Chapter 1 : Sutra 3
Therefore:
Always free of passion we must be found,
If we would sound life's Secret;
But if passion be always within us,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see. The path upon which one can walk is not the Path; the truth that can be defined is not the Truth.
The Nameless is the begetter of Existence, and name is the mother of things.
Tao Upanishad #3
Available in:
Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Sutra (Original)
Chapter 1 : Sutra 3
Therefore:
Always stripped of passion we must be found, If life's Secret we would sound; But if passion always within us be, Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.
Therefore:
Always stripped of passion we must be found, If life's Secret we would sound; But if passion always within us be, Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.
Transliteration:
Chapter 1 : Sutra 3
Therefore:
Always stripped of passion we must be found, If life's Secret we would sound; But if passion always within us be, Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.
Chapter 1 : Sutra 3
Therefore:
Always stripped of passion we must be found, If life's Secret we would sound; But if passion always within us be, Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.
Translation (Meaning)
Questions in this Discourse
Osho, please tell us: are not all of Lao Tzu’s teachings the teachings of a defeated, beaten man? At their root, isn’t there a negative attitude, a kind of escapism? Won’t this policy of tathata—of acceptance—end up encouraging exploitative systems? And finally, can we not call these teachings mere theoretical idealism? They are not practical, nor do they show any way to be free of doing or to be de-hypnotized.
Lao Tzu does not believe in methods. He says methods belong to desire. There is no method to desirelessness. “Method” means a means, a path, an action undertaken to reach somewhere; a road, a bridge to connect to a destination.
Lao Tzu says: for desire you need methods, you need paths, you need to run, to labor, to strive. For desirelessness, understanding is enough. For desirelessness, understanding suffices; no method is needed—for Lao Tzu. And whoever understands the whole matter, for them too no method is needed. All methods are toys given to the uncomprehending—arrangements to take them away from their clinging slowly, because they won’t drop everything at once. So we stage a gradual weaning.
Lao Tzu says: understanding, insight, prajna! If the mind’s net is seen as a net, you will step out of it this very moment—just by seeing it; no other method is needed. If I understand that this is poison, the cup will fall from my hand by itself. I don’t need some exercise to drop it. If I understand that fire burns, my hand will stop short of it. I don’t need to hire two or four wrestlers to restrain me.
Methods are needed only when there is no understanding; where there is understanding, method is unnecessary. So there are two ways. One is the way of method—the way of unawareness. The unconscious man says, “I have no understanding; give me a method to make up for that lack—some trick, some technique, some method.” Unawareness asks for method; it cannot live without it. For understanding, no method is required. Once the point is seen, the matter is over. Seeing is enough. Why? Because people like Lao Tzu hold that we are not actually bound; we merely think we are bound. We are not ill; we are only ignorant.
There are two kinds of cases. One person is really ill; an actual disease grips his chest—then medicine is needed, a remedy is necessary. But another person is not ill at all; he only imagines, “I am ill.” Then medicine can be costly and dangerous, because medicine can become a new disease. That man just needs understanding that he is not ill. And if you must give him “medicine,” it should be sugar pills, just water—only the appearance of medicine. It will not be medicine at all.
Lao Tzu holds—and rightly—that life’s basic difficulty is the difficulty of ignorance. It is not a real, objective difficulty. We are not truly far from the divine; we only believe we are. We have not truly stepped outside the palace of our life; we only imagine we have. We have not lost life’s treasure; we have only forgotten it. If this is so, Lao Tzu says, what need of methods? The question of method does not arise. Understanding is sufficient. Understanding itself is the method.
The Buddha has said somewhere: those who do not understand, I give them methods; those who understand, I give them understanding. To the uncomprehending I say, “Do this and that, and it will happen.” To those who understand, I simply explain—and that’s the end of it.
Almost like this: every day hundreds come to lie on a psychoanalyst’s couch who are not ill at all. But it makes no difference—they are ill all the same. Whether there is any real illness or not, they are ill—and often more ill than the truly sick! The illness is only a notion, a belief. Yet they too must be treated. What is the treatment? What have Freud or Jung been doing? Nothing but talking for years with the patient, ventilating the illness; and if in the midst of that talking an understanding dawns, the patient steps out of the illness. If understanding does not arise, he remains imprisoned within it.
Life’s problem is not the problem of a real disease; it is the problem of a pseudo-disease. Hence Lao Tzu does not talk of methods. He says: be without method—that is the only method. Know, understand and be still—that is the method.
Nor is Lao Tzu speaking from despair, from defeat. This is worth understanding, because the thought arises again and again. Listening to people like Lao Tzu one feels, “Escapists! They say, ‘Don’t desire.’ If we don’t desire, how will we progress?” Yet have you kept any account of how far desire has taken you—how many have “progressed” by desiring?
Someone asked Aldous Huxley: “Three generations of your Huxley family have labored for progress—the father and the grandfather, all for humanity’s advance. Give us an accounting: can you say that man today is happier, more peaceful, more blissful than five thousand years ago?” Huxley said, “Had you asked my great-grandfather, he might have boldly said, ‘Yes!’ My father would have hesitated. I cannot answer at all.”
No, man has not become happier, nor more peaceful, nor more blissful. And there has been plenty of progress—enough progress indeed.
Lao Tzu’s words provoke the fear that progress will stop. But is man for progress, or is progress for man? If man is merely for progress, then fine—sacrifice man, let him go; progress must happen at any cost. The small house must become big, even if the man dies. Vehicles of ten miles per hour must vanish, and machines of a thousand miles per hour must arrive—never mind if people survive on the road or not. We must reach the moon and the stars—never mind whether the one who reaches survives or not. If progress is the goal, then Lao Tzu is wrong. But if man—his joy, the juice of his life—is the goal, then Lao Tzu is right. The truth is: however far you run with desire, you never arrive.
Remember: having run does not mean you have reached. No one arrives merely by running. But the mind’s logic says, “If you don’t run, you’ll never arrive; only by running will you arrive.”
Lao Tzu says: life’s supreme treasure becomes visible when you halt and stand still; it is not seen by running. And he is not alone: Buddha says this, Mahavira says this, Patanjali says this. All who have known say this. If so, then all the wise are escapists and all the unwise are progressivists. Not a single awakened one will say anything different from Lao Tzu.
Another interesting thing: all these “progressive” unawakened people, after circling around, sooner or later go sit at some Lao Tzu’s feet seeking peace. Lao Tzu never goes to the feet of these unawakened ones for peace. The progressivist sooner or later sits with the so-called escapist and says, “Give me peace.” The escapist never goes to the progressivist saying, “You have found great joy; please pass me a little.” Why is it invariably so? Lao Tzu has eyes; Buddha has eyes. They too can see the progressivist marching ahead—“Perhaps we have strayed!” Yet this never happens: Buddha never goes asking them anything. It is the progressivist who returns again and again: “My mind is disturbed, tormented, troubled.”
No, not by escape. The situation is like this—only the connotations of the word mislead us. A house is on fire, and I run out; you shout, “Escapist! Running away from the house!” In one sense, literally, you are right: it is escape—I am leaving the house and getting away from the fire. But staying in a burning house is not intelligence. If that is “courage,” then when a truck blows its horn on the road, to stand unmoving before it would be heroism! Whoever steps aside on hearing the horn—“Escapist! Running away? This is your examination: when the truck is blaring, stand firm! Don’t lose your courage!”
No. If we understand life rightly, Lao Tzu is not running away from life; he is only stepping away from stupidity—from the fire, from the disease. He is going deeper into life. And we, thinking we are advancing in life, go on advancing into sheer stupidity and are deprived of life. What is the final criterion? Compare Lao Tzu’s face with ours. Lao Tzu, untroubled even while dying; we, anxious even while living. Lao Tzu joyously embraces death; we have never embraced life with joy. Lao Tzu laughs even in illness; we keep weeping even in health. What is the measure? Put thorns in Lao Tzu’s hands and he is grateful; put a flower in our hands and no gratitude arises. By what path shall we recognize? What standard?
