Tao Upanishad #66

Tao is like the ocean. Rivers are born from the ocean and merge back into it. Tao means that original source from which life arises; and that ultimate rest into which life dissolves. Tao is the beginning and the end. The start is that, and the finish is that.
This center of Tao—or of Dharma, or of Truth—we are born carrying it; it exists even before our birth. And we die carrying it; it travels with us even after death. That which within us neither is born nor dies—that alone is Dharma. To know it is the only thing worth knowing.
In this sutra there are very precious pointers toward that inner center.
The first pointer: ‘He who knows others is learned; he who knows himself is wise.’
Knowing others is very easy. For to know others, the senses get involved. I have eyes; I can see you. But these eyes that see will not be of use to see oneself. I have ears; I can hear you. But these ears will not be of use to hear myself. I have hands; I can touch you. But with these very hands I cannot touch myself. The senses are doors to know the other. The senses are available to us; we come to know others with ease.
And in the race to know the other we forget that we have remained strangers to ourselves. Even what we think we know about ourselves we know through others. If you think you are beautiful, it is because others told you so; if you think you are thoughtful, that too others have said; if you think you are unintelligent, that too has been impressed upon you by others. What you know about yourself has come through the mediation of others.
Thus we remain dependent on others even for self-knowledge—and afraid of others as well. If my beauty depends on your eyes, I will remain fearful. For a slight change in your gaze and my beauty is gone. If my intelligence stands upon your appraisal, you can pull the bricks of the foundation any time and my intelligence will collapse. If you are the cause of my prestige, then it is no prestige at all—it is slavery. If my prestige depends on anyone, I am a slave to that person. And what prestige can slavery have? What we know about ourselves is through the other—therefore it is false.
There are still deeper reasons to understand. I can know you; I have senses, I have a mind. I can see with the eyes, I can think with the mind. But in knowing oneself neither the senses will be of use, nor the eyes, nor even the mind. For about others one can think; about oneself nothing can be thought. And so long as you are thinking there can be no relationship with yourself. For as long as you think you remain outside yourself. As long as thought exists you are not at your inner center; you revolve on the periphery. Thought too is a restlessness; thought is a tension. One may call it a fever—a kind of inner agitation. Hence if thoughts are racing, you cannot sleep at night, because thought is not rest. And one reaches the inner center only in the ultimate state of rest. The more the tension, the greater the distance.
Therefore the madman is farthest from himself. Madness means that all inner ties to oneself have snapped. None of your roots remain anchored in your center. You have been uprooted—roots severed from the soil. The madman is farthest from himself because his thought never stops even for a moment; it goes on ceaselessly. You too are far from yourself in the same proportion as silence is lacking within you.
Through thought I can know the other, but through thought I cannot know myself.
Hence all cleverness—which Lao Tzu calls erudition—depends on thought. Wisdom depends on no-thought. Therefore we cannot call Buddha learned; we cannot call Mahavira learned. Aristotle is learned, Plato is learned. Buddha and Mahavira are not learned—they are wise.
The difference is this: learning is an accumulation of thought; wisdom is the radiance of thoughtlessness—where all senses are quiet. With the senses you can know the outer. As long as the senses are restless, they will be an obstacle; their restlessness takes you outward. The senses are outward-going doors.
As long as the mind is moving, you will not know yourself either—because the movement of the mind holds you at the circumference. When the senses fall silent and the mind too becomes quiet, and when within there is no movement, no ripple, no vibration; when only you remain inside, where nothing is happening, no act is taking place within—complete non-doing—then there is nothing to dislodge you from your center; no wave can pull you out. In that very moment, knowing is born.
If you wish to be learned, scriptures will help; schooling is useful; learning is necessary. If you wish to be wise, scriptures are dangerous, an obstacle; education is not only futile, it is harmful. There is no facility of learning. One has to unlearn. Not learning, but unlearning; what has been learned must also be forgotten; what is known must be dropped.
And remember, renouncing knowledge in this world is most difficult. Wealth can be dropped; position can be dropped. For in dropping position there is hope of a greater status; in renouncing wealth there is the possibility of gaining great treasure. Even the rich thinks the poor is happy. The rich man—truthfully, only the rich—never does the poor think that the poor are happy. The rich often thinks there is great joy in poverty—just as the poor thinks there is great joy in riches. What we do not have appears to hold joy.
And a strange thing: if the poor thinks there is joy in riches, the so-called learned—the pundits, not the wise—explain to him, you are mad. But when the rich thinks there is joy in poverty, these very holy men do not explain to him that he too is mad. Both are saying the same thing: joy is in what they do not have. Neither is there joy in poverty, nor in wealth. Joy is always a hope—there, where we are not. And where we arrive—there sorrow appears.
The rich can renounce wealth because the hope of joy in poverty remains. Positions can be renounced because even by renouncing positions one gains great prestige. In fact, prestige comes only by renouncing positions. He who knows the art of prestige will drop position—because in dropping it you feel, this man is greater than the throne. Otherwise, how could he drop it? A small man clings to position. He can kick the throne—he seems greater than the throne. But the one who is dropping also calculates; he knows there is profit in renunciation. To drop wealth is not much of a difficulty; to drop status is not too hard. But to drop knowledge is very difficult, for ignorance holds no promise.
