Tao Upanishad #19

All the dimensions of existence can be divided into the feminine and the masculine. The division of woman and man is not merely a sexual division. In Lao Tzu’s vision, the division into feminine and masculine is the very dialectics of life, an essential part of life’s dialectical evolution.

Man and woman differ not only at the level of the body; they also differ at the level of the mind. Wherever existence manifests, there the polarity of feminine and masculine will appear. But in understanding Lao Tzu, keep one thing in mind: the masculine is the transient form of existence, and the feminine is its eternal form. Like the wave that rises on the ocean—its rising is momentary. The ocean was there before the wave, and will be there after the wave. Femininity is the ocean of existence; the masculine is a passing wave.

Hence the Judaic tradition that narrates human creation—that God made man first and then created woman from his rib—would, in Lao Tzu’s eyes, be entirely upside down. Lao Tzu holds the feminine to be primary; man is born from it and dissolves back into it. And there is a profound resonance in Lao Tzu’s assertion.

First: woman is possible without man. Her restlessness for man is not so deep. If she wishes, a woman can remain a virgin all her life without it burdening her. But to keep a man celibate is almost impossible. And even when it happens, it requires immense arrangement and discipline; it is neither simple nor easy.

Lately I have been surprised. When I meet male ascetics, their inner struggle is sexual desire; when I meet nuns, their primary struggle is not sexuality. After meeting hundreds of nuns I was amazed to find that women who enter the world of meditation are generally not troubled by sexuality, while men who enter are. In fact, a man’s sexuality is so active and so momentary that it pricks and torments him at every turn. A woman’s sexuality is not so momentary; it is steadier, more settled.

It may surprise you that in all animals sexuality is periodic—certain months of the year bring it on, and the rest of the time it is almost forgotten. Only the human is sexual twenty-four hours a day and year-round—no fixed periods. Even so, within humans if you consider woman and man separately, there is a striking difference: a woman’s desire is periodic; she does not feel sexual on all days of the month. A man does—every day. And psychologists say: even in the woman’s fertile moment, if the man does not arouse it, she can live without sexuality. Her being is more tranquil; the man’s is more restless.

Therefore, in a deep sense, man circles around woman. However much he pretends it is otherwise, it is man who circles around woman. In childhood he circles the mother; in youth he circles the wife. Without woman, man is incomplete; in woman there is a kind of wholeness. I am saying this by way of example so the feminine existence can be understood: the feminine is full, shapely, the circle complete.

Lao Tzu says: the more complete a thing, the more lasting it is. The more incomplete, the more fleeting. That is why we give the ultimate secret of life the name “the feminine mystery.”

Just as there are fundamental differences in body, there are fundamental differences in mind. A man’s way of thinking is logic—this is crucial to understand, because Lao Tzu’s entire vision rests on it. The masculine method is logic. The feminine method is not logic; it is very illogical—call it intuition if you like, but it cannot be called logic. Logic has its own structure; wherever the masculine thinks there will be mathematics, rules, method. Wherever the feminine thinks there will be no mathematics, no syllogism—only direct conclusions. This is why dialogue between man and woman so often fails.

All men experience that talking to women is difficult, because she is “illogical.” When he begins to lay out premises, she has already reached a conclusion. Communication breaks; conversation fails. Every husband feels it is useless to argue, because the last word will somehow be hers. However many reasons he may give, it hardly matters—she does not listen to reasons. This angers a man, because he is saying the right thing, rationally, and yet she refuses to hear. But her way of thinking simply isn’t logic; she is not at fault.

There are two ways to know anything. One is to proceed step by step and arrive at a conclusion by method. The other is to leap and land directly in the conclusion—no steps in between. Intuition is this direct leap.

We all have intuitive flashes. You see a person, and suddenly a conclusion arises: “It is better to be careful with this man.” You have no reason, no argument; you do not even know him. But like a lightning-flash the conclusion is there.

If you watch, you’ll find that in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, that sudden, unreasoned flash turns out to be right. Those who work with intuition say: if the intuition is pure, it is always right. Logic can be wrong; intuition is not.