Lao Tzu is no escapist. And if he is, then everyone should be an escapist—then escapism is religion. Because by escaping the futile, Lao Tzu enters the meaningful, the essence of life.
It seems to some that this is despair, hopelessness—fear of life, lack of strength to fight: “Perhaps he withdraws because he is weak.” But Lao Tzu shows not the slightest sign of weakness. No one displays the power that Buddha, Lao Tzu, or Christ display. And those we call progressives all become nervous, their hands and feet tremble, their nerves grow diseased, a thousand fears enter their chest.
Today American psychologists say barely ten percent can be called mentally healthy. What of the other ninety? And if you look closely at the ten percent, they are mostly the uneducated, villagers, forest-dwellers, laborers, the lower classes. The higher you go, the more “advanced,” the worse the figures become. Why?
No progressive can ever sleep with the deep rest Lao Tzu knows, nor eat with his joy, nor digest as he does, nor share his health, fearlessness, or silence.
No—the ever-flowing stream of joy in Lao Tzu carries no hint of despair. This man is not defeated. He says, “No one has ever been able to defeat me.” Someone asked, “Why not?” Lao Tzu said, “Because I never tried to defeat anyone. You can defeat me only if I try to win. You can only defeat me if I set out to conquer. I never set out to conquer.”
We think perhaps he avoids winning because he fears fighting. He says, “I did not go to win because in your world I found nothing worth winning. I saw nothing worth conquering. These petty things you compete for I did not deem worth conquering. And to stir up such fuss only to lose over petty things? For if you set out to win, you will also lose. Even if you win, you gain nothing; and if you lose, you inherit restlessness and anxiety. I simply did not go to win—not from fear of losing, but because there was nothing worth winning.”
We naturally feel this is a pessimist’s viewpoint. But a pessimist should look miserable, no? It’s strange: the “pessimist” does not look unhappy, and we “hedonists” look miserable.
When Buddha’s texts were first translated in the West, they said, “Pessimist par excellence!” The ultimate gloom-monger—he says, “Birth is suffering, life is suffering, old age suffering, death suffering—everything is suffering.” Pessimist! But none of them thought to look at his face. If he is a pessimist and you are hedonists, then your faces should shine with happiness. There is no sign of joy on your faces. And this man who says, “All is suffering,” has an immeasurable bliss. Surely some mistake is being made.
Buddha says: to see that life is dukkha—suffering—is precisely what opens the door to bliss. Those who believe life is happiness, they attain only suffering. His arithmetic is exact and profound. If you proceed thinking life is a flower, when it is a thorn, you will be pricked and suffer. Because it is a thorn, not a flower. But if you recognize the thorn as a thorn, it cannot hurt you in the same way. The thorn manages to hurt because it masquerades as a flower. Buddha says: know that life is dukkha, and then no one can steal your joy. If you mistake life for happiness, you begin a chain of delusion and will end in sorrow.
Lao Tzu is no pessimist; he is the supreme celebrant of joy—supreme. The peak, the uttermost of blissfulness—that is Lao Tzu.
Lao Tzu had a disciple, Chuang Tzu. The emperor of China invited him to come and be his prime minister. Chuang Tzu replied, “Where I am, the happiness is such that there is none higher. By making me your minister you would only bring me down. Beyond this, there is no further joy. From here, any movement is a falling back. From here, to shift even an inch is to lose.” He said, “From here, any ‘advancement’ is a retreat. Keep your offer.”
We would think, “Madman! The chance to be prime minister—invited by the emperor himself! Others must go begging for every vote. He’s mad to refuse—he should have gone quietly.” But Chuang Tzu’s understanding told him otherwise: “From this bliss, to move at all is to be lowered. There is no higher.” You keep it.
When Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu or others speak of tathata—suchness, of acceptance—they do not do so out of gloom, frustration, or the moralistic idea that contentment is a virtue. Not at all.
Acceptance can arise in two ways. One: “There is no way out, so accept—at least you’ll have some consolation.” No. Lao Tzu’s total acceptance, his tathata, does not mean this. He says: the man who says, “By accepting I will have contentment,” is still rejecting within.
Understand this well. He is still rejecting, because if there were no rejection, from where would discontent arise? I say, “A thorn is lodged in my foot; let me accept it, at least there will be some contentment.” But hidden in that “acceptance” is rejection. In truth, that acceptance is only another mode of rejection. I still feel the pain, the hurt. Seeing no way out, I close my eyes and say, “All right, there must be some divine secret in this; in the curse a blessing is hidden; in dark clouds white lightning is hidden; among thorns there are flowers; inside sorrow, joys are hidden.” But my search is still for joy—the white streak of lightning. I have no acceptance of the dark cloud. When the night grows darkest, dawn is near—but my longing is for dawn. I invoke this sentence to soothe myself about the night, but my desire is for the morning. The night’s darkness I tolerate by keeping my eye on the coming light. This is not Lao Tzu’s tathata.
Lao Tzu says: not acceptance for the sake of consoling contentment, but because rejection is stupidity. Rejection leads nowhere but to self-created hell. Lao Tzu emphasizes less “acceptance” and more the understanding of rejection. The day you fully see that by rejecting you manufacture hell with your own hands, that very day rejection will depart; what remains is acceptance. See the difference. One kind of acceptance is something we impose against our inner no; it creates conflict—inside, rejection; outside, an imposed yes. The other kind arises naturally when rejection evaporates; then acceptance is simply what is.
My friend dies. I say, “All right, I must accept; there is no help. Everyone has to go; who remains forever?” I lecture myself like this, but the stab remains inside: the empty space aches; within, something keeps saying, “It’s wrong; it should not have happened,” while outwardly I go on consoling myself. These two run together. The balm I apply on the surface does not heal the wound within.
This is not the tathata Lao Tzu is speaking about. He says: I do not say, “I am sad because my friend died;” I say, “I am amazed he lived so long!” Life is the improbable; death is the natural. Death is not astonishing; life is the astonishment.
Lao Tzu will say: “He lived so long—astonishing!”
I mentioned Chuang Tzu. His wife died. The emperor came to condole and found Chuang Tzu sitting at his doorway, beating a little hand-drum, legs stretched out, singing. The emperor was nonplussed—he had rehearsed all the conventional lines of condolence, as people do; but the scene didn’t fit the script. Here was drumming and delight!
The emperor couldn’t restrain himself. “Chuang Tzu, if you will not mourn, at least don’t beat the drum! That much is enough.” Chuang Tzu said, “Either mourn or beat the drum; there is no place to stand in between. Why should I be sad? I am thanking Existence that she lived so long—astonishing! She served me so much—astonishing! She loved me so deeply—astonishing! And if at the moment of departure I cannot even send her off with joy, I would be most ungrateful. I am bidding her farewell. As she recedes from this world, my drumbeat will fade; but in her going I would send her with celebration.”
We, who call ourselves hedonists, cannot live together joyfully even while alive; and Chuang Tzu bids a joyous farewell to his dead wife with a drum—he is the “pessimist”! Then our hedonism and pessimism are strange indeed. Who is the pessimist? We are—the ones who live in sadness twenty-four hours a day. Chuang Tzu is among the supreme joy-lovers.
Lao Tzu does not say, “Accept” out of helplessness, but out of strength, power, capacity. Acceptance is great strength. Someone throws stones at Mahavira; he stands there. Our mind mutters, “What a coward! He should answer stones with bigger stones.” But Mahavira stands—not from cowardice, but from supreme power. His inner strength is such that the stones do not land, do not wound; they fail to provoke any reaction within. The thrower is childish; Mahavira is filled with compassion: “What a madman, wasting his energy!”
We see only two options: either reply to a stone with a stone, or run away. We see no third. Mahavira’s option is the third: neither flee nor retaliate. He does not “take” the stone at all; it creates no disturbance within. Thus he remains in great gain, not loss—firm in his ultimate peace and bliss, unmoved an inch.
