Tao Upanishad #40

This is the sutra concerning life’s most difficult riddle.
Lao Tzu stands in opposition to what we call great moral principles. His fundamental insight is that, in life, a deep balance is being established at every moment.
If you press for saintliness, un-saintliness will grow. If you emphasize morality, immorality will develop in the same measure. If you want people to be good, inevitably you become the cause of producing an equal number of bad people.
If we try to understand life, the first thing to remember is: without balance life is impossible. And this balance is universal—across all dimensions, in all directions.
Today scientists have reached a strange idea. It would worry us; it would not worry Lao Tzu. A hundred years ago, in France, a thinker and psychologist named Binet undertook the first tests to measure human intelligence. In these hundred years Binet’s methods have evolved greatly; today we can know a person’s intelligence quotient, the IQ—how much intelligence a person carries.
Continuous experiments with this quantity of intelligence have revealed something unanticipated. If, among a hundred people, one is a genius, one will be an idiot. If ten are sharp, ten will be dull. If you divide a hundred people into two equal parts, the fifty above are precisely balanced by fifty at the other end. If you want to produce ten geniuses, you will unavoidably succeed in producing ten fools.
It sounds astonishing. Does it mean that in giving intelligence to some, we must rob others of it? Life is balance in all its dimensions. If there is a measure of healthy people, it is balanced by an equal measure of the unhealthy and sick.
Lao Tzu says: you cannot escape balance. If you produce ten good people, ten bad people will be born inevitably. They are the other side of those good ten. And just as a coin cannot have only one side, so too in the mystery of life a personality cannot be one-sided. When a saint is born, an un-saint is born along with him.
This is a little difficult to grasp, for what has the un-saint to do with the saint?
But understand consciousness as a vast terrain. When a mountain rises, a ravine is formed alongside. You cannot raise a peak without creating a valley. If you wish to avoid valleys, you must avoid mountains. If you desire the mountain-crest, you must also accept the dark hollows of the valley. The summit is one aspect; the adjoining pit is its other aspect—it belongs to the mountain. Only on a flat plain can you be free of both mountains and valleys.
Just as this is true of the earth, Lao Tzu says, so it is true of consciousness. Consciousness is also a terrain. When in consciousness a person stands up like a mountain, instantly another person is formed as a ravine to balance him. If one person is Rama, another will unavoidably be Ravan. If you want Rama, there is no way to avoid Ravan. And if you wish to avoid Ravan, you will have to drop the attraction, the fascination for Rama.
This is the complexity. We want to avoid Ravan and keep Rama. We want only Ramas, no Ravan at all. But we are oblivious of life’s balance. We do not see that if the earth were full of Ramas, it would be the dullest, most suffocating earth imaginable. If all were like Rama, they would become terribly boring. Once in a while, Ravan is also needed—he prevents boredom with Rama; he keeps the rasa of Rama alive.
Ravan cannot exist alone either. For the good man to exist, the bad man is necessary; for the bad man, the good man is necessary. All good men depend on the bad; all bad men depend on the good. They are interdependent. Neither the good nor the bad are independent; each leans on the other.
This interdependence is hard to understand. For thousands of years our longing has been: let there be the good, not the bad; the intelligent, not the unintelligent; the virtuous, not the unvirtuous. We labor to have only light, no darkness; only life, no death; only happiness, no sorrow.
Lao Tzu says: our effort is bound to fail. Hence the strange fact: the more a man longs for happiness, the more miserable he becomes. He who does not long for happiness can escape misery. There is only one sutra to be free of sorrow: do not desire happiness. If the hunger for happiness is intense, sorrow will grow vast.
