TAO
Tao The Golden Gate Vol 1 09
Ninth Discourse from the series of 10 discourses - Tao The Golden Gate Vol 1 by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
The Venerable Master said:
When man attains the power to transcend that which changes, abiding in purity and stillness, heaven and earth are united in him.
The soul of man loves purity, but his mind is often rebellious. The mind of man love stillness, but his desires draw him into activity. When a man is constantly able to govern his desires, his mind becomes spontaneously still. When the mind is unclouded, the soul is seen to be pure. Then, with certainty the six desires will cease to be begotten and the three poisons will be eliminated and dissolved.
The reason men do not possess the ability to achieve this is because their minds are not clear and their desires are unrestrained.
He who has the power to transcend his desires, looking within and contemplating mind, realizes that in his mind, mind is not; looking without and contemplating form, he realizes that in form, form is not; looking at things still more remote and contemplating matter, he realizes that in matter, matter is not.
Tao believes in spontaneity – not in cultivating virtues, not in creating a character, not even in conscience, but only in consciousness. Character, discipline, conscience are all ego efforts and ego is against Tao.
Tao is a state of let-go: to be in tune with existence with such totality that there is no separation at all. You are not even the part, you are the whole. You are not the wave but the ocean itself. Hence there is no question of doing. Tao means being.
All other so-called religions insist on doing. They believe in commandments: “Do this, don’t do that.” They have many shoulds and should nots. The Buddhist scriptures have thirty-three thousand rules for a monk. Even to remember them is impossible. People forget even what the Ten Commandments are – how can they remember thirty-three thousand rules? Their whole life will be wasted only in remembering them. When are they going to cultivate these rules? It will take millions of lives.
Maybe because of this, the idea of many, many lives became so significant in the East because time is needed to cultivate so many rules. One life is not enough – even a thousand lives will not be enough – you need millions of lives to cultivate all this. In fact, the whole approach helps you to go on postponing. Tomorrow becomes bigger and bigger, almost infinite and today is so small that you can deceive yourself, you can say to yourself, “Let me remain whatsoever I am today. Tomorrow I will change. And today, anyway, is so small, nothing much is possible. I will start tomorrow.” Of course tomorrow never comes. It is there only in the imagination.
Tao believes in this moment; Tao has no idea of future. If you can live this moment in purity, in silence, in spontaneity, then your life is transformed. Not that you transform it: Tao transforms it, the whole transforms it. You simply allow the river to take you to the ocean. You need not push the river.
But when such great truths are put into language, difficulties arise because our language is made by us. It is not made by people like Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Ko Hsuan, it is made by the mediocre people that the world is full of. Obviously, language is their invention and it carries their meanings, their attitudes toward life. So whatsoever you say is going to be somewhere inadequate – not only inadequate but deep down wrong also.
This has to be remembered and even more so about these sutras because these sutras were written originally in Chinese. Chinese is a language totally different from any other language, it is the most difficult language in the world for the simple reason that it has no alphabet, it is a pictorial language.
Pictorial languages are the most ancient languages. They must have come from the very dawn of human consciousness because when man is a child he thinks in pictures, he cannot think in words, so his language is pictorial. That’s why in children’s books there are so many colored pictures; the text is not much but pictures are many. The child is not interested in the text, he is interested in the pictures.
Looking at the picture of a mango, a very juicy colorful mango, he may become interested to know what it is called, how it is written and he may read the text – just a few words about the mango. Slowly, slowly the mango disappears, giving place to language. In the university books, pictures disappear completely. The more scholarly a book is, the less is the possibility of pictures; all is language. In your sleep you still dream not in a linguistic way but in a pictorial way because in your sleep you become a child again.
Chinese is a dream language. And we know the difficulty with dreams – you have dreamed something, but in the morning you cannot figure out what it means. You will need an expert to interpret it and even experts don’t agree. The Freudian will say one thing, the Jungian will say something else, the Adlerian may say just the opposite. And now there are many more new trends, new schools of psychoanalysis and they all have their interpretations. And whomsoever you are reading will look valid, reasonable because they can all provide great rationalizations. The dream is yours, but you don’t know what it means because a dream can mean many things. A dream is multidimensional.
And that’s the difficulty with the Chinese language: it is a dream language, a pictorial language – each picture can mean many things. Hence there are translations of Chinese scriptures, many translations, and no two translations ever agree because a picture can be interpreted in as many ways as there are people to interpret it. The Chinese language is only symbolic; it indicates. It is very poetic, it is not like arithmetic.
If you remember this, only then will you not fall into the trap in which almost all the scholars have fallen.
These sutras were not written in an alphabetical language so whatsoever is being said in these sutras is an interpretation. And I myself don’t agree in many places. If I were to translate it, it would be a totally different translation. I will tell you where I differ and why:
The Venerable Master said:
When man attains the power to transcend that which changes, abiding in purity and stillness, heaven and earth are united in him.
The first thing that’s absolutely wrong is the idea of attainment. Tao does not believe that you have to attain anything or that you can attain anything. You are already that which you can be: nothing more can be attained. The very idea of attainment, of achievement is alien to the Taoist approach. There is nothing to attain, nothing to achieve. The idea of attainment and achievement is rooted in our egos. The ego is always ambitious; it can’t be otherwise. Either it has to attain worldly things or it has to attain otherworldly powers, siddhis, but something has to be attained. The ego lives by attaining.
And Tao says the ego has to be dissolved, you cannot be allowed to be ambitious – to be ambitious is to go against Tao. Tao teaches non-ambitiousness. You have just to be yourself as you are. You are already perfect; you have never left your perfection for a single moment. You are already in Tao. It is just that you have started dreaming that you have lost it, that you have gone far away.
It is just like as in your sleep: you remain in your room, in your bed, but you can dream of faraway places. You can visit the moon and Mars, you can go to the stars, but in the morning you will find you have not left your bed, not even for a single moment.
When one becomes conscious, one becomes aware of the whole ridiculousness of all the achievements and failures. It is the idea of achievement that brings in its wake failure and frustration. If you succeed it brings ego. Ego is misery because the more ego you have, the more you think that you are separate from the whole – that you have become somebody special, unique, superior, higher, holier, that you don’t belong to the ordinary world, that you are a saint, a mahatma. If you fail, then there is frustration. That brings pain, that brings anguish. Whatsoever happens, success or failure, you will suffer. Ego brings suffering; whether it succeeds or fails makes no difference. Hence the idea of attainment is totally wrong. This is the Taoist approach – remember it.
The translator says: When man attains the power… Again the word power is not right because Tao does not believe in power. It believes, really, in utter powerlessness because when you are powerful you are fighting against the whole. Adolf Hitler is powerful, Alexander the Great is powerful, Ivan the Terrible is powerful; Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, these are powerful people, but they are fighting against nature, spontaneity.
Jesus is not powerful, Jesus is utterly powerless. When Jesus was crucified his disciples were waiting: “Now is the time he will show his power.” The enemies were waiting, the friends were waiting for the same thing: “Now he is going to show his miraculous power, now he will prove that he is the only begotten son of God.” He didn’t prove anything, he simply died. He died like any mortal – he died like the two thieves who were crucified with him. He was just in the middle; on either side of him there was a thief. The enemies were frustrated, the friends were frustrated even more. What happened? Where had his power gone? And he was always talking about being the son of God… But to be the son of God simply means to be utterly powerless.
