Taoism

How to be a taoist psychotherapist within a very confucius-oriented mental institution? In other words, how to be a nut-healer instead of a nut-cracker?

Now this has to be understood: when a person goes mad it simply shows that he was the weakest link in the group in which he used to live -- for example, in a family. If the family is neurotic -- as families are -- then the person who is the weakest in the family will become neurotic. And through that person the whole neurosis of the family will start flowing. He will become the scapegoat. He may be weaker, he may be more fragile, he may be more sensitive than the others. He may be of a softer heart and a softer build. So the whole neurosis of the family will start flowing through him and the whole family will start calling him mad. And they will start thinking about taking him to the psychiatrist, to the institution. And he was helpful, he was a safety valve for the…

Question: what is the place for method in lao tzu's philosophy of life? How can a man reach his goal whose aim is not doing but just floating? And is effort not necessary to reach the goal? Lao tzu's method of no-doing, to be inactive, also establishes a goal. And can we call it wisdom to let ourselves loose on unknown and unfelt ways? Is this the characteristic of a wise man or an unwise man?

Understand this well. Then you will be incapable of clenching the fist. You will suddenly realise that all your efforts to do so will go in vain for you have no energy left. Now you cannot clench; it opens! So methods are to be evolved to make you clench your fist harder and yer harder! All methods are meant to take you to -- the peak of tension, to the climax, after which dispersal starts. Suddenly you discover that the fist has opened and the diamond has fallen! It was never there. We never gathered courage to open the fist and see for fear that it might fall or the neighbour might know about it! Then you feel all the effort of holding on to it, was in vain. So the method says, "Clench your fist!" The methodless way of Lao Tzu says, "You will not attain till vou open.…

In the last few days my mind has been playing with this question. What happens when a hard-way person, for example a follower of gurdjieff, comes across a taoist master?

The question is from Purna; a beautiful question, significant: What will happen if a follower of Gurdjieff comes across a Taoist Master? What happens when a river comes falling, tumbling, down off a hillock upon strong rocks? If you look, you will think 'Those rocks are so hard, what can the river do, what can this waterfall do?' But if you come after a few years, you will find those rocks are gone; they have become sand. The soft water has become victorious over hard rocks. Lao Tzu calls it 'the watercourse way', the way of the soft, the way of the feminine. What happens when a man, a very strong man and a very fragile beautiful woman come across each other, what happens? The man looks like a rock and the woman looks like just a small rivulet, tumbling from a hillock... but whatsoever the appearances, the final victory…

The pundit in today's story -- was he not also a beautiful taoist? Perhaps not reached the ocean, but on the way?

He can be called a Taoist, but not a man of Tao. Taoist in the sense that he believes that Tao is true, but not a man of Tao because his belief is unbased. It is not his own experience, it is not his own existential understanding; it is still knowledge, it is not knowing. To be a Taoist is easy, it is very cheap: you can always borrow knowledge. To be a man of Tao is arduous, it needs guts. Sometimes you may be more impressed by a Taoist than a man of Tao, because the Taoist is understandable by your intellect. He has some affinity with you, he talks the same logic and the same language that you can understand. To understand the man of Tao may be difficult because there is no bridge yet between you and him. He exists in a very transcendental world, in a…