavern, the club, the brothel; the old in the temple. The young do not worry; their trust is still intact. As their legs shake, trust weakens; fear catches hold; they head to the temple, take God as support.

Socrates neither fears nor leans on any support. He says: I do not know whether I will survive or not; let it be known first, only then can any decision be made. This is flexibility.

You know nothing, and you have made so many decisions! You know nothing, and you have accepted so many doctrines! You know nothing, and you sit like a knower. Upon deep ignorance you have spread the cover of scholarship; your ignorance is not visible. Because of that scholarship you have become hard; you have lost your elasticity.

Pundits come to me; I have never found anyone as dull-witted as they. Their heads full, their hearts empty. They do not speak; the Upanishads speak through them. They do not speak; the Gita repeats itself through them. They are tape recorders, not men. They are gramophone records, not human beings—and worn-out records, not new from the market. Often like a record with a broken groove where the needle gets stuck and repeats the same line: Hare Krishna, Hare Rama; Hare Krishna, Hare Rama. This they call mantra. It is only a broken gramophone record with a stuck needle. They go on repeating. No way forward, no way back; one groove repeating.

A deep inertia is seen in pundits. Small children are far more full of knowledge. Their ignorance is there, but it is not covered. It is like the open sky; all roads are open; they can go anywhere—their freedom is clear. Remain always like a small child—eager to learn, curious, ardent. Pundit means one eager to teach, not to learn. Pundit means one looking for disciples, not a guru.

The learner is always searching everywhere; he is a seeker. From wherever it comes, he thanks and takes it. He never allows the past to become a burden; he keeps the future open. He never lets the past build a wall between himself and the future—that I have known, now what is left to know?

However much you have known, it is nothing compared to what remains. And even if you knew everything knowable, there is in this world something that is unknowable—that cannot be known by knowing. That is Paramatma. He is known by being, not by knowing.

Therefore, when the army is obstinate, it loses the war.

For obstinacy is hardness.

When a tree becomes unyielding, it is cut down. The place of the big and strong is below; the place of the gentle and weak is on the summit.

That is why I say Lao Tzu is fresh like the dew. He has drunk directly from life’s banks—not from any scripture. He says: the great and strong seem to you to be on the summit; you are mistaken. Only the soft, pliant, weak are on the summit—because the soft and pliant are beautiful, true, alive. Roots are in the earth; they are strong. The flower is on the summit; it is weak. Large stones, strong stones, lie in the foundation of the temple; the golden spire—weak, delicate—is above. This is the truth in life too. If you see otherwise, there is only one reason: you are standing on your head.

I have heard: a donkey once went to meet Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. He was doing a headstand in his lawn early morning. The guard at the gate was dozing. Had a man passed by, he would have stopped him; but seeing a donkey, he said, let it go—what harm can it do? It cannot be a conspirator, cannot carry a bomb. It will nibble some grass and move on.

But that donkey could talk; he was no ordinary donkey—he had learned to speak by reading newspapers. He went and stood near Nehru and said: listen, Panditji!

Nehru was a little startled. He looked up and forgot he was doing a headstand. He said: I have never seen such a donkey. Why are you standing upside down?

The donkey said: great sir, you are doing a headstand; I am not upside down.

When you stand on your head, what is above looks below; what is below looks above. You have looked at life standing on your head; therefore those seated in Delhi look above to you, and the man digging a ditch by the roadside looks below. Those who have amassed wealth—Birla, Rockefeller—look above to you; and the beggar sleeping peacefully under a tree at noon looks below. You are upside down.

Lao Tzu has seen life standing upright. He saw: in the hearts of emperors there is no peace, no love, no bliss. Sometimes he has seen rainbows of joy in the life of a beggar, but never in the life of emperors. Otherwise, were Buddha and Mahavira foolish to leave palaces and become beggars? They must have seen some secret of life. Lao Tzu says the same: he saw that life rejoices in very small things. In the race for position and power, life’s joy is lost.

The day you are content to be a nobody, life will shower. Therefore the peace with which a beggar sleeps—no emperor sleeps thus. The ordinary man, unknown to all—he loves in a way that those known to all cannot.

There was a great American actress—the greatest of her day—Marilyn Monroe. She committed suicide. She married many times. No woman of this century was as beautiful. The greatest men in the world were eager to marry her. In the bloom of youth she killed herself. She wrote the cause: I am utterly incapable of love, and I have not been able to receive love. She was an empress of the film world, and yet could not find love. What happened? What hindered?

Love grows only in the heart where the will to power does not grow. Where the longing for power sprouts, love dies—its breath is strangled. And he who has not known love—what has he known? He may sit on a summit—he has lost life. He who knew wealth and not Dharma has squandered life; he has known nothing. He who knew words and shastras and not truth remains deprived. When all sides were brimming and all could be had, he returned thirsty and empty-handed.

Lao Tzu says—this is his observation—that the big and strong are below; the gentle and weak are on the summit. And the day you look standing upright—and by upright I mean thoughtless, for thought has turned your head upside down—the day you look without thought, you will see life’s simple truth: to be ordinary here is to be extraordinary. To be nothing here is the way to be everything.

Live silently—as trees live, as birds and animals live, as the moon and stars live—so that no one even knows of you; so that your footprints never appear on the pages of history; so that not even a line arises in the stream of time; so that your signature is nowhere visible. Live as if a line were drawn upon water—drawn and gone. Then you will find great flowers blooming in your life. When you consent to be nothing, to be shunya, then the capacity for purnata arises within you.

Only the shunya can become the purna. Therefore I call shunya the temple of Paramatma. And I call being ordinary, sannyas. The longing to be extraordinary leads to madness. And the longing to be extraordinary is most ordinary—everyone has it. He alone becomes extraordinary who longs to be ordinary. If you look without thought, Lao Tzu’s understanding will become your understanding. And I say again, it is difficult to find a more direct observer of life than Lao Tzu.

Enough for today.