How we go on misunderstanding people like Jesus, Lao Tzu, Ko Hsuan! Our misunderstanding is almost infinite. Jesus surrendered to God. Yes, for a moment he himself had become aware of all the expectations. Almost one hundred thousand people had gathered to see and friends were very few. He must have seen the expectation in people’s eyes – they were expecting miracles. Great things were going to happen, something that only happens once in thousands of years. For a moment he may have been impressed, hypnotized by so much attention, by so much expectation. The whole atmosphere must have been charged with only one desire: to see his power.
And he asked God, “Have you forsaken me?” But then immediately he understood – he was a man of intelligence, tremendous intelligence. Immediately he understood that whatsoever he has said is wrong. How can God forsake him? The very idea that God can forsake him is negative, is ugly. It is not trust.
If God shows miracles, then it is very easy to trust. If he is proving your power then it is very easy to trust; anybody will be able to trust. No intelligence is needed to trust, no special understanding is needed to trust. Any fool would have trusted.
But nothing was happening and the last moment had arrived. Jesus immediately understood the point – this is the time to understand. He surrendered. He said, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” Don’t listen to me, simply go on doing whatsoever you want to do. Who am I to suggest? I am no more, I am in your hands.
This was real powerlessness. This is Tao. Ko Hsuan would have understood it; the Jews could not understand it. And the whole gathering was of Jews, friends or enemies. They had always believed in achievement, in power, in ambition – all their prophets had been doing miracles. If they were angry with Jesus, the reason was that he was not proving the point; he was not proving himself to be really a prophet – the ancient prophets had done so many miracles.
And my feeling is that he never did any miracles. If he had done any miracles, all the Jews would have converted. They would not have crucified him. It is enough proof that he never did any miracles. And all the miracles that are propounded by the Christians are invented. These Christians are also of the same mind, the same desire, the same ambition: “How can our Lord be without miracles? If ordinary prophets were doing so many things, how can our Lord be without miracles?” So they have invented even better miracles, greater miracles than those of all the prophets.
But my feeling is that Jesus was a man of Tao. He was really a man who can be called religious.
I have heard a beautiful story. It is not recorded anywhere. It must have gone from one master to another, just by word of mouth:
Moses, Abraham, Ezekiel, three ancient prophets, were sitting under a tree in heaven talking about great things, talking about the Old Testament. Then suddenly Abraham said, “We know everything about the Old Testament. Had Jesus been here he would have told us something about the New Testament.”
Moses laughed and he called a boy who was sitting just by the side of the tree and said, “Jesus, please go and bring three cups of coffee for us.”
Abraham was shocked. This is Jesus? And Jesus went to bring three cups of coffee for the old prophets.
But I love this story. Only Jesus can do that – so utterly powerless. His powerlessness is his miracle: he has annihilated himself totally. They were not even aware of his presence, that he is sitting by the side of the tree. He didn’t say a single word like: “I am Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God. And what are you saying? I should go and bring three cups of coffee for you? Go yourself! Is this the way to talk to the son of God?” But he simply went.
Only Jesus can do it, or Lao Tzu or Ko Hsuan or Bodhidharma or Basho. These are people who have dropped the whole power trip, the whole number.
Ko Hsuan cannot mean what the translation will create in your mind. It says: When man attains the power to transcend that which changes…
No. If I were to translate it… I don’t know Chinese at all, but who cares? I can still translate, not knowing a single word of Chinese because I know the spirit of Tao; that’s my experience. If I were to translate it, I would say: When man surrenders to the power of Tao, he transcends that which changes…
When man becomes utterly powerless as a separate entity, then he transcends that which changes. Then he abides in purity and stillness. Then the purity that comes to him is not something cultivated from the outside.
It is not something that you have to maintain continuously, that you have to be on guard otherwise you will lose it. Your saints are continuously on guard. They know perfectly well that if they are relaxed for even a single moment they will lose all their purity. They don’t abide in it. It is not natural to them, it is something artificial: arbitrary; they have imposed it on themselves.
You don’t need to breathe, you need not remember to breathe; otherwise you would have been dead long before now because any time you forget about breathing – a beautiful woman passes by and you forget about breathing and you are finished! There is the full point. Then you cannot breathe again. But breathing continues even while you are asleep – not only while you are deeply asleep, even if you are in a coma breathing continues; it does not depend on you.
Once I went to see a woman… Her husband loved me very much. He came crying and weeping and he said, “This was my wife’s last wish, that she wanted to see you. But for nine months she was in a coma and the doctors say there is no possibility that she will ever become conscious. But please come with me just to fulfill her last desire. That was her last desire before she became unconscious.”
So I went to see the woman. For nine months she had been in a coma, but she was breathing perfectly. To be in a coma means to be almost dead. And she died after three months; after remaining one year in a coma she died. But for one year she continued to breathe. Her breathing was perfect, there was no disturbance in it.
Tao takes care of your breathing; it is natural. Your blood circulates continuously, day in, day out, year in, year out. For centuries man used to think that there was no circulation of the blood in the body. Blood simply filled the body as water filled a pot. It is only three hundred years ago that it was discovered that blood does not just fill the body; it continuously circulates, it goes on circulating at a very great speed. That keeps your inner world alive, dynamic. Who is circulating your blood? – certainly not you, otherwise you will forget it. Who digests your food? – certainly not you. In fact, if you become very conscious of digestion you will disturb your stomach.
Try a simple experiment for twenty-four hours: when you are eating just become conscious that the food is going into the stomach and now you have to digest it. Troubles will start: you will feel heavy and you will not know what to do, how to digest it. Just remain conscious that the food is in the stomach and it has to be digested and then you will be almost incapable of doing anything. Do a few yoga exercises, stand on your head, jog, jump, and within twenty-four hours you will have a bad stomach. You will have disturbed the whole process. It does not need you at all. Once the food has gone below your throat you need not bother about it. Tao takes care of it.
All that is essential is natural, and to live your whole life in a natural way is the only teaching of Tao. It teaches you powerlessness, but there is great power in powerlessness – the power of existence, the power of the whole, not your power, not my power, not anybody’s power.
Then there arises a purity in you. You are not the author of it, you are not the architect of it; you are simply a witness, a watcher. And there arises a tremendous stillness, not something forced from the outside. That’s what your so-called religious people are doing all over the world: they are forcing purity. And whenever you force purity on yourself, whenever it becomes a cultivated phenomenon, it is repression and nothing else. And repression only creates ugliness; it creates a split in you, it makes you schizophrenic.
A priest invites another priest to lunch at his house. At the end of the meal, the guest, who is slightly drunk, notices how pretty the maid is.
He turns to his colleague and says, “You are an old friend, you can tell me – do you sleep with the girl?”
The host is very angry. “How dare you speak like this in my house?” he cries. “Please leave immediately!”
After his friend has gone, the priest notices that a beautiful silver spoon has disappeared, so the following morning he sends his friend a note saying, “My dear holy friend, I am not saying that you are a thief, but if you find my silver spoon, please send it back!”
The answer comes quickly:
“My dear holy friend, I am not saying that you are a liar, but if you had slept in your own bed last night, you would have found your silver spoon!”
All cultivated purity creates hypocrisy, it creates a duality in you. It is bound to create it because you have not understood, you have simply denied something. It has not disappeared; it is there waiting to take revenge. And it will find its own way – it will come from the back door. If you don’t allow it to come from the front door it will come from the back door.
Tao does not believe in any cultivated character. It believes in a natural purity, in a natural stillness. You must have watched how if you try to become silent then each and every thing becomes a disturbance, a distraction.