Except for a few like Lao Tzu—the supreme knowers—no one teaches ignorance. We are troubled by ignorance, so we stuff ourselves with knowledge. This stuffing with knowledge will make you learned. The learned is that ignorant person who has filled himself with borrowed knowledge. Ignorance does not disappear; it is only suppressed. As you are naked and put on clothes—the nakedness does not vanish, it is only covered; now it is not visible to others. And not only do others not see it—which is fine—even you no longer see it; that is the miracle. For the clothes are outside; the clothes are on the eyes of the other, not on you.
When one meets the Pope of the Vatican, special attire must be worn. If women, the head must be covered; if men, the head must be covered. Certain simple clothes must be worn to enter. A group of twelve Americans went to see the Pope. The man who explained to them how to dress, how to stand, how to bow, was a bit troubled himself by the explaining. He said, forgive me, this is my compulsion; I am appointed to this task, it is my bread and butter; but I am so harassed telling people these things that I often feel it would be simpler if we just tied a bandage on the Pope’s eyes! That would be easier than all this commotion.
But even such a big commotion serves only as a bandage on the other’s eyes; it does nothing more. The bandage is big, but it only obstructs the other’s sight; he does not notice that you are naked. But you remain naked. The learned appears learned in the eyes of others; within he remains ignorant, naked. And just as by wearing clothes you conjure a miracle and imagine you are no longer naked, so too the pundit wraps himself in words and thinks, now ignorance is over, now I am wise. Yet not one word among these is realized; none of this has he known; none of it has any taste for him. These are empty, borrowed, lifeless, impotent words. Words gain life only from experience. Scriptures can supply words—an easy task. Memory can be decorated—no difficulty. Little children do it, and better than old men.
All that is collected from outside can at best affect the outside—remember this. A pundit can impress you; perhaps a wise man may not. Strangely, the wise have often been crucified upon the earth; pundits never. Stones have been hurled at sages many times; no one stones the pundit. The wise have suffered many hardships; but for the pundit there is no such question. The wise have borne all kinds of condemnation; the pundit bears none. Why?
The pundit’s knowledge impresses you. It comes from the outside and influences those outside. The wise man’s knowing has not come from outside; it springs from within. It is unique, fresh, unprecedented. It is virginal. You have no recognition of it. So when you meet a wise man, you are thrown into unease. You cannot quite understand him, or in trying to understand you always misunderstand. Because what he is saying is so new that your intellect and your information cannot harmonize with it. He is speaking of something with which you have had no relation.
Thus the wise man appears a stranger. The pundit is your own sort of person. He is like you. The difference between you and him is of quantity, not of quality. You know a little less; he knows a little more—but you stand in the same queue. He is a bit ahead, you a bit behind. No enmity is felt—rather a deep familiarity is felt. With the wise, enmity is always felt, because he does not stand in your line. And whatever he says seems dangerous—for whatever he says causes your edifice to fall. Whatever he says proves your knowledge to be ignorance. Whatever he says makes your information futile. He snatches from you. He breaks you. He dissolves you. The wise always appears destructive. The pundit appears constructive—he only adds to you. He gives you something. The pundit seems to donate; the wise seems to take away.
Therefore only the very brave can remain near a wise man—those willing to become utterly ignorant. If you are seeking knowledge, the pundit is the right place; he will give you knowledge, you can collect. If you go to the wise you will be in trouble. First he will snatch away all that you have—he will make you utterly poor within. Jesus has used the phrase: poor in spirit. He will make even your soul poor. But from that very poverty, that utter destitution, that supreme ignorance, wisdom is born.
This is very paradoxical. We think knowledge is a collection. Knowledge is not a collection; whatever is collection is erudition, scholarship, intellectual cleverness, smartness. Wisdom has nothing to do with it. Wisdom is a birth, not a gathering. As a child is born in the mother’s womb, so is wisdom a birth. You cannot assemble a child—buy a leg from somewhere, a hand from somewhere, a head from somewhere, and then join them. If you prepare a child like that, it will be a corpse—and that is the pundit’s knowledge. He brings a foot from here, a hand from there, a head from elsewhere; he constructs a statue. But the statue is dead, for life never comes from collection. And just as the mother must pass through a labor, so the seeker after wisdom too must pass. The search for wisdom is a labor—a self-birth. The first step of this self-birth is to realize: whatever has been known from the outside is not wisdom.
Even this understanding is difficult. For immediately you feel impoverished. For all you know has been known from the outside. Have you ever thought in solitude whether anything you know is really yours? It frightens one even to think so. Think and sweat will break out; your limbs will tremble. Nothing of our knowing is our own. We live in such poverty. But that borrowed knowledge creates an illusion that we know something. And the strange thing is, just as others go on giving us borrowed knowledge, so we go on giving it to others—generation after generation this foolishness continues. No one stops in between to say, I know nothing.
