Tao Upanishad #27

Those who only look at life from the surface, who take the surface to be all, will not see the use of emptiness. Those who limit themselves to logic and never descend deeper than thinking will never come to see that what is not present is also the very ground of life. Those who think only in the language of mathematics will find life to be constructive, positive. But they won’t see that life’s positivity cannot last even a single moment without the negative, without its contrary.

Let us understand through a few examples. This is one of Lao Tzu’s fundamental sutras. The basic sutra is that life stands upon duality. And life does not move by opposing its opposite, but only with the cooperation of its opposite. Ordinarily it seems that if your enemy dies you will be happier. But perhaps you do not know that the moment your enemy dies, something within you also dies, something that was there only because of your enemy. That is why very often it happens that there is less loss when a friend dies than when an enemy dies. For the one who opposed you was also arousing a challenge within you; in the very struggle and opposition in which you were continually engaged, he was also shaping you.

Therefore Lao Tzu has said: friends—anyone will do; but choose your enemies with care. Friends do not influence life as deeply as enemies do. A friend can be neglected; an enemy cannot be neglected. A friend can even be forgotten; no one ever forgets an enemy.

But can an enemy influence life so much? This does not occur to our ordinary thinking. If there had been no British rule in India and we tried to produce a Mahatma Gandhi, you would understand what I mean. Almost nothing of Gandhi would remain; or what remained would not be recognizable as Gandhi. That opposition to the British, that enmity, created him ninety-nine percent. When a nation falls into crisis, great men appear of themselves—not because great men choose crisis, but because crisis creates great men. The hour of crisis, the hour of tension, brings them forth.

Hitler wrote in his autobiography that without a great war no great leader can be. Therefore, if one wants to be a great leader, war is absolutely necessary. You cannot name a single great leader who was produced by times of peace; all were born because of war. So whoever wants to become great must arrange for war. Without arranging war, no one can become great.

Life proceeds by the cooperation of opposites. It appears as if it proceeds by opposing, but in truth it proceeds by cooperation. Understand from other angles and it will become clear. If we remove Ravana from the Ramayana, a story cannot be built on Rama alone. It is possible that Ravana might not have been and Rama might have been born; but then Rama would not be known at all. For the whole radiance of Rama’s personality emerges against the opposition of Ravana. The more Rama shines, the greater Ravana’s contribution is in that glory. Rama cannot be shaped without Ravana; nor can Ravana be shaped without Rama. They grow great by leaning on each other. This is the truth. But one who looks only from above sees: they are enemies, in opposition. The deeper truth of life is that they are partners. They may not know it; it is not necessary that they know that on a very subtle plane there is a partnership, a friendliness, a cooperation.

Life is neither created nor does it develop without the opposite. The opposite is indispensable.

Freud, in this century, discovered a precious truth: whomever we love, we also hate. It was shocking! It shocked even Freud. It deeply shocked people, lovers in particular. For a lover cannot accept that he hates the one he loves. But all lovers know it—even if they will not admit it. So Freud was much denied, yet could not be refuted. Slowly the truth had to be accepted.

Whomever we love, we also hate—because love cannot stand without hate. If you have loved someone and you are honest and analyze it, you will find: in the morning you hated, at noon you loved, by evening you hated, by night you loved. Hate and love alternate periodically. With the one with whom you quarreled in the morning and thought, “It is impossible to live a moment with this person,” by evening you reconciled and thought, “Without this person it is impossible to live even a moment.”

The old connoisseurs of love said: love is perfect only when there is no quarrel within it. And Freud says: the more complete the love, the more complete the quarrel. If two lovers are not fighting, it only means that they are deceiving each other; it is not love. If there is no conflict between you and your wife, it means that husband and wife ceased to be long ago; there is not even a need for quarrel now. The deeper the so-called love we know—Freud is not speaking of any spiritual love, that we do not know—the deeper the love, the more inevitable the conflict.