Just a dog barking, who is not at all aware that you are trying to meditate, who has nothing against meditation, who is not an old enemy, who is not taking any revenge on you for some past karma… He is enjoying his barking; that is his meditation. Maybe he is doing Dynamic Meditation! He seems to be more modern and up to date than you – you are doing Vipassana and he is doing Dynamic! But you will be disturbed. He is not disturbed by your Vipassana and you are disturbed by his Dynamic Meditation for the simple reason that you are forcing something; it is not natural. It is just a very thin layer of stillness that somehow you have painted upon yourself.
Deep down, a thousand and one dogs are barking and they immediately understand the dog barking and they start feeling a great urge to bark. The distraction comes from your inner dogs, it is not coming from the outer dog. The outer dog is not responsible at all. If your silence is natural, the dog’s barking will not be a distraction; it may even enhance your stillness, it may become a background to your stillness. That’s how it happens.
When in the night you see the stars, beautiful stars, have you ever thought what happens to these stars in the day? They don’t go away – where can they go? They are there, but because the background is no longer there, the darkness is no longer there, you cannot see them. In the night the darkness functions as a background: the darker the night, the more shining are the stars. They are not shining so much on a full-moon night, but when there is no moon at all the stars are really beautiful.
The same is true about a real silence: everything that ordinarily proves a distraction becomes a background. The dog barking, the traffic noise, somebody shouting, children crying, running, the wife cooking food in the kitchen – everything becomes a background and everything deepens your silence because you are not concentrating, you are not forcing anything. You are simply relaxed. Things go on happening, you remain untouched; you remain absolutely centered and effortlessly centered.
This thing has to be remembered: Tao teaches you effortless naturalness. It does not believe in effort as Yoga does. Yoga and Tao are totally opposite to each other. That’s why Yoga could not penetrate China. Buddha impressed China for the simple reason that he also says that you should be natural, that your meditation should be effortless, that it should not be imposed from the outside, that it should arise from your innermost core. It should not be a plastic flower, it should be a real rose: When man attains the power to transcend that which changes, abiding, in purity and stillness, heaven and earth are united in him.
That’s what I call the meeting of the East and the West, the meeting of materialism and spiritualism. That’s my idea of Zorba the Buddha: …heaven and earth are united in him.
Tao is not otherworldly like Jainism; it is not this-worldly either like Charvakas. It believes in the unity of existence. It does not divide existence in any way. Its whole vision is that of total unity, organic unity.
Heaven and earth are one; in you they are already meeting. Your body is part of the earth, your soul is part of heaven. The meeting is already happening – you are not aware of it. If you relax you will become aware of it and the meeting is tremendously beautiful. Earth alone is dead. That’s why a materialist philosophy of life sooner or later comes to realize that life is meaningless.
That’s what has happened in the West. All great thinkers of this century in the West are obsessed only with one problem: the meaning of life. And they all agree on one point at least: that life is meaningless.
Dostoyevsky’s famous novel The Brothers Karamazov is one of the most important novels ever written. If I am asked to name the ten best novels in the world, then this will be one of those ten – not only one of them, but the first of those ten. It is one of the greatest creations.
In The Brothers Karamazov one of the characters says to God, “Where are you? I want to meet you – not that I am interested in seeing you, not that I want to know about you; I simply want to give you back the ticket that you gave me to enter this world. Please take it back! This whole world is absolutely meaningless.”
Marcel says in one of his writings that suicide seems to be the most important metaphysical problem. If life is meaningless then of course suicide seems to be the most important metaphysical problem. Why go on living? In the past people used to think that it is only cowards who commit suicide; now the pendulum seems to have moved to the other extreme. The materialists are feeling so meaningless that the idea is arising slowly and gathering force that it is only cowards who go on living. It is the brave people who try to commit suicide. Why go on living if there is no meaning?
But this has happened because only earth was accepted, not the sky, not heaven. Earth is meaningless, barren; without the sky there is no soul – you are just a body, a corpse. And what meaning can a corpse have? When the soul leaves the body, meaning has left the body. And if you don’t believe in the soul then you are bound to feel sooner or later that life has no meaning.
The West is feeling this great meaninglessness and the East believed only in heaven, only in the soul, but that is an abstraction. The body is concrete, the soul is only an abstraction; it is intangible. And when you start running after intangibles, after invisibles, you lose track of all that is concrete. That’s why the East is poor, starving, ill, burdened with thousands of problems – and seems to have no way of solving them for the simple reason that for centuries we have never bothered about the earth. Our eyes were fixed on the sky.
An ancient Greek parable says:
A very famous astrologer was looking at the sky in the night, watching the stars, studying the stars. He lost his way, naturally because he was not looking at the earth where he was walking and he fell into a well. Then he became aware, but then it was too late. He started shouting, “Save me!”
He was outside the village, but an old woman who lived nearby somehow managed to save him. When he got out of the well he told the woman, “You may not know me, you may not recognize me in this dark night, but I will tell you who I am: I am the king’s special astrologer! It is very difficult for people even to approach me, but you can come to me. I will tell you about your future.”
The old woman laughed. She said, “You fool! You don’t know even where the well is and where the road is, and you will tell me about my future!”
That’s what has happened in the East: the East has fallen into the well, lost track of the concrete, become too metaphysical.
Tao seems to be the only life vision which is total. It does not deny the earth, it does not deny the sky. It accepts both, it accepts the unity of both. It says that the man who has come to know spontaneous purity and stillness, who has become relaxed with the whole, with the law of the ultimate – in him heaven and earth are united.
That’s my concept of a sannyasin too – in you I would like this meeting to happen. You will be misunderstood all over the world: in the East people will think you are materialist, in the West people will think you have become metaphysical. That means you have gone crazy, berserk, that you are talking mumbo-jumbo. They will say, “Stop all this nonsense! Be realistic, be pragmatic.” You will be misunderstood everywhere because the East has believed only in half and the West has believed in half.
I believe in the whole. To me, to trust the whole is the only way to be holy and to trust the whole is the only way to be whole. And when you are whole, life is bliss, life is benediction, life is a celebration.
The soul of man loves purity…but his desires draw him into activity.
Man has three layers and those three layers have to be understood. The first, the deepest core, is the soul; the soul means your center of being. And the outermost circumference consists of desires. And between the two is another concentric circle, half way from both, from the outer and from the inner. It is neither outer nor inner – that is your mind.
The soul of man loves purity… By “purity” Ko Hsuan always means innocence. So don’t misunderstand it with any moralistic meaning of purity because Tao does not believe in any morality or any immorality: only innocence.
That’s why the child is innocent because when he is born he is just the intrinsic center; the two circles have not yet gathered around the center. That’s why every child looks so beautiful. Have you ever come across an ugly child? It is impossible. And what happens to all the beautiful children? – because if all children are beautiful, all people should be beautiful because these same children become grown-up people. But somewhere on the way they all disappear and something ugly sets in. We give them wrong circumferences; we give them wrong minds, wrong desires. We create such a dichotomy in their being that they become a crowd, not a unity. They are no longer integrated beings. They become fragments. And to be fragmentary is to be ugly because you lose all harmony and without harmony there is no beauty, no grace.
The soul of man loves purity… If you reach your innermost core you will suddenly find innocence arising in you, roses of innocence flowering.
…but his mind is often rebellious.
But the mind is not willing just to be innocent. Innocence says yes, it is trust. The mind says no, it is doubt. The mind always lives through the no, it is negative; the soul is always positive. The soul has no idea of saying no, it knows nothing about the no. And the mind knows nothing about the yes. If the mind sometimes has to say yes, it only says it unwillingly. You can watch it in yourself: whenever your mind says yes it says it unwillingly because it cannot find any way of saying no, that’s why it says yes. Yes is not spontaneous for the mind, no is spontaneous.