Recently, a Jain monk was brought to me. Two devotees accompanied him. The monk motioned for them to go out; he wished to ask something private about sadhana. The devotees went out. The monk asked me, “What you say, I also say; but why does my talk not have impact? Show me a way.” I told him, “What you say may be said even better than I say it. But as long as you want to make an impact, everything is futile; your curiosity is about the other, not about yourself. Why do you want to influence? What inner benefit will come if someone is influenced? Only the ego will increase. That is not benefit, it is harm. Your stiffness will grow—but that is an obstacle, not a help.”
So I told him, “Do something so that people remain utterly uninfluenced by you. Your attempt to influence—you were telling your devotees you had to ask me about sadhana. Is this sadhana? Certainly you have no taste of yourself; therefore you influence others. Why do we want to influence others? So that through their eyes we might discern that we are something.”
“When the other is impressed, a shine appears in his eyes; that shine gives us vitality. Otherwise, we are lifeless. It gives pleasure, juice, power. It is a very strange vitamin—no scientist has yet discovered such a vitamin. The vitality that reaches you from that shine in the other’s eyes has no pharmaceutical equivalent.”
“Your curiosity about others is proof that you have no idea of your own self and you want to construct your identity from the eyes of others—who am I?”
The pundit thinks he has become wise because he influences others. “If I did not know, how would people be impressed? People are impressed; certainly I know.” Even his sense of knowing depends on people being impressed. The wise also has influence—but it is never his ambition. The influence of a wise man is his natural fragrance. As a man walks in the sun and a shadow forms, when the wise moves among people his shadow falls—inevitably. But that shadow is not his doing. For the pundit, it is his whole effort; his entire juice is in making others impressed.
Lao Tzu says, ‘He who knows others is learned.’
And the pundit knows others well—in truth, he knows only others. Knowing others brings advantages, for then others can be manipulated—made to act and dance as you wish—if you know them.
Dale Carnegie has a famous book—How to Influence People. All over the earth thousands of such books are written these days—how to influence others, how to be successful with others. Certainly, if you are to be successful with others, you must know others. And knowing others is not difficult at all. But knowing oneself is extremely difficult. And I have yet to see a book titled: How to Influence Yourself. Always: how to influence others. But how to influence yourself? How to know yourself? In that, no one has any taste. Why?
There is a delusion in our minds that we already know ourselves. What remains is the other, the unknown—he has to be known. This delusion must be broken. You do not know yourself; you may know a little about the other, but of yourself you know nothing. And then another strange thing happens: the one who does not know himself—can he really know the other?
Go a little deeper. One who does not know himself—how meaningful can his knowledge of the other be? One who has no inner experience—his knowledge of others will be shallow. He will not be able to enter the depths of the other either. He may circle around him, know something about him—but not know him. He can know the face, the eyes, the behavior.
In modern psychology there is a school called behaviorism. These psychologists assert that man has nothing like a soul; only behavior is all—there is nothing within. What one does outside, the sum of it is called soul. If you know a man’s entire behavior, behaviorists say, you have known the man. What you do—that is you. If your doings are fully understood, the matter is finished. There is nothing inside. To deny God is not so great an atheism as behaviorism, because it says only acts exist—what you do.
Do not think behaviorism is a new notion. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of you are behaviorists. You recognize a person by his acts—no other recognition. You see someone stealing—so a thief; someone praying—so a saint. You too see only what he does. What he is—you cannot see. What is inside the thief, we do not see. What is inside the saint, we do not see. The theft is visible; the prayer is visible. And it may be that the saint, while praying, is a thief, and the thief, while stealing, is a saint. But that is very hard; such recognition is very difficult.
I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was close to death. One night, after the physician said it would be hard to survive till morning, he prayed to God: “All my life I have prayed and none was fulfilled; now the last hour has come; fulfill at least one final prayer: before I die, show me heaven and hell, so that I may decide where it is proper to go.”
He was a wise man; every step should be taken thoughtfully.
He fell asleep and saw himself at the gate of heaven. His prayer had been granted. He entered. He was in trouble. For, as he had heard and read in the scriptures—streams of wine, apsaras and beautiful women, wish-fulfilling trees under which all desires are instantly fulfilled—none of that appeared. There was a great silence—colorless and bare. People were doing nothing. Someone was meditating, someone praying, someone worshiping—which was very frightening. Twenty-four hours—he asked, “Is this all that happens here? In heaven one only prays, chants, meditates, does headstands, practices austerities?” he asked.
He thought, good it is that I asked beforehand; this heaven seems dangerous. Hell! The image of heaven vanished, another gate opened. He stood before hell. The gate opened—fresh breezes, melody, dancing. He saw—heaven was here. He thought, great deception runs on the earth—great revelry and joy. He thought, good that I inquired before; heaven is here.
He slept again and in the morning he died. When his soul reached Yama’s office, he was asked, “Nasruddin, where do you wish to go?” Nasruddin smiled; Yama also smiled. Nasruddin thought, you cannot deceive me; I have seen where to go. Nasruddin thought Yama was smiling because he knew Nasruddin knew nothing. He said, “I want to go to hell.” Yet Yama kept smiling. He felt uneasy. “Listen, I want to go to hell.” Yama said, “Certainly—you go to hell. But this is nothing unusual; most people want to go to hell.” Nasruddin said, “Not unusual!”
