Tao Upanishad #15

Lao Tzu says: if the thing is understood, nothing remains to be done. Then understanding itself brings about whatever is to be done. And what is not worth doing drops away of its own accord, as dry leaves fall from a tree. What is not to be done needs no effort to suppress it; what is to be done needs no effort to make it happen. What is to be done begins to happen; what is not to be done ceases to happen.

What is this understanding? Because you say it seems as if we do understand, and yet the revolution Lao Tzu speaks of does not occur. There are only two possibilities: either Lao Tzu is wrong; or what we take to be understanding is not understanding.

Lao Tzu is not wrong. He is not wrong because what he has said is not his alone; whoever has known on this earth has said the very same thing. Even those who never heard of Lao Tzu—Socrates in Greece says the same; Buddha in India says the same; wherever anyone has known, they have said: understanding is enough.

There are several points; keep them in mind. Then it will become clear that if revolution does not happen, what we call understanding is not understanding.

First, why does the wrong keep happening through us? Why does the right not happen through us? Is the reason our lack of understanding, or something else? If unknowing is the cause, understanding will remove it. If there is some other cause apart from unknowing, understanding will not remove it. The real question is this: if our ignorance is the cause of what happens through us, then knowledge will remove it.

I walk out of this room and bang my head on the wall. If the cause is the darkness in the room, then as soon as there is light, the head-banging will stop. It must stop. If I still bang into the wall even after the light is on—just as I did in the dark—then there are only two conclusions: either there is no light and I only think there is; or the banging had nothing to do with darkness—its cause lay elsewhere, unrelated to dark or light.

And if there is some other cause that even knowledge cannot remove, then it will never be removed. If a thing cannot be removed by knowledge, by what else will it be removed? Who will remove it? For there is nothing higher in us than knowing. If even knowledge does not remove it and we say, “Action will remove it,” then who will act? The ignorant will act. If knowledge cannot remove it, how will the actions of the ignorant remove it?

Yet your question is valid. Because it seems to us that understanding is complete—and still the revolution does not happen. That transformation, that transfiguration does not occur.

Now we must understand that understanding too can be of two kinds. One kind only appears to be understanding, is merely apparent. We have an instrument called intellect. Through intellect we can grasp anything logically. If a well-ordered argument is presented without logical flaws, the intellect accepts: “Yes, I see.” But the intellect’s “seeing” does not bring transformation; revolution does not occur. The intellect is a small fragment of the personality; the personality is vast. That the intellect has understood does not mean your whole being, your very life-energy, has understood.

Until this century the West did not clearly recognize that what we call the human intellect sits atop an unconscious mind nine times more powerful. I explain to you that anger is bad; your intellect agrees. But the intellect has never actually been angry. Anger arises from those nine unconscious layers behind the intellect.

Imagine I live in a house. There is a watchman at the door. The poor fellow has never been angry. Whenever a disturbance happens at the door, the master of the house inside comes out with a gun and creates the havoc. When a preacher comes to advise, he catches hold of the watchman and lectures him: “Anger is very bad; one should not quarrel.” The watchman says, “I understand perfectly. I too see that when there is trouble and the master comes, there is bloodshed. I fully understand.”

But the preacher does not know that the one he is instructing never created the disturbance, and the one who did has no communication with this watchman. They never meet. And when the master comes with the gun, the watchman folds his hands, bows at his feet—because he is the master. When the master goes back inside, the watchman sits on his chair, dozes, and muses, “Very bad—one should not be angry.”

If we divide your mind into ten parts, the intellect is one, and nine parts lie in darkness. All the turmoil of life arises from those dark parts. When sexual desire arises, it arises from the nine parts. When you read a book on brahmacharya (celibacy), it is the one part—the watchman—that reads. You finish the book and feel, “Absolutely right.” But nothing happens through that feeling. When those nine parts fill up with sex-energy, the one part has no strength. They push it aside and come out.

That one part’s job is only this: when there is time, it “understands”; when there is time again, it repents. That one part has no real hearing in the inner court.

Remember, the deeper the layer in the mind, the more powerful it is. Power is not at the circumference; it is at the center. The intellect is our circumference, the outer rampart; no one stores treasure there. Treasure lies hidden in the innermost vault. Our life-energy is hidden in the inner sanctum; the intellect stands at the door. It is through this intellect that we read, hear, and “understand.”

So when Lao Tzu says, “If you understand, transformation happens,” he means: if understanding reaches the center—the innermost master within—then revolution happens.

Our difficulty is real and natural: it seems to us we have understood, yet no revolution follows. We remain where we were. And from this so-called understanding another mischief starts: we become divided. The inner mind makes us do one thing while we wish to do another. Our wish never happens; what happens is what comes from within. Then at the end there is remorse, humiliation, inferiority. One falls in one’s own eyes—“I am worthless.”

This is not the understanding Lao Tzu is speaking about. This intellectual understanding is a counterfeit. It is like someone saying, “If a tree gets water, it flowers.” We go and sprinkle water on the leaves. When no flowers come, we say, “But we watered it, and flowers didn’t come; obviously the one who said it was wrong.” Or we say, “Perhaps what we sprinkled wasn’t water.” Naturally the question will arise—“Flowers didn’t come.”