All religion is born from great courage, from great endeavor; all religion is born of fearlessness, not fear; it is a settling into bliss, not into sorrow. The formula of sorrow is the demand for happiness. The path to established bliss is the acceptance of suffering.
More tomorrow. Any questions?
Lao Tzu says: for desire you need methods, you need paths, you need to run, to labor, to strive. For desirelessness, understanding is enough. For desirelessness, understanding suffices; no method is needed—for Lao Tzu. And whoever understands the whole matter, for them too no method is needed. All methods are toys given to the uncomprehending—arrangements to take them away from their clinging slowly, because they won’t drop everything at once. So we stage a gradual weaning.
Lao Tzu says: understanding, insight, prajna! If the mind’s net is seen as a net, you will step out of it this very moment—just by seeing it; no other method is needed. If I understand that this is poison, the cup will fall from my hand by itself. I don’t need some exercise to drop it. If I understand that fire burns, my hand will stop short of it. I don’t need to hire two or four wrestlers to restrain me.
Methods are needed only when there is no understanding; where there is understanding, method is unnecessary. So there are two ways. One is the way of method—the way of unawareness. The unconscious man says, “I have no understanding; give me a method to make up for that lack—some trick, some technique, some method.” Unawareness asks for method; it cannot live without it. For understanding, no method is required. Once the point is seen, the matter is over. Seeing is enough. Why? Because people like Lao Tzu hold that we are not actually bound; we merely think we are bound. We are not ill; we are only ignorant.
There are two kinds of cases. One person is really ill; an actual disease grips his chest—then medicine is needed, a remedy is necessary. But another person is not ill at all; he only imagines, “I am ill.” Then medicine can be costly and dangerous, because medicine can become a new disease. That man just needs understanding that he is not ill. And if you must give him “medicine,” it should be sugar pills, just water—only the appearance of medicine. It will not be medicine at all.
Lao Tzu holds—and rightly—that life’s basic difficulty is the difficulty of ignorance. It is not a real, objective difficulty. We are not truly far from the divine; we only believe we are. We have not truly stepped outside the palace of our life; we only imagine we have. We have not lost life’s treasure; we have only forgotten it. If this is so, Lao Tzu says, what need of methods? The question of method does not arise. Understanding is sufficient. Understanding itself is the method.
The Buddha has said somewhere: those who do not understand, I give them methods; those who understand, I give them understanding. To the uncomprehending I say, “Do this and that, and it will happen.” To those who understand, I simply explain—and that’s the end of it.
Almost like this: every day hundreds come to lie on a psychoanalyst’s couch who are not ill at all. But it makes no difference—they are ill all the same. Whether there is any real illness or not, they are ill—and often more ill than the truly sick! The illness is only a notion, a belief. Yet they too must be treated. What is the treatment? What have Freud or Jung been doing? Nothing but talking for years with the patient, ventilating the illness; and if in the midst of that talking an understanding dawns, the patient steps out of the illness. If understanding does not arise, he remains imprisoned within it.
Life’s problem is not the problem of a real disease; it is the problem of a pseudo-disease. Hence Lao Tzu does not talk of methods. He says: be without method—that is the only method. Know, understand and be still—that is the method.
Nor is Lao Tzu speaking from despair, from defeat. This is worth understanding, because the thought arises again and again. Listening to people like Lao Tzu one feels, “Escapists! They say, ‘Don’t desire.’ If we don’t desire, how will we progress?” Yet have you kept any account of how far desire has taken you—how many have “progressed” by desiring?
Someone asked Aldous Huxley: “Three generations of your Huxley family have labored for progress—the father and the grandfather, all for humanity’s advance. Give us an accounting: can you say that man today is happier, more peaceful, more blissful than five thousand years ago?” Huxley said, “Had you asked my great-grandfather, he might have boldly said, ‘Yes!’ My father would have hesitated. I cannot answer at all.”
No, man has not become happier, nor more peaceful, nor more blissful. And there has been plenty of progress—enough progress indeed.
Lao Tzu’s words provoke the fear that progress will stop. But is man for progress, or is progress for man? If man is merely for progress, then fine—sacrifice man, let him go; progress must happen at any cost. The small house must become big, even if the man dies. Vehicles of ten miles per hour must vanish, and machines of a thousand miles per hour must arrive—never mind if people survive on the road or not. We must reach the moon and the stars—never mind whether the one who reaches survives or not. If progress is the goal, then Lao Tzu is wrong. But if man—his joy, the juice of his life—is the goal, then Lao Tzu is right. The truth is: however far you run with desire, you never arrive.
Remember: having run does not mean you have reached. No one arrives merely by running. But the mind’s logic says, “If you don’t run, you’ll never arrive; only by running will you arrive.”
Lao Tzu says: life’s supreme treasure becomes visible when you halt and stand still; it is not seen by running. And he is not alone: Buddha says this, Mahavira says this, Patanjali says this. All who have known say this. If so, then all the wise are escapists and all the unwise are progressivists. Not a single awakened one will say anything different from Lao Tzu.
Another interesting thing: all these “progressive” unawakened people, after circling around, sooner or later go sit at some Lao Tzu’s feet seeking peace. Lao Tzu never goes to the feet of these unawakened ones for peace. The progressivist sooner or later sits with the so-called escapist and says, “Give me peace.” The escapist never goes to the progressivist saying, “You have found great joy; please pass me a little.” Why is it invariably so? Lao Tzu has eyes; Buddha has eyes. They too can see the progressivist marching ahead—“Perhaps we have strayed!” Yet this never happens: Buddha never goes asking them anything. It is the progressivist who returns again and again: “My mind is disturbed, tormented, troubled.”
No, not by escape. The situation is like this—only the connotations of the word mislead us. A house is on fire, and I run out; you shout, “Escapist! Running away from the house!” In one sense, literally, you are right: it is escape—I am leaving the house and getting away from the fire. But staying in a burning house is not intelligence. If that is “courage,” then when a truck blows its horn on the road, to stand unmoving before it would be heroism! Whoever steps aside on hearing the horn—“Escapist! Running away? This is your examination: when the truck is blaring, stand firm! Don’t lose your courage!”
No. If we understand life rightly, Lao Tzu is not running away from life; he is only stepping away from stupidity—from the fire, from the disease. He is going deeper into life. And we, thinking we are advancing in life, go on advancing into sheer stupidity and are deprived of life. What is the final criterion? Compare Lao Tzu’s face with ours. Lao Tzu, untroubled even while dying; we, anxious even while living. Lao Tzu joyously embraces death; we have never embraced life with joy. Lao Tzu laughs even in illness; we keep weeping even in health. What is the measure? Put thorns in Lao Tzu’s hands and he is grateful; put a flower in our hands and no gratitude arises. By what path shall we recognize? What standard?
Lao Tzu is no escapist. And if he is, then everyone should be an escapist—then escapism is religion. Because by escaping the futile, Lao Tzu enters the meaningful, the essence of life.
It seems to some that this is despair, hopelessness—fear of life, lack of strength to fight: “Perhaps he withdraws because he is weak.” But Lao Tzu shows not the slightest sign of weakness. No one displays the power that Buddha, Lao Tzu, or Christ display. And those we call progressives all become nervous, their hands and feet tremble, their nerves grow diseased, a thousand fears enter their chest.
Today American psychologists say barely ten percent can be called mentally healthy. What of the other ninety? And if you look closely at the ten percent, they are mostly the uneducated, villagers, forest-dwellers, laborers, the lower classes. The higher you go, the more “advanced,” the worse the figures become. Why?
No progressive can ever sleep with the deep rest Lao Tzu knows, nor eat with his joy, nor digest as he does, nor share his health, fearlessness, or silence.
No—the ever-flowing stream of joy in Lao Tzu carries no hint of despair. This man is not defeated. He says, “No one has ever been able to defeat me.” Someone asked, “Why not?” Lao Tzu said, “Because I never tried to defeat anyone. You can defeat me only if I try to win. You can only defeat me if I set out to conquer. I never set out to conquer.”