He was sent to hell. As he entered, he was shocked. Four demons’ apprentices attacked him, began beating him. They dragged him toward a cauldron where a fire burned. He said, “But just at midnight when I came earlier, all was different. This is exactly what the old texts said.” The devil said, “When you came the first time, you had come as a tourist. We keep that part for visitors to see. This is the real hell.”
What is visible in a man’s behavior is not the real man; it is what he has made to show you. What you are doing is not your real self; in doing, the attention is on the other. You may worship, pray, practice austerities—whatever you do is not your essential part. In doing, deception is possible. Behavior is not the soul. You can deceive others—and you can deceive yourself. By and by, doing, you too begin to believe that you are what you do. People take the sum of acts to be the soul. The sum of acts is not the soul—it is the dust collected upon the soul. It may be dirty, it may be fragrant—that is another matter. But it is dust.
What you know about the other is not knowing the other either; it is knowing his behavior. This knowledge Lao Tzu calls erudition. Beware of being learned. The ignorant have been heard of reaching the ultimate truth—but never the learned. And the learned arrives only when he gathers the courage to become ignorant again.
‘And he who knows himself is wise.’
What is it to know oneself? It has no relation with any act, because all acts are outward-bound. Whatever you do goes outward. No doing brings you inward. Doing flows outward as water flows downward. That is the nature of doing. Therefore through any doing you will not know yourself. You must search for a moment when you do nothing—that is called meditation. A moment when you do not do anything; you just are—just being. If you can remember this small phrase, just being—and for even a moment in twenty-four hours seek this being, when you do nothing; the body does nothing; the mind does nothing; you only are. Breath moves; blood flows in the body; you do not do it.
Remember: what happens without you doing will continue to happen. Blood will flow, digestion will go on, breathing will continue, the heart will beat; you need not do anything there. Even otherwise you do not beat the heart or flow the blood; it goes on. That belongs to nature. Whatever is natural continues within you. Whatever you have constructed stops.
In that silent moment for the first time you encounter yourself. No eyes are needed for this recognition, no hands, no ears. No sense is needed. This recognition is supersensory. Even the mind is not needed, because the mind is the device for arranging things outside. For outside work the mind is needed; for the inner, not at all. Mind is our relationship with others. It is the faculty, the instrument of our web of relationships with the other. With oneself there is no question of relationship—there are not two to relate. There you are alone—unsocial, unrelated, solitary. Mahavira called that state kevalya—because of aloneness—that there is nothing there to relate to.
In this moment of kevalya, when all doing has ceased, only natural processes continue and you only are—what happens? Unique happenings arise. In this moment the future ends; the past dissolves; only the present remains. In this moment, whatever others have said about you disappears. In this moment, whatever you have known from scriptures and others dissolves. In this moment you are with the flame of life itself. You do not have to think, “What is the soul?”—for thinking is needed only when you do not know. We think about that which we do not know. Here, there is a face-to-face encounter—self-realization. Lao Tzu, the Upanishads, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna call this the moment of knowing. Everything else is trash. Erudition is trash and the collection of trash.
‘He who knows himself is wise.’
And until you know yourself, know that you are ignorant. For if this remembrance stays—that you are ignorant—the nuisance of erudition will not arise within. If the memory stays that I do not know, the effort to know will continue.
In this country a misfortune has happened—there is no way to reverse it now. The misfortune is: we already know all truths of life—of Atman, of Brahman. There is nothing here that we do not already know. Here we are born—and before we take our first breath we have Brahma-jnana. Here everyone has Brahma-jnana. Hence this country is becoming more irreligious by the day; to measure it is difficult. But the cause is not Western education, nor the influence of communism, nor the winds of atheism; the cause is the burden of scholarship.
Everyone knows; therefore the search has stopped. No one sets out on the quest. You already know—what is there to seek now? The Upanishads are memorized, the Gita is memorized; its recitation goes on daily. You can pass any exam in religion; to fail you would be difficult. You know everything.
This sense of already knowing has become a barrier to seeking. The purity of ignorance has been destroyed. The purity of ignorance is of great value. The feeling of ignorance makes one humble, ready for the quest; it opens doors. All our doors are shut. All our closed doors are blocked by scriptures. One blocks with the Gita, one with the Quran, one with the Bible. Someone jams Mahavira’s image into the doorway to keep it from opening.
Keep in mind Lao Tzu’s thought: until you have any experience of yourself, all knowledge is useless—and do not call it knowledge.
‘He who conquers others is strong; he who conquers himself is powerful.’
He who conquers others has bodily strength; he who conquers himself has the strength of the soul. Conquering the other is not very difficult. For conquering the other one only needs to be a little more animal—nothing more. The wrestler means one who is more bestial than you, whose body is that of a wild beast. To conquer the other you need animality. The more bestial you are, the more you can conquer others—to break, to destroy, to be violent. To conquer oneself is of a very different order. There the animal’s strength will not work; even the body’s strength will not work. In truth, strength does not work there at all.
Understand it a little. The use of strength is suppression. To conquer oneself, strength is of no use. To conquer the other, nothing but strength works. Hence all methods of conquering others are expansions of power. If we look at all forms of power—the individual if powerful suppresses others, rides on their necks. If a nation is powerful it grabs its neighbors. The strong harass the weak—domination is the nature of power.