But the one who said, “If the tree gets water, it flowers,” meant the roots. The irony is, water given to the leaves never reaches the roots; water given to the roots reaches the leaves. Leaves have no mechanism to send water to the roots; roots have the mechanism. The roots are the center of the tree; leaves are the circumference. Leaves may remain or fall—they are nonessential; others will grow. But if the roots go, bringing new roots is nearly impossible.

So understand two things. First, what you call understanding is merely logical, verbal, intellectual—not inner, not of the soul, not total. It does not reach your life-energy; hence transformation does not happen. The point is perfectly understood, and you stand exactly where you were.

Then what to do? How to bring the kind of understanding that reaches the roots?

All our education trains only this so-called understanding. We learn mathematics with the intellect; language with the intellect. It works—for practical life it works—because your inner center has no mathematics opposed to it; otherwise it would not work. If your innermost center had its own mathematics, all schools would be worthless. But there is no mathematics there; so at school you learn arithmetic—there is no inner opposition. You add two and two equals four; no voice within insists two plus two is five. If the inner mind insisted two and two are five, all universities would be rubbish—you could not write four; whenever you tried, you’d write five.

Hence universities succeed for the workaday world. Mathematics is our invention; language is our invention; what schools teach is human invention. If we don’t teach a child language, he will not speak on his own. But no one needs to teach a child anger; he will learn it by himself. If we do not teach mathematics, he will never learn it by himself. But for sex, for lust, no university is needed. Throw him in the jungle—he will learn. It is not a matter of learning; it arises from within.

This means: you run into trouble only with those things that arise from within. With things that don’t arise from within—outer things—you don’t face trouble. You can learn any language; it is surface work, and the inner mind does not oppose it. So schools and universities train the upper layer of the mind. The difficulty begins when you want to change life from within, yet you keep using the same upper layer. There the trouble begins.

You decide, “I will not be angry.” You try to learn this with the same faculty with which you learned mathematics. But anger is one thing and mathematics quite another. Mathematics is man’s invention; anger—if it is anyone’s invention—is nature’s, not man’s. When we bring in “understanding” from that same upper layer, it blocks and nothing happens. To carry understanding into the within, there is a process. Even your present understanding came through training: it took twenty-five years of training for you to settle into “two plus two makes four.”

One day Mulla Nasruddin was seen on the street in fine clothes, a diamond ring on his finger. People were astonished and gathered around. “Mulla, what happened?” He said, “I won a lottery.” “But how?” “For three nights in a row I dreamt of the number seven. Three nights! So I thought: seven times three is twenty-eight. I bought that number.” People said, “Mulla, what are you saying? Seven times three is twenty-one!” Mulla said, “Maybe for you—but the lottery came on twenty-eight.” And that’s that… he won on twenty-eight!

“Two and two make four” is training; it did not arise from within. Now, to reach the inner mind, understanding too must pass through processes.

When Lao Tzu spoke, man was very simple. Let me alert you to the differences that now create obstacles. In Lao Tzu’s time man had no intellectual training, no thick intellectual layer. He was speaking to village folk—simple, guileless, close to nature. There was no intellectual treasure to come in the way. If Lao Tzu were speaking to you, the very first question would be the one you have asked: “We understand you, but…” Those he spoke to never raised this question. In thousands of anecdotes about Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, not one person asks, “We understand, but life doesn’t change.” Many did ask, “We don’t understand—explain!”

Do you see the difference? Many said, “We have not understood, please say it again.” And Lao Tzu would say it again. Once it happened that a man came every morning for twenty-one days and would say, “What you said yesterday I have forgotten. Please explain again.” One day, two days, three, four. A disciple, Matsu, became puzzled. On the fifth day he stopped the man outside the hut: “What is this?” The man said, “I forgot—please let me understand again.” Matsu said, “Get lost! Don’t go in again. One madman is you; the other madman is Lao Tzu. If you come all your life, he’ll go on explaining. For five days I’ve seen you bring the same question, and he again explains the same thing.”

While they were talking, Lao Tzu came out and said, “You’ve come, brother! Come in. You forgot—listen again!”

For twenty-one days the man came. On the twenty-second day he didn’t. The story says Lao Tzu went to his house: “Are you ill? What happened?” The man said, “I have understood.” “And?” “Nothing else: I am a different man.”

Now see the difference. If we had gone to Lao Tzu twenty-one times, we wouldn’t have gone to understand. We would have said, “We understood the first day, but life didn’t change.” That man never said, “Life didn’t change.” He said, “You say, once it is understood, life will change. So let it be understood—that’s all.”

Whenever Buddha spoke—now that his scriptures have been edited—there is a surprise: Buddha would not repeat any line fewer than three times. He would say each line thrice. If you print it that way, the book becomes thrice as long; the reader finds it tedious. When Rahul Sankrityayan first translated the Vinaya Pitaka into Hindi, after every line he put a mark, and in an index indicated “same again,” “same again,” “ditto.” The whole book is full of marks. Why did Buddha repeat so much?