This causes the man even more trouble. He argues; he is often right—and yet he discovers that what the woman said without argument also turns out right. He becomes even more irritated. Almost everyone who has written about women writes with a certain anger. The anger is: she neither argues nor reasons, yet the conclusions she reaches are frequently right.

Her conclusions are intuitive—they arise from her whole being. A man’s conclusions arise from his intellect, not his totality. He speaks out of thinking; whatever is spoken out of thought can be wrong. If you understand intuition, it will be clear.

In Japan there is a common little bird around village homes. When an earthquake is coming, she vacates the village twenty-four hours in advance. Our most sensitive instruments cannot warn more than six minutes beforehand—and six minutes is useless. But that little bird somehow knows a full day before. For thousands of years Japanese villagers have watched this bird; when she disappears—though she is very common—people begin to evacuate: within twenty-four hours the earthquake is certain.

How does the bird know? She has no logic, no mathematics, no Aristotle or Plato to teach her, no university to study logic. Yet something is perceived, and she acts on that perception. The entire animal world is intuitive. Animals do many things by pure intuition; there is no logic in it. They act rightly. What is this intuition? Being in tune with existence. If the bird is one with her environment, even the subtlest vibrations coming into that field will be felt by her. The perception is not intellectual; her whole being experiences those tremors.

When a man loves a woman, his love too is often intellectual—he thinks, he calculates; there is mathematics in it. When a woman loves, the love is utterly blind; there is no arithmetic in it. Hence the difference: a man’s love may be here today and gone tomorrow; a woman’s love is hard to lose.

This is why harmony rarely settles between men and women. Today it seems right to love; tomorrow the intellect may calculate otherwise. Reasons change daily. The woman he found beautiful today may seem less so tomorrow after constant familiarity, for familiarity diminishes beauty; the unknown attracts. But the woman will love just as much tomorrow, because her love had no reasons; it was the call of her whole being. Therefore a woman does not worry much about whether the man is handsome or not. A man is not worried about his own beauty either. You may be surprised: why do women worry so much about beauty, clothes, fashion, jewelry? You think it is something in the feminine mind. The truth is the reverse: women make all these arrangements because men are influenced by them. The man has no other existential attraction; therefore the woman must spend herself in arrangements. The man can wear the same clothes for years—she does not love him for his clothes. Jewels or none, it makes no difference. Whether he is handsome or not, she isn’t much concerned. If love is there, everything is there; if love is not, nothing is of value.

But for a man, the rest has much value. In truth, if you stripped away all adornment from the woman a man loves, ninety percent of her would depart—for him. That is why it becomes difficult to go on loving one’s own wife, because she appears without decoration; the ninety percent makeup is gone as soon as you are familiar.

A woman asks nothing of the man—his being a man is enough. Her love is intuitive, not intellectual.

Secondly, because her love is intuitive, it is total. It arises from her whole body—her every fiber. A man’s love is not from the whole; it is largely genital. As soon as a man loves, the demand for sex appears quickly. A woman can love for years without demanding sex. In fact, when a woman loves very deeply, the man’s demand for sex at such moments shocks her. It never occurs to her that one could ask for sex in so deep a love.

I have known hundreds of women closely, and I have yet to find one who is not troubled by the man’s incessant sexual demands. Every woman becomes weary. Where she is drawn to love, the man is drawn to sex. Once his sex is gratified, he forgets the woman. The woman continually feels used—she has been used. Not loved, used. The man had to release his tension, and the woman was used like a vessel. After use, she seems worthless. But a woman’s love is deep, from the whole body—every pore. It is not genital; it is total.

Anything becomes total only when it is not intellectual; the intellect is a fragment of the personality. Hence a woman, in truth, loves her son in a way she never quite experiences with her husband. The ancient rishis said something startling: the Upanishadic sages would bless newlyweds saying, “Love your husband so much, so much, that in the end you have ten sons, and your eleventh son is your husband.”

They meant: a woman’s love becomes truly complete when she begins to feel her husband as her child. She can love her son totally—without calculation, without selectivity, with no sexual element, and therefore it is utterly pure. Until the husband begins to appear like a son to her, she is not wholly fulfilled.