People try to reach the soul within by power as well—and then they get into trouble. As wrestlers fight others, so some fight with themselves. There is no need to fight with oneself, for there is no question of battle there. Nothing can be obtained through fight there.
You have seen, you know—people engaged in sadhana begin to torture their bodies—they are wrestling with themselves. If they were not sadhus they would be devils—torturing someone else. At least be grateful—they torture only themselves. Torture they must; their taste is in torturing. Now they have become enemies of their own bodies.
There have been sects of ascetics who sleep on thorns, walk on embers. Among Christians there was a sect where the monk whipped himself every morning; the more lashes, the greater the tapasvin. One sect wore shoes with nails inside to pierce the feet; wore belts with spikes to wound the waist. The more the spikes, the greater the ascetic!
You find this troubling. But you too are doing the same. Only what you are used to does not appear to you. If a sadhu comes by car—finished. If he comes on foot—you put your head at his feet. Do you know what you are doing? If the sadhu eats twice a day—finished; your connection breaks. If he starves—you carry him on your head. What are you doing? You are hammering spikes into shoes and belts. Those spikes were honest; yours are dishonest and invisible. But you are used to them.
See a sadhu in comfort—and immediately he becomes unsaintly. Why this cult of suffering? The more a sadhu tortures himself, the more he appears saintly. If he plucks out his hair, seems a tapasvin. If he stands naked in sun and rain, a tapasvin. If he starves—a tapasvin. When his body is reduced to bones, the whole frame emaciated and yellow—you say, now the glow of austerity! That yellowness that appears near death you call the aura of tapas! When the whole body is dead, only the eyes remain—you say, what light! What are you doing? What is your longing? What influences you?
You are impressed by suffering. Someone tortures himself and you relish it. And since the torturer is also eager for your relish, he multiplies his tortures. For the more he tortures himself, the more your respect grows—the more his ego is gratified.
Decide for one month in this land that we will not respect anyone who tortures himself—and ninety-nine out of a hundred ascetics will vanish; they will run away. Because they live on your respect. They are torturing themselves. Remember, their sin will stick to you too—you are responsible. They are not torturing themselves alone; you lend a hand. Perhaps if you stop respecting, the mischief will end. The ego can do anything.
People fight with others—it is understandable. To conquer the other there is only one way—fight and display greater strength. But to conquer oneself, fighting is not the way. You bring the language of the outer within. Do not fall into the delusion that what succeeds outside will succeed inside. What succeeds outside fails inside—the directions are opposite; the mathematics is altogether different.
Those who have experienced the outer struggle—and we all have, through many lives of struggle we have learned that the strong win, the weak lose, violence wins; we used violence with others. Then comes the idea of knowing oneself, conquering oneself. The difficulty is language, for our language is saturated with violence. We conquer others; then we speak of self-conquest. “Conquering oneself” is a compelled phrase, for there is no other word. Otherwise, the word is not right. For here there is no question of victory—which is bound up with violence and power. Inside, the one who succeeds, the one who reaches knowing, is the one who does not fight, does not use power, leaves power utterly unused.
Understand this. When power is used, it is depleted. Hence whoever fights outside becomes daily depleted. He may sit on your neck today, but in riding your neck he has lost power—because he has used it. Before mounting, he was more powerful; now the quantity has diminished. Therefore, if the man thrown down is intelligent, he need not fight—he can make the other fight and defeat him.
In Japan, under Tao’s influence, an art developed: Judo. Judo is the art that when someone attacks you, you provoke him to attack more; you incite him to go mad, and you remain calm. And when he strikes, you absorb the blow. If he punches you, do not resist; do not stiffen your hand to block. Make your hand like a cushion, a pillow—let his fist sink into it. Judo says your hand will drink the force of his punch.
This is true. When you block with strength, your bone breaks not from his force but from your resistance. Your stiffness breaks it. If you are not stiff at all…
See a drunk fall in the street. You try falling. You will return home with broken bones. Drunkards know a certain art you do not. They fall again and again and nothing happens; in the morning they go to the office. No bones broken. What art do they know? They fell in unconsciousness, their bones should break more. You fell consciously—your bones should not. But in consciousness you become resistant; you stiffen, try to protect yourself; in that effort and the impact with the ground the bone breaks. The drunkard does not even know he is falling, or that the ground is falling on him; he falls so simply, without any opposition, that the ground cannot hurt him.
The inner journey is utterly different from the outer. Outside you fight—and your power depletes; you become weak. You appear powerful by victory, but you have lost something. Inside, do not use power at all. There is no need. Let power remain present—and within your power will increase. Unused, power becomes an inner treasure; unused, power becomes peace. The unused form of power is called peace. Peace is not impotence; it is not weakness; it is supreme power that has not left its home, that remains enthroned within, that has not gone outside; it is a lake without ripples. Supreme power becomes available—but not through use, through non-use.
Hence Lao Tzu puts all emphasis on non-action. He says: the more you quiet action, the more supremely powerful you become. And in this great power, self-knowing and self-victory happen by themselves. This is not a fight; it simply happens in the presence of power—just as when the sun rises, flowers open; the sun does not go and open them. The sun rises and birds begin to sing; no one knocks on each throat. The sun does not do anything—his presence, and life throbs.