To explain, one gives arguments. But to make something reach within, those ancient, simple people needed only repetition: through repetition the words became a mantra, became suggestible, and entered within. Mere repetition was enough; the more you repeated, the deeper it went.

The intellect understands in one go—so it needs no repetition. If you repeat, the man will say, “Why waste our time? We’ve got it—move on.”

Even today those who work with the unconscious do little else but repeat. A few years ago in Paris there was Emile Coué, a great psychologist, who healed millions. He would only repeat one thing: “You are not ill.” He would have the patient lie down for an hour and go on repeating: “You are not ill, you are not ill.”

The patient might say, “I understand—why say it again and again?” Coué would reply, “I am not concerned with you. You have understood; you always understand. I want it to reach deeper and deeper.” He would keep repeating. Soon the upper intellect—fond of the new, bored by the old—would say, “All right, I’ve heard it,” and fall asleep. This is all hypnosis means: the upper intellect gets bored and sleeps.

Coué would continue. Then the layer behind it would begin to hear; soon it too would tire and sleep. Then the layer behind that would hear. And Coué would go on until the message reached your inner center: “You are not ill.” If the center accepts, “I am not ill,” illness disappears.

For this, mantras, meditations, tantras—so many devices—had to be devised later, when people became sophisticated. In Lao Tzu’s time there was no need. People were simple; the door to their inner mind was open; there was no guard of intellect; anything spoken by a man like Lao Tzu would enter within. Arrangements were there: one went to Lao Tzu only when ready to trust. If someone came eager to argue, Lao Tzu would say, “Go to such-and-such teacher; stay there a while.”

I was reading the life of a Sufi, Ajnabi. A great village pandit, a scholar of grammar, came to hear him and saw that Ajnabi didn’t know grammar, not even proper language. The pandit said, “First teach proper language and grammar to these people you address. Start from the beginning. What are you doing—speaking such lofty things without language or grammar!”

The Sufi said, “Stay here.” He was famed for miracles. The pandit stayed. The Sufi told him, “Every evening dogs and cats gather outside my hut. Begin teaching them grammar.”

It seemed mad; but the Sufi said it—and he was miraculous. Perhaps the dogs and cats were special; perhaps there was a secret. Perhaps by teaching them he himself would learn something. He began. He taught the simplest lessons, but the cats and dogs wouldn’t learn. Six months passed; he was exhausted. The Sufi asked, “Any progress?” “None,” said the pandit. “Did you start from the very beginning?” “From the very beginning!” “And further?” “Not a single step.” “What is the difficulty?” “They don’t know language, they don’t speak. If they could speak, I could teach grammar.”

The Sufi said, “The world I speak of—you know neither its language nor its grammar. If you knew, I could begin with you.”

In old times there was a regular arrangement: if a guru saw someone come to argue, he sent him to a place where only argument went on—so that he would tire and be fed up, and one day return saying, “I have argued much and gained nothing; now say something that makes something happen.”

Then a Lao Tzu would speak.

About another Sufi. Two Sufis lived opposite each other. A disciple of one came and said, “The Sufi across the way spreads false, filthy rumors about you. Why don’t you set him right? Why don’t you speak?” The master said, “Go and ask him the secret. But don’t ask in a hurry—precious things are not told to strangers on the road. Answers given to passersby are only worth the road. What should I do?” “Serve him for a year; come close. When intimacy ripens, then at a right moment ask.”

He served a year, became intimate. One night while pressing his guru’s feet he asked, “You abuse my master and spread rumors—what is the secret?” The guru said, “Don’t tell anyone. I am his disciple. I am forbidden to reveal the secret—go ask him. But again, don’t ask as a stranger; come close.” The disciple said, “What a mess! We took you for an enemy and served you a year—you are his disciple! I must now go back.” He served his original master for two more years. One dawn while bathing the master, he asked, “Tell me today—what is the secret?” The master said, “He is my disciple. I have kept him there to spread false things about me so that those who believe such rumors never come to me—they are the wrong people. My time is precious; I want to spend it on those who seek truth. Those who turn back because of rumors have no seeking. That man is my own. He has served me for twenty years in a way beyond measure; he has saved me from hundreds of useless people.”

This was a regular arrangement. And when someone was full of trust—meaning ready to open the heart directly—

What are modern psychologists or psychoanalysts doing? Just this. Psychoanalysis runs for three years on a patient. He lies on the couch; for hundreds of hours he talks, and the therapist listens. Why? Because, by and by, the patient exhausts the upper, intellectual stuff and then begins to speak deeper things. Those too get exhausted; then more intimate things start coming. An opening happens. After a year of talking, talking, the inner things begin to come out. When the therapist sees that very deep material is surfacing, the time has come: now the man is suggestible; a seed can be planted that will grow into a tree.

Understanding means a thing reaches your innermost layer. But reason will never let it reach. And we insist on understanding through reason. Reason is the mischief-maker—the guard. It says, “Explain to me first. If you convince me, I’ll take you to the master. If you can’t convince me, how can I take you in?” And the trouble is: when it is convinced, it thinks it is the master and that it has understood. Then it finds nothing changes—because the intellect has no power to act. The force to act lies hidden behind it on another plane. Hence the obstruction.