We think perhaps he avoids winning because he fears fighting. He says, “I did not go to win because in your world I found nothing worth winning. I saw nothing worth conquering. These petty things you compete for I did not deem worth conquering. And to stir up such fuss only to lose over petty things? For if you set out to win, you will also lose. Even if you win, you gain nothing; and if you lose, you inherit restlessness and anxiety. I simply did not go to win—not from fear of losing, but because there was nothing worth winning.”
We naturally feel this is a pessimist’s viewpoint. But a pessimist should look miserable, no? It’s strange: the “pessimist” does not look unhappy, and we “hedonists” look miserable.
When Buddha’s texts were first translated in the West, they said, “Pessimist par excellence!” The ultimate gloom-monger—he says, “Birth is suffering, life is suffering, old age suffering, death suffering—everything is suffering.” Pessimist! But none of them thought to look at his face. If he is a pessimist and you are hedonists, then your faces should shine with happiness. There is no sign of joy on your faces. And this man who says, “All is suffering,” has an immeasurable bliss. Surely some mistake is being made.
Buddha says: to see that life is dukkha—suffering—is precisely what opens the door to bliss. Those who believe life is happiness, they attain only suffering. His arithmetic is exact and profound. If you proceed thinking life is a flower, when it is a thorn, you will be pricked and suffer. Because it is a thorn, not a flower. But if you recognize the thorn as a thorn, it cannot hurt you in the same way. The thorn manages to hurt because it masquerades as a flower. Buddha says: know that life is dukkha, and then no one can steal your joy. If you mistake life for happiness, you begin a chain of delusion and will end in sorrow.
Lao Tzu is no pessimist; he is the supreme celebrant of joy—supreme. The peak, the uttermost of blissfulness—that is Lao Tzu.
Lao Tzu had a disciple, Chuang Tzu. The emperor of China invited him to come and be his prime minister. Chuang Tzu replied, “Where I am, the happiness is such that there is none higher. By making me your minister you would only bring me down. Beyond this, there is no further joy. From here, any movement is a falling back. From here, to shift even an inch is to lose.” He said, “From here, any ‘advancement’ is a retreat. Keep your offer.”
We would think, “Madman! The chance to be prime minister—invited by the emperor himself! Others must go begging for every vote. He’s mad to refuse—he should have gone quietly.” But Chuang Tzu’s understanding told him otherwise: “From this bliss, to move at all is to be lowered. There is no higher.” You keep it.
When Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu or others speak of tathata—suchness, of acceptance—they do not do so out of gloom, frustration, or the moralistic idea that contentment is a virtue. Not at all.
Acceptance can arise in two ways. One: “There is no way out, so accept—at least you’ll have some consolation.” No. Lao Tzu’s total acceptance, his tathata, does not mean this. He says: the man who says, “By accepting I will have contentment,” is still rejecting within.
Understand this well. He is still rejecting, because if there were no rejection, from where would discontent arise? I say, “A thorn is lodged in my foot; let me accept it, at least there will be some contentment.” But hidden in that “acceptance” is rejection. In truth, that acceptance is only another mode of rejection. I still feel the pain, the hurt. Seeing no way out, I close my eyes and say, “All right, there must be some divine secret in this; in the curse a blessing is hidden; in dark clouds white lightning is hidden; among thorns there are flowers; inside sorrow, joys are hidden.” But my search is still for joy—the white streak of lightning. I have no acceptance of the dark cloud. When the night grows darkest, dawn is near—but my longing is for dawn. I invoke this sentence to soothe myself about the night, but my desire is for the morning. The night’s darkness I tolerate by keeping my eye on the coming light. This is not Lao Tzu’s tathata.
Lao Tzu says: not acceptance for the sake of consoling contentment, but because rejection is stupidity. Rejection leads nowhere but to self-created hell. Lao Tzu emphasizes less “acceptance” and more the understanding of rejection. The day you fully see that by rejecting you manufacture hell with your own hands, that very day rejection will depart; what remains is acceptance. See the difference. One kind of acceptance is something we impose against our inner no; it creates conflict—inside, rejection; outside, an imposed yes. The other kind arises naturally when rejection evaporates; then acceptance is simply what is.
My friend dies. I say, “All right, I must accept; there is no help. Everyone has to go; who remains forever?” I lecture myself like this, but the stab remains inside: the empty space aches; within, something keeps saying, “It’s wrong; it should not have happened,” while outwardly I go on consoling myself. These two run together. The balm I apply on the surface does not heal the wound within.
This is not the tathata Lao Tzu is speaking about. He says: I do not say, “I am sad because my friend died;” I say, “I am amazed he lived so long!” Life is the improbable; death is the natural. Death is not astonishing; life is the astonishment.
Lao Tzu will say: “He lived so long—astonishing!”
I mentioned Chuang Tzu. His wife died. The emperor came to condole and found Chuang Tzu sitting at his doorway, beating a little hand-drum, legs stretched out, singing. The emperor was nonplussed—he had rehearsed all the conventional lines of condolence, as people do; but the scene didn’t fit the script. Here was drumming and delight!
The emperor couldn’t restrain himself. “Chuang Tzu, if you will not mourn, at least don’t beat the drum! That much is enough.” Chuang Tzu said, “Either mourn or beat the drum; there is no place to stand in between. Why should I be sad? I am thanking Existence that she lived so long—astonishing! She served me so much—astonishing! She loved me so deeply—astonishing! And if at the moment of departure I cannot even send her off with joy, I would be most ungrateful. I am bidding her farewell. As she recedes from this world, my drumbeat will fade; but in her going I would send her with celebration.”
We, who call ourselves hedonists, cannot live together joyfully even while alive; and Chuang Tzu bids a joyous farewell to his dead wife with a drum—he is the “pessimist”! Then our hedonism and pessimism are strange indeed. Who is the pessimist? We are—the ones who live in sadness twenty-four hours a day. Chuang Tzu is among the supreme joy-lovers.
Lao Tzu does not say, “Accept” out of helplessness, but out of strength, power, capacity. Acceptance is great strength. Someone throws stones at Mahavira; he stands there. Our mind mutters, “What a coward! He should answer stones with bigger stones.” But Mahavira stands—not from cowardice, but from supreme power. His inner strength is such that the stones do not land, do not wound; they fail to provoke any reaction within. The thrower is childish; Mahavira is filled with compassion: “What a madman, wasting his energy!”
We see only two options: either reply to a stone with a stone, or run away. We see no third. Mahavira’s option is the third: neither flee nor retaliate. He does not “take” the stone at all; it creates no disturbance within. Thus he remains in great gain, not loss—firm in his ultimate peace and bliss, unmoved an inch.
All religion is born from great courage, from great endeavor; all religion is born of fearlessness, not fear; it is a settling into bliss, not into sorrow. The formula of sorrow is the demand for happiness. The path to established bliss is the acceptance of suffering.
More tomorrow. Any questions?
Osho, “understanding” — what kind of phenomenon is it?
Whatever happens in life can happen in two ways: without understanding, or with understanding. It will be easier if we take an example.
You abuse me; anger arises in me. Does my anger spring up instantly from your abuse, or does something like an act of understanding happen in between? When you abuse me, do I try to understand why your abuse is giving rise to anger within me? Do I turn inward to see whether anger should arise or not? Do I look within to see what anger is?
If I do not look at any of this—if you abuse me and I get angry, and between the two there is no interval for my understanding, no space at all—there, your abuse; here, my anger; there, a button pressed and I flare up—then I am behaving like a mechanism. That is the behavior of unawareness.
But if you abuse me and I understand what is arising within me, why it is arising—where does the insult touch me? which wound does it press? where does it pierce, and why? what is there in the insult that fills me with so much fire, that makes me so poisonous?—if I understand all this and then see this poison, recognize this rising fire called anger for what it is, then whatever I do will be out of understanding.
And the amusing thing is that anger can happen only in unawareness; it cannot happen in understanding. So if you abuse me and I care to understand, anger becomes impossible. If you abuse me and I take no care to understand, only then is anger possible.