The day you are simply present within—silent presence, just your presence—by your presence the great power appears, and victory happens. Inner victory is not a struggle, not a war, not suppression.
Lao Tzu says, ‘He who conquers others is strong; he who conquers himself is powerful.’
He who conquers others is needlessly losing his strength. In the end his hands will remain empty—he will find in his fists nothing but ashes. He who conquers himself alone truly uses power; he attains all that is valuable, beautiful, true hidden in life-energy.
You can use power in two ways: outward to conquer others, or inward to know yourself. The mathematics is different, the mechanisms different. Outside, power must be violent; inside, power must be non-violent. Outside, power destroys; inside, power becomes creative—self-creation, self-discovery.
But language compels us; we use the same words for inside that we use for outside. Understand the difference. It is no conquest, for inside there is neither anyone to win nor anyone to lose. There are not two for victory. He who begins to fight gets caught in duality; his duality makes him even more diseased. The sannyasin, the seeker, the yogi gripped by inner conflict works twenty-four hours at fighting himself. Victory never arrives—who will win, who will lose? There are not two. In fighting he squanders his strength.
I experienced this. A young man once came to me—perhaps ten or fifteen years ago—about thirty-five to forty in age. A seeker, intense in search. He asked me, “Until now I have been restraining my sexuality, fighting, trying to cultivate brahmacharya. Will I succeed?” I told him, “Till forty-five there will be some chance of success; after forty-five, defeat will begin.” He said, “What are you saying! My guru told me this is a short nuisance; youth will pass—trouble over.” I said, “When you are forty-five, come back to me.”
He came back at forty-five. He said, “You were right—the trouble is increasing. I cannot understand the mathematics. At thirty, it was not so troublesome; at forty-five it is more.” I said, “At thirty you had more energy to fight; at forty-five less. That against which you fight has not diminished. You have been exhausting yourself by pushing sexuality down; the suppressor grows weak while desire remains where it was.”
After forty-five, great difficulty begins for brahmacharis. The real pain starts after sixty. People think, “He is sixty and still troubled!” The real trouble begins then, for the suppressor has weakened; the fighter has lost—tired, broken—while desire stands fresh. Those who live sex naturally may perhaps be beyond it by sixty; those who fight never get beyond it even as they die. Their desire remains young; they grow old, tired, and desire is strong. Then the restlessness and suffering begin.
By fighting inside you only create turmoil, and you lose life, time, and opportunity. It is not a question of fighting—it is a question of understanding. The very idea of fighting is wrong; to set up conflict is wrong. Even to think “I must stop it” is wrong—for that which you stop is also you, and that which stops is also you. It is like making your two hands fight. Which will win—the right or the left? Neither can win.
Yes, it can happen that I was raised in a tradition where I heard the right hand is wrong—or the left is wrong—and the other is right. Then I will put all my weight behind the hand I heard is right, and not support the one I heard is wrong. But how does it matter? Both hands are mine. And whether I give strength or not, still both are mine. The funny thing is: when I give strength to the right and not to the left, soon the right will tire and the left remain fresh—because the one given strength gets tired. In the end the left will win—just a little force and the left will put the right down.
Hence in brahmacharya, those who fight are quickly defeated by sexuality. A hedonist is hard to shake. Let Indra send apsaras to the hedonist—he will sit smoking his cigarette. But the rishi-muni falls into great trouble, immediately and easily. There is no need to send apsaras—any woman will do. That the rishis found them so beautiful is no proof the apsaras were beautiful—it proves the rishis’ craving was deep. Deep craving makes anything beautiful. To be a woman is enough—beauty is projection from within. Therefore nowadays Indra has stopped sending apsaras; you will not find them. Whom to send? There is no one rigidly stiff to be shaken. People are so shaken that an apsara would put them to sleep—they are so tired. The hedonist does not get corrupted; have you heard “corrupt hedonist”? “Corrupt yogi” makes sense. Why?
Because the perspective of conflict is fatal in the inner world. The seeker needs to be careful not to begin fighting inside, not to create any duality or enemy within. Whatever is inside should be assimilated. Lust is mine; anger is mine; whatever is within—that is me. Even “mine” is inaccurate—I am that. With all that is within I need a soulful relationship—deep friendship, intimacy, closeness, a homeliness. As this friendliness gathers, the energy of desire that flows outward begins to flow inward.
Right now desire flows outward because your juice is outside. When your juice is within, the same energy flows inward. The very lust that becomes kama becomes Rama when it turns inward. The only difference is outer and inner flow. Now I am curious about the other—so my desire flows out. When I am curious about myself, absorbed in my own search, the same energy flows towards me. But it will flow only when a doorway of friendship opens—when a line of friendliness is drawn through which it can enter. As an enemy it cannot come in; there is no invitation for an enemy.