If you want to reach that plane and it doesn’t happen directly—if it does for someone, fine—then first you must find ways to break the guard of the intellect. You must do certain meditations that make you non-intellectual, irrational.

For example, the meditation I use is utterly beyond the intellect. A clever man will run away just seeing it: “What is this—people dancing, yelling, jumping? Madness!” But the one who is dancing and jumping has gone below the plane of the intellect. The intellect deals in reasons: “Why are you laughing? There is nothing to laugh at—first give a reason, then laugh. Why are you crying? There’s nothing to cry about. Why are you jumping? Is the floor on fire? Why are you punching the air? First let someone abuse you, then raise your fist.” The intellect keeps insisting: whatever you do must be reasonable. But have you ever done anything truly alive that was reasonable? When you fall in love, where is the intellect? When you are enraged, where is the intellect? When you feel like killing or like dying, where is the intellect? At the crucial points of life, the intellect is absent. If you keep obeying the intellect, you will never descend to the deep points.

All meditation techniques are designed to break the layer of intellect. Once that layer cracks, you become simple. And when you are simple, an inner seeing arises from which things are clear. Then the question never arises, “I have understood—why no revolution?” To understand is to be transformed. To know is to be transformed. Knowledge is transformation. The question does not arise.

But as we are today, the question does arise. We are split in two. The part that understands has no connection with the part that acts. The doer is different; the knower is different. The house is divided. The one with the power to act does not come to understand; the one who comes to understand has no power to act. The two never meet. What to do?

There is only one way: break the upper layer of “understanding” and step a little into the world of unreason. Be a little unreasonable and see. Then the wall between your two divisions will slowly fall; you will begin to move between them. You will become integrated, whole, one. And that one man—whatever he understands—bears fruit in his life.

We are two. Hence our question entangles our life more and more. With each life it will entangle further, because the division keeps increasing. Break the division somewhere.

In the last camp at Mount Abu, a friend—well educated, in a high government post—came to watch. For two days he just watched. Then he told me, “This I cannot do—what these people are doing.” I asked, “How do you say you cannot? Are you saying it after trying, or without trying? Or is it only fear—that if I jump in, something wild will also come out of me? On what basis do you say it?” He was a little shaken. His wife was with him; he looked at her. I said to her, “Please step out. In your presence perhaps he cannot drop his cleverness. Please move.” He said, “I am saying it out of fear. I feel that if I jump, I’ll create a great commotion.” I said, “Create it—once. You will meet a new face of your own—the real face. At odd moments it bursts out, but then you cannot be its master, because it appears for a moment and hides again.”

Psychologists say anger is temporary madness. It is full madness—only temporary. It stays a little while, so you don’t notice. Then it passes. If it became permanent, you would be insane. But what is temporary can become permanent.

I told him, “Do it.” He said, “I will gather courage, I’ll try.” I said, “It’s not a matter of courage or trying. Blindfold yourself and stand up. And when it starts coming, forget that you are a high officer, well educated, sensible.” On the third day he was leaping. A different person. Afterward he told me, “I am so light I could fly—so light! I don’t know how much illness has left from within. Now I can understand you more accurately.”

So the guard of so-called cleverness that sits on our head must be broken; only then can that understanding arise within. First do something to break this so-called understanding.

Junayd, a Sufi master, would first have a seeker do something mad. He would say, “Go stand in the marketplace and announce: ‘Whoever strikes me with a shoe, I will bless him! Whoever passes without striking me, beware—he will be cursed!’” The man would protest, “What are you saying?” Junayd would say, “First make one round of the town; then we can talk. I cannot work with you as you are. Go, receive a few shoes. Let what sits on your head fall. Then we can speak simply, from within.”

Lao Tzu speaks of the depth of understanding. He is right: cast the hook of understanding, and the fish of revolution will be caught. But you are sitting with your hook in your household bucket. No fish will come there. You yourself know there is no fish in that bucket. You are trying to catch revolution in the intellect; there is no revolution there. The intellect is the most conformist, the most orthodox part of your personality. Nothing will be caught there.

Go deeper—to where the current of life flows, where there is liquidity, where things are born, where the chaos of existence is. Deep within, in the heart, where energy wells up—whence sex arises, anger arises, love arises, hate, compassion arise—there. Not where mathematics and language function; not where geography and history are studied; not where chemistry and physics are known. Where love is born, where hate is born, where the sources of life flow—when the hook of understanding is set there, the fish of revolution is caught. Without that, it is not.

If once in a thousand there is a truly simple person, it happens instantly. Today that simplicity is rare. Today we need devices to break, and then to enter. Then understanding and revolution are not two things; they are two names for one coin.

Do you think that doing nothing is some petty effort? Doing nothing is the greatest effort in this world. The power of non-doing is the highest mastery there is. Doing—children can do that. There’s no great effort in doing; it’s something quite natural and ordinary. Animals are doing too. Non-doing is something very great. So don’t think that when Lao Tzu says “don’t do,” inaction, effort comes to an end.