Yet the lover will want, the beloved will want, the husband will want, the wife will want that the quarrel cease, and then there will be great bliss in love. They do not know the truth of life. The day the quarrel ceases completely, love will already have come to an end. In fact, quarrel cannot cease with the one with whom our love is alive. Quarrel means expectations—great expectations. The greater the love, the greater the expectation; the greater the expectation, the greater the feeling of failure, the more the frustration, nothing seems to come into the hand—and then there is quarrel. If no expectation remains—no demand, no hope, no idea of any dream being fulfilled—quarrel stops. Then we accept life as it is.

So Freud says, great lovers cannot live in peace.

A very unusual man, de Sade, said in one of his statements: love is a kind of disease. He called it a disease because we invite love and hatred arrives in our hands. They are two sides of the same thing, two sides of the same coin. So with whomever there is love, with that one the game of hate will also go on.

Nor can hatred alone stand. If you think you only hate such and such a person, you are mistaken. Hatred cannot stand alone. Hatred can persist only where a thread of love still remains—otherwise even hatred cannot endure. If your enmity is deep and your hatred heavy, search within and you will find that somewhere a thread of love is still tied. If the thread of love is completely broken, the thread of hate also breaks.

Thus, to both friend and enemy we are bound. With the friend there is love above and hate below; with the enemy there is hate above and love below. But the bonds are equal. This sounds difficult, for our expectations around love are great. Let us understand from another aspect of life.

A man labors the whole day. Then it should happen that he cannot rest at night; being habituated to labor, he should not be able to sleep. But the more one is habituated to labor, the deeper the sleep one enters. The one who has rested the whole day—it should be that at night he finds deep rest, deep sleep, being habituated to rest. But the one who rested the whole day cannot sleep at night. In fact, the one who worked has earned the opposite pole of labor—rest. And the one who rested has earned the opposite pole of rest—labor. Therefore, the one who rested during the day will, during the night, toss and turn and labor. He will not be able to sleep.

We cannot escape the opposite; it is always standing there. If rest at night is desired, labor during the day is necessary. And the more the labor, the deeper the rest. Hence, the irony: those who live in much labor, to whom leisure is not available, attain the deepest rest; and those who have every facility for leisure—leisure itself becomes a problem, because it does not come.

We live by superficial logic. We say, if rest is wanted at night, then rest the whole day. This is straight logic. But life has nothing to do with it. It is the same logic that says: if you want to love someone, then do not quarrel at all. But life is the reverse. Exactly as electricity has positive and negative poles, so too with life. Only with both poles present is there flow and life. If we cut away one, the other is lost too.

Yet to accept the opposite is very difficult. One who accepts the opposite, I call a sannyasin; Lao Tzu calls him a knower—one who accepts the opposite.

To accept the opposite means this: if today you come to honor me, I should also accept that at some level within you an insult toward me will gather as well. This cannot be avoided. If I accept your honor, I should be prepared that today or tomorrow I will have to endure your insult too. If with this awareness I accept your honor, your honor will not give me pleasure, and your insult will not give me pain. Because I will see, deep within your honor, the insult as well; and deep within your insult, the honor too. If someone throws a shoe at me—why would he do so without cause? He takes so much trouble; some involvement with me must be there. Some connection must be there. And someone who garlands me—perhaps the garland is cheaper; a shoe is more costly. His involvement is heavier, his restlessness more intense. He will surely do something for me.

If I can see, in his insult, his respect—that he is doing something for me, taking trouble—then the sting of insult is gone. And if I can see, in honor, that sooner or later the other face will appear, then the illusion of honor, the dream, vanishes. Then honor and dishonor become two faces of the same coin. And the one to whom honor and dishonor are seen as two faces of one coin—he has gone beyond both.

Life is bound on all sides by the opposite. But when we look at one side, we forget the other completely. That forgetting is our greatest misfortune. When we look at one, we completely forget the other. When we see the thorns, we do not see the flowers. When we see the flowers, we do not see the thorns. Yet flowers and thorns are on the same tree. The sap flowing within both is the same. One branch gives life to both; one root is the life-giver to both. One sun pours its rays on both; one gardener waters both. From one existence both arise. Deep down they are one. But when we see flowers, they so occupy our eyes that we forget the thorns; and the more we forget, the sooner the thorns will prick. When the thorn pricks, then only the prick remains in memory and we forget the flowers. We even forget that in our attachment to the flowers we earned this prick. We drank the juice of flowers, so we have also tasted this fruit. But when the thorn appears, the flower disappears.

