Osho on Taoist Master Lin Lei

WHEN LIN LEI WAS NEARLY A HUNDRED, HE PUT ON HIS FUR COAT IN THE MIDDLE OF SPRING, AND WENT TO PICK UP THE GRAINS DROPPED BY THE REAPERS, SINGING AS HE MADE HIS WAY THROUGH THE FIELDS.

Lin Lei is a Taoist Master, but as Taoist Masters are, they live a very ordinary life. They don’t live in any extraordinary way, they don’t claim that they are special beings, talented geniuses, sages, saints, MAHATMAS; they don’t claim anything. They simply live a very ordinary life because they are natural beings: natural like the trees, natural like the birds, natural like nature itself. They are not in any way egoistic.

For example, if in India you want to find out where the MAHATMAS are you can easily find them. But if you had gone to visit ancient China and wanted to know a Taoist Master, nobody would have been able to tell you where you would find one. You would have had to look, move, wander around the country… and at some time you might have come across one. But there is no way unless you have experienced something of it in your own being. Unless you have the taste, the flavour, you will not be able to recognise a Taoist Master. Lin Lei is a Taoist Master — very simple, very old, very ancient; a hundred years old and he is picking up the grains dropped by the reapers. Now this is the lowliest job one can find, the most beggarly and yet…

… SINGING AS HE MADE HIS WAY THROUGH THE FIELDS.

The Taoist is always happy because he does not wait for any cause: he does not wait for any special situation in which he is going to be happy. Happiness is like breathing, happiness is like the beat of the heart — happiness is his being, it is not something that happens to him. Happiness is not something that happens and does not happen, happiness is something that is always there. He is full of happiness. Happiness is the stuff that existence is made of; and a Taoist has fallen in harmony with existence — naturally he is happy. Whatsoever he is doing, he is doing it happily. His happiness precedes his action.

Sometimes you are happy and sometimes you are unhappy — because your happiness is conditional. When you are succeeding you are happy, when you are failing you are unhappy; your happiness depends on some outer cause. You cannot always sing; even if you sing, your song will not always have the singing. Sometimes it will really be a delight and sometimes just a repetition, dead and dull. Sometimes, when the friend has come, when you have found a beloved, you are happy. Sometimes, when the friend has gone, the beloved is lost, you are unhappy. Your happiness and unhappiness, is caused from the outside — it is not an inner flow, it is not something that you possess. It is given to you by others and taken away, given to you by circumstances and taken away. This is not of worth because you remain a slave, you are not a Master.

The Taoists call that person a Master whose happiness is absolutely his own. He can be happy irrespective of the situation: young he is happy, old he is happy; as an emperor he is happy, as a beggar he is happy. His song is uncontaminated by circumstances; his song is his own, his song is his natural rhythm. This man, a hundred years old…. Ordinarily, a man of one hundred years of age will not be able to sing — what is there to sing about now? Life has disappeared, life has oozed out, he is almost as dry as a bone, and there is nothing to hope for only death is to come. Singing, celebrating — for what? A man of a hundred years has no future: his life is spent, he is exhausted, any moment death will knock him down. For whom? For what? For what reason can a man sing like that? And at the age of a hundred years one has to go and do such a beggarly job… one has to pick up the grains dropped by the reapers. That means nobody is there to look after the old man. He is left alone — no family it seems, no son, no daughters, no wife, no brothers; nobody to look after him. What is there to sing about?

But if you have the song — the real song, the song that arises from your intrinsic core, your innermost centre — then it does not matter. You can go on singing even when death is descending. You can go on singing even if somebody is killing you. Your body can be killed, but not your song. Your body can be imprisoned, but not your song. Your song is eternal because it is uncaused.

Remember this very fundamental law of life: That which is caused is never eternal, that which is caused is temporal. When the cause will disappear, it will disappear; it is a by-product. That which is uncaused is going to be forever and forever, because there is nothing that can destroy it. Your body will die — it has been caused;

the meeting of your father and mother has been the cause of it. Your body will die: one day it was caused. It has a certain energy, a certain life-span, then it will be finished. Every day you are dying, one day you will simply disappear into the grave.

But is that all that you have? Is that all that your being is? Is there not something more?

There is something in you which was before you were ever born that is going to be there even after you are-gone forever. After you have died, that which was before your birth will remain — that is uncaused.

That’s why Taoists don’t believe that God created the world, that God created man, that God created souls. If God had created souls then they were caused and one day they would disappear — howsoever far that day might be is not material. If the world were caused and man had been created, then one day the world would be uncreated and man would be uncreated. Taoists say ‘That which is eternal, uncaused, uncreated’ — they don’t have a creator. In fact, nobody has ever reached that peak, that sublime peak, of understanding as have the Taoists. All other religions look juvenile.

The Taoist maturity is so tremendous, is of such splendour, is of such depth and height, that no other religion can be compared to it; they all look like kindergarten schools — made specially for children. Made specially for children, that’s why God is ‘the Father’; children cannot be independent, they need a father. If your real father has disappeared then you still need an imaginary father in heaven to control you: you are not mature enough, you cannot be on your own, you have to lean on somebody or other.

Taoists have no concept of God — not that they are godless, they are the most godly — but they don’t have a concept of God; existence is enough. There is no creator, there is no creation, there is eternity. This has always been so, this will always be so. Once you have come in contact with this eternal continuity inside your being, the substratum, then there is nothing to be miserable about.

You are eternal, you are immortal, there is no death for you because there has never been any birth. You are uncreated, you cannot be destroyed. Whatsoever the outer circumstances, your inner light goes on burning bright and the song continues.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse name: Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 1
Chapter title: There can be no regret
Chapter #5
15 February 1977 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on many Mystics like Dadu, Farid, Gurdjieff, J. Krishnamurti, Kabir, Nanak, Meher Baba, Patanjali, Swami Ram Teerth, Rumi, Sahajo, Sai Baba, Saraha, Socrates, Tilopa, Zarathustra, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Ko Hsuan and many more in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Sermons in Stones
2. Come Come Yet Again Come
3. Tao: The Three Treasures
4. Beyond Enlightenment
5. The New Dawn
6. The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1, 2
7. The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty
8. Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries
9. Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 1
10. The Path of Love
11. The Book of Wisdom
12. The Tantra Vision, Vol 1, 2
13. Tantra: The Supreme Understanding
14. Tao: The Golden Gate
15. The Empty Boat