Surrender is the greatest resolve. Now this is very upside-down; it doesn’t occur to us, does it? We feel that surrender—placing one’s head at someone’s feet—means we are finished. But know that to place your head at someone’s feet is not within the capacity of an ordinary person! And to truly put your head at someone’s feet, to let go of yourself completely, is only possible for one who is utterly his own master. How will you let go? Simply putting your head on someone’s feet doesn’t mean it truly stays there! There must be so much inner mastery that you can say, “All right, I drop it all.” But who will drop it? Can you? One who cannot drop anger, who cannot give up smoking—will he drop himself entirely?

A man quits smoking and says, “I’m making a great effort.” Even that doesn’t easily drop. So to surrender yourself completely—this is no small effort; it is the greatest effort, the ultimate effort. Beyond it, there is no other effort.

If the perfection of emptiness had to be attained, then even that would not be possible. It is! It is! Just stop trying to fill yourself, and you will suddenly discover that you are emptiness. In this world nothing can be perfect. Nothing that man does can be perfect.

Once the sultan in whose house Mulla Nasruddin worked got angry and said, “You are a perfect dope; you are a perfectly complete donkey.” Mulla Nasruddin said, “Don’t flatter me—nobody is perfect! How could I be a perfect donkey? Don’t flatter me needlessly; no one is perfect.”

Perfection—no one can attain it. But if emptiness had to be brought, that too could not be perfect. Yet emptiness is your very nature. You don’t have to bring it; it already is. Yes, you can, if you wish, cover it, hide it, forget it. Forgetfulness can happen—that’s all. You cannot erase it; you can only forget it. The perfection of emptiness is not something to be attained. You only have to drop all efforts to be perfect, and you will find that you have become empty.

What needs to be understood here is what Lao Tzu calls a pot and what you call a pot. Our languages differ. We call the clay wall the pot. And when we buy it in the market, the few coins we pay are for the clay wall the potter has made. For us the pot means the clay wall. For Lao Tzu it means the emptiness within that clay wall—that is the pot. Lao Tzu says, it is that pot we bring home. The clay wall is only a boundary; the void within is the pot. The pot is precisely that. This wall is only the boundary line of the void.

And we keep this boundary line only because we want to fill the pot. If it were to remain empty, there would be no need for the boundary at all.

Consider: why do we have to make this boundary line? Why does the potter build this round clay ring around the emptiness? So that we can fill something into it. Because you cannot pour anything into the void as such. So we surround the void from all sides with matter, and then fill it. What will be filled is still the void, but you will need to give it a bottom. Otherwise it will spill. So we build the pot’s wall, because we want to fill.

But if you only intend to keep it empty, would you go to the market to buy a pot? If our purpose is to keep it empty! Who would buy an empty pot? Who would carefully preserve an empty pot?

If there is nothing to fill, the wall becomes useless. Its only purpose was filling. So the moment a person agrees to remain empty, to remain void, the wall of the body drops. That is what we mean when we say the body is no longer constructed again. Understand it like this: within us is a void—that is our soul. And our body is a pot—the clay wall. As long as we want to fill ourselves, to fulfill desires, to reach somewhere, to attain something, to travel toward a goal, to satisfy some craving or wish, the potter will go on making our pot again and again.

On the day the Buddha attained enlightenment, he said, O potter of my mind, you will no longer need to make a pot. This is the last time. And I thank you—you have made many pots for me. O builder, you will no longer have to build me a house. For now the dweller has no wish to dwell. I will have no need of any house.

Every time, it is because of our urge to fill that we fashion a body. And the day we consent to be void, on that very day there is no longer any need to construct this body.

But the mistake we make with the pot is the same mistake we make with ourselves. We take the pot’s wall to be the pot; we take our wall to be “me.” We never recognize the inner void as the one who is, nor do we recognize the void inside the pot as the essential. It is the sky within the pot that is valuable, for that is what can contain things. When you buy a pot at the market, in truth you buy it for that emptiness. But since there is a hurry to fill, the wall becomes indispensable. So the potter serves you by making the wall.

If there is surrender to this being-empty, then no wall will remain, no pot will remain. And the falling of the pot will not change anything else. The inner sky of the pot will become one with the outer sky. There is no hindrance in between, no barrier, no obstruction. The tiny soul enclosed within the pot will become one with the Supreme Soul. Call it moksha, nirvana, or anything else you like. Then there is no need for the pot. The pot is needed for filling. So when you have something to fill, you buy a pot; when there is nothing to fill, no one buys a pot. When there is something to fill, we demand a body; when there is nothing to fill, the body is no longer a question.

Lao Tzu is saying that you do not have to produce that void. You only produce the pot. The potter does not create the inner void; he only constructs a wall around the void. Hence it can be had for a few coins. Otherwise, even if you spent the entire wealth of humankind, you could not produce even that much void. That empty sky within the pot cannot be manufactured even at the cost of all wealth and all lives. It already is. The potter does not produce it; he merely fashions the pot’s wall, a ring of clay.