Life is a polarity, and between the poles there is balance. Before grasping this sutra, understand polarity and balance. There is opposition between the two, yet there is also an inner bond. The opposition between Ravan and Rama is clear; between Kauravas and Pandavas, clear; enmity, obvious—on the surface. But in the depths they depend on one another. We usually think: as some become rich, others become poor—so we are against the rich. But when deeper sutras of life are seen, it becomes clear this applies not only to wealth. Gurdjieff held that even knowledge is of limited quantity. One of the most intelligent men of this century, he used to say: knowledge is limited. Therefore when one man gathers knowledge, another becomes poor in knowledge. Consciousness too is limited. When someone attains supreme consciousness, someone else reaches the poverty of consciousness. And not only because of limitation, but because balance is needed; otherwise the arrangement of life would break down.
Hence a unique phenomenon in human history: as the aspiration for virtues increases, vices develop apace.
Lao Tzu says: there is a state of nature in which we do not pay attention to polarities. That is the ultimate state. He calls it Tao—the state of suchness in which we know neither vice nor virtue; we do not even know what saintliness is, what un-saintliness is. That is the supreme peace. The very moment we know what saintliness is, we have become aware of un-saintliness.
Therefore a very amusing fact: saints understand sin more intimately than sinners do. The saint knows sin with a subtlety the sinner does not possess. If a person becomes concerned with health, it means he is ill. The more a person feels preoccupied with health, the more ill he is. And the man who thinks of health twenty-four hours a day can never be healthy. That too is a disease—and a deep one.
Lao Tzu asks: when did the fall from Tao—fall from nature—occur?
“When the great Tao declined, the principles of humanity and justice were born.”
Lao Tzu says: when man was no longer man, the doctrine of humanity was born.
We think the opposite: if we accept the doctrine of humanity, we will become human. Lao Tzu says: when man ceased to be man, then we began telling people, ‘Be human!’
Man is man already. There is nothing to become. To be told to become means a fall has occurred. When you tell a human being, “Become human,” what does it mean? It means humanness has already been lost.
Lao Tzu says: the grand doctrine of humanity arises in a condition of man’s fall. Otherwise man is naturally human. The talk of justice arises only when injustice begins.
Understand this: awareness begins with the opposite. When we say there must be justice, it is clear that injustice is already happening. And the more we shout for justice, the more injustice will grow. We say we need knowledge—because ignorance is dense. And the more we expand knowledge…
Now the West has also begun to understand Lao Tzu. Many thoughtful people today say: we must reorient our entire order around Lao Tzu.
Our world-order has been built against Lao Tzu. We listened to those who said: there should be goodness; there should be justice; there should be equality; there should be humanity, freedom, equality—principles. But what is the result?
If we look at the outcome, much becomes clear. Today the quantity of knowledge on earth is perhaps greater than ever before; and man’s ignorance too is greater than ever. Paradoxical—so much knowledge, so much ignorance together! Lao Tzu would not be surprised. He says: the more you increase knowledge, the more ignorance will increase. But our assumption has been that as knowledge rises, ignorance will diminish. Our logic says: more knowledge, less ignorance.
History does not testify in our favor. Knowledge has increased—no doubt. Every week five thousand new books are produced around the world. Libraries have swelled; universities have proliferated; new branches of knowledge have sprouted. Oxford University teaches in three hundred and sixty subjects.
Everywhere we keep increasing the pile of knowledge. Daily we must break off new branches, because the load becomes too heavy to manage even on a single branch. Today, even if one wants to know everything just about the small human eye, a single life is too short. However much one learns, even on that one small topic, total knowledge is impossible.
Thus we are forced to divide and specialize. A time was when one doctor treated the whole body—knowledge was small. Then knowledge increased, and we had to create specialists: one doctor cannot know the whole body. Then we had to find doctors for each organ.
Now even a single organ contains more knowledge than one doctor’s capacity. In America they think: knowledge is becoming so vast that we cannot rely on man; computers must assist. In the future, the “learned” will be those who can use computers. A doctor need not know medicine; he must know how to ask the computer which remedy suits which disease. Knowledge is becoming so much that the human brain cannot contain it.