Watch the truth of this statement. These are not theories, hypotheses, these are simple facts. You can just watch it in yourself. The first thing that happens to your mind is no. It immediately says no – even if there is no reason to say no.
Just the other day I received a letter from a sannyasin: “Osho, when you talked about Prem Chinmaya’s coming back, his dying from the sixth center and that he will have to live only one more life, I cannot believe you or trust you.”
You may not know anything about reincarnation; you can simply say, “I don’t know about it, so how can I believe or disbelieve?” You can remain open.
But you will not miss any opportunity of saying no. Now this sannyasin must be waiting for something to say no to. Do you know what it means to die from the sixth center? Have you any idea of the inner physiology of man?
Ask Puja and Sheela what happened when Chinmaya died. They were surprised – they could not believe what was happening: his whole body became cool, his head became very hot. He complained also that “Something strange is happening, as if my whole energy has come into the head. My body is cool and calm, but my head is feeling almost as if it is on fire.”
Whenever the soul leaves the body, the center that becomes its leaving center becomes hot – naturally because the whole energy concentrates there. The energy that is spread all over the body gathers together at one point and that point certainly becomes absolute fire.
You don’t know anything about the inner physiology. If you don’t know, I am not telling you to believe in it – I am the last person to tell you to believe in anything – but there is no need to say no either. You can simply remain open, you can say, “I will see what happens when I die.”
And then he says, “I don’t believe you, I don’t trust you. Does it matter?” To me it does not matter, not at all because I don’t depend on your belief, but it matters immensely for you. I am not saying force yourself to say yes to me because a forced yes will be only a disguised no. I am simply saying be here and be open. There is no need to say yes or no, you can simply say, “I don’t know.” Function out of a state of not-knowing so that you remain available to experiment, to experience. If you say no you have become closed and you can say yes only when you have experienced.
So I am not asking you to believe in it, but I will certainly request you not to disbelieve. There is no need for belief and no need for disbelief. But this sannyasin’s mind must have been waiting for some opportunity.
It is very rare here because I don’t talk about things which you will find difficult to believe – I rarely talk about things which are beyond you. I leave them; I prepare you so that you can experience them one day. But once in a while something happens. For example, Prem Chinmaya’s death was such an occasion that I had to say something about death, something about which center he died from. I had to say this, that he will be back here soon. And these things are not beyond your comprehension if you are going deep into meditation, but if you are not going into deep meditation they are beyond comprehension.
The mind wants to say no and if you listen to the mind you stop listening to the master. If you want to listen to the master, first you have to be open so that one day yes can surface in you spontaneously. It matters much as far as you are concerned.
Being here and saying no in some way simply means you will be physically here and spiritually absent. It will be a sheer waste of your time. Then there is no need to be here.
The whole effort of this buddhafield, the whole purpose of it, is to help you to go beyond mind, to go beyond no.
Ko Hsuan’s sutra says:
The soul of man loves purity, but his mind is often rebellious. The mind of man loves stillness, but his desires draw him into activity.
The soul loves purity, innocence; that’s its natural joy. The mind is not interested in purity, in innocence because innocence needs yes as a foundation and the mind lives through no. But because the mind continuously says no it has to suffer much turmoil, hence there is a great need in the mind to be still, to be silent, to be calm and quiet: The mind loves stillness…
But then there is another outer circle in your being – the circle of desires which don’t even allow you silence. They drag you into activity. The mind drags you into no’s, into negativity; that disturbs your purity. Yes is your innocence, no means you have lost your innocence. Then there are desires which don’t leave you at the mind, they want some activity; just no won’t do. They drag you into a thousand and one activities – the Chinese expression is into “ten thousand things.” They keep you constantly occupied – money, power, prestige; they go on goading you, “Do this. Achieve this. Without achieving this you are not a real man. Prove that you are powerful, prove that you are great, prove that you are special.” And to prove it you have to move almost into a state of insanity. That’s what politics is.
Politics is the other pole, exactly the opposite pole to religion. Religion takes you to the essence of your being and politics takes you to the accidents of your desires. The desires keep you so occupied with the mundane, with the futile, that you start forgetting everything that is intrinsic, that is really valuable. Running after money, you forget all about the inner treasure. Running after power, you forget all about the power of Tao, which is the supreme power. Running after name and fame, you forget completely that name and fame are just momentary. But they go on goading you; they won’t leave you for a single moment. In the night you will dream about desires, in the day you will run after desires. And all desires are mirages, like the horizon that looks so close that you will be able to reach it within an hour. But you never reach it because it does not really exist.
But you go on forgetting everything: you forget the soul, heaven; you even forget the body, the earth. You become almost mad. All your politicians are mad. All your people who are running after money are mad, who are running after fame are mad. But because they are in the majority, they appear to be absolutely right. In fact, the person who is not interested in name and fame, power and prestige, seems to be a little out of his senses. What has happened to this man?
You will be asked again and again, “What has happened to you? Why are you not interested in accumulating more money? What do you do just by sitting silently looking inward?” You will be condemned by the world because the world consists of extroverts. They will call you introverts, they will tell you that introversion is a kind of perversion, they will tell you that you are selfish, that you are narcissistic, that you are only interested in your own joy, that you should be concerned with others, that you should live like everybody else, that you should be part of the crowd. Of course, they are many and you will be very alone.
Jesus has said to his disciples, “I am sending you amongst wolves.” And I know what he means. When I send you into the world I also know I am sending you amongst wolves. You are trying to be silent, innocent, childlike, and the world is trying to achieve just the opposite ends.
When a man is constantly able to govern his desires, his mind becomes spontaneously still.
Again wrong words have been used: When a man is constantly able to govern his desires…
No, Ko Hsuan cannot say …to govern his desires… because that means repression, that means control. He can only say: When a man is able to understand his desires, his mind becomes spontaneously still.
Only understanding is needed; nothing else ever helps. If you understand a desire it disappears. Desires are like darkness: you bring light and darkness disappears. You need not throw it out, you need not repress it, you need not close doors to keep it out – you cannot do anything directly with darkness, you just have to bring light in. A small candle will do and all darkness disappears. Just a little light of understanding and desires start disappearing. Then arises spontaneous stillness.
Remember this word spontaneous. That is the key word as far as Tao is concerned.
When the mind is unclouded, the soul is seen to be pure.
And when there are no desires, thoughts automatically disappear because thoughts are servants of desires. When there are desires, your mind is full of thoughts, full of plans – what to do, how to do, how to fulfill these desires. When desires disappear you have cut the tree from the very root. Then leaves start disappearing, branches disappear, the tree itself disappears of its own accord and the mind is unclouded. In that unclouded state of mind, in that thoughtless state of mind you will be able to see the purity of your inner being.
Then, with certainty the six desires will cease to be begotten and the three poisons will be eliminated and dissolved.
This is something very significant to remember.
All the religions have talked only about five senses. It is only Tao that talks about six senses. All the religions have talked about five desires because man consists of five senses; Tao talks about six desires. The insight is tremendous because just recently, just in this century, science has discovered the sixth sense – otherwise the sixth sense was not known. Your ear has two senses. Your ear is not a single sense – hidden inside it is another sense: the sense that keeps your body balanced.
That’s why when you see a drunkard walking you can see that he cannot walk straight; zigzag he goes. His steps are not in harmony for the simple reason that alcohol affects the sixth sense, that which keeps your body balanced. It is a Taoist insight for the last five thousand years that there are six senses. Through the eye the desire for beauty arises, through the ear the desire for music arises, from the nose the desire for nice smells arises, from the tongue the desire for taste and from the whole skin the desire to touch – these are the five traditional senses – and from the sixth sense the desire to remain in control, balanced. If somebody hits your ear hard you will lose balance; you will see stars in the day.