That is why a man like Lao Tzu will say: there is no need for any method to remove anger. No technique is needed. No mantras or occult devices are needed. No amulets to tie on. No oaths, no pledges, no vows are needed. Just understand anger, and anger will become impossible.
Right now I am having a Western friend do a meditation. He is present here. Anger is his great pain. It erupts on someone. So I have told him to take a pillow and, for three days, vent his anger on it.
At first he was very surprised. He said, “What madness are you talking about! On a pillow?”
I said, “You begin. If you can take it out on a person, then taking it out on a pillow is certainly not more mad. If it has never looked like madness when you take it out on a person, then on a pillow it is surely less so. Try.”
He tried the first day. He came and reported: “At first it felt a bit odd—what am I doing? But in five to seven minutes a rhythm came, and I started hitting the pillow just as if it were alive. And not only alive; very soon the pillow took the form of the person with whom I have had the greatest enmity. I remembered him—ten years old now. The one I wanted to beat but did not—his face began to appear in the pillow. I laughed, I felt restless, and there was a certain relish too—and I hit.”
For three days now he has been beating the pillow. Today he gave the full report. It is astonishing. The whole report is this: on the first day, all the faces began to appear—those I wanted to hit and could not. On the second day the faces disappeared; pure anger remained. It was pouring out from my side; on the other side there was no one. Pure anger! And then he understood that people were only excuses on whom he vented it. This fire is within me; it keeps seeking pretexts. Then an understanding arose. He saw anger in a new light. Today it was no longer the other’s responsibility; it was now within—no longer objective, it became subjective. “You abused me, therefore I got angry”—not so. Now it became clear: I wanted to be angry, and I was waiting for your abuse. And if you had not abused me, I would have sought an abuse elsewhere. I would have provoked you to abuse me. I would contrive, I would say such things, I would do such acts that an abuse would come from somewhere. Because what had filled me within wanted to be released. It needed to be freed.
On the second day he saw—he is doing it all day; three or four times a day, for an hour each time—he saw that this anger is toward no one; this anger is within me. And today was his third day. He came and said, “I am astonished: the moment it became clear that it is toward no one, that it is within me, it was as if something inside took its leave—everything has become quiet. I am utterly unable now: if someone abuses me at this moment, I will not be able to get angry. At least not at this moment. Because it is as if a great weight inside has been thrown out. Everything is empty.”
Understanding means: whatever happens within you happens knowingly, in your awareness, in your wakefulness, in your consciousness. Whatever! And then much will stop happening by itself. And what stops—that is sin. And what continues even in full awareness—that is virtue. Understanding is the touchstone. What can continue along with understanding is virtue; and what cannot continue along with understanding is sin. That which can function only in unawareness is sin. And that which cannot be operated at all in unawareness is virtue. So the meaning of understanding is only this: whatever happens within me should happen attentively, not in my inattention.
Yet everything is happening in inattention. When do you become angry? When do you become filled with love? When do you experience pleasure? When do you experience pain? Almost all of it is outside your knowing—unconscious. Suddenly it seems, I am happy; suddenly it seems, I am unhappy. There is a great melancholy. And when you feel melancholy, you do not think it is coming from within; you start looking around for causes: who is doing this, plunging me into gloom? The boy, the girl, the wife, the husband, the friend, the business—who is it? You at once set out to search. And searching, you catch hold of someone or other.
But they are all scapegoats, all excuses, all pegs. None of them is real. Because the amusing thing is, if you were locked alone in a room, even then you would do the very same things you do with people. The very same. You think you talk because a friend meets you? Leave you alone—you will talk alone, with a friend in your dream. You think you get angry because someone abuses you? Lock you in a room; within fifteen days you will find you have gotten angry hundreds of times in that locked room. Perhaps you banged your shirt hard; perhaps you threw a utensil; perhaps you let your anger out while bathing. In twenty-five different ways you will vent anger.
Let whatever happens within happen with understanding. Let no inner event happen in your inattention—that is what is called understanding. And the amusing thing is, if there is understanding, what is wrong stops on its own. If there is no understanding, then however many devices you try, you cannot begin what is right.
More tomorrow.
You abuse me; anger arises in me. Does my anger spring up instantly from your abuse, or does something like an act of understanding happen in between? When you abuse me, do I try to understand why your abuse is giving rise to anger within me? Do I turn inward to see whether anger should arise or not? Do I look within to see what anger is?
If I do not look at any of this—if you abuse me and I get angry, and between the two there is no interval for my understanding, no space at all—there, your abuse; here, my anger; there, a button pressed and I flare up—then I am behaving like a mechanism. That is the behavior of unawareness.
But if you abuse me and I understand what is arising within me, why it is arising—where does the insult touch me? which wound does it press? where does it pierce, and why? what is there in the insult that fills me with so much fire, that makes me so poisonous?—if I understand all this and then see this poison, recognize this rising fire called anger for what it is, then whatever I do will be out of understanding.
And the amusing thing is that anger can happen only in unawareness; it cannot happen in understanding. So if you abuse me and I care to understand, anger becomes impossible. If you abuse me and I take no care to understand, only then is anger possible.
That is why a man like Lao Tzu will say: there is no need for any method to remove anger. No technique is needed. No mantras or occult devices are needed. No amulets to tie on. No oaths, no pledges, no vows are needed. Just understand anger, and anger will become impossible.
Right now I am having a Western friend do a meditation. He is present here. Anger is his great pain. It erupts on someone. So I have told him to take a pillow and, for three days, vent his anger on it.
At first he was very surprised. He said, “What madness are you talking about! On a pillow?”
I said, “You begin. If you can take it out on a person, then taking it out on a pillow is certainly not more mad. If it has never looked like madness when you take it out on a person, then on a pillow it is surely less so. Try.”
He tried the first day. He came and reported: “At first it felt a bit odd—what am I doing? But in five to seven minutes a rhythm came, and I started hitting the pillow just as if it were alive. And not only alive; very soon the pillow took the form of the person with whom I have had the greatest enmity. I remembered him—ten years old now. The one I wanted to beat but did not—his face began to appear in the pillow. I laughed, I felt restless, and there was a certain relish too—and I hit.”
For three days now he has been beating the pillow. Today he gave the full report. It is astonishing. The whole report is this: on the first day, all the faces began to appear—those I wanted to hit and could not. On the second day the faces disappeared; pure anger remained. It was pouring out from my side; on the other side there was no one. Pure anger! And then he understood that people were only excuses on whom he vented it. This fire is within me; it keeps seeking pretexts. Then an understanding arose. He saw anger in a new light. Today it was no longer the other’s responsibility; it was now within—no longer objective, it became subjective. “You abused me, therefore I got angry”—not so. Now it became clear: I wanted to be angry, and I was waiting for your abuse. And if you had not abused me, I would have sought an abuse elsewhere. I would have provoked you to abuse me. I would contrive, I would say such things, I would do such acts that an abuse would come from somewhere. Because what had filled me within wanted to be released. It needed to be freed.
On the second day he saw—he is doing it all day; three or four times a day, for an hour each time—he saw that this anger is toward no one; this anger is within me. And today was his third day. He came and said, “I am astonished: the moment it became clear that it is toward no one, that it is within me, it was as if something inside took its leave—everything has become quiet. I am utterly unable now: if someone abuses me at this moment, I will not be able to get angry. At least not at this moment. Because it is as if a great weight inside has been thrown out. Everything is empty.”
Understanding means: whatever happens within you happens knowingly, in your awareness, in your wakefulness, in your consciousness. Whatever! And then much will stop happening by itself. And what stops—that is sin. And what continues even in full awareness—that is virtue. Understanding is the touchstone. What can continue along with understanding is virtue; and what cannot continue along with understanding is sin. That which can function only in unawareness is sin. And that which cannot be operated at all in unawareness is virtue. So the meaning of understanding is only this: whatever happens within me should happen attentively, not in my inattention.
