Osho on Enlightened Taoist Master Chuang Tzu Chuang Tzu was a Taoist master also known as Zhuangzi, was a disciple of Lao Tzu. He was an admirable writer and skilful composer, and by his instances and truthful descriptions hit and exposed the&nbsp;Mohists&nbsp;and&nbsp;Literati. The ablest scholars of his day could not escape his satire nor reply to it, while he allowed and enjoyed himself with his sparkling, dashing style; and thus he was the greatest men, even kings and princes, could not use him for their purposes. King Wei of Chu, heard of the ability of Chuang Tzu, sent messengers with large gifts to bring him to his court, and promising also that he would make him his chief minister. Chuang-Tzu, however, only laughed and refused to be in restrictions of great palace. Zhuangzi had written a book named after his own name the Zhuangzi. It is one of the two foundational texts of&nbsp;Taoism, along with the&nbsp;Tao Te Ching. The Zhuangzi consists of a large collection of anecdotes, allegories, parables and fables. Osho has spoken on Chuang Tzu beautifully in his discourse series the empty boat. He says Persons like Chuang Tzu are concerned with being, not becoming. They are not concerned with doing, they are not concerned with the future. No planning is needed. Existence takes care of itself. Chuang tzu said before his death to his disciples: "I SHALL HAVE HEAVEN AND EARTH FOR MY COFFIN; THE SUN AND MOON WILL BE JADE SYMBOLS HANGING BY MY SIDE; PLANETS AND CONSTELLATIONS WILL SHINE AS JEWELS ALL AROUND ME, AND ALL BEINGS WILL BE PRESENT AS MOURNERS AT THE WAKE. WHAT MORE IS NEEDED? EVERYTHING IS AMPLY TAKEN CARE OF."<div class="raw-html-embed"><div style="width:100%;height:1px;background:#00000036;margin:10px 0;"></div></div>Chuang Tzu is one of the rarest of flowerings, rarer even than a Buddha or a Jesus. Because Buddha and Jesus emphasize effort and Chuang Tzu emphasizes effortlessness. Much can be done through effort but more can be done through effortlessness. Much can be achieved through will but much more can be achieved through will-lessness. And whatsoever you achieve through will, will always remain a burden to you; it will always be a conflict, an inner tension, and you can lose it at any moment. It has to be maintained continuously -- and maintaining it takes energy, maintaining it finally dissipates you. Only that which is attained through effortlessness will never be a burden to you, and only that which is not a burden can be eternal. Only that which is not in any way unnatural can remain with you forever and forever. Chuang Tzu says that the real, the divine, the existential, is to be attained by losing yourself completely in it. Even the effort to attain it becomes a barrier -- then you cannot lose yourself. Even the effort to lose yourself becomes a barrier. How can you make any effort to lose yourself? All effort is born out of the ego, and through effort ego is strengthened. Ego is the disease. So all effort has to be left completely, nothing is to be done; one has to lose oneself completely in the existential. One has to become again like a small child, just born, not knowing what is right, not knowing what is wrong, not knowing any distinctions. Once distinctions enter, once you know this is right and that is wrong, you are already ill, and you are far away from reality. A child lives naturally -- he is total. He does not make any effort, because making an effort means you are fighting with yourself. A part of you is for and a part of you is against -- hence the effort. You can achieve much, remember. In this world, particularly, you can achieve much through effort because effort is aggression, effort is violence, effort is competition. But in the other world nothing can be achieved through effort, and those who start with effort finally have also to drop it. Buddha worked for six years, continuously meditating, concentrating -- he became an ascetic. He did all that can be done by a human being, not a single stone was left unturned -- he staked his whole being. But it was an effort, the ego was there, and he failed. Nothing fails like the ego in the Ultimate; nothing succeeds like the ego in this world. In the world of matter nothing succeeds like the ego; in the world of consciousness nothing fails like the ego. The case is just the opposite -- and it has to be so because the dimension is just the opposite. Buddha failed absolutely. After six years he was completely frustrated, and when I say completely, I mean completely. Not even a single fragment of hope remained, he became absolutely hopeless. In that hopelessness he dropped all effort. He had already dropped the world, he had already left his kingdom; all that belonged to this visible world, he had left, renounced. Now after six years of strenuous effort he left also all that belonged to the other world. He was in a complete vacuum -- empty. That night he slept a different quality of sleep because there was no ego; a different quality of silence arose because there was