For a buddha, these six desires no longer arise. Not that the eyes go blind. In fact, now they can see beauty more truly, but there is no desire to possess beauty. Not that you become deaf to music, but now there is no desire to possess anything. You enjoy more because your energy is free and your senses are more clear, more transparent.
Nobody can see beauty more clearly than a Buddha, nobody can hear music more deeply than a Lao Tzu, nobody can taste better than Jesus. All their senses become truly sensitive, they are then really senses. Your senses are dull. Your society helps you to keep them dull because the society is afraid. If your senses are really very keen and very sensitive then you can be a dangerous person because of your desire to possess. You see a beautiful woman: she is somebody else’s wife and if your eyes are really able to see the beauty and you have the desire to possess also, you will grab the woman, you will escape with the woman, you will rape the woman. Something criminal is bound to happen.
Nature allows you total sensitivity only when you become capable of dropping all possessiveness, all ideas to possess. Then you can touch and then even rocks feel velvety. Then everything starts having a divine quality, everything is transformed.
…and the three poisons will be eliminated and dissolved. What are the three poisons? The first is sexuality – not sex, remember, but sexuality. Sex is natural. Tao is not against sex, it is the only religious approach which is in total agreement with sex. Tao has its own science of sex, it has its own Tantra, which really goes far deeper than Indian Tantra. But sexuality is a totally different phenomenon; sexuality means a perverted state of sex energy. Then it becomes poisonous.
The second poison is anger and the third poison is greed. Sexuality, anger, greed: these three poisons combined together, this unholy trinity, creates your ego. And all these three can be dissolved, eliminated. If sexuality disappears you will be surprised that anger disappears – without any effort on your part. Anger simply means that your sexuality is hindered. Anybody who hinders your sexuality creates anger in you; he is your enemy. And sexuality creates greed – greed is a form of sexuality, it is a perverted form. Money becomes your object of love because the society does not allow any other kind of love. It allows money, power. They can become your objects of love. It helps to change your object of love. First it changes your sex into sexuality…
See the difference. Sex is a natural phenomenon; it is your capacity to reproduce. Sexuality means your mind is continuously occupied by sex. It is no longer a natural phenomenon, it has become cerebral. It is no longer confined to the sex center, it has gone to the head. Now you are constantly thinking of sex.
Just watch for one hour how many times you think of sex – you will be surprised. Psychologists say that you are in for a great surprise if you watch your mind to see how many times in an hour you think about sex. Men think about it twice as much as women do; that may be one of the causes of conflict between them. They have a different kind of sexuality. Man’s sexuality is more repressed than woman’s for the simple reason that man has to earn money, has to become famous, has to be a prime minister or a politician. Naturally, from where is he going to get all this energy to be the president? There is only one energy; you don’t have many energies in you, mind you, you have only one kind of energy. Whatsoever name you want to give to it you can give, XYZ, but you have only one kind of energy. Sigmund Freud has called it libido, but it simply means sex – that is your only energy. Now if you want to have more money or more power, you want to be the president or the prime minister of the country, then you have to take your sexuality and channel it.
I have heard…
One day Carter and Brezhnev met for a long meeting. The two wives waited outside the meeting room for so many hours, they eventually struck up a conversation. Soon they were finding they liked each other and were sharing intimacies.
Rosalyn Carter confessed, “You won’t believe this, my dear Brezhnova, but Jimmy just isn’t the same man that I married. For such a long time now he hasn’t even looked at me. He comes home so tired he immediately goes to bed and falls asleep.”
“With me it is the same,” said Brezhnova. “I just don’t know what to do.”
“The other night,” explained Rosalyn Carter, “I finally decided to tempt Jimmy. I put on my transparent black negligee and some expensive perfume, turned down the lights, put some sexy French music on the stereo and piled pillows on the bed. And then I waited for him in the bedroom.”
“He came into the bedroom already talking about all the problems in the Middle East, the dollar going down, etcetera, etcetera and I threw him down on the pile of pillows, took off his shirt, opened up my negligee to show him my bare breasts and asked him, ‘Jimmy, does this remind you of anything?’”
“He looked at my tits, put his hand to his forehead and said, ‘Of course. I must call Moshe Dayan!’”
“That’s nothing,” said Brezhnova. “With me it was worse. I did everything you did, except I didn’t bother with the negligee. As soon as he lay down on the bed I jumped on him and put my cunt right in front of his face and said, ‘Look at this, Brezy. Does it remind you of something?’ And he replied, ‘Oh yes! I forgot to call Fidel Castro!’”
It is bound to happen. You have to divert your sexual energy; then money, power, prestige, they become your sexual objects. And these people can talk about morality and discipline easily. They can teach others how to control their sexuality very easily, but in fact what they are doing is nothing but sex perversion. And these people become very violent. They are violent – they keep the whole world always on the brink of war.
When sex becomes perverted, love becomes hatred. Nothing is wrong with sex, but everything is wrong with sexuality. Sex should be allowed a natural flow. Yes, one day, if you live it naturally, transcendence happens. But it is spontaneous, it is not celibacy. It comes through celebration.
Just as at the age of fourteen you become mature sexually, at the age of forty-two, if you have lived your sex naturally, you will go beyond it. But it is a strange world. Children become sexual, children who are not sexually mature because the whole atmosphere is poisoned. Small children start thinking of sex. Seeing films, reading novels, looking at obscene magazines, they start thinking about sex.
Italian Piero comes to a village. He asks a farmer, “Do ya know where little children come-a from?”
“They grow out of cabbages!” the farmer answers.
Piero walks a little further and meets the milkman. “Hey!” says Piero. “Do ya know where little children come-a from!”
“Sure,” answers the milkman, “the stork brings them.”
Piero continues on his way a little despondent, then… “Ah!” he thinks, “here comes-a the right-a man to ask-a! Vicar! Do ya know where little children come-a from?”
“Yes, my son,” responds the Vicar. “God sends them from heaven.”
“Shit-a!” exclaims Piero. “Isn’t there anyone in this-a village who fucks-a?”
Children become sexual before the normal age and you can also find eighty year-old men running after women. Both are ugly and in an unnatural state.
Tao believes in total naturalness. It is not against sex, it is against sexuality because it knows that if sexuality does not enter your life – that means if perversion does not enter your life – if nobody teaches you to be against sex there will be no perversion. It is because of your saints and moralists and puritans that you all have become perverted – children and old men, all. If sex is left alone without interference from any moral teaching, then one day the child will become sexually mature nearabout fourteen and one day nearabout forty-two he will transcend it. He will have seen by that time that it is child’s play and enough is enough. And that transcendence is beautiful. Anything that happens on its own is beautiful because it comes through Tao. And then anger will not be there in your life, neither will greed.
The reason men do not possess the ability to achieve this is because their minds are not clear and their desires are unrestrained.
Meditation brings both clarity and a certain inner discipline. And by “meditation” Tao simply means watching your mind and its functions.
He who has the power to transcend his desires, looking within and contemplating mind…
That is the definition of meditation according to Ko Hsuan: …looking within and contemplating mind… Just silently watching all the processes of the mind – thoughts, memories, imagination, dreams, desires – then a realization happens, a realization that:
…in his mind, mind is not…
This sutra is immensely significant. When you watch the mind clearly, silently, the mind starts disappearing. More watchfulness, less mind. One percent watchfulness, ninety-nine percent mind. Ninety-nine percent watchfulness, one percent mind. One hundred percent watchfulness and there is no mind in the mind. All thoughts have gone, the mind is absolutely empty. And in that emptiness Tao comes in, rushes in. You have created the right space for it.