Our vision is always partial. Partial vision is ignorance. Partial vision is not false; it also sees truth—but only the incomplete truth. And the remaining part appears so opposite that we cannot join the two in any harmony. How to harmonize them?

The one who embraces you today and says, “There is none but you; you are my joy, you are my song”—how can we imagine that this same person may tomorrow plunge a dagger into the chest? It seems inconsistent. Logic demands consistency. But life’s depth is otherwise. For one who has never been connected so deeply, would never come to stab your chest. Can you make anyone an enemy without first having made him a friend? Is it possible that he remains a small friend and becomes a great enemy? No, this cannot be. Proportion! As much friend as he was, that much enemy he can be—not a grain more.

Machiavelli, in The Prince, advised emperors: the more intimate your friends, the more cautious you should be of them. The advice is cunning, but it contains truth. The more intimate the friendship, the more alert you must be; for an equal danger stands close by. He wrote also: if you want that your enemies do not come to know the truth, then do not let your friends come to know it. And he wrote: never behave with any enemy in such a way that if ever he becomes a friend, you will have to repent—for any enemy can become a friend any day.

And life changes moment to moment. Here nothing is static. From one extreme to the other life sways. On the surface of life the opposites appear separate; in the depth they are conjoined. The one who sees only the surface will not understand Lao Tzu. For Lao Tzu speaks of the ultimate polarity, the last duality of life.

He says: “Thirty spokes join at the hub, but the usefulness of the wheel depends on the empty space left for the axle.”

Look at the ox-cart’s wheel. The rim, the spokes, join at the center. Strange— the wheel turns, the spokes revolve; but there is an empty space, an emptiness, at the center, and upon that emptiness the whole turning of the wheel depends. The peg sits in that emptiness. And a curious thing: the wheel moves, the peg stands still. Upon the standing peg the moving wheel revolves. If the peg also moves, the wheel will not move. The wheel can move because the peg does not. The unmoving peg allows the moving wheel to move. The more unmoving the peg, the more skillfully the wheel can turn. This is the law of the opposite. And the wheel’s center is empty; in that emptiness the peg sits.

That emptiness, says Lao Tzu, perhaps you do not notice—yet it is the real secret of the wheel. It is the center. Without that empty space there can be no wheel. Which means: wherever fullness is seen, deep within, emptiness will also be present. Let us understand.

If, walking on the road, you meet Buddha with a bhiksha-patra—an alms bowl—he will look utterly empty. He has nothing. An alms bowl—nothing else. No wealth, no rank, no prestige, no palace. Once there was a day: had you met Buddha then, he had everything—wealth, palaces, kingdom, empire; great power, great prestige—everything around him. One day he had everything, yet Buddha felt: within I am empty. Outside everything was fullness, and Buddha felt: within I am empty. The wheel was full; the peg was utterly empty. And Buddha felt: what use is this outer fullness if I am empty within? So Buddha left it all. Then one day he is walking the road like a beggar. Now, if you look at him, outside all is emptiness; but within that man is utterly full.

The whole notion of renunciation, of tapascharya, arose from understanding this secret: if you go on filling outside, inside you will remain empty. For emptiness is inevitable within every fullness. And if you begin to fill within, you will have to be willing to be empty without; both cannot be managed together. If you desire both—outer fullness and inner fullness—it is not possible. For life follows the law of the opposite. You will have to understand polarity. If you wish to be a man fulfilled within, wish that the Paramatman fills you within, you will have to let go the concern for the outer fillings of the world. This outer clutching will have to be dropped—this clinging. Then the inner holding will be available; but outwardly—outwardly emptiness will spread.

An emperor came to meet Buddha. He said: you had everything—why did you renounce? Even now nothing is lost. In some sorrow, in some anxiety, such a mistake happens. Your father is my friend; I can persuade him to take you back. If your conflict with your father is such that you would not return home, then I am not a stranger; I am as your father. Come to my palace. And if you think it is not right to take someone’s favor, I have only one daughter and no son; I will marry you to her. My entire wealth, my kingdom—be its master.