no effort; a different quality of being happened to him that night because there was no dreaming. If there is no effort, nothing is incomplete, then there is no need to dream. A dream is always to complete something: something which has remained incomplete in the day will be completed in a dream because mind has a tendency to complete everything. If it is not complete then the mind will always be uneasy. Effort is put into many things and if they remain incomplete, a dream is needed. When there is desire, there is bound to be dreaming, because desiring is dreaming -- dreaming is just a shadow of desiring. That night, when there was nothing to be done -- this world was already useless, now the other world was also useless -- all motivation to move ceased. There was nowhere to go, and there was no one to go anywhere That night sleep became samadhi, it became satori; it became the ultimate thing that can happen to a man. Buddha flowered that night and in the morning he was enlightened. He opened his eyes, looked at the last star disappearing in the sky, and everything was there. It had always been there, but he had wanted it so much he couldn't see it. It had always been there, but he had been moving so much in the future with the desire that he could not look at the here and now. That night there was no desire, no goal, nowhere to go, and no one to go anywhere -- all effort ceased. Suddenly he became aware of himself, suddenly he became aware of the reality as it is. Chuang Tzu says from the very beginning: Don't make any effort. And he is right. Because you will never make such a total effort as Buddha. You will never be so frustrated that the effort drops by itself; it will always be incomplete.&nbsp; And your mind will always go on saying: A little more and something will happen, a step more. The goal is near, why are you getting dejected? Just a little more effort is needed because the goal is coming nearer every day. Because you will never make so absolute an effort you will never be completely hopeless. And you can continue this half-hearted effort for many lives -- that is what you have been doing in the past. You are not here for the first time before me. You are not here for the first time making some effort to realise the true, the real. You have done it many, many times, a million times in the past -- but you are still hopeful. Chuang Tzu says; it is better to drop effort in the beginning. It has to be dropped: either you drop it in the beginning or you will have to drop it in the end. But the end may not come soon! So there are two ways: either make a total effort... so total that all hope is shattered and you come to realise that nothing can be achieved through effort, there is not even a single small fragment somewhere in the unconscious still lingering and saying: Do a little more and this will be achieved.... either make a total effort, then it drops by itself, or don't make any effort at all. Just understand the whole thing. Don't move into it at all. Remember one thing... you cannot come out of it if it is incomplete; once entered, it has to be completed. Because the mind has a tendency to complete everything -- not only the human mind, even the animal mind. If you draw a half circle, incomplete, and a gorilla comes and sees it, and if some chalk is there, he will immediately complete it. Your mind as such has a tendency to complete -- anything incomplete gives you tension. If you wanted to laugh and you could not, there will be tension. If you wanted to cry and could not, there will be tension. If you wanted to be angry and could not, there will be tension. That's why you have been ill for so long; everything has been left incomplete! You have never laughed totally, you have never cried totally, you have never been angry totally, you have never hated totally, you have never loved totally. Nothing has been done totally -- everything is incomplete. Nothing is total. It lingers on, and then there are always many things on your mind. That is why you are so ill at ease. You can never feel at home. Chuang Tzu says: It is better not to start because once you start it has to be completed. Understand, and don't move in a vicious circle. That is why I say that Chuang Tzu is a rare flowering, rarer than a Buddha or a Jesus. Because he achieved simply by understanding. There is no method, no meditation for Chuang Tzu. He says: Simply understand the 'facticity' of it. You are born. What effort have you made to be born? You grow. What effort have you made to grow? You breathe. What effort have you made to breathe? Everything moves on its own, so why bother? Let life flow on its own then you will be in a let go. Don't struggle and don't try to move upstream, don't even try to swim, just float with the current and let the current lead you wherever it leads. Be a white cloud moving in the sky -- no goal, going nowhere, just floating. That floating is the ultimate flowering. So the first thing to understand about Chuang Tzu before we enter his