But for the man the situation is opposite. If the wife appears like a mother to him, he will start looking for another wife. A man does not want a mother; he wants a wife—and more precisely, a mistress. A wife becomes stable; the mistress has built-in transience and the convenience of change.

When I use the word “feminine,” I am speaking of the feminine consciousness, the “feminine mystery” of Lao Tzu—not about biological women as such. Women are women only when they embody that femininity; and if a man embodies it, the deepest doors of life open to him.

All the great insights that have dawned on this earth have not come through logic; they have arisen through intuition. Whether it is Archimedes soaking in his tub and suddenly, for no apparent reason, the idea he was seeking flashes—and he is so overjoyed that he runs naked into the street shouting “Eureka! Eureka!” He had tried all mathematics; it did not work. Relaxing in the bath, not even thinking, the intuitive lightning strikes, and the problem is resolved. Archimedes did not solve it; it was solved within and presented to him—no logical method, no reasoning; a direct visitation.

In two thousand years of science, the greatest scientists say the same: when I am relaxed, conclusions arrive somehow. You know it too: a name slips your mind; you try hard and cannot recall. You give up, recline, light a cigarette, read the newspaper, turn on the radio, or potter in the garden—and suddenly the name you struggled for simply arrives from within. That is not the intellect; the intellect already tried and failed.

In America there was a man—Edgar Cayce—who would go into a trance. Seat any patient by him, and in trance he would diagnose the illness. He was not a physician, had no medical training. In his waking state he could not say a thing about medicine. But he diagnosed forty thousand patients. He would close his eyes in meditation and begin to speak: what illness, which medicine would cure it—medicines he did not even know when awake. And his diagnoses came right. On waking he would confess: I know nothing; I have never heard this drug’s name.

At times he prescribed a medicine that could not be found anywhere in America. A year later it was located—because it was still being prepared in the factory and had not yet reached the market; even its name was not finalized—and Cayce had named it a year earlier. Only after it appeared did the patient recover.

Once a prescription could not be found anywhere in the world; newspapers advertised globally: if anywhere this drug exists, a dying patient needs it and Cayce says only this will help. A man from Sweden wrote: such a drug does not exist, but my father patented a formula like this twenty-six years ago; it was never produced. I have the formula; if you like, I’ll send it. The drug was made and the patient recovered.

Cayce’s perception was intuitive—this is a characteristic of the feminine mind: conclusions appearing in no-thought. All meditative processes lead in this direction.

Lao Tzu says: if you think, you will go astray. Do not think—and the conclusion arrives. Stop thinking and wait; the answer arrives. Merely wait; keep the question within and wait—the answer is given. Do not think. What can you gain by thinking? What is your capacity? If a single wave were to think about the problems of the universe, what could it think? Better to leave it to the ocean and wait for the ocean to answer.

By “feminine mind” Lao Tzu means: step aside and let existence answer. Do not put yourself in between. Whatever you bring is likely to be false; what existence gives cannot be false.

It is said of Luqman that he would sit in meditation by the plants and say to them: reveal to me for which disease you can be medicine! He spoke about a hundred thousand plants. There was no big laboratory for trials.

The Ayurvedic texts too were compiled without big laboratories; yet their conclusions still stand. They were intuitive—taken in meditation. Sarpagandha is an ancient Ayurvedic herb. For five thousand years it has been used as a sleep-inducer. Only recently has the West proved in laboratories that nothing is a better tranquilizer. What is sold in the West under the name “Serpentina” is an extract of sarpagandha. Today we have subtle instruments; on the day sarpagandha was discovered, such tools did not exist. The path of discovery must have been different.

That path was the feminine way. Our modern laboratory method is the masculine way. Lao Tzu said: the feminine mind has its own science; the masculine mind has another. The science developed in the West is the masculine search: logic, cutting, dissecting, analysis—break things down, compute, and conclude.

But those conclusions must be changed every few months. If any scientific conclusion stands for six months, it is a matter of good fortune—because in six months the tools for slicing are finer, new logical structures arise, mathematics grows subtler; the old reckoning is wrong. Today scientists say it has become difficult to write big books; by the time you finish, what you wrote has already become obsolete. So science is written in small books; in fact, books themselves are giving way to periodicals and journals—get your statement printed before it turns out wrong! One cannot wait six months or a year.