While he was making these proposals, he did not once look carefully at Buddha’s face—Buddha was smiling. When he finished and asked, “What do you intend?” Buddha said: you think I have nothing, and I think you have nothing. Both of us are right—but our fields of thinking are different. You have everything outside; I have nothing outside. Naturally, you see: poor fellow! take him back to prosperity somehow. I too see: I have everything within; you have nothing within. I feel: poor fellow! fill him within somehow. Buddha said to the emperor: I have known both. What you can give me—I already had. What you assure me—far more than that I had. I left it. And I tell you: now I have everything; then I had nothing. You have only one experience, of having everything—which you take to be everything. Listen to me: take this alms bowl in your hand and be initiated into sannyas.

Polarity is everywhere. Lao Tzu says: the ox-cart’s wheel turns. The spokes are full, but the wheel is empty at its center. Upon that emptiness it turns. But emptiness is not seen. Emptiness means: that which is not seen. The visible always depends on the invisible. This polarity will be everywhere: the visible will depend on the invisible; word arises from silence; life is poised with death. But the other is not seen.

To explain further, Lao Tzu says: “We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that makes the vessel useful.”

We fashion a clay pot. Ask rightly: where is the pot—in the clay, or in the emptiness enclosed by the clay? When you buy a pot in the market, do you buy it for the pot’s sake, or do you buy the pot for the sake of the emptiness within? Water cannot be poured into the clay, only into the empty space. The more empty the pot, the more useful it is. The wall of clay is useful only because it surrounds an emptiness and gives it a boundary—nothing more. The real pot is the emptiness.

But we see only the pot; no one sees the emptiness. You do not go to the market to buy emptiness; you go to buy pots. You do not pay for emptiness; you pay for the clay. A big pot—more price; a small pot—less price. The price depends on the clay, not on the emptiness—though the supreme utility of the pot is in its emptiness. At home you discover that however lovely the clay, without the inner emptiness the pot is useless. However beautiful the clay, if the inside is closed and there is no hollow space—only clay within—the pot is useless; bringing it home was in vain.

The utility belongs to emptiness.

Lao Tzu says: we build a house...

We are sitting here; we say we sit in a house. Ask Lao Tzu and he will say: we sit in emptiness. The house is these walls standing around. No one is sitting in the walls. The walls merely separate the outer emptiness from the inner emptiness. Their use is to demarcate. They divide the sky outside from the sky within. This has a convenience, a need. That is all the use of the wall. But in the wall no one sits; we sit in the empty sky. Within this building, what do we in truth use? The emptiness. The more the emptiness, the more useful it becomes. The more the space, the more its utility.

“The usefulness of a house is in its emptiness. By cutting doors and windows into walls we make rooms; but the usefulness of the room depends upon the emptiness within.”

Lao Tzu says: where utility seems to appear, it actually depends on the opposite. When you build a house, did you ever think you were creating a void? Making an emptiness? No—you draw the plans of walls, doors, windows. You never draw plans for emptiness. But rightly seen, through doors and walls you are only shaping emptiness. That void is what you are giving a form. The form appears valuable from above; within, the valuable is the emptiness. Therefore it can happen that a hut may be greater than a palace—depending on how much emptiness, how much space is within.

Often I have found: if you ask a poor man to host a friend, he says, “Certainly, we will.” If I ask a rich man to host a friend, he says, “There is no space.” He has more space—but “there is no space.” What has happened? If you go and measure, the poor has less space, the rich more. But the rich man’s space is filled with so many things—filled to the brim—that it is as if there is no space at all.

I once stayed at a millionaire’s house. Seeing his drawing room I felt it could not be called a drawing room—there was no place to sit. It looked like a museum. He had gathered so many kinds of furniture. It was not furniture to sit on, it was furniture to look at—centuries old. He said, “This is 300-year-old French furniture; this is so-and-so centuries old.” I said, “All that is fine, but where is the sitting? It is all furniture—yet one cannot sit anywhere. There isn’t even room to move; if one has to pass through the room, one must squeeze through.” He had kept adding whatever he liked. When I said, “Where is the drawing room in this?” he was startled. He said, “I had not noticed. When I began, I meant it to be a drawing room. Slowly it kept filling. Now when a guest comes, I only show it to him. It is no longer a drawing room.”