sutras, is -- be natural. Everything unnatural has to be avoided. Don't do anything that is unnatural. Nature is enough -- you cannot improve upon it, but the ego says, no, you can improve upon nature -- that is how all culture exists. Any effort to improve upon nature is culture, and all culture is like a disease -- the more a man is cultured the more dangerous he is. I have heard that a hunter, a European hunter, was lost in a forest in Africa. Suddenly he came upon a few huts. He had never heard that a village existed in that thick forest. It was not on any map. So he approached the chief of the village, and he said: This is a pity that you are lost to civilization. The chief said: No, it is not a pity, we are always afraid of being discovered -- once civilization comes in we are lost.&nbsp; Nature is lost once you make an effort to improve upon it -- that means you are trying to improve upon God. All religions are trying to do that -- to improve upon God. Chuang Tzu is not in favour of that. He says nature is ultimate, and that ultimate nature he calls Tao. Tao means that nature is ultimate and cannot be improved. If you try to improve upon it, you will cripple it -- that is how we cripple every child. Every child is born in Tao, then we cripple him with society, civilisation, culture, morality, religion... we cripple him from every side. Then he lives, but he is not alive. I have heard that a small girl was going to a party, a friend's birthday party. She was very small, just four years old. She asked her mother: Were there such parties and dances when you were alive? The more cultured and civilised, the more dead. If you want to see perfectly dead men and yet still alive go to the monk in the monasteries, go to the priests in the churches, go to the Pope in the Vatican. They are not alive, they are so afraid of life, so afraid of nature, that they have suppressed it from everywhere. They are already in their graves. You can paint the grave, you can even make a marble grave, very valuable -- but the man inside is dead. A drunkard was passing through a graveyard and he saw a beautiful grave made of pure white marble. He looked at the grave, looked at the name on it. The grave was that of the famous Rothschild. He laughed, and said: These Rothschilds, they know how to live. Culture kills you, culture is a murderer, culture is a slow poison -- it is a suicide. Chuang Tzu and his old master, Lao Tzu, are against culture. They are for nature, pure nature. Trees are in a better position than you, even birds, fishes in the river, are in a better position because they are more alive, they dance more to the rhythm of nature. You have completely forgotten what nature is. You have condemned it to the very root. And if you want to condemn nature you have to start by condemning sex, because the whole of nature arises out of it. The whole of nature is an overflowing of sex energy, of love. The birds sing, the trees flower -- this is all sexual energy, exploding. Flowers are sex symbols, the singing of the birds is sexual, the whole of Tao is nothing but sex energy -- the whole of nature propagates itself, loves itself, moves into deeper ecstasies of love and existence. If you want to destroy nature condemn sex, condemn love, create moral concepts around life. Those moral concepts, howsoever beautiful they look, will be like marble graves and you will be there inside them. Some-drunkard may think that you know what life is, that you know how to live, but anyone who is in HIS state of awareness is in no state even to call you alive. Your morality is a sort of death: before death kills you, the society kills you. That is why Chuang Tzu's message is one of the most dangerous, the most revolutionary, the most rebellious -- because he says: Allow nature! And don't give any goal to nature. Who are you to create goals and purposes? You are just a tiny part, an atomic cell. Who are you to force the whole to move according to you? This is most dangerous for people who are religious, for people who are moralistic puritans. This is a most dangerous message. This means break all the barriers, allow nature to erupt -- dangerous it is. Source: Discourse Series: When the Shoe Fits, Chapter #1 Chapter title: When The Shoe Fits 11 October 1974 am in Buddha Hall References: Osho has spoken on&nbsp;‘Krishna, Jesus, Buddha, Shiva, Lao Tzu and many other enlightened Masters’&nbsp;in many of His discourses. More on them can be referred to in the following books/discourse titles: 1. Vigyan Bhairav Tantra 2. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha 3. Tao: The Three Treasures 4. Zarathustra: The Laughing Prophet 5. The Mustard Seed: My Most Loved Gospel on Jesus 6. The Path of Love 7. Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master 8. When the Shoe Fits 9. Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen, with Basho’s Haikus 10. Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega 11. Sermons in Stones 12. The Book of Wisdom 13. The Divine Melody &nbsp;