Books are becoming so many that vast libraries cannot be built—they would cover all the land. Moscow’s library has so many books that if its stacks were laid end to end, they would circle the earth. Who will read all this?
Hence the idea of micro-books arose: tiny films—compress a thousand pages onto one sheet; store it; read by projector.
Books multiply; knowledge multiplies. Western scientists are worried: how shall we transfer to our children the knowledge our generation is creating? The new idea is: education should not end in twenty-five years; at least fifty years will be needed. But if a man studies fifty years, when will he live?
So another idea has come: memory transplantation. When a man dies, preserve his memory and implant it in a child—so the child need not learn what his father learned; the father’s memory becomes available; the child can move ahead to learn something new.
So much knowledge! Yet man’s ignorance is dreadful. We know the moon and the stars, but we do not know ourselves. We are paving roads to Mars; but the road to oneself seems far, almost impossible. We know so much now about how anger arises, how it functions; how sex-energy awakens, its biochemistry, its mechanisms. Buddha did not know so much. But Buddha knew enough that anger could not operate within him. We know everything about anger, yet we have not the slightest mastery over it. We know more about sex than any age ever did, and yet we are more tormented by it than any age ever was.
Our knowledge grows in quantity; our ignorance too grows. Today man trembles—no trust in himself; not a moment’s confidence; no security; life seems meaningless. Clearly, the logic with which we moved has failed.
Mankind moved with Aristotle’s logic. Aristotle said: as knowledge increases, ignorance will decrease—a straight arithmetic. Lao Tzu’s arithmetic seems reversed: if knowledge increases, ignorance will also increase. No one listened to Lao Tzu; he seemed senseless, illogical. Naturally, our mind prefers what appears logical, so Aristotle became the center for humanity; the West developed all science on Aristotle’s base.
But now that things have developed, it appears Lao Tzu may be right. In the last fifty years, the most intelligent in the West agree: life has become meaningless. No sense appears. Why do we live? For what is this rush, this haste? Why live at all—no reason seems clear.
Sartre says: without our consent we are forced to live; without our consent, we are born; without our consent, one day we are taken away. Only in one act can we assert our will: suicide. No one asks us at birth; no one asks at death. Life feels like a nightmare.
In the last fifty years, innumerable thoughtful people have committed suicide—never before like this. Formerly suicides were by the thoughtless; now suicides are by the thoughtful. A qualitative shift. Earlier, no one considered a suicide intelligent. Today, at least in the West, if an “intelligent” man has not yet committed suicide, his intelligence is doubted—for if life is futile, suicide is the only logic. If I am certain life has no substance, why continue?
Before killing himself, Nijinsky wrote: I am committing suicide—do not think I am a coward. The situation is the reverse: you cannot commit suicide; you are cowards, that’s why you go on living. I can; I am not a coward. Therefore I free myself from your futile race.
Nijinsky’s point does not seem entirely wrong. If you also ask yourself why you go on living, perhaps cowardice is the reason; you cannot gather the courage to die, so you drag on. This feeling of dragging has come for the first time on earth. As knowledge has increased outwardly, ignorance has deepened within; balance is complete.
Lao Tzu says: self-knowledge cannot be born unless you are freed from this outer knowledge.
Consider the last three hundred years: the doctrine of humanity has gained momentum. Yet the wars we have fought in these three centuries—in their scale and cruelty—have no parallel. As talk of humanity grew, we dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Everywhere we shout about humanity; and in Vietnam, war goes on. Those who preach humanity also conduct war. If humanity has arisen, wars should cease; they do not.
We worry greatly about justice; injustice becomes incalculable. Whenever we reform in the name of justice, a new arrangement of injustice arises. Our revolutions do not destroy diseases; they shift the burden from one shoulder to another. Our reforms promise; results do not arrive.
We think: the more courts and laws, the fewer crimes. Statistics tell the opposite story. As laws increase, courts increase, judges increase—criminals increase. The two-thousand-year record shows a strict proportion: laws go up, crime goes up. Lawyers get afraid—perhaps laws are still too few; they add more. Criminals increase further.