But the truths reached by intuition have not needed alteration for thousands of years. The Upanishads are true today as they were; there is no likelihood they will ever need to be revised. Why? Something in them is such that it never calls for change.

Lao Tzu says: “The valley spirit never dies; ever the same”—a mere statement without reasoning. He does not tell you why the valley spirit does not die; he simply states it. He should offer reasons, present witnesses. Lao Tzu says: only those who have no realization need witnesses. No witness is needed.

Mulla Nasruddin once brought a case to court. He said: my wife attacked my face with scissors and cut it to pieces like cloth. The magistrate was astonished, for there were no marks on Nasruddin’s face. “When did this happen?” “Last night.” The magistrate said, “Think before you speak! There isn’t a scratch, and you say she sliced your face?” Nasruddin replied, “Who needs marks on the face? I have twenty witnesses! Marks are not necessary; I’ve got the witnesses—these twenty men are here and will say what I say happened.”

We search for witnesses only when we lack trust in ourselves. When there is inner certainty, we don’t even need logic as a witness.

The Upanishads say: Brahman is. They do not say why. They do not argue with those who deny it; they do not offer proofs. They simply state: Brahman is. If you ask for an argument, they say: there is none—we know. If you want to know, we can show the way; we don’t offer arguments. Lao Tzu says: we can show you what it means that the valley spirit is immortal; we can lead you into the feminine mystery; but we do not argue—because we know.

Whoever has argued that God exists has had no real taste of God. Hence those who argue for God only strengthen the hands of the atheists—because every argument can be refuted. There is no argument that cannot be dismantled.

Nasruddin advised his son going to the university: “Study logic.” The boy asked, “What’s the need? What can logic teach?” Nasruddin said, “Logic has great merits; it can make you thoroughly dishonest. If you want to be dishonest, logic is essential. Honesty can be without logic; dishonesty cannot.”

The son said, “Explain.” Nasruddin said, “Two men come out of a kitchen chimney. One is spotless, in white; the other is black with soot. Which one will bathe?” Naturally the boy said, “The black one.” Nasruddin said, “Wrong. The dirty man will see the clean man first and think, ‘I too must be clean.’” The boy said, “Then the clean one will bathe—seeing the dirty man he will think, ‘I must be dirty.’” “Wrong again,” said Nasruddin. “The logician will say: when both came out of the same chimney, how can one be clean and the other dirty?” If you want to prove everyone wrong, learn logic.

Logic can demonstrate what is wrong; it never proves what is right. The right must be experienced. And if we do not know the right, even what we refute through logic cannot be refuted completely; it is only a game.

Western science has grown from logic; Aristotle is its father. Where logic rules, there is cutting and hacking. Its method is analysis. So they kept dividing until they reached the atom—the final fragments.

The feminine mind is synthetic—it joins, it does not split. It says: keep joining, and when there is nothing left to join, what remains is truth. Hence the feminine mind’s conclusions are vast, not atomic. It says: the whole universe is one Brahman. The scientist says: the universe is a heap of atoms, each separate, unconnected; between any two is a deep gulf. The universe is like a pile of sand grains.

Is the universe a heap of atoms—or does our method make it appear so?

The feminine, the one who knows by feeling, says: there are not even two—let alone many. The universe is a single vastness. She thinks in the language of joining; when there is nothing left to join, all is one.

The masculine thinks in the language of breaking; the feminine thinks in the language of joining. Where there is breaking, there is aggression. Western scientists say, “We are conquering nature.” But in the East, Lao Tzu never says we are conquering nature; he says we are nature’s children—how can we conquer our mother? That would be rape.

Lao Tzu says: we cannot conquer nature; we can only become her collaborators, her grace-recipients. If nature’s benediction descends on us, it is enough.

Thus the West has begun to reconsider Lao Tzu. A remarkable book has been written—The Tao of Science. Some Western scientists now proclaim that Aristotelian science should be set aside, and a new science should be built on Lao Tzu—because the language of winning and losing is the language of violence. Nature cannot be conquered; trying to conquer her is as mad as a finger trying to conquer the body. It can never win; it will only suffer. Man has become very troubled. When we think in terms of conquering nature, we begin to think of conquering each other; fighting becomes our style of thought.