Yet everything is happening in inattention. When do you become angry? When do you become filled with love? When do you experience pleasure? When do you experience pain? Almost all of it is outside your knowing—unconscious. Suddenly it seems, I am happy; suddenly it seems, I am unhappy. There is a great melancholy. And when you feel melancholy, you do not think it is coming from within; you start looking around for causes: who is doing this, plunging me into gloom? The boy, the girl, the wife, the husband, the friend, the business—who is it? You at once set out to search. And searching, you catch hold of someone or other.
But they are all scapegoats, all excuses, all pegs. None of them is real. Because the amusing thing is, if you were locked alone in a room, even then you would do the very same things you do with people. The very same. You think you talk because a friend meets you? Leave you alone—you will talk alone, with a friend in your dream. You think you get angry because someone abuses you? Lock you in a room; within fifteen days you will find you have gotten angry hundreds of times in that locked room. Perhaps you banged your shirt hard; perhaps you threw a utensil; perhaps you let your anger out while bathing. In twenty-five different ways you will vent anger.
Let whatever happens within happen with understanding. Let no inner event happen in your inattention—that is what is called understanding. And the amusing thing is, if there is understanding, what is wrong stops on its own. If there is no understanding, then however many devices you try, you cannot begin what is right.
More tomorrow.
Osho's Commentary
Truth cannot be said. There is no path upon which one can proceed. Existence is Nameless; the world of objects is the world of names. Therefore, the mind rooted in desire will never know life’s unfathomable depths, the mystery of life; it will know only the outer periphery of life.
Therefore is used only when what follows flows from what has gone before, issues out of it, is distilled from it. Only if the third point grows out of the first two can it be joined by a therefore. But what relation has a mind filled with lust with a mind filled with words? What relation has a path upon which one cannot walk with a mind driven by lustful longing? What relation has that Existence to which no name can be given with a mind choked with desire?
It is not apparent; it is hidden. Hence Lao Tzu’s therefore has always been difficult to grasp. Let us first look a little into the connection.
In truth, only he who is filled with craving wants to arrive somewhere. The very desire to arrive somewhere is craving. If I am content to be what I am, then all paths are useless for me; there remains no way for me. When I do not have to go anywhere, when I do not have to arrive anywhere, then no path has any purpose for me. If I must arrive somewhere, go somewhere, become something, gain something, then paths become inevitable. If there is to be no journey, what use are paths? But if there is to be a journey, a path is necessary. All the paths we construct are paths of craving. No path is ever made without desire. Though desire relates to the goal, not to the path, yet no goal can be reached without a path. And no craving can be fulfilled without a means. If any desire is to be fulfilled, instruments are necessary.
Craving is the longing to arrive somewhere. Some faraway star keeps glittering in the desire-laden mind and whispers: Come here and you will find peace, come here and you will find happiness, come here and you will taste bliss. Where you stand, there is no bliss. There, where desire is making some star glitter, there is bliss. And between us and that star lies a great distance. To bridge it, a way must be made. That way we may pave with wealth, or we may pave it with Dharma; we may travel outward, or we may go within. By that way we may try to attain some object of the world, or to attain Moksha, or to open the door of the divine. But if our goal is somewhere distant, then a path to join us to that goal becomes unavoidable in between.
And Lao Tzu says, the path upon which one can walk is not the real Path. But a mind filled with craving will surely tread paths. This means that whatever paths the desire-choked mind walks are not real paths. Walking happens only upon false paths; walking does not happen upon the real Path. In fact, any longing to go anywhere is a longing to go astray — anywhere, unconditionally. It is not that the longing to acquire wealth is wrong; nor is the ambition to conquer the whole world wrong in some special way. No — even the longing to attain Moksha is just as wrong. Wherever there is the question of attainment, the mind becomes tense and unpeaceful.
A mind filled with lust is never where it is; it always wanders where it is not. This is a strange impossibility. Where I am, there I am not; and where I am not, there I keep wandering. Naturally the result is anguish, a pulling apart. For only where I am can I be at ease. Where I am not, I cannot be at ease. But to be where I am, it is necessary that there be no urge in me to go anywhere; that the mind make no journey at all.
Therefore, says Lao Tzu. Therefore he says that a mind full of lust, a mind full of desire, cannot open the doors to life’s unfathomable mystery; it can come to know only the periphery, the outer boundary. The mystery remains unknown. The palace remains unvisited. The desire-filled mind lives taking the outer wall of the palace to be life itself.
And it will live. For the palace is here and now; while the desire-laden mind is always somewhere else and some other time. It is never here and now — always somewhere else, in a dream! Nor is it that, when it reaches there, anything changes. Where I stand today, I dream of being somewhere else; and when I reach there, this same mind stands again beside me and once more manufactures the seeds of fresh longings to go elsewhere. Thus we go on running. And it is a most amusing race: for the place for which we run — upon reaching it, we immediately begin to run toward some other place.
In truth, what we took to be the goal before arriving becomes only a halt after attaining it. Before attaining, it seems everything will be found there. Upon arriving, it seems this is only the beginning; we must go further. And at every point of so‑called rest it feels the same: we must go further. Hence we cannot be at peace even for a single moment.
Knowingly, Lao Tzu has used therefore after these sutras, as one would in mathematics or logic. And the conclusion he draws is this: Always stripped of passion we must be found — stripped of desire, uprooted from desire. As though one were to peel off all the layers of yearning from oneself. As though someone were to peel an onion and throw away each layer, and keep discarding, until not a single layer remains. But when you peel an onion to the end, finally nothing remains in the hand. Remove one layer and another is there; remove the second and a third appears. Keep uprooting; in the end what remains is only emptiness.
If you remove all your desires, do you imagine that you will remain? Are you anything more than the sum of your desires? If all your cravings are stripped away, like the layers of an onion, what will you be except a void? You are what you have wanted — the sum of that only! If your wanting drops away, have you ever thought what you will be? Pure shunya — a nothingness.
But from that very nothingness, from that very no‑thing, the door of life opens.
In truth, all doors open through emptiness. You build a house; you put a door in it. Have you ever considered what a door is? A door is only an emptiness. Where you did not build the wall, there is the door. Properly seen, the meaning of door is: where there is nothing. You cannot enter through the wall; you enter through the door. And what does door mean? It means emptiness. Where nothing is, from there you enter. And where something is, from there you do not enter. It is a strange thing: entry into a house never happens through the house; it happens through that place where the house is not. The meaning of door is: the non‑being of the house. Except for the door, there is the house.
So until we find within us such an emptiness where nothing is, we shall not be able to enter the ultimate mystery of life. That palace will remain unvisited and unknown to us.
Therefore Lao Tzu says: uproot, strip away all the layers of craving. Not a single layer of desire should remain.
We too, sometimes, peel off layers of desire. But we remove one layer only when we have already constructed a thicker one. We also renounce desires, but we renounce a desire only when we have replaced it with a bigger one. In truth, we renounce only when our foot has already landed on a greater desire. We leave a small house for a bigger one; we abandon a small post for a higher post. We too leave — but we always build a larger rampart before we abandon a small wall.
Sometimes it even happens that we drop the whole structure of worldly desire. A man had been seeking wealth, position, fame. He stops everything; he steps down from posts, renounces wealth, abandons clothes and becomes naked — and declares, Now I go to search for the Lord. He leaves all. But then he breaks the old structure for the sake of a more vast desire. No one can now accuse him of seeking wealth, or position, or prestige.
But if we look closely at the word Ishwar, we will find everything gathered there. Ishwar is formed from aishwarya — supreme opulence. The Ultimate Aishwarya is called Ishwar. Now he seeks that opulence which never ends. Now he is after that wealth which no thief can steal. Now he is searching for that treasure which death cannot snatch away. Yet the search is the same. Now he seeks that post from which there is no demotion. Now he longs for that prestige which has no end. Only the name of his search has become Ishwar.