The human mind wanders in a false logic. More crime—more laws. Then it appears there is a deep relationship between the criminal and the judge; the thief and the policeman are two sides of one coin. Not two things—joined within. One grows only with the growth of the other; they are secretly connected; each feeds the other.
Lao Tzu’s vision is utterly different. He says: all your good principles, your noble doctrines, are the roots of your evils.
“When humanity and justice arose, it was because the Tao had declined. And when knowledge and cleverness were born, hypocrisy too became active with full force.”
Have you noticed: it is very difficult to keep an educated man from dishonesty. We think: perhaps education is at fault; we need the right education. Again we err.
Lao Tzu says: it is impossible to keep the educated man from dishonesty. Education gives cleverness; cleverness turns into cunning. Education gives understanding; it does not change the heart. The heart remains as it was. Only the head changes. What the uneducated heart could do yesterday, now it can do with double speed. A man who held a sword—he is the same man; now we have given him the atom bomb. Yesterday he could kill a few; today he can kill millions. The anger within is the same; yesterday he threw a stone; today he throws a bomb. The man is the same.
As education increases, dishonesty increases. Emerson and others who believed that when the whole world is educated, evil will disappear—are fundamentally wrong. The world is becoming educated; some countries are fully educated. America is fully educated; and the very diseases of America are born out of its education. Good men, if they accept wrong logic, do harm.
A friend came to me—he has dedicated his life to educating tribals. He is delighted—he sacrificed everything. I asked him: look also at what has happened to the children who received your education. You will die thinking you have done a great service; but look at the other side—what has become of those who got educated?
America is an educated nation; we can assume it is the future of the world. As all become educated, all nations will become like America. But what is the result of full education? Crime has not decreased—has increased. Dishonesty has not decreased—has increased. Murders have not decreased—they have increased. Sin has increased in the same measure as education.
What does it mean? You cannot destroy the opposite by increasing one side; you can only increase both.
Look from another angle. Today’s medicines are more than ever; diseases have not decreased—have increased. New, original diseases have appeared. Why? Simple logic would say: more medicines, fewer diseases. Yet the opposite happens—what rule is at work?
As medicines increase, your capacity to be ill increases. Your trust in yourself declines; your faith shifts to drugs. You withdraw; the medicine fights your disease, not you. Your own resistance does not grow. The more you use drugs, the less your capacity to fight illness. Medicine fights; you do not. You grow weaker; stronger doses are needed—that very need declares your weakness, and summons greater illness to your door. This duel goes on between drugs and disease; you are only the battlefield—Kurukshetra—where Kauravas and Pandavas fight. Germs of disease and chemicals of medicine fight; you are beaten by both. Disease assaults you; what remains, medicine assaults. Medicine does just enough to keep you from dying—so you can remain alive for the disease.
There is a hidden interconnection between drugs and diseases.
Ask Lao Tzu, and he will say: the day there are no medicines in the world, diseases may disappear. Our mind cannot accept this, because Lao Tzu’s logic is of another kind. He says: without medicine, you will have to fight disease; your strength will awaken. Trust in drugs reduces trust in yourself.
Understand another paradox: the more we secure ourselves, the more insecure we become; the more insecure, the more we run to secure ourselves. What does this mean? The more secure you are, the weaker you become.
You sit in an air-conditioned room, and through the window you see a laborer walking under the blazing sun. You think, poor fellow! But perhaps he does not even notice the heat. The sense of heat is yours. If you step out in his place, the sun will be unbearable. Heat is not dependent only on the sun; it depends on you. When you sweat and think, “that poor laborer,” in truth you are the poor one; he may feel nothing. For heat to be felt, air-conditioning is the precondition. Therefore the more air-conditioning, the more the heat. As we cool the world, the world grows hotter—paradoxical, yet the connection is deep. While the machine bears the heat for you, your body’s own capacity diminishes. When suddenly you face the sun, you are defenseless; you cannot bear it.