In Lao Tzu’s vision, until the feminine consciousness becomes influential, wars cannot end. Women have never been eager for war. If a woman smiles and puts a tilak on the warrior’s forehead, the smile is false; behind it are only tears. After sending men to war, women have done nothing but weep—because whoever wins or loses, the woman invariably loses. In war, whether anyone dies or survives, the woman loses: her son, her husband, her lover—someone of hers dies on one side or the other. War may excite men, but to the woman it brings a fatal wound to life. Women have always been against war. But the feminine consciousness has no sway; as long as the masculine mind dominates, war will not disappear. Even if a man runs a movement against war, his style remains warlike. Even for peace his fists are clenched and lathis in hand: “We will establish peace!” The very mode remains militant.

Another case about Nasruddin: two people fought and broke each other’s heads with chairs. Nasruddin was there and called as a witness. The magistrate asked, “You stood by and watched? Weren’t you ashamed? They are your friends; why didn’t you intervene?” Nasruddin said, “There wasn’t a third chair. If there had been a third chair, I’d have intervened. I had no means, so I had to stand and watch.”

Even to protect someone, the man needs a weapon. You will be astonished: psychologists say all weapons are extended forms of the male genitals—guns, swords, knives—designed to penetrate; they are phallic. Women have not developed weapons. Fighting itself is meaningless to the feminine. Victory is not her language. The feminine mind thinks in the language of surrender. The center of the masculine mind is resolve, struggle, victory. If a man goes to seek God, he goes as if to attack: “I will attain!” He searches for truth as if seeking an enemy: “I will find it!” There is no prayer in it; there is a will to seize.

As we proceed with Lao Tzu it will become clear: only one who can surrender, let go, can make room within for the vast truth. Logic and struggle are masculine marks; surrender and non-rational faith—shraddha—are the marks of the feminine mind. Intuition is born within trust. If a man has to “have faith,” he has to force it; it is not natural. He says, “Well, if it won’t work without faith, I will believe.” But a forced faith has no value; where faith is manufactured, doubt remains within—faith above, doubt underneath.

Nasruddin was teaching his son the lessons of life. “Climb that ladder,” he said. The boy asked, “Why? What for?” “No more talk—trust, and climb.” The boy climbed. “Now,” said Nasruddin, “jump; my arms are open!” “But why?” “Trust! I am your father; jump!” The boy jumped; Nasruddin stepped aside. The boy fell, hurt his legs, and cried. Nasruddin said, “Here’s a life lesson: trust no one—not even your father. If you want to win in life, don’t trust.” This is the man’s entire education. The world he builds is a world without trust—full of struggle, each a competitor, an enemy. For the feminine, trust is natural. But since women are educated by men, they too are taught the male’s formulas; thus a woman educated in the male style can become even more skeptical—like a new convert more zealous than the old.

The feminine mystery, as Lao Tzu points, is the realm of trust, surrender, non-striving—cooperating with nature, not opposing; flowing with the river, not swimming against it; letting the river carry you. Lao Tzu says: so long as I sought, I did not find. The day I stopped seeking and began to drift, I discovered that truth had always been with me. Seeking itself blocked the seeing. “I became like a dry leaf; wherever the wind took me, I went.” From that day the ego had no place; and I knew the supreme truth. After that, no restlessness. All unrest comes from searching, from striving to arrive, to become. The faithful is content with what is, where he is, as he is.

This does not mean there is no journey; there is—but it is with the whole, not against it. A straw floating in the river also reaches the ocean. One need not launch a boat and struggle; the straw arrives, carried by the river. He is spared the fuss of “reaching.”

If we can let go of ourselves as a woman lets go in love—toward existence, God, the Tao—we can come easily to life’s truth.

A couple more points. As there is a difference between man’s and woman’s intelligence, so too in their basic dimension of living: man lives in time; woman lives in space. There are two dimensions of existence: time and space. The masculine lives in time—keeping accounts of past and future; ticking like a clock. The day science succeeded in the West, the clock succeeded too. In the East the clock was never invented; because the East never thought in the masculine way, never kept a time ledger.