So easily this happens outside; it happens as easily within. When you fall in love with a person’s body, you forget that there is also an inner space—what we call Atman. You forget to see whether there is an inner openness, an inner emptiness. Just as a man buys a pot judging the outer workmanship and forgets to notice whether there is space inside to hold water, so a man falls in love with a body, seeing only the skin, the shape of bones, the contours—forgetting to ask whether there is an Atman-like space within, a place where I can enter.

Then later there is regret. You say, “What mistake have I fallen into!” The mistake is only this: a person is not important because of the body. The body is necessary. But a person is important by the sky within—by the emptiness, the openness, the space within.

That very space is named Atman. When we say, “How much Atman is within you?” it means: how much can you contain within? How much room is there? If a slight abuse is hurled at you and it cannot be contained, Atman is very little. If the inner house were vast, perhaps the echo of that abuse would not even reach; you would not even know it was spoken. If a small stone is thrown, there is not even space inside for that stone to find rest; instantly, from within, the stone returns twice as big. Throw a stone into emptiness and emptiness will not send it back; throw it at a wall and the wall returns it. One who lives in reactions—this means there is no inner space. Throw here, and it returns from there. Nothing can be contained; there is no room.

But the true flower of love blooms only in that space. I am not speaking now of Freud’s love; I speak now of that love we do not know at all—the love in which neither our love nor our hate remains. I speak of that love where neither flowers nor thorns remain—only the stream of sap that flows beneath both. But who looks at the inner emptiness? We do not see it.

If someone saluted Lao Tzu, it happened sometimes that he would reply after an hour: “Salutations!” By then the man had forgotten he had even saluted. By then he had thought many thoughts against Lao Tzu: this man is not right; I saluted and he has not replied.

A friend said to Lao Tzu one day, “Is this any manner? Is this etiquette—that a man greets you and you answer after an hour?”

Lao Tzu said, “At least let his salutation reach me. Let it be taken into my heart. Let it rest in my heart. To return it so quickly would be discourtesy; such impatience, such haste—someone says ‘Namaskar’ and we say ‘Namaskar’—neither of us is involved. It is only a settlement, a closing of the matter, a nuisance finished.”

From the surface, Lao Tzu seems strange. But the greeter has forgotten, and Lao Tzu is still answering—so for that hour the greeting has remained with him. For that hour it has resonated in his life-breath. This is not reaction; it is a living response. Reaction is immediate, mechanical. Press a button and the fan runs; press it and the light goes off. Electricity cannot say, “You go on pressing; I will go off a little later.” It is mechanical. A man abuses you and a flame of anger erupts within—equally mechanical. Someone speaks words of love and you are enraptured, your chest swells—equally mechanical. Someone presses buttons, and you inflate and deflate.

Therefore you suffer unaccountably the whole day long. Everyone is pressing buttons, and you are compelled to be what they make you. Someone abuses—and you go. Someone smiles—and spring comes into your life. Someone does not look at you—and your lamps are extinguished, a night of no moon descends. Like a chameleon you must react for twenty-four hours. You have no Atman, no inner space. So everything rebounds from the surface.

Inner space means patience. Inner space means a counter-sensitivity. Inner space means that if something enters me, it will take time; it will have to travel to reach me.

So says Lao Tzu: let his salutation reach me, let it resound in my life-breath; then let the response be formed; then, out of love, I return it. It will take time.

When we fall in love with someone’s body, we do not remember to inquire into the inner space, the inner sky. We bring home the pot and forget the emptiness within.

Rabindranath wrote a song about a Buddhist bhikshu. A Buddhist monk passes along a road, and the city’s courtesan—nagarvadhu—looks down and sees him.

The word “prostitute” is not beautiful. The ancients were wise—they called her nagarvadhu, the bride of the whole town. Now the situation has reversed. For now even the woman you call your wife is, in a sense, a private prostitute—personal. For if you ask a Western psychologist, he will say there is no essential difference between a prostitute and a wife: the prostitute is collective and impermanent, no permanent license; she is hired for a night; with a wife the contract is lifelong—purchased for life. But in the East they said nagarvadhu.