Hence in Russia they plan to air-condition entire cities. The day cities are conditioned, children will be born in conditioning and the old will die in it—then man will have to go underground. There are tales that civilizations, upon reaching such peaks, have had to move beneath the earth.
In South America there is Lake Titicaca—mysterious. A river pours millions of gallons into it daily; yet there is no outlet, and its level never rises an inch. Scientists asked: where does the water go? Mystics believe an ancient Inca city lies beneath; the lake feeds it through subterranean channels. The city perished, the channels remain. Scientists are beginning to consider it.
Whenever a civilization fully develops, it goes underground. At Mohenjo-daro and Harappa there are seven layers of cities—not necessarily buried by earthquakes. It is more likely that civilization itself went underground—the outward environment became unbearable.
Within two hundred years, if we spread air-conditioning across our settlements, man will have to live below ground. The sun, which has been life, may become death.
The more we secure ourselves, the more we open the door to danger. The more we arrange to be saved, the more we become vulnerable.
Lao Tzu says: when knowledge is born, hypocrisy, trickery, deception are born. It becomes difficult for the knower to remain honest.
Remember a story from the Bible—the only truly precious story in the Christian scriptures: God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden because they tasted the fruit of knowledge. God said, the whole garden is yours, except one tree—the Tree of Knowledge. Taste all fruits, but not this one.
Perhaps for that very reason Adam and Eve became most eager for that fruit. The devil whispered to Eve: this fruit is forbidden because it will make you like gods; knowledge makes man divine. God does not want you to become like him.
The devil persuaded Eve first—no need to persuade the husband separately; if the wife agrees, the husband follows. Eve’s jealousy could be stirred easily: become like gods! Adam said: God has forbidden—why invite trouble? But when a choice is between God and the wife, one must choose the wife. The fruit was eaten. At once they were expelled from heaven.
In the Bible, knowledge becomes the cause of man’s fall. This aligns with Lao Tzu: knowledge is man’s downfall. Ever since, Adam has been wandering, and Adam’s sons are wandering. They cannot return until they renounce knowledge. The gates of paradise open again when knowledge is dropped.
A strange thing: when knowledge disappears, ignorance also disappears. That there is ignorance is known only because knowledge has arisen. The more knowledge grows, the more the sense of ignorance grows. If you were alone on earth, would you be learned or ignorant? You would simply be. There would be no comparison. Learned or ignorant—by what measure? Virtuous or characterless—by what measure? Saint or sinner—by what measure?
Lao Tzu says: the state of Tao is like being alone on earth—no way to measure, nothing good, nothing bad; nothing knowledge, nothing ignorance; no saintliness, no un-saintliness—just being.
Another delightful detail in the Bible: as soon as Eve tasted the fruit, she hurried to cover her body with leaves. Until then, she was naked. With knowledge came the awareness of sin. With knowledge came the urge to hide. With knowledge, the total acceptance of the body disappeared; part of it was rejected. Adam and Eve were naked like small children—innocent. With knowledge, guilt began.
Lao Tzu says: until knowledge is lost, innocence is not available.
Therefore, those who attain the supreme knowing are precisely those who can also drop knowledge. Then they become innocent, simple.
Jesus says: those who are like small children—innocent—shall enter my kingdom of heaven.
Whether small children are innocent is another matter—Freud does not agree. He says all sins are present in them in seed; only their expression is delayed. With your help they will surface.
But Jesus means something else: where there is no knowing, there is un-knowing—abodha. Un-knowing is innocence.
As soon as knowledge came to Eve and Adam, they covered themselves. Shame arose—a sense of fault. In our culture we call shame in a woman a virtue; it is not. Shame means the sense of guilt has entered. Without experience, how would guilt be known? Something wrong has entered within.