Remember, no one can make God a subject of desire, an object. If you do, there you will never find God; you will only find your old desires installed in new forms. No one can make Moksha an object of desire. If you do, Moksha will prove only a new prison — beautiful, wrought of gold, garlanded with flowers, yet a prison all the same. Desire can never take us outside the prison. As far as wanting extends, so far extends bondage.
Lao Tzu says, uproot, remove — break the layers of lust one by one. Why? Because only then, if one is to take the measure of life’s hidden, abysmal mystery, only then is desirelessness useful. Desirelessness means: empty of all desires.
The desire for peace remains in the mind, the desire for Dhyana remains, the desire for Samadhi remains. And the mind is very cunning. The mind says, No harm; if you do not want position, then want meditation; if you do not want wealth, at least want peace. And the mind lives neither in wealth nor in meditation, neither in peace nor in heaven. The mind lives in desire — in desiring. Therefore the mind says, Any object will do, no harm; but want something. Desirelessness means: nothing is wanted. And remember, the mind’s cunning is very deep. It can go even so far as to say: I want nothing — this is my desire. To be desireless — this is my desire. But the mind will still be standing behind.
Rabindranath in Gitanjali, in one line, sings a prayer to the Lord: I want nothing else of You — only this much I desire, that no desire remain in my heart!
But it makes no difference, none at all. If you look deeply, the one who asks for ten thousand rupees, the one who asks for a big house — his desire is not as great as Rabindranath’s. That poor fellow is very humble. What is he asking? What value has his demand? Rabindranath says, I want nothing except this — that I may receive non‑desire, that I may go beyond desire. But this too is desire — the ultimate, the last, the most subtle.
And Lao Tzu says: desireless! Uproot — uproot to the very last breath.
Someone once came to Lao Tzu, a young man, and said, I want peace. Lao Tzu said, You will never attain it. The youth asked, What difficulty do you see in me? What sin have I committed that peace will never come to me? Lao Tzu said, As long as you want peace, you will not have it. We too desired it for long, and in the end we discovered that nothing in this world becomes such a great unrest as the desire for peace itself. Drop wanting peace — then come.
Another incident I recall. A seeker came to Lin‑chi and said, I have left everything. Lin‑chi said, Kindly, leave this too and then come! The youth said, But I have left everything! Lin‑chi said, There is no need to save even this much.
So subtle is the flavour of desirelessness!
The youth says, I have left everything. Lin‑chi says, Leave this too. Why preserve even this? No — he says — nothing remains with me. Lin‑chi replies, Do not save even this.
Desire, craving, wanting — they catch us again and again through innumerable doors.
To be desireless means: I am content as I am. If I am unquiet, I am unquiet; if I am restless, I am restless; if I am in bondage, I am in bondage; if I am in sorrow, I am in sorrow. As I am — total acceptability, a complete acceptance of this. No, not even an inch otherwise is in question. As I am, I am.
Then there is no movement, no motivation. How will any journey begin? How will the mind say, Come there, attain that? As I am, I am.
The essence of Tao is tathata — suchness, acceptance. Where there is total acceptance, there is desirelessness. And where there is even a slight non‑acceptance, there is the birth of desire. A slight rejection — and desire is born, craving takes hold, the race begins. Have you noticed? From non‑acceptance desire is born. We all have lived in desires, live in desires. If we search each desire, we will immediately see from which non‑acceptance it was born — what thing was it that you wanted to be otherwise, different, other — and the desire arose.
I have read in the life of Nasruddin. One day a funeral procession was passing through the village; someone had died. The house of Mulla Nasruddin lay in the middle of the way. A big man of the village had died. Almost all the notables were in the procession. Seeing Nasruddin’s hut in the middle, many respectfully raised their hands toward the hut and saluted.
Nasruddin’s wife was standing outside. She ran and said to the Mulla, Someone respectable of the town has passed away, and many are going in the funeral; many, looking toward your hut, are offering salutations.
Nasruddin said, It may be; I did hear some sound. But at that time I was lying turned to the other side. And you know well the bad habit that man had from the very beginning — he could have died an hour later; by then I would have turned this way.
Nasruddin is mocking the man. He says, At that time I was turned to the other side. Even changing my posture for a salutation was out of the question!
Once the villagers thought Nasruddin was in great difficulty. They collected some money and came to give it to him. He was lying on his back in the open under the sky, near a tree. They said, We have come to offer you some money, Nasruddin. We heard you are in much trouble. Nasruddin said, Come a little later, because my pocket is under me. When I turn over on my stomach, then come and put it in.
Nasruddin made piercing jokes about man. He was a precious man.
But if we go into the depth of desirelessness, we will know this: as we are, it is accepted. There is not an inch’s desire for otherwise. If such desire is not there, Lao Tzu says, the mystery of life, the abysmal depths can be touched. And only in the depths is life. On the surface there is only the periphery; on the surface only an outer line. As if I were to touch your body and return and say I have touched you. Indeed, we speak like this. If I touch your body and return, I say I have touched you. Though I have only touched the outer contour, the shape; I have not touched you. The outer shape of your body is not you. That outline is only the boundary between you and the world. You are deep within. All that is only the outer arrangement for you, within which you can be. It is only your house, your dwelling, your garment.
If we see others through their garments and touch their outline, that may be forgivable. We see ourselves also only from outside; we touch and feel ourselves only as body.
We touch the whole of life only from outside. Lao Tzu says, because of the mind yoked to desire.
This needs to be understood a little. Why can a desire‑ridden mind not go deep? Three sutras.
First: a desire‑ridden mind cannot stay in one place for more than a moment; therefore it cannot dig. The desire‑ridden mind is a running mind. It cannot stay even for a moment in one place. To descend deep, excavation is needed. If you carry a spade in your hand and keep running while digging, you will not be able to dig a well. You will only uproot a few stones here and there, spoil the road, or fill the ground with useless pits — but you will not dig a well. To dig a well you need one place, one place for the stroke, one place for the labour, and waiting. A desire‑ridden mind cannot do that. It is always running. It is always one step ahead of you. Where you are, it is a little ahead, running. As the shadow follows behind you, so desire runs ahead of you. Where you are, it begins to give you visions of what lies ahead.
So first: the desire‑laden mind does not stay even for a moment; without staying, there is no depth.
Second: the desire‑laden mind is never in the present, never. And life is in the present. The desire‑laden mind lives always in the future. If the mystery of life is to be touched, it must be touched in this very instant. But the desire‑ridden mind says: in some other moment everything is hidden; tomorrow, where I shall reach, there the gates of bliss will open; tomorrow, where I shall reach, treasures are buried. Today? Today there is nothing. The desire‑driven mind is extremely indifferent to the present and overly eager for the future. But the mystery of life is in the present.
In truth, in Existence there is only the present; neither is there any past nor any future. Existence is always present. Existence simply is. Past and future are the odd inventions of the desire‑laden mind. The mind preserves the past because only with its support can it journey toward the future. Hence what we call the future is merely the repetition of our past — its reflection, its projection. What we have tasted in the past, that again and again we want to taste in the future, with small changes here and there. So we preserve our past, so that we can construct our future.
But the past is only memory, not existence. And the future is only imagination, not existence. The future is a dream that has not yet happened; and the past is a dream that has happened. What always is, is neither past nor future. It is the present. Perhaps even to call it present is not quite exact — because we call present that which lies between past and future. But if both past and future are false, how can truth exist between two falsities? Between two lies, there can be no truth.
Therefore, more exactly, there is not even a present — Existence is Eternity, the Shashvat, the Sanatana. There nothing ever disappears and nothing ever happens; there, all is. The whole condition is of is. He who enters this is, this is‑ness, touches the unfathomable depths of life.
The desire‑laden mind will keep circling the periphery: it will draw its juice from the past and spread its dreams into the future; it will sink roots into the past and spread branches into the future — for flowers that never come. And Existence? Existence is slipping by now. It is now. It is here, this very instant.
Third: life is the nearest of the near. Even to say nearest is not right, because we ourselves are life. If it is the nearest, it is still a little away from us. Life is ourselves. And the desire‑laden mind is always searching for the far away — the far away. The desire‑laden mind seeks always the distant. And life is nearest, nearer than the nearest. The desire‑laden mind is farther than the farthest. These two never meet. The mind and life never meet anywhere.