If a person accepts all the powers of his nature with simple joy—as God’s gifts—and receives them with gratitude, he will find there is no need to conquer desires. The very talk of conquest is futile. What is the question of conquering one’s own desires? They are my desires. I direct them out—they go outward. When I become interested within—they begin coming inward. When the energy of desire begins to flow inward and kama becomes self-kama, then the state called aptakam is attained. Aptakam means: one whose every desire has become inward; who himself has become the goal of his desire; whose rivers no longer seek any outer ocean but fall into the ocean within.
‘He who is content is rich; he who is resolute has will. He who is linked to his center overcomes death; and he who dies and yet lives attains eternal life.’
He who is content is rich. We hear this proverb often—but we do not really understand it. We tell people—and they too take it vaguely—that contentment is a great wealth and the contented person is always happy. If someone is unhappy we say, keep content; through contentment you will gain happiness. Remember, to say “contentment brings happiness” is wrong. It is true that the contented person is happy; but to say contentment brings happiness is wrong.
If you grasp this difference, the secret of this sutra will be clear.
We preach: “Contentment brings happiness.” Someone is unhappy; troubled. We say, be content—you will gain happiness; no wealth is greater than contentment. What are we saying? We are saying, divert your greed towards contentment—because contentment will bring happiness. If you want happiness, be content. But the focus is on happiness—on gaining happiness. The funny thing is: he is unhappy precisely because he was chasing some happiness that did not come. The cause of his sorrow is his desire for happiness. And we say, if you want happiness be content. We preach contentment so that he may obtain happiness. We are fueling his desire for happiness, fanning that very flame—which is the cause of his misery.
So, note: to say “contentment brings happiness” is wrong. Yes, one who is content is happy—that is true. Contentment is not the cause and happiness is not the effect. The relationship between contentment and happiness is not causal. It is like the relationship between you and your shadow. Where you are, your shadow is. Happiness is the shadow of contentment—not its fruit. Therefore, one who becomes content to get happiness will be neither content nor happy, because his attention is wrong. Where there is desire for happiness, contentment cannot be. Contentment means there is no demand for happiness. Contentment means we know the art of enjoying what we have, wherever we are. Understand this difference. Contentment means the art of happiness—drinking joy out of whatever is, wherever we are.
Epicurus was Greece’s greatest materialist philosopher—like Charvaka. But neither Charvaka nor Epicurus have been understood. Epicurus says: be happy. We think: hedonist. Yet he is saying something tremendous: whatever is, draw full joy from it. Charvaka said the same: squeeze the full juice of joy from what is in your hand; do not postpone happiness into the future. The time that passes will not return. If postponement becomes a habit, you will go on postponing and never know joy.
To be content means: with what you have, draw so much joy that contentment overflows and fills you—do not defer. If you try to become content so that tomorrow happiness may come, you will be neither content nor happy. Gain happiness today—and you will be content. For when happiness is not in the future, the reason for discontent vanishes. Future happiness is the cause of discontent; expectation of the future is the cause of frustration and sorrow.
The emperor of Greece went to meet Epicurus. He was astonished. He had thought: this atheist Epicurus—does not accept God or the soul, values only pleasure—a stark atheist! Who knows what he must be doing! When he arrived, he was amazed. Epicurus had a garden where he lived with his disciples. The emperor saw him and found him more calm than any theist saint he had ever seen. He rejoiced seeing his bliss. They had little—but whatever they had, they lived amidst it like emperors.
The emperor said, “I wish to send you a gift.” He was afraid—“Ask a materialist what gift—he may ask for my whole empire!” Still he said, “Ask—whatever you want, I shall send.” Epicurus fell into thought. They say, for the first time, worry lined his forehead. He closed his eyes. The emperor asked, “Why so unhappy?” Epicurus said, “It’s a bit difficult, because we do not think of the future. And you say, ask for something—you want to send something. You have put me in difficulty. We enjoy what we have and do not think of what we don’t have. Now I must think about what I don’t have to ask of you.”
He said, “There is one way. A new man has joined the ashram today—he is not yet adept in joy; let’s ask him.” The new man too had joined after much thought. He said thoughtfully, “Send a little butter; our bread has no butter.” The emperor did not send butter; he brought it himself, to see how butter would be received. That night it seemed as though heaven had descended into the ashram. They danced, rejoiced—there was butter on the bread! The emperor wrote in his memoirs: I cannot believe whether I saw truth or dream—there is everything with me and I am not so joyful; and that night there was only butter on bread and they were so blissful!
The art of extracting joy from what is—that is contentment. Understand this: contentment is not persuading yourself, not consolation—“Since I do not have, why desire?” While inside, the mind still thinks, “It should have been.” Why think of what is not? Think not of what is not—and of what is, drink its juice; from that immersion contentment is born. And contentment is happiness; contentment is wealth.
The discontented is always poor, however much he has, because he keeps count not of what is but of what is not. He keeps account of lack. The contented is rich because he keeps account of what is—and what is, is so much that you have never counted it, so you do not know.