In the innocent there is neither shame nor shamelessness—for shamelessness requires shame first. In the innocent there is neither modesty nor immodesty; immodesty is a by-product of modesty.
Lao Tzu says: there is a simple state of life in which you do not yet know what is black and what is white. That is the supreme religion. All talk of religion below that is talk after the fall.
Confucius once came to Lao Tzu. Confucius is the exact opposite—our kind of man, Aristotle’s ally. He says: teach people what goodness is. He is a strict man of ethics, rules, discipline. Life, inch by inch, must be regulated: how to rise, how to sit, how to speak—he devised rules for everything. No greater disciplinarian has walked the earth.
Confucius was dying. A disciple came after many years. The dying master asked: when you arrived in the village, did you get down from the bullock-cart outside the boundary, or did you ride in? The disciple said: being your disciple, how could I err? I got down outside. Confucius sighed in relief: then I can die in peace. Such a man of rules!
Lao Tzu was the reverse—no rules at all. For Lao Tzu, rules indicate a fall; rules are a brace for a disease.
Confucius asked Lao Tzu for a message: I want to make people good—advise me. Lao Tzu said: just do not try to make people good; otherwise you will succeed in making them bad. Your kindness will be enough if you simply drop the attempt to make people good.
Confucius was bewildered: then there will be anarchy! Lao Tzu said: attempts to create order produce disorder. Confucius said: people will become licentious. Lao Tzu said: rules create licentiousness. Without rules, how can there be licentiousness? People will be simple. Rules are against simplicity, they force people into revolt.
Understand this: rules force people into revolt. Simplicity is a flow; a rule is a dam.
When I was small, a teacher in our school died. We used to tease him as “Bhola Shankar”—simple Shankar—he truly was simple, harassed by all. The whole school went to bid him farewell. I stood near the bier. His wife came out, fell on his chest and cried, “O my Bhola Shankar!” I could not hold my laughter. We had only used that name to tease him; to hear his wife say it at his death—laughter spread through the boys. We were scolded at home: a man died and you laughed! But the stronger the rule “Do not laugh,” the more explosive the laughter became. The wife’s tears dried—she was shocked.
Rules empower the opposite. The rule was clear: do not laugh. But life does not obey rules. Laughter arose within—simple, with no ill will. The rule built a dam; when dams break, destructiveness follows.
Those who see life in terms of dams—like Confucius—fear that without rules no one will listen: subjects will not obey kings; sons will not obey fathers; wives will not obey husbands; servants will not obey masters.
Lao Tzu says: the more you try to make sons obey fathers, the more sons will turn against them. And he has proved right. For five thousand years we have tried; the result: the gulf between fathers and sons has grown. We wanted servants to obey masters; the result: servants say, who told you that you are masters? At most we are partners. We wanted subjects to obey kings; the result: kings have vanished. Those who remain are glorified servants—parliaments fix the queen’s salary.
Because of Confucius. Lao Tzu had told him that day: you will ruin the world. You will impose order and produce disorder. You will want discipline and give birth to indiscipline. If you simply drop trying to do good, bad may cease.
But this is difficult—very difficult. To believe that if you do not give medicine, disease may heal…
Yet in the West many hospital experiments show Lao Tzu right. One group gets allopathic medicine, another homeopathic; same disease. Another gets naturopathy; another receives ash from a baba. The percentage of cures is equal—around seventy percent in all cases.
Then they thought: perhaps some medicines do work. So they began giving pure water to some patients—placebo. Ten patients, one disease: five get drug, five get water. Water works as much as the drug.
Now they say: if you have a cold, take medicine and you will be cured in seven days; if you don’t take medicine, you will be cured in one week. What happens is still unclear.
Lao Tzu says: nature corrects itself. Leave it to nature. Do not interfere. You are the mischief-maker. Stand aside and let nature work. The vast energy that gave you life, that breathes in you, will also wash away your illnesses, your evils—if you do not come in between. Flow with it. Do not swim—float. Surrender to the river; do not decide the destination. Wherever it takes you is the destination. Only in such a state do the flowers of Dharma bloom.