…looking without and contemplating form…
Then you are capable of looking without. First look within, let the mind disappear, attain clarity, then look without: …looking without and contemplating form… Then meditate on the forms outside: the trees, the clouds, the stars, the moon…
…he realizes that in form, form is not…
Then you will be surprised to see that the waves are not there, only the ocean. In the form there is no form. The trees are not there but only life expressing itself in millions of forms – but not confined to any form; it is formless.
…looking at things still more remote and contemplating matter, he realizes that in matter, matter is not.
That too is of great significance. It is only now that modern physicists have said that matter does not exist, but Tao was saying for five thousand years that: …in matter, matter is not.
If you can meditate, start from within, then look around, and then look into things at their deepest core. First the mind disappears, then form disappears, then matter disappears. Then what is left? That which is left is Tao, is nature. And to live in that nature is to live in freedom, is to live in eternal bliss.
Tao is the word of Ko Hsuan for God. Dhamma is the word of Buddha for Tao. Buddha says, “Aes dhammo sanantano – this is the eternal law.” Once you have seen the eternal law you become part of eternity. Time is transcended, space is transcended. You are no more and for the first time you are. You are no more as a separate entity, but for the first time you are the whole.
This is my vision too. My agreement with Tao is absolute. I cannot say that about other religions; with Tao I can say it without any hesitation. Tao is the most profound insight that has ever been achieved on the earth.
Enough for today.
When man attains the power to transcend that which changes, abiding in purity and stillness, heaven and earth are united in him.
The soul of man loves purity, but his mind is often rebellious. The mind of man love stillness, but his desires draw him into activity. When a man is constantly able to govern his desires, his mind becomes spontaneously still. When the mind is unclouded, the soul is seen to be pure. Then, with certainty the six desires will cease to be begotten and the three poisons will be eliminated and dissolved.
The reason men do not possess the ability to achieve this is because their minds are not clear and their desires are unrestrained.
He who has the power to transcend his desires, looking within and contemplating mind, realizes that in his mind, mind is not; looking without and contemplating form, he realizes that in form, form is not; looking at things still more remote and contemplating matter, he realizes that in matter, matter is not.
Tao believes in spontaneity – not in cultivating virtues, not in creating a character, not even in conscience, but only in consciousness. Character, discipline, conscience are all ego efforts and ego is against Tao.
Tao is a state of let-go: to be in tune with existence with such totality that there is no separation at all. You are not even the part, you are the whole. You are not the wave but the ocean itself. Hence there is no question of doing. Tao means being.
All other so-called religions insist on doing. They believe in commandments: “Do this, don’t do that.” They have many shoulds and should nots. The Buddhist scriptures have thirty-three thousand rules for a monk. Even to remember them is impossible. People forget even what the Ten Commandments are – how can they remember thirty-three thousand rules? Their whole life will be wasted only in remembering them. When are they going to cultivate these rules? It will take millions of lives.
Maybe because of this, the idea of many, many lives became so significant in the East because time is needed to cultivate so many rules. One life is not enough – even a thousand lives will not be enough – you need millions of lives to cultivate all this. In fact, the whole approach helps you to go on postponing. Tomorrow becomes bigger and bigger, almost infinite and today is so small that you can deceive yourself, you can say to yourself, “Let me remain whatsoever I am today. Tomorrow I will change. And today, anyway, is so small, nothing much is possible. I will start tomorrow.” Of course tomorrow never comes. It is there only in the imagination.
Tao believes in this moment; Tao has no idea of future. If you can live this moment in purity, in silence, in spontaneity, then your life is transformed. Not that you transform it: Tao transforms it, the whole transforms it. You simply allow the river to take you to the ocean. You need not push the river.
But when such great truths are put into language, difficulties arise because our language is made by us. It is not made by people like Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Ko Hsuan, it is made by the mediocre people that the world is full of. Obviously, language is their invention and it carries their meanings, their attitudes toward life. So whatsoever you say is going to be somewhere inadequate – not only inadequate but deep down wrong also.
This has to be remembered and even more so about these sutras because these sutras were written originally in Chinese. Chinese is a language totally different from any other language, it is the most difficult language in the world for the simple reason that it has no alphabet, it is a pictorial language.
Pictorial languages are the most ancient languages. They must have come from the very dawn of human consciousness because when man is a child he thinks in pictures, he cannot think in words, so his language is pictorial. That’s why in children’s books there are so many colored pictures; the text is not much but pictures are many. The child is not interested in the text, he is interested in the pictures.
Looking at the picture of a mango, a very juicy colorful mango, he may become interested to know what it is called, how it is written and he may read the text – just a few words about the mango. Slowly, slowly the mango disappears, giving place to language. In the university books, pictures disappear completely. The more scholarly a book is, the less is the possibility of pictures; all is language. In your sleep you still dream not in a linguistic way but in a pictorial way because in your sleep you become a child again.
Chinese is a dream language. And we know the difficulty with dreams – you have dreamed something, but in the morning you cannot figure out what it means. You will need an expert to interpret it and even experts don’t agree. The Freudian will say one thing, the Jungian will say something else, the Adlerian may say just the opposite. And now there are many more new trends, new schools of psychoanalysis and they all have their interpretations. And whomsoever you are reading will look valid, reasonable because they can all provide great rationalizations. The dream is yours, but you don’t know what it means because a dream can mean many things. A dream is multidimensional.
And that’s the difficulty with the Chinese language: it is a dream language, a pictorial language – each picture can mean many things. Hence there are translations of Chinese scriptures, many translations, and no two translations ever agree because a picture can be interpreted in as many ways as there are people to interpret it. The Chinese language is only symbolic; it indicates. It is very poetic, it is not like arithmetic.
If you remember this, only then will you not fall into the trap in which almost all the scholars have fallen.
These sutras were not written in an alphabetical language so whatsoever is being said in these sutras is an interpretation. And I myself don’t agree in many places. If I were to translate it, it would be a totally different translation. I will tell you where I differ and why:
The Venerable Master said:
When man attains the power to transcend that which changes, abiding in purity and stillness, heaven and earth are united in him.
The first thing that’s absolutely wrong is the idea of attainment. Tao does not believe that you have to attain anything or that you can attain anything. You are already that which you can be: nothing more can be attained. The very idea of attainment, of achievement is alien to the Taoist approach. There is nothing to attain, nothing to achieve. The idea of attainment and achievement is rooted in our egos. The ego is always ambitious; it can’t be otherwise. Either it has to attain worldly things or it has to attain otherworldly powers, siddhis, but something has to be attained. The ego lives by attaining.
And Tao says the ego has to be dissolved, you cannot be allowed to be ambitious – to be ambitious is to go against Tao. Tao teaches non-ambitiousness. You have just to be yourself as you are. You are already perfect; you have never left your perfection for a single moment. You are already in Tao. It is just that you have started dreaming that you have lost it, that you have gone far away.
It is just like as in your sleep: you remain in your room, in your bed, but you can dream of faraway places. You can visit the moon and Mars, you can go to the stars, but in the morning you will find you have not left your bed, not even for a single moment.
When one becomes conscious, one becomes aware of the whole ridiculousness of all the achievements and failures. It is the idea of achievement that brings in its wake failure and frustration. If you succeed it brings ego. Ego is misery because the more ego you have, the more you think that you are separate from the whole – that you have become somebody special, unique, superior, higher, holier, that you don’t belong to the ordinary world, that you are a saint, a mahatma. If you fail, then there is frustration. That brings pain, that brings anguish. Whatsoever happens, success or failure, you will suffer. Ego brings suffering; whether it succeeds or fails makes no difference. Hence the idea of attainment is totally wrong. This is the Taoist approach – remember it.