The courtesan looks out, and she is enchanted. She comes down and says to the monk, “Be my guest tonight.” The monk looks at her from head to foot and says, “Now, others will also desire you—many. You are beautiful, young. Even if I do not come, your night will not be empty. Some day when none will desire you, when the town throws you out—and it will throw you out—some day when you cry and no voice answers, then I will come.” The courtesan felt hurt; she was insulted. It was the first time. People used to knock at her door and she refused. Today, for the first time, she knocked at someone’s door—and was refused. The pain was heavy. She returned.

Some twenty years later, a dark night—someone is crying by the roadside. The monk passes and stops. He touches the face and asks. She is thirsty and wants water. He goes to the nearby village, brings water and a lamp. Leprosy has eaten her body. It is the same courtesan. The village has thrown her out; no place for a leper inside. Today no one is willing even to give water. The monk says, “Open your eyes and see—the grace of the Lord! I could fulfill my promise. I have come. Twenty years ago you invited me; that invitation has now reached me. I have come. And the time has also come.”

She opened her eyes and said, “No, it would have been better if you had not come. What use is your coming now? You should have come that day. That day I was young, beautiful.”

The monk said, “But today you are more experienced, more wise. You have seen life—its pain, its happenings, its sorrow, its melancholy. Today I see you have no body, but you have a little Atman. The body has gone; but today Atman is. That day there was no Atman—only body.”

Within there is something, opposite to the body yet united with it. If we can keep in mind this inner contrariness of the body, Lao Tzu’s sutra will be understood. The pot is said to explain—but in depth it is man that is being spoken of.

Regarding existence he says: “Thus, the positive, constructive existence of things gives beneficial convenience, but only in their non-existence lies their real utility.”

When things are present, they give convenience; but their absence also has a deeper utility. When there is youth, youth has its use; when youth is lost, its loss has a deeper use. But we do not know that use because many of us become old only in body; maturity of consciousness does not happen. In consciousness we remain childish. Hence even the very old remain childish in consciousness.

A curious fact: even the oldest person, when he dreams, always sees himself young. Always! Thousands of dreams have been studied, but not one has been found in which an old person saw himself old. It clearly means that desire within still considers itself young. The body does not cooperate—compulsion. The body deceives; it has grown decrepit. But inside, the mind still takes itself to be young; and in dream the mind’s own belief appears.

If a person takes only youth to be useful and, when youth is lost, sees no utility, he has not known the value of negation. If he understands the value of negation, old age becomes more beautiful than youth. For in the beauty of youth there will be excitement; where there is excitement there cannot be depth. There can be speed, haste, movement—but not depth. Thus the beauty of youth will be shallow. When youth is lost, if one can understand its utility, old age receives a beauty that youth never can. And rightly so—old age is ahead of youth, more evolved. In old age a dignity, a depth, an infinite depth becomes available—that is the use of youth’s absence.

Life is full of mystery. But he who knows only life’s mystery and not the mystery of death, does not know the whole. Before death, life is nothing; before death, all is nothing. Death is absence, non-existence.

Lao Tzu says: the utility of positive existence is there—but the utility of negative existence is of another order altogether. Its meaning is different.

But in life we see meaning; in death we see none. For us death is only an end, a closing. Not a beginning, not a new unveiling, not the opening of a new door—only the sudden shutting of old doors; nothing opens. We have no clue about death. The reason is one: we are tied to the positive. The positive keeps us preoccupied. We have never taken note of the negative. Let us understand this negative a little; then non-existence will come into view.

In the day we wake and we account for our waking. A man’s effort is to manage with as little sleep as possible. In the West, many scientists think that sooner or later we should arrange that man need not sleep. If sleep is not needed, life can be longer by twenty years. If you live sixty years, twenty are lost in sleep. Rather than lengthening life by twenty years to eighty, would it not be better to save the twenty years that go to waste in sleep and let you fully live sixty? So scientists think someday we will find a way that man need not sleep.