“And when knowledge and cleverness were born, hypocrisy too became active with full force. When peace within relationships became impossible, kind parents and obedient sons began to be praised.”
When we say someone’s son is very obedient—what does it mean? It means he is the exception.
Lao Tzu says: to be a son should itself mean obedience. “Obedient son” is a redundancy. If we say, “such-and-such mother is very compassionate,” does it mean mother and compassion are two separate things that sometimes join and sometimes do not? To be a mother is compassion. Thus, to say a mother is compassionate reveals that mothers are no longer compassionate—that is why the praise. To say a father is kind reveals fathers are no longer kind. To praise an obedient son reveals that sons are no longer obedient.
These are symptoms of decline. When a mother must be praised for love—it is a sign of fall. When a father must be praised for kindness—it is a sign of fall. When a son’s obedience becomes praise-worthy—know that illness has reached its peak.
Lao Tzu appears upside down, but perhaps we are upside down, and he stands straight—that is why he appears inverted. His point rings true. What is there to say about a mother’s love? To be a mother is love. “An obedient son” is a useless repetition. The meaning of “son” is that he is the extension of the mother and father—their hand, their future. Where is the question of obedience and disobedience?
I do not say, “my hand is very obedient.” But if one day newspapers print, “this man’s hand is obedient—when he wants to lift water, it lifts,” then know that paralysis has become common; hands no longer listen. We live in a paralyzed world. No father trusts that a son will obey. And if sons do obey, they are wooden—stupid. There is no fulfillment in them. Tell them, “sit,” they sit; until told “rise,” they remain. No joy.
Sons with a little intelligence do not listen. They try to make the father obey. Fifty years ago in America, psychologists said boys and girls were afraid to enter the house; now fathers and mothers fear entering—who knows what the children will do! Earlier, children were oppressed by parents; now parents are oppressed by children. Parents are terrified: perhaps we will give them a complex, harm their minds! This world of paralysis is the consequence of not listening to Lao Tzu. He says: do not bind life’s spontaneity; otherwise fractures will appear. Do not try to force obedience; otherwise disobedience will arise. Do not impose discipline; the other also has an ego—he will react. When a father says, “I will make you obey,” the son’s ego responds, “Let us see.” The father’s insistence creates the son’s resistance. When the father has no ambition to be obeyed, the son has no urge to resist.
Understand: when the father becomes deliberate—“I will achieve this”—the son too becomes deliberate. And remember, if the two fight, the son will win. The father cannot win—he belongs to the setting sun; the son is the rising sun. Everywhere, fathers are losing.
Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons—a precious tale of this struggle. Lao Tzu would say: what can be more diseased, more insane, than a world where father and son must fight? If conflict pervades the home, what remains of peace?
Yet the fight goes on. At every inch—who wins, who loses. Each day fathers lose. But behind this loss there is a law we do not see—Lao Tzu reminds us of it. When a father tries to prove, “I am the father, obey me,” when a guru demands reverence—the echo is disrespect. When a guru is such that he is unaware he deserves respect—then respect flows to him naturally.
I was once at a university teachers’ conference. The great concern was: the teacher’s prestige is in danger. It is not in danger—it is gone. Yet they try to save it—and the more they try, the worse it becomes. Schools, colleges, universities overflow with indiscipline. No one asks: where lies the responsibility?
I told them: your worry that students do not respect you is dangerous—its only outcome will be even less respect. Who told you that a guru should be respected? The old definition is different: he who is respected is the guru. “Guru should be respected” is a meaningless demand. If you are respected, you are a guru; if not, you are not. Finished. If students do not respect you, you are not gurus—why prolong the illusion?
A father is one whose word is naturally heeded. If a son does not heed, you are only biologically a father—that is all. Biological fatherhood has little glory—an injection could be a father. Being a father is a spiritual attainment. Many beget children; few become fathers. Flies and mosquitoes multiply—there is no virtue in that.