We have no dates for when Rama or Krishna were born or died. For Lao Tzu neither. It is even hard to decide who came first or later. We never kept chronicles. In truth, time-consciousness never took root in the East. Why? Time-consciousness grows with tension; the greater the anxiety, the greater the awareness of time.

In the West today time is measured to the second—and often to madness. A man rushes to catch a plane to save an hour. He never thinks: for what will I use that hour? He will use it to save more hours, and those to save even more, and finally die saving—never having used them. To use time, one needs relaxation; time itself breeds tension, anxiety. Tomorrow matters; today does not.

For women, today matters—the here and now. So women enjoy things that happen here and now. They do not worry about the year 2000, or whether a third world war will come, or what is happening in Vietnam or Bengal. They are not concerned with faraway Washington or Peking, but with what is happening in the neighbor’s house—ear to the wall! Immediate consciousness. The distant does not concern her; the near and now does—even if trivial. What is happening in Washington is not happening next door. A quarrel between husband and wife, a mother scolding a child—trivial but near. The trivial becomes valuable if it is now. For the man, the most valuable thing is valueless if it is now; the farther it is, the more scope there is for thought. The nearer it is, the less thinking is needed; the farther, the more material for logic and planning.

So a man is eager for the distant. The woman is eager for the near. And interest in the near is more valuable for truth than interest in the distant. I do not mean you should remain curious about the neighbor’s gossip; I mean the near is where life is. The closer the sense of existence, the fresher and more alive it will be. Distance is dust, dream, imagination.

Man lives in time; woman in space. It is no accident that the home was made by woman, not by man. If a man had his way, he would never let a home take root; the home binds him to the near. He is a born nomad, a wanderer—how far can he roam! Hence the intense urge to wander.

Women cannot understand: what will you do on the moon? There is no shopping center there! Do you know that in America astronauts are among the most prestigious people, but their wives’ divorce rate is twice that of average citizens? Why? Those keen on the far lose interest in the near—the wife. A wife feels hurt even if you read a newspaper in her presence; you have gone far. Wives become enemies of books—and of games: the husband picks up a bat and heads for the field—great pain! The wife is here and he is far. And if he goes to the moon! When he returns, he will be less interested in his wife; after such distance, the near cannot excite.

Man is always on a journey. Homes were made by women. That is why she is called the homemaker even if you pay for it; it makes no difference—she planted the peg; you only feel bound within it.

I was reading an autobiography: the author writes, my great dilemma was whether or not to marry; marriage binds me, I cannot move; if I don’t marry, the journey can continue, but there is nowhere to rest.

If a man had his way, he would wander like a nomad. Notice: among nomadic tribes, the women become almost more masculine than the men. Look at Balochi women; they must wander with the men. The necessity of wandering imposes the masculine style on them. If a woman is to wander, she must develop masculine traits. Balochi women become more “male” than men; they will plunge a dagger into your chest; you cannot tease them; if they seize your hand, you may not pull free.

And conversely, our men become “feminine,” for bound to the home they must live with feminine qualities. Hence their greatest anger at women—she seems their chain. People announce “marriage bond” on invitation cards—very apt. Marriage is indeed a bond for men. From there begins their frustration.

One morning Nasruddin met the doctor. The doctor asked, “How is your wife now? Did she sleep?” Nasruddin said, “What a wonderful medicine you gave! She slept beautifully; much better.” The doctor asked, “Anything else?” Nasruddin said, “Only this: when will she wake up? It’s been five days—such peace and freedom; she is sleeping perfectly!” The doctor exclaimed, “Five days! You fool! Why didn’t you report? Did you overdose?” Nasruddin said, “Not at all. You said, ‘Give it on a quarter coin.’ I had no quarter, only four nickels; I put the medicine on four nickels. Such peace, such freedom! Since marriage I have known no such quiet—my wife is sleeping.”

A man feels bound. If he runs, restlessness arises; if he stays, he feels chained. He is always eager for the farther. And it is not that having reached there he will cease to be eager; the moment he reaches, he becomes eager for farther still. We had not yet landed on the moon when plans were made for Mars. The moon became useless once reached; now Mars—without asking why.