The translator says: When man attains the power… Again the word power is not right because Tao does not believe in power. It believes, really, in utter powerlessness because when you are powerful you are fighting against the whole. Adolf Hitler is powerful, Alexander the Great is powerful, Ivan the Terrible is powerful; Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, these are powerful people, but they are fighting against nature, spontaneity.
Jesus is not powerful, Jesus is utterly powerless. When Jesus was crucified his disciples were waiting: “Now is the time he will show his power.” The enemies were waiting, the friends were waiting for the same thing: “Now he is going to show his miraculous power, now he will prove that he is the only begotten son of God.” He didn’t prove anything, he simply died. He died like any mortal – he died like the two thieves who were crucified with him. He was just in the middle; on either side of him there was a thief. The enemies were frustrated, the friends were frustrated even more. What happened? Where had his power gone? And he was always talking about being the son of God… But to be the son of God simply means to be utterly powerless.
How we go on misunderstanding people like Jesus, Lao Tzu, Ko Hsuan! Our misunderstanding is almost infinite. Jesus surrendered to God. Yes, for a moment he himself had become aware of all the expectations. Almost one hundred thousand people had gathered to see and friends were very few. He must have seen the expectation in people’s eyes – they were expecting miracles. Great things were going to happen, something that only happens once in thousands of years. For a moment he may have been impressed, hypnotized by so much attention, by so much expectation. The whole atmosphere must have been charged with only one desire: to see his power.
And he asked God, “Have you forsaken me?” But then immediately he understood – he was a man of intelligence, tremendous intelligence. Immediately he understood that whatsoever he has said is wrong. How can God forsake him? The very idea that God can forsake him is negative, is ugly. It is not trust.
If God shows miracles, then it is very easy to trust. If he is proving your power then it is very easy to trust; anybody will be able to trust. No intelligence is needed to trust, no special understanding is needed to trust. Any fool would have trusted.
But nothing was happening and the last moment had arrived. Jesus immediately understood the point – this is the time to understand. He surrendered. He said, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” Don’t listen to me, simply go on doing whatsoever you want to do. Who am I to suggest? I am no more, I am in your hands.
This was real powerlessness. This is Tao. Ko Hsuan would have understood it; the Jews could not understand it. And the whole gathering was of Jews, friends or enemies. They had always believed in achievement, in power, in ambition – all their prophets had been doing miracles. If they were angry with Jesus, the reason was that he was not proving the point; he was not proving himself to be really a prophet – the ancient prophets had done so many miracles.
And my feeling is that he never did any miracles. If he had done any miracles, all the Jews would have converted. They would not have crucified him. It is enough proof that he never did any miracles. And all the miracles that are propounded by the Christians are invented. These Christians are also of the same mind, the same desire, the same ambition: “How can our Lord be without miracles? If ordinary prophets were doing so many things, how can our Lord be without miracles?” So they have invented even better miracles, greater miracles than those of all the prophets.
But my feeling is that Jesus was a man of Tao. He was really a man who can be called religious.
I have heard a beautiful story. It is not recorded anywhere. It must have gone from one master to another, just by word of mouth:
Moses, Abraham, Ezekiel, three ancient prophets, were sitting under a tree in heaven talking about great things, talking about the Old Testament. Then suddenly Abraham said, “We know everything about the Old Testament. Had Jesus been here he would have told us something about the New Testament.”
Moses laughed and he called a boy who was sitting just by the side of the tree and said, “Jesus, please go and bring three cups of coffee for us.”
Abraham was shocked. This is Jesus? And Jesus went to bring three cups of coffee for the old prophets.
But I love this story. Only Jesus can do that – so utterly powerless. His powerlessness is his miracle: he has annihilated himself totally. They were not even aware of his presence, that he is sitting by the side of the tree. He didn’t say a single word like: “I am Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God. And what are you saying? I should go and bring three cups of coffee for you? Go yourself! Is this the way to talk to the son of God?” But he simply went.
Only Jesus can do it, or Lao Tzu or Ko Hsuan or Bodhidharma or Basho. These are people who have dropped the whole power trip, the whole number.
Ko Hsuan cannot mean what the translation will create in your mind. It says: When man attains the power to transcend that which changes…
No. If I were to translate it… I don’t know Chinese at all, but who cares? I can still translate, not knowing a single word of Chinese because I know the spirit of Tao; that’s my experience. If I were to translate it, I would say: When man surrenders to the power of Tao, he transcends that which changes…
When man becomes utterly powerless as a separate entity, then he transcends that which changes. Then he abides in purity and stillness. Then the purity that comes to him is not something cultivated from the outside.
It is not something that you have to maintain continuously, that you have to be on guard otherwise you will lose it. Your saints are continuously on guard. They know perfectly well that if they are relaxed for even a single moment they will lose all their purity. They don’t abide in it. It is not natural to them, it is something artificial: arbitrary; they have imposed it on themselves.
You don’t need to breathe, you need not remember to breathe; otherwise you would have been dead long before now because any time you forget about breathing – a beautiful woman passes by and you forget about breathing and you are finished! There is the full point. Then you cannot breathe again. But breathing continues even while you are asleep – not only while you are deeply asleep, even if you are in a coma breathing continues; it does not depend on you.
Once I went to see a woman… Her husband loved me very much. He came crying and weeping and he said, “This was my wife’s last wish, that she wanted to see you. But for nine months she was in a coma and the doctors say there is no possibility that she will ever become conscious. But please come with me just to fulfill her last desire. That was her last desire before she became unconscious.”
So I went to see the woman. For nine months she had been in a coma, but she was breathing perfectly. To be in a coma means to be almost dead. And she died after three months; after remaining one year in a coma she died. But for one year she continued to breathe. Her breathing was perfect, there was no disturbance in it.
Tao takes care of your breathing; it is natural. Your blood circulates continuously, day in, day out, year in, year out. For centuries man used to think that there was no circulation of the blood in the body. Blood simply filled the body as water filled a pot. It is only three hundred years ago that it was discovered that blood does not just fill the body; it continuously circulates, it goes on circulating at a very great speed. That keeps your inner world alive, dynamic. Who is circulating your blood? – certainly not you, otherwise you will forget it. Who digests your food? – certainly not you. In fact, if you become very conscious of digestion you will disturb your stomach.
Try a simple experiment for twenty-four hours: when you are eating just become conscious that the food is going into the stomach and now you have to digest it. Troubles will start: you will feel heavy and you will not know what to do, how to digest it. Just remain conscious that the food is in the stomach and it has to be digested and then you will be almost incapable of doing anything. Do a few yoga exercises, stand on your head, jog, jump, and within twenty-four hours you will have a bad stomach. You will have disturbed the whole process. It does not need you at all. Once the food has gone below your throat you need not bother about it. Tao takes care of it.
All that is essential is natural, and to live your whole life in a natural way is the only teaching of Tao. It teaches you powerlessness, but there is great power in powerlessness – the power of existence, the power of the whole, not your power, not my power, not anybody’s power.
Then there arises a purity in you. You are not the author of it, you are not the architect of it; you are simply a witness, a watcher. And there arises a tremendous stillness, not something forced from the outside. That’s what your so-called religious people are doing all over the world: they are forcing purity. And whenever you force purity on yourself, whenever it becomes a cultivated phenomenon, it is repression and nothing else. And repression only creates ugliness; it creates a split in you, it makes you schizophrenic.