To be a father is a great thing—and greater than to be a mother. Motherhood is a natural event; fatherhood is an attainment. Animals know nothing of fatherhood. For you to know, what arrangements had to be created! Marriage, surveillance, laws—still a father is never fully certain the child is his. To secure this certainty, whole moralities were devised—chastity, fidelity. Such fear, such anxiety—just to ensure that the heir to my will is truly my son.
Fatherhood is not natural. If tomorrow society begins to rear children collectively, the institution of father will disappear; it was not always there, it came late. Motherhood is natural; fatherhood is spiritual—hence we preferred to call God “Father,” not “Mother.” To be a father means: the son listens—and you never try to make him listen. It is the father’s dignity.
An old rule: on the day the son marries, the father becomes a brahmachari. It must be so. In a house where the father is begetting children and the son is also begetting children, there can be no reverence for the father—at most a little camaraderie. The same foolishness in both. Thus, at fifty, when the son returns from the gurukul to marry, the parents—now fifty—enter vanaprastha, turn their faces to the forest. The toys of the body are no longer theirs; the children will play with them; they must move beyond. Twenty-five years later, when the son’s son returns, the grandparents are seventy-five—time for sannyas. Their worldly chapter closes.
Thus there was a natural reverence for the father. Those seventy-five-year-old elders—better call them “venerables,” for old age comes by years, but venerability by insight—would go to the gurukuls as gurus. Those who had lived three stages—twenty-five years of brahmacharya, twenty-five of householding, twenty-five learning how to be in the world yet not of it—these were gurus. Toward them, reverence arose effortlessly. To small children who came from villages to study, these elders appeared Himalayan peaks; to touch their feet was supreme good fortune.
Lao Tzu says: but effortless—sahaj. If life flows in its spontaneity, the flower of Dharma blossoms. If we bind life in rules, at best we can hang paper or plastic flowers called morality.
“And when misrule and chaos spread in the country, loyalty to the lord and faithful ministers began to be praised.”
It is the same insight from different angles: to abandon spontaneity is irreligion. For Lao Tzu, saintliness is not Dharma; spontaneity is Dharma. Remember this last thing: saintliness, as the opposite of sin, is not Dharma for Lao Tzu; spontaneity is Dharma—because it is not opposed to anything. Even the un-saint, if he lives spontaneously, becomes a saint; and the saint, if he lives unspontaneously, is but a hidden sinner. A spontaneous life—simple, unforced, un-imposed—that is Lao Tzu’s Dharma. Flowers bloom, birds sing, the sun rises; and one day man too is just so—no strain, no superimposition.
This will seem difficult. For as soon as you hear “no imposition,” you ask: what will we do if all impositions are removed? Think for a moment: no rules on you at all—what would you do? One will run away with the neighbor’s wife; one will rob a bank; one will murder. Sit silently and see: if no rules bind you, and you accept Lao Tzu wholly—what would you do?
I heard of an office where, on a psychologist’s advice, the owner hung a plaque: Life is short—what you must do tomorrow, do today; what you must do today, do now. The next day the office had to shut down. A clerk eloped with the secretary. The cashier robbed the cashbox—he had been thinking of it for long. The office-boy beat the boss with a shoe—he too had been thinking of it.
The owner said: take down that plaque!
If you contemplate Lao Tzu’s rule, meditate. It will not hinder Lao Tzu; it will help you see yourself. If there are no rules on you, what will you do? That is your true character. What you do because of rules is not you; it is acting, compulsion—of no value.
Thus Lao Tzu will help you descend within—self-observation. Imagine: for one day, twenty-four hours, there are no rules for you; you will do only what is spontaneous. Just imagine; do not enact it—only imagine. You will see how distorted humanity has become because of rules.
Enough for today. Sit for five minutes, sing a little kirtan, then go.