They do not know—this is the result of overemphasis on the positive. The man who forgets how to sleep will have a waking that is dull and meaningless. Have you noticed? At night when you go to bed, your eyes are extinguished; in the morning they light up again. The night does not go by in vain; night is the way to receive energy through non-existence. Sleep means sinking into the negative, into the no, into shunya—so that shunya may give us strength anew.

Therefore physicians say: no disease can be cured if sleep is impossible. No treatment will work. For if a man closes all possibilities of drawing energy from within, the drugs from outside can do nothing. Physicians now accept: we are only collaborators in the curing of illness—only collaborators. Essentially it is the patient who heals himself. And he can do so only when he lets go all positivity and dissolves into the darkness of night, into shunya.

Dissolving into shunya we reach the deepest level of our life-breath, where life’s foundation is, where the source is—we draw energy from there. That very energy appears in the morning as freshness in the eyes, as the song of the birds, as the blossoming of flowers. The same energy! Trees sleep at night, birds sleep, animals sleep, man sleeps. But some people can no longer sleep—and slowly it seems perhaps the whole of humanity will not be able to sleep. The day humanity cannot sleep, know that all humanity has gone mad. We can never be healthy again—because we have abandoned negation.

Lao Tzu says: sleep is first; waking second. Because negation is first. Rest is first; labor follows. And the deeper the rest, the deeper the labor you can enter.

We must understand this negation, this non-existence. Sleep is non-existence; waking is our positive. In waking we are active; in sleep we become shunya. Therefore the one who dreams the whole night experiences in the morning that he has not slept. For dream is the in-between of negation and affirmation. You have slept and have not slept; you have been awake and not awake. The mind wavers between—so activity continues. Often people get up more tired in the morning than they lay down at night.

I have heard: a villager came to his friend’s house in the capital. On returning, people asked, “What difference did you find between village and city?”

He said: “In the village people are tired by evening and get up fresh in the morning; in the city people seem fresh in the evening and get up tired in the morning.”

In the evening the city is awake—fresh. Clubs, hotels, cinemas—everyone seems fresh. In the morning? If you could roam, invisibly, through bedrooms—people rise like corpses; they don’t want to rise; they rise somehow—compulsion: the office, the shop. As if pulled along; no inner life-breath rising. They stand without a spine, walking. What has happened?

They have lost the negation of sleep, the non-existence of sleep. From morning to night they are talking; at night also in dreams they go on talking. Some mutter in their sleep—talking. Silence is negation; word is existence. Word is positive; silence is shunya. But the person who is drowned in words and to whom shunya never happens within, to whom silence never comes—only words, words—such a man is deprived of life’s depths.

Word is useful, but not enough. Word is necessary, but not sufficient. Words are needed, but more than words—wordlessness is needed; more than sound—silence.

Remember: those whose words have weight, whose words have life—are those who have the capacity for silence. The greatest words of this world have arisen from those who know the art of becoming shunya. When a Buddha speaks, each word carries another magic. When Mahavira speaks, he does not speak as we do; each word is saturated with dense silence. When Mohammed speaks, it is after years of silence. When Jesus speaks, thirty long years... No one knows what Jesus did for thirty years. Mahavira stood in the forests for twelve years—silent. For twelve years he did not speak; therefore when he spoke, the quality, the power was different. Each word became heavy with the meaning of silence. When a word is born out of silence, its weight, its value, is other.

You can speak the same words—there is no hindrance. Mahavira did not coin new words; nor Buddha, nor Christ, nor Krishna. The words Krishna spoke in the Gita were all familiar to Arjuna; at no point did he say, “Your words are beyond me.” He understood them all. He could have spoken the same words. But when Krishna speaks them, their value changes. If Arjuna speaks them, they do not carry the same value.

A word has one meaning in the dictionary—that is one meaning. Another meaning enters a word from the inner silence. There is someone who, whatever he speaks, his speaking becomes poetry. And there is someone who, even reading poetry, leaves it tasteless and stale—the words die on his lips. On someone’s lips, words become nectar and set out on a journey toward the vast. Those lips belong to one who has the capacity for dense silence. In that silence, when a word is conceived, grows, becomes pregnant, and is finally born—then it has life.