Kipling once sang that East and West never meet.
They may perhaps meet somewhere — but mind and life never meet. It may surprise you: mind and life never meet. Therefore he who is filled with mind becomes empty of life. And he who is empty of mind becomes filled with life.
But it will seem difficult, for we are filled with mind. Have we then come to know anything of life? No, we have not known life at all. We have mistaken the mind for life. And to take mind for life is like someone mistaking pebbles and stones for diamonds; or like someone who gathers the dry leaves fallen from the tree, thinking them to be flowers, and never once raises his eyes to see that flowers bloom above. The dry leaves fallen and discarded, prohibited, expelled — he keeps gathering them and thinks they are flowers, piling them up, filling his treasury. The mind is only the ash of the past. As a traveler passes along a road and dust gathers upon his clothes, so, passing through existence, the ash that accumulates upon us from the roads — that collection is mind. From that very collection we keep projecting into the future.
Lao Tzu wants to cut the root of it. Therefore he says, free of desire. For where desire is not, mind cannot remain. Desire is the root. If you ask Buddha, he will say: Trishna! Let there be no Trishna and all will be attained. A precise word — Trishna. What Lao Tzu calls desiring, passion, craving, Buddha calls Trishna. Mahavira calls it Pramad. Different words have been used by different ones — but the one root that cuts the mind is the same.
Whoever wants something cannot be outside the mind. Whoever wants nothing is outside the mind this very instant — this very instant! He does not need to wait till tomorrow. If, sitting right now, you can gather the courage to say, Now I want nothing, then in this very instant you can step out of the blindness of births upon births. In this very instant!
But you will be deceived. Not because going beyond mind is impossible — you will be deceived because you do not understand the whole kingdom of mind. Hearing me, your mind will say, If it is possible to step out, why not do it? Do it now. It should be done.
If you fashion even this into a desire — I will close my eyes so that it is good, I will be free of trouble, I will become silent, supreme bliss will shower, I will break Trishna, the doors of life’s mystery will open — if you turn even this into a desire, you have slipped again, strayed again.
There was a Sufi fakir, Bayazid. When Bayazid first went to his Master, he had a great habit of sleep. The Master would instruct, Bayazid would fall asleep. The Master would set him on guard outside — Bayazid would sleep. Many times the Master said, Look, you will miss everything because of sleep. Bayazid would reply, I keep awake so much — it’s not that I only sleep. Mostly I stay awake, I sleep a little too. But his Master said, You do not know: it can happen that you remain awake for twenty‑four hours and in one moment fall asleep — and all is lost.
That night Bayazid had a dream: he had died and reached the gate of heaven. The gate was closed, and on it a board was hung: Whoever comes to the gate and wishes to enter should sit silently. Once in a thousand years the door opens — for a single instant. Sit aware; when the door opens, enter within. Bayazid trembled: once in a thousand years, and only for a moment! And a wink — in a matter of a thousand years — will surely come. With great courage and will, he kept his eyes open, open, open — and then a drowse overtook him. When his eyes opened, he saw the door was closing. He panicked, ran, but the door had shut. He sat again; another thousand years passed. Then one day a drowsiness had come; he heard a sound, as if the door had opened. But the mind said, This is only a dream; such doors do not open — and besides, a thousand years are not yet over. Still he jumped up in a panic — and saw that the door was closing. He woke up. Dreams.
In the middle of the night he went to his Master and said, Now I will not blink; forgive me. The Master asked, What happened? He told his dream. The Master said, You did not see properly. On this side of the door there was a board stating that once in a thousand years the door opens, remains open for a moment, and closes again. When the door was closing, did you see the board on the other side? Bayazid said, I had no chance to see the other side; the door was almost closing — only twice I barely glimpsed it. The Master said, Next time, if a dream like this comes, look once at the board on the other side as well. There it is written: This door opens only when you sleep.
When we fall unconscious, only then does the door open. What kind of condition can this be — that the door opens when you sleep?
The real thing, if we go deeper — the Master did not say this to Bayazid — if we go deeper, it is not that when we fall unconscious the door opens; rather, when the door opens, we fall unconscious. That is the working of our mind. If once that door were to open before our eyes, then there would be no way for the mind to survive. Hence the mind makes full arrangements for its safety; it prepares every kind of defense. All kinds of arrangements.
Just the day before yesterday a young man came to me. He said: Two months ago I came very restless — my mind would not be quiet; much unease and anxiety. Now the mind has begun to quiet, restlessness has lessened. But now I have brought a new anxiety: should I go further inwards or not?
What fear?
Will it not happen that my interest in the desires of life fades? Will it not happen that my interest in the running of life all around diminishes? Will it not happen that my ambition dies? Otherwise how will I progress?
He is right; the mind brings such things. Just when the door is about to open, the mind brings such arguments. Will it not be that all my well‑made arrangements are upset? The mind immediately fetches some report from within.
Someone wrote to me: Meditation is going very deep, but now I cannot do it, because I am afraid — what if I die in meditation? Such a panic arises — what if I die in meditation? If I die in meditation, what then? Will you be responsible?
I said, What do you think — that without meditation you will never die? If you are certain you will not die without meditation, then if you die in meditation I can take responsibility. But if you can die without meditation too, why put the responsibility of meditation on me?
People write to me: If meditation goes deep, won’t we go mad?
The mind immediately arranges things. As soon as you reach that place where the door opens, the mind says, No — do not go further; now turn back. It will find any excuse.
I have long explained to people that by changing clothes nothing happens, by changing names nothing happens, by taking sannyas nothing happens. Then people would come and say, Give at least some outer support! Without any outer support, how can we go within? You speak in such a way that we shall never be able to go within. No mala, no clothes, no worship, no image, no temple, no fasting — then how can we go within? Give some outer support. I said, Fine — I will give an outer support. Now the same people come to me and say, What will changing clothes do? What will wearing a mala do? What will worship, prayer, kirtan do? These are all outer things.
I am sometimes amazed at the human mind. The same man says both things, and yet does not see that it is his mind speaking both. When the way to go within is being made, the mind says, How will you go within without support? When the outer support is given, the mind says, What will the outer support do? We have to go within! And the wonder is that our unintelligence is so deep that we do not understand these foolish counsels of our mind at all. Every time the mind arranges for us to sleep. It gathers very petty excuses so that you sleep.
A friend came just now and said, You yourself have always said that we should not give pain to anyone. If I put on the clothes of a sannyasin, my wife will be pained.
I asked him, When did you hear me say this? He said, Ten years ago. In ten years, did you never cause pain to your wife? If not, I accept you as a sannyasin; go. You do not need to change your clothes. He said, No, I have caused pain. Then I said, Only at the moment of changing clothes you will refrain from causing pain; and while causing all other pains, do not come to me saying, You said never to cause pain to anyone. All the other pains you have given with relish.
But man’s foolishness is amazing. He says, Changing clothes will cause my wife pain. And you had said, Do not cause pain. If you have stopped causing pain, very good — do not cause pain.
No, he says, I have not stopped causing pain; I am just the same. All the rest goes on.
The wonder is this: we never stand a little apart to see that it is our mind advising us to sleep. And it advises in such a way that it appears absolutely correct. The argument sounds perfectly right. But the wife is only an excuse. The real thing is the mind. The mind is taking the wife as a pretext. While looking at the neighbour’s woman, this mind never took the pretext of the wife. Then it said, What wife? What is all this? These are all provisional relations; in this world, who belongs to whom? Then the thought never came.
But whenever we are about to take a step beyond the mind, then the mind counsels sleep. When the gate of heaven is about to open — not that it opens when you sleep — when it is about to open, the mind says, Sleep! It gathers a thousand excuses: You have been awake so long! You are tired — now you should sleep.
Lao Tzu says: desire alone is the mind. And without becoming desireless there is no way to descend into the depths of life.