If you carry the clay pot wherever you go, do not be under the illusion that the same sky remains inside it that was there in the potter’s house. As you move with the pot, the sky within keeps changing. The sky of your pot does not travel along with you. Only the pot goes wherever you take it; this much is sure: that much sky will be within it anywhere. Break the pot anywhere, and that sky merges with the vast sky.

Therefore the Buddha said something very precious, which could not be understood—and precious things are seldom understood. Buddha said: do not even think that the same soul continues within you. Hence Buddha could not be understood. As I said, the potter makes the pot; you take it from the market; you move one inch, and a different sky enters that pot; you reach home, and then the sky of your home enters it. You do not bring the same sky along. But you don’t care about the sky—you care about filling. Which sky—any sky will do.

When Buddha said this, it became very difficult, because we all are used to thinking that one identical soul sits within us, the same soul. Buddha says: no. As you travel, the soul keeps changing. You are the pot moving along; the soul is the filled sky.

Therefore Buddha said: just as we light a lamp at dusk and extinguish it in the morning, we say, “Extinguish the same lamp we lit at dusk.” It is fine to say so. But the flame that was lit at dusk had long since gone out. At every moment another flame takes its place. That is why smoke forms. The previous flame becomes smoke and vanishes; a new flame follows it. But the coming and going happen so quickly, the interval between the departure of one and the arrival of the next is so small, that we do not notice that one flame went and another came. Yet in the morning when you put it out, Buddha says: to be precise, say only this—extinguish the flame that is now burning in the place of the one we lit at dusk. It may be its progeny, flowing in its stream. That original flame cannot now be extinguished; it has gone out many times over.

Even so, this flame is flowing in that same series. So Buddha says: the soul is a series. A series of existences, not a unit of existence. Not a unit; a series. The soul you had in a previous birth is not exactly the same soul you have now, only in that same stream. Certainly, the soul in me and the soul in you are different. But the difference is between two series.

Understand this. We lit two lamps. They burned all night. Both flames kept going out and being replaced. In the morning, when we extinguish lamp A, lamp B does not go out. And there is a gap, a difference, between A and B. Still, A is not the same as the lamp we lit at dusk. And yet A is not B. Note this: A is not the very same as the one we lit at dusk. If we call the dusk flame A-one, then the lamp we extinguish in the morning is A-one-thousand. If we call the other lamp B-one, then the one we extinguish in the morning is B-one-thousand. B has its own series; A has its own series.

The current of our births is a series. Buddha, for the first time, gave the world the sense of a living, flowing soul—dynamic, river-like, a stream. On the day the pot breaks, the very same soul that desired liberation will not be the one that is liberated. Some current of consciousness within that series will be liberated. The series is one. Not a unit, but a flow. And now even scientists, in the material realm, are nearing this truth. They say: it is no longer right to say “atom”; say “event.” Now, to say “particle” is wrong—say event. And no longer say “object”—say process, flow, quantum!

Lao Tzu says: become the void. The moment the event of becoming void happens, the pot becomes useless. Even so, the pot may live for a while longer, because the pot has its own laws. You bring a pot into the house to fill it, but on the way home you are transformed and now you do not want to fill it. Your not-wanting-to-fill will not make the pot shatter. The pot has its own existence. You set it aside; it will remain there empty, it will remain, become worn, and break. It may take ten years to fall apart. The day you decide that nothing is to be poured into it, one thing becomes certain: you will not go and buy another pot. But the pot you already brought home will not break merely because you have become desireless. It has its own current; it has its own momentum.

Thus the Buddha attained enlightenment at forty, and died at eighty. For forty years the pot remained. Mahavira attained at about forty-two, and he too died some forty years later. For forty years the pot remained. But now the pot was unfilled. Now there was only waiting—for the pot to collapse and break according to its own law.

Someone may ask: could we not just smash the pot? If there is nothing to fill, break it and throw it away. One could ask—and it is a proper question. I bought a pot; now there is nothing to fill; why not smash it and discard it? Then why did Buddha or Mahavira live forty more years? Since everything had become void and no desire remained, why live those forty years?

If we were to ask Buddha or Mahavira, they would say: smashing it is also a desire. Not even that much desire remains—to smash the pot. Now whatever happens, happens. That too would be desire, because you would have to do something. To smash the pot, you would have to act. That doing indicates that some attachment to the pot still remains. You are still in relationship. You smash the pot—you still acknowledge the pot. Some relationship, some transaction with the pot is still going on.

No—Buddha or Mahavira would say: all right, we are empty now; let the pot live out its age-karma, the span it has. As we ourselves asked in the past life: may such a pot be given that lasts eighty years. We went to the market, said to the potter, give us a pot that will last ten years. We paid the price and took a ten-year pot. But in five years illumination occurred, and there was nothing to fill. Still, five years of the pot’s age-karma remain. We ourselves paid for it. We will not smash it. We will let it run. There is no enmity with it. When it falls of its own accord, it will fall. There will be no effort to save it either.

So when poison was offered to the Buddha, he quietly ate it. It tasted bitter in his mouth—indeed, it was poison. People later said, What madness was this! A man as intelligent and as alert as you, who is awake even in sleep—how could he not know while drinking poison? We cannot accept that. Buddha said, I knew perfectly well. The first morsel touched my tongue—it was clear at once. It was poisoned.