Think of it this way and it will be easy. If in a mother’s body a fetus is formed this very moment and comes out this very moment, not remaining in the nine months of silence, it will be a miscarriage, not a birth; an abortion, and there will be no life in it. But in nine months of silence, in nine months of darkness, in nine months of negation, the child grows and attains life. Exactly so, when within someone there is a womb-like silence and a word is conceived, nurtured, grows, receives nourishment and then is born—then it has life.

Our words are miscarriages—abortions. We read a newspaper and rush to tell someone the news. We read a book and grow impatient for the boy to return from school so we can preach to him—abortion! We give no opportunity for a word to live in silence. Intellectually we are all abortive—hurling our miscarriages upon one another; one quickly throws his on another, and the other on a third.

When someone came to the Zen master Bokuju, he would say: if you want to learn through words, go elsewhere. If you want to learn through shunya, stay here. We too will use words—but only to point toward shunya, to indicate. We too will sometimes use words—but only to indicate shunya. The real thing is shunya. The real thing is silence.

Silence is non-existence; word is existence. And in every aspect of life, that which is not seen is the profound. That which does not come into memory, into recognition, into experience—that is the valuable. The person who gives less attention to the positive that is visible, that the senses can grasp, and gives more attention to the non-existent—the shunya, the negation, the silence—that person sets out on the journey toward life’s supreme truth.

So Lao Tzu says: always search for depth; do not get entangled in the surface. Always search for the opposite which is the very foundation. Care for that—because from it life’s juice, life’s beauty, life’s strength and energy become available. Everywhere, continually, the ‘other’ is present in depth. Keep that depth in mind and your whole vision changes. One who begins to see hatred even within love becomes free of both. Then a unique love is born—completely unfamiliar to us. That love is not a relationship; that love is a quality of being.

Christ called that love God. Mahavira called it ahimsa; Buddha called it karuna. Lao Tzu gave it no name; he said all names are corrupted. If you say ‘love’, people will understand their love; if you say ‘compassion’, they will understand their compassion. Every word has been contaminated; diseased men have used them so much that words have become infectious. The germs of men’s diseases have entered into words. Not a single word remains uncontaminated. It is hard to find a word that has not been infected by human sickness. Therefore Lao Tzu said: I give no word. I only say: where both do not remain, that which remains—that alone is worth attaining.

If the hint of word and shunya is caught—one more indication at the end—behind the word shunya is hidden; yet the shunya hidden behind the word is still related to the word. There is another Shunya—Mahashunya—in which neither word nor shunya remains. But for that there is no name. Existence is dual—divided into two, into opposites—and works through opposites. But in the depth of existence there is non-duality—Advaita. There both are lost. Then it becomes difficult even to say ‘one’ remains. As I said, our language—whenever we say ‘one’—immediately ‘two’ comes to mind. Try it: sit for an hour and think of ‘one’ without ‘two’. Then you will understand the ‘one’ I indicate. But whenever we say ‘one’, ‘two’ arises. Our ‘one’ is part of a series of two. It has no meaning by itself.

Therefore the Hindus did not call the supreme ‘one’; they said ‘Advaita’—not-two. They used negation. They could have simply said ‘one’, but at once ‘two’ would arise in the mind; so they said, with great intelligence: not-two. In saying ‘not-two’ they hinted at ‘one’ without using the word.

He who knows, recognizes, understands duality—goes beyond duality. Existence is dual where we stand—but we see only one side of the duality.

So there are three steps. First: we see only one side of the dual; the other is unseen. The first work is to see the whole duality. When we see the whole duality, then the third becomes visible—the beyond of duality. Where we stand, we see love and not hate; if hate is seen, love is not. If both begin to be seen, the third appears—that which is neither, which is beyond both.

The attainment of Advaita becomes possible by fully understanding the significance of duality. And if you want to understand duality fully, Lao Tzu says: wherever there is the positive, the affirmative—search out the negative. You will find the positive stands upon the negative. And when both are gone, that is attained after which nothing remains to be attained.

Enough for today.

We shall pause for five minutes—join the kirtan. And do not just sit; participate, be a partner.