A Sufi story: a young man told a fakir, “I want to kill myself—there is no juice in life; I have nothing.” The fakir said, “Do not worry. I know an emperor. You do not know what you have, but I do—I will sell it.” He said, “I have nothing—what will you sell? I am empty; I do not even have a bag to keep anything.” The fakir said, “Do not worry—come with me.” He took him to the palace gate, went inside, returned and said, “What if I get you a hundred thousand? The emperor is ready to buy your eyes.” The youth said, “What are you saying—eyes? Even for ten million I would not sell.” The fakir said, “Just now you said you had nothing, and now you won’t sell your eyes for ten million! I can sell your ears, your teeth—many things. Say the word—I have buyers everywhere. I will pile millions before you.” The man said, “You are dangerous; it would be better I had died than met you!”
You do not know what you have until it is taken away. Many discover after dying that they were alive; before, they never knew. What you have is invisible to you. We do not count it; it is not our habit.
Contentment means: the taste and awareness of what is. Discontentment means: the taste and awareness of what is not. And contentment is wealth.
‘And he who is resolute has strength of will.’
One who possesses the capacity to decide. It does not matter what the decision is—the capacity to decide. You have almost no capacity to decide. Even if you decide to keep this finger straight for five minutes, you will move it a thousand times. Even decide to keep your eyes open for two minutes—they will start to blink; you will invent a thousand reasons and blink.
Decisiveness—when a decision is taken, let it stand. In letting a decision stand you gather together; will arises. Truly, the soul arises. However small the matter—small or great is not the point. When you take a decision—and once taken, there is no question of options; the matter is finished; there is no return; in such a state you gather—you cannot be broken.
But right now, even when you take a small decision, at the very moment you know it will not last. This is the great joke: even as you take it you know it will not stand. This voice within—saying it won’t last—will destroy it.
I have heard: a old woman heard Vivekananda’s discourse. She ran home because Vivekananda had quoted the Bible: faith can move mountains. Behind her house was a hill. She thought, incredible—till now I did not know. If faith can remove the hill—remove it! She rushed home, took a last look through the window at the hill—after the prayer it would be gone—closed the window, prayed, then looked again—the hill was still there. She said, “I knew beforehand such things never happen!”
She knew beforehand! What does faith mean? And I tell you—the hill could have moved; it did not because of the old woman. Within, truly, faith can move mountains—far greater things than mountains. But faith means a unison—a single mood within—where no inner conflict remains, no second voice. Remember, that second voice is the nuisance. When you marry someone, within you are already filling the divorce form. When you love someone, you already know what you say cannot be true—you keep a second hand ready for enmity while extending one for friendship. You are fragmented. This fragmented personality is poverty; an unfragmented personality is richness.
‘He who is resolute has will. And he who remains linked with his center is deathless.’
He who has established his relation with his center and does not let it break, whose roots are not uprooted from his own center—he has no death. For death is only of the periphery; the center never dies. Death is only of your personality, never of you. You die because you have fastened yourself to what is perishable. And the immortal within you—upon that you have no attention.
This inner journey—set aside erudition, take up wisdom; drop worrying about conquering others; set out upon the victory of the self; know that wealth is not in possessions but in contentment, in resolution, in decisiveness, in your soul—such a vision and such a journey—and you will be linked again to your center. In truth you are already linked—remembrance will arise, recognition will happen. And that recognition means you are conqueror of death.
‘And he who dies and yet lives attains eternal life.’
You must die at your periphery—only then will you know the everlasting life hidden within. You must die out of your senses—then you will know your supersensory life. You must die in your mind—then you will know the nectar of your soul.
Jesus has said, he who saves himself will lose himself; he who is ready to lose himself—there is no way to destroy him.
One must learn the art of dying—only then does one know life’s ultimate mystery. The art of dying means: die at the periphery, die to the outer, die to others. Let only one point of life remain—the inner center of consciousness; and from all sides gather yourself and die. If even for a single moment this happens—that the outer world has ended, all is a cremation ground, and only my one flame remains burning—then for me there is no death. I will return to this world of corpses, but I shall not be one who dies. If even for a moment the source of oneself is experienced, the nectar is found.
People search for the elixir of immortality—somewhere it might exist! Hidden in mercury, hidden in some alchemy. I knew an old gentleman—closer death drove him crazier. Whenever he came to see me, he had only one topic: Is there such a thing as nectar? By what alchemical method can a man live forever—show me.
I said to him, “You will have to die. For the place you are seeking immortality is the realm of death. No alchemical method can give immortality. It can give length, not deathlessness. And length solves nothing; it increases the problem. The longer the span, the longer death chases you. One who dies in a single year may never even know death. But one who dies at a hundred has experienced death for a hundred years—feared for a hundred years—hardly dying at last.”
Do you know? In America they did a survey: at thirty-five, only twenty out of a hundred believed in the immortality of the soul. At fifty, forty out of a hundred. At seventy, eighty out of a hundred. And they did not find a single person over a hundred who did not believe in the immortality of the soul. As death grows more frightening, man begins to believe more that the soul is immortal. At thirty-five there is swagger; no fear of death. At a hundred, everyone is bent; death has become intense.
I told him, “Do not search outside; no one has ever found nectar outside. Nectar can be found, but not in chemistry; not hidden in any herb; not in the art of alchemy. Nectar is available—but within oneself; and it is attained by one who dies and yet lives—who dies to the outer periphery and lives only in the inner life.”
‘He attains eternal life.’
Let us sing for five minutes, then disperse.