The Upanishadic or Eastern people were free of time-consciousness. Lao Tzu says: “Across the river from my village there was another village; in the stillness of night we could hear the dogs bark; at dusk we could see smoke rising from their houses. But no one from our village ever became curious to go see who lived there.”

I read the life of a Trappist monk. The Trappists are perhaps the strictest order in the world; once a man enters, he may never leave, unless the master expels him. The door closes for life; one departs only at death. A new monk was initiated. He was told the door now closes forever. He was given a cell and the rules. In that monastery, monks were allowed to speak only once in seven years. He went to his cell; seven years passed. He came to the master and said, “Everything is fine, but the windowpane in my cell is broken. For seven years I have not slept; rain enters, insects and mosquitoes come in. I had only this one chance to speak, so I request the pane be fixed.” The master said, “Very well,” and sent someone to fix it.

Seven more years passed—fourteen in all. He came and said, “All is fine; you fixed the pane. But because of seven years of rain, the mat you gave me has turned to wood; for seven years I haven’t slept. Kindly replace the mat.” “Very well,” said the master.

Seven years later—twenty-one years—he returned. The master asked, “All well?” He said, “All well; but when the men came to replace the mat, as they carried out the old, hardened mat, the window broke again. For seven years I haven’t slept; water comes in.” The master said, “Out! Leave this door now. In twenty-one years you have done nothing but complain. Such a man we do not keep.”

These are people of another world. We cannot bear twenty-one minutes; twenty-one years is too much. Once in seven years the poor man brings one complaint—still too much. He waits those seven years for the day to come. If there were time-consciousness, seven minutes would be hard.

Time-consciousness grows with the masculine mind; women have little sense of time. Hence the daily quarrel at the door: the husband honks in the car while the wife is still adorning herself. They miss the train or arrive late to the cinema; the husband shouts, “What was the need to take so long?” In truth, the woman has no time-consciousness; it does not occur that half an hour matters. Why all this horn?

I have heard: a woman’s car stalled; she could not start it. The man behind started honking. She got out, went to him and said, “Sir, my car won’t start; would you please start it? I’ll honk for you.”

Unhurriedness—no impatience—is built into her very personality.

Lao Tzu says: this unhurriedness, this absence of time-fever in the feminine mind, are great allies of truth. Always remember: when I speak of the feminine mind, I do not mean women as such. A man may have a feminine mind—like Buddha, who had no sense of time.

When Buddha died, it had been forty years since his enlightenment. Someone said on that last day, “Your compassion was infinite; after enlightenment you could have extinguished like a lamp into the infinite—you lived forty years for us!” Buddha said, “Forty years? Ananda,” he asked his attendant, “has so much time passed?” He had no sense of time. “Has it been so long since enlightenment?” No account at all.

The woman lives in space; space is spread here and now. Time is spread between past and future; space unfolds in the present. Hence women have a strong sense of space. Whatever little work women have done is all spatial—making the home, arranging furniture, decorating rooms, dressing the body, wearing ornaments—all spatial. These have shape and form in space; they have no status in time.

A man takes little interest in these; they seem trivial. His interest is in time. He wonders: how will communism come? Marx sits in the British Museum and ruins his life pondering how communism might come. He will not be there to see it; yet he plans for a future no woman can plan for. Marx would be carried home unconscious from the library; the attendants would drag him out when the museum closed; he would cling to his chair: “Let me write a little more.” For what? For some future dream that someday communism will come. No spatial sense—no here-and-now. A woman could not do it. If something can happen here and now, good; otherwise, not worth it. Time has no grip on her.

Lao Tzu holds that if the sense of time drops, you become of the feminine mind. All seekers say: when time disappears, meditation arrives. When there is no time. Someone asked Jesus: what is special about your heaven? He said, “There shall be time no longer.” The special feature: there will be no time. Everything else will be, but not time. Because with time come anxieties, the race, desire, the thirst for results; with time, not here but somewhere else our kingdom of joy is imagined.

Keep these qualities of the feminine mind in view; then tomorrow’s sutra will be easier to understand.

Enough for today. Join the kirtan for five minutes. Those who wish to join—do not be afraid. Forget the neighbors and dissolve into the singing.