Then why did you not spit it out? Why did you not refuse it? Why did you go on eating?

Buddha said: the man who had cooked it would have suffered. He would have suffered without cause, been pained without reason. He was very poor and humble. There was only enough vegetable in his pot for me. And he was so joyous—there was no reason to poison his joy.

But people said: what are you saying! Your death could have occurred.

Buddha said: as far as I am concerned, I died the very day desire was exhausted, the day thirst ended. What remains is age-karma. Let the pot run its term.

So if someone were to come into this house and smash the pot with a stick, he would not stop him. He himself would not go to smash it; and if someone came to smash it with a stick, he would not prevent him. But this is the last one, because such a consciousness will not go again to buy another pot. There is no rebirth for him. Liberation from birth and death means only this: one who has resolved to be void has no further purpose in buying pots.

Let’s take one more question.

We always ask such a question. The question is wrong. And because it is wrong, whatever answers we get do not help us. Asking the right question is very difficult—more difficult than getting the right answer! Because once the right question arises, the right answer is not far away.

We always ask, “How to stop the mind? How to make it a void?” No. We should ask only this much: how not to fill the mind? “How not to fill it!” We ask, “How to empty it?” We should ask, “How do we not fill it?” Because it is already empty. That which you are asking to empty is empty. You don’t have to empty it. Your kindness will be enough if you simply do not fill it.

But we keep asking, “How to empty it?” and then we find methods that turn out to be more filling. Because whatever you do, if you are asking “How to empty it?” you will bring more devices for emptying—and you will fill the mind with those as well. No; ask, “How do we not fill it?”

We are filling it twenty‑four hours a day. And the wonder is that this filling is of such a kind that if we do not fill it even for ten minutes, what we have filled over thousands of years will empty out. The situation is this: what we are filling is a void. Since we are continuously filling, the illusion of fullness remains. If we stop even for ten minutes and do not fill, then what has been filled for lifetimes will fall away and the pot will be empty immediately—because below, it is bottomless. The mind you have has no bottom.

But we keep pouring in. It is almost like the miller who pours wheat in at the top and flour keeps falling out below. Now he says, “How to stop this flour?” He does not ask, “How to stop pouring the wheat?” From that side he keeps pouring, and on this side he asks how to stop it! If he tries to stop the flour, more trouble arises—because the wheat is being poured from behind. Just stop for five minutes; you won’t have to do anything to stop the flour. The mill will empty by itself.

The real question is to look at how we are filling. For twenty‑four hours we are filling. Not a single day passes in which we do not manufacture new desires. If you would stop even with the old desires for a single day, that very day you would find you are empty. Whatever desires you had yesterday, kindly remain confined to those for twenty‑four hours. It’s not a big thing to say, “I will stop at what I desired yesterday. If yesterday I wanted ten rupees, today too I will want only ten. I will stop where I was.”

Within twenty‑four hours you will get into difficulty and discover that you are beginning to empty. If you want to preserve the desire for ten rupees, today you will have to want twenty; only then will it survive. You will have to keep desiring today, feed it, increase it, provoke it. Keep giving it food, fertilizer, and water.

If you pause even for a moment, it is almost like someone riding a bicycle: stop pedaling and you fall. If you stop at the last stroke, the bicycle won’t go on for long. If you are going uphill, it will fall at once; if downhill, it may go a little further—but it will fall. Constant pedaling is necessary to keep a bicycle moving. Almost the same is true to keep the wheel of the mind turning: constant pedaling. Even a moment’s interruption is dangerous—the bicycle will topple.

Every day we manufacture new desires. Daily. Someone’s clothing comes into view—desire is produced. A house comes into view—desire is produced. Someone’s face—desire is produced. Without even moving, the slightest stir and desire is produced. We get up and sit down—desire is produced.

Be alert about this. Be alert about the filling. Drop the worry about emptying. You will not be able to empty it. No one has ever emptied it. Just drop the preoccupation with filling. And one day you will suddenly find that the filling has stopped and, from below, the flour has stopped coming out of the mill; it lies empty. Keep watch over the filling—where and how you are filling! First be aware; do not hurry to stop. First be aware of all the ways you fill and all the channels through which you fill! And man is such that till his last breath he goes on filling.

Mulla Nasruddin was bitten by a mad dog. For two or three days he paid no attention. People said, “It’s a mad dog; go to a doctor.” When he went, the poison had already spread. The physicians met and decided they had to tell Nasruddin directly. They said, “Hydrophobia has set in. It is beyond our limits now. You will live as a madman. You came too late.” They thought he would panic. Nasruddin said, “No harm. Bring me pen and paper.” Pen and paper! The doctors thought perhaps he would write a will, or maybe letters to friends, to wives. But there was no worry on his face, no panic. They gave him paper and pen. Nasruddin began to write and did not raise his head for an hour. The doctor was surprised: “What a long will! Or is it letters to home?” When Nasruddin finally looked up, the doctor asked, “What are you writing—such a big will? Or letters home?”

Nasruddin said, “No, I am writing the names of the people I will bite. I’m going to be mad! I’m making a list. Once I go mad, I won’t be able to make the list. Since I’m about to go mad anyway!” And he said to the doctor, “Don’t feel jealous; you will not be deprived. I have included your name in it. Your name is first.”

This Nasruddin gives a very true report of the inside of man. If a mad dog bites, the first thought will be: whom shall I bite? What’s done is done; whom shall I bite now? Till the last breath, desires continue to be manufactured. What is there to do now? Make a plan; he is preparing the list. “Prepare the list in time.”

Keep attention on the filling—that we are filling at every moment. And the more alert you become to the filling, the more you will slowly see that the filling is utterly futile. You have not managed to fill, even by filling all your life! Through countless births you have not filled! You pour from here, and from there it all runs out. But the illusion of filling never leaves because we never pay attention to the filling.

Another story of Nasruddin—and then I will complete the point. A young man came to him and said, “How do you say, Nasruddin, that we should empty the mind? How?” Nasruddin said, “Right now I’m going to the well to draw water; you walk behind me—and don’t ask questions on the way. If you ask, I’ll drive you off. I’ll answer on the way back.”

Nasruddin picked up two buckets and ran to the well. The young man went along. Nasruddin set one bucket on the parapet of the well. The young man was a little surprised when he saw the bucket placed there. He saw that it had no bottom at all—an open drum. There was nothing on either side. But he remembered, “This fool told me not to ask questions in the middle. Now I’m stuck! This can never be filled. I’m in trouble now. And until this is filled, as he said, we won’t return home, and there will be no question and answer. And when will it fill? It cannot fill.” Still he thought, “Have a little patience. Watch for a minute or two—what does he do?”

Nasruddin lowered the bucket, drew water, and poured it into the bottomless drum. By the time he had poured, it had already run out. He dropped the other bucket again. Two or three buckets had already gone.

The young man said, “Wait, sir, now I don’t even want to ask questions. Even if you would answer later, I don’t want to ask. But let me give you a piece of advice.”

Nasruddin said, “Quiet! I often see that those who come to learn start teaching in a hurry. You came as a disciple and now you have become the master. Now you are giving me advice. Insolent one, don’t do such a thing again. Stand where you are!”

The man said, “But when will it fill? Just think a little! You’ve poured three buckets, and not a single drop remains.”

Nasruddin said, “When no one else in the world is thinking, have I taken a contract to think about wrong things? For lifetimes people have been filling and it has not filled—and they are not thinking. And I have poured only three buckets. So what of it? You keep quiet!”

He stood a while longer. Nasruddin poured another five or ten buckets. The young man said, “Have a little consideration. There is a limit. Lift your eyes and look up.”

Nasruddin said, “It is not my concern whether the bucket fills or not. I will fulfill my effort. I will keep on filling. I am not going to ask the bucket. My task is to fill. The bucket will not fill? We’ll see how it does not fill!”

The young man said, “I’m going now. Namaskar!” and he left.

But that night he couldn’t sleep. “What kind of man is this! What could it mean?” The more he thought, the more he felt he had made a mistake. “I should have waited a little. Who knows—maybe he’s still filling, or what is he doing?” As soon as the man had left, Nasruddin had taken his bucket and gone home. The young man got up at midnight and went to the well—saw that he had gone. He went to Nasruddin’s house and found him sleeping. He woke him and asked, “What happened? Did that drum fill or not?”

Nasruddin said, “Fool, that was kept for you.”

We have been filling our minds for lifetimes. And leaving lifetimes aside—because that is so old we have forgotten—even in this very life we are filling. Have you ever noticed whether, of the things you have filled yourself with, even a grain remains inside? How many times have you been angry—how much remains? How many times have you indulged—how much remains? Whatever you have done, what remains of it? What is your treasure out of it? The bucket is empty. And we ask how to empty the bucket. The joke is that the bucket is empty. It has never been filled. You do not need to empty it. Kindly see that, in the madness of filling, you are not even looking at the empty bucket; you keep lowering it into the well, filling, pouring...

It is as if Nasruddin were to ask someone, “This drum I have kept on the parapet of the well—how to empty it?” Our asking is like that. Where is the mind full? What is there to empty? The mind is empty. But we go on pouring with such force that we do not notice that the mind is empty.

Pay a little attention to this filling. And to whatever has been “filled” till now, and has never actually been able to be filled—be a little aware of that. If someone agrees not to fill for just twenty‑four hours, he will find that this mind has always been empty; nothing has ever been able to be stored in it.

So do not ask in reverse. Do not raise the wrong question. Wrong questions lead to wrong answers. The right question leads to the right answer. The right question is: this filling that we are doing—how not to do it?

And “how not to fill” means only this much: become a little aware. If you realize that this drum is broken at both ends, will you still fill it? The bucket will fall from your hand; you will laugh and go back home.

That void is not to be brought in—it is within us. The miracle is that we have even made that void look as if it were full. It seems as if everything is full. Awakening to this illusion is enough.

Some more questions remain. When we meet next time, we will take them up.