A priest invites another priest to lunch at his house. At the end of the meal, the guest, who is slightly drunk, notices how pretty the maid is.
He turns to his colleague and says, “You are an old friend, you can tell me – do you sleep with the girl?”
The host is very angry. “How dare you speak like this in my house?” he cries. “Please leave immediately!”
After his friend has gone, the priest notices that a beautiful silver spoon has disappeared, so the following morning he sends his friend a note saying, “My dear holy friend, I am not saying that you are a thief, but if you find my silver spoon, please send it back!”
The answer comes quickly:
“My dear holy friend, I am not saying that you are a liar, but if you had slept in your own bed last night, you would have found your silver spoon!”
All cultivated purity creates hypocrisy, it creates a duality in you. It is bound to create it because you have not understood, you have simply denied something. It has not disappeared; it is there waiting to take revenge. And it will find its own way – it will come from the back door. If you don’t allow it to come from the front door it will come from the back door.
Tao does not believe in any cultivated character. It believes in a natural purity, in a natural stillness. You must have watched how if you try to become silent then each and every thing becomes a disturbance, a distraction.
Just a dog barking, who is not at all aware that you are trying to meditate, who has nothing against meditation, who is not an old enemy, who is not taking any revenge on you for some past karma… He is enjoying his barking; that is his meditation. Maybe he is doing Dynamic Meditation! He seems to be more modern and up to date than you – you are doing Vipassana and he is doing Dynamic! But you will be disturbed. He is not disturbed by your Vipassana and you are disturbed by his Dynamic Meditation for the simple reason that you are forcing something; it is not natural. It is just a very thin layer of stillness that somehow you have painted upon yourself.
Deep down, a thousand and one dogs are barking and they immediately understand the dog barking and they start feeling a great urge to bark. The distraction comes from your inner dogs, it is not coming from the outer dog. The outer dog is not responsible at all. If your silence is natural, the dog’s barking will not be a distraction; it may even enhance your stillness, it may become a background to your stillness. That’s how it happens.
When in the night you see the stars, beautiful stars, have you ever thought what happens to these stars in the day? They don’t go away – where can they go? They are there, but because the background is no longer there, the darkness is no longer there, you cannot see them. In the night the darkness functions as a background: the darker the night, the more shining are the stars. They are not shining so much on a full-moon night, but when there is no moon at all the stars are really beautiful.
The same is true about a real silence: everything that ordinarily proves a distraction becomes a background. The dog barking, the traffic noise, somebody shouting, children crying, running, the wife cooking food in the kitchen – everything becomes a background and everything deepens your silence because you are not concentrating, you are not forcing anything. You are simply relaxed. Things go on happening, you remain untouched; you remain absolutely centered and effortlessly centered.
This thing has to be remembered: Tao teaches you effortless naturalness. It does not believe in effort as Yoga does. Yoga and Tao are totally opposite to each other. That’s why Yoga could not penetrate China. Buddha impressed China for the simple reason that he also says that you should be natural, that your meditation should be effortless, that it should not be imposed from the outside, that it should arise from your innermost core. It should not be a plastic flower, it should be a real rose: When man attains the power to transcend that which changes, abiding, in purity and stillness, heaven and earth are united in him.
That’s what I call the meeting of the East and the West, the meeting of materialism and spiritualism. That’s my idea of Zorba the Buddha: …heaven and earth are united in him.
Tao is not otherworldly like Jainism; it is not this-worldly either like Charvakas. It believes in the unity of existence. It does not divide existence in any way. Its whole vision is that of total unity, organic unity.
Heaven and earth are one; in you they are already meeting. Your body is part of the earth, your soul is part of heaven. The meeting is already happening – you are not aware of it. If you relax you will become aware of it and the meeting is tremendously beautiful. Earth alone is dead. That’s why a materialist philosophy of life sooner or later comes to realize that life is meaningless.
That’s what has happened in the West. All great thinkers of this century in the West are obsessed only with one problem: the meaning of life. And they all agree on one point at least: that life is meaningless.
Dostoyevsky’s famous novel The Brothers Karamazov is one of the most important novels ever written. If I am asked to name the ten best novels in the world, then this will be one of those ten – not only one of them, but the first of those ten. It is one of the greatest creations.
In The Brothers Karamazov one of the characters says to God, “Where are you? I want to meet you – not that I am interested in seeing you, not that I want to know about you; I simply want to give you back the ticket that you gave me to enter this world. Please take it back! This whole world is absolutely meaningless.”
Marcel says in one of his writings that suicide seems to be the most important metaphysical problem. If life is meaningless then of course suicide seems to be the most important metaphysical problem. Why go on living? In the past people used to think that it is only cowards who commit suicide; now the pendulum seems to have moved to the other extreme. The materialists are feeling so meaningless that the idea is arising slowly and gathering force that it is only cowards who go on living. It is the brave people who try to commit suicide. Why go on living if there is no meaning?
But this has happened because only earth was accepted, not the sky, not heaven. Earth is meaningless, barren; without the sky there is no soul – you are just a body, a corpse. And what meaning can a corpse have? When the soul leaves the body, meaning has left the body. And if you don’t believe in the soul then you are bound to feel sooner or later that life has no meaning.
The West is feeling this great meaninglessness and the East believed only in heaven, only in the soul, but that is an abstraction. The body is concrete, the soul is only an abstraction; it is intangible. And when you start running after intangibles, after invisibles, you lose track of all that is concrete. That’s why the East is poor, starving, ill, burdened with thousands of problems – and seems to have no way of solving them for the simple reason that for centuries we have never bothered about the earth. Our eyes were fixed on the sky.
An ancient Greek parable says:
A very famous astrologer was looking at the sky in the night, watching the stars, studying the stars. He lost his way, naturally because he was not looking at the earth where he was walking and he fell into a well. Then he became aware, but then it was too late. He started shouting, “Save me!”
He was outside the village, but an old woman who lived nearby somehow managed to save him. When he got out of the well he told the woman, “You may not know me, you may not recognize me in this dark night, but I will tell you who I am: I am the king’s special astrologer! It is very difficult for people even to approach me, but you can come to me. I will tell you about your future.”
The old woman laughed. She said, “You fool! You don’t know even where the well is and where the road is, and you will tell me about my future!”
That’s what has happened in the East: the East has fallen into the well, lost track of the concrete, become too metaphysical.
Tao seems to be the only life vision which is total. It does not deny the earth, it does not deny the sky. It accepts both, it accepts the unity of both. It says that the man who has come to know spontaneous purity and stillness, who has become relaxed with the whole, with the law of the ultimate – in him heaven and earth are united.
That’s my concept of a sannyasin too – in you I would like this meeting to happen. You will be misunderstood all over the world: in the East people will think you are materialist, in the West people will think you have become metaphysical. That means you have gone crazy, berserk, that you are talking mumbo-jumbo. They will say, “Stop all this nonsense! Be realistic, be pragmatic.” You will be misunderstood everywhere because the East has believed only in half and the West has believed in half.
I believe in the whole. To me, to trust the whole is the only way to be holy and to trust the whole is the only way to be whole. And when you are whole, life is bliss, life is benediction, life is a celebration.
The soul of man loves purity…but his desires draw him into activity.
Man has three layers and those three layers have to be understood. The first, the deepest core, is the soul; the soul means your center of being. And the outermost circumference consists of desires. And between the two is another concentric circle, half way from both, from the outer and from the inner. It is neither outer nor inner – that is your mind.
The soul of man loves purity… By “purity” Ko Hsuan always means innocence. So don’t misunderstand it with any moralistic meaning of purity because Tao does not believe in any morality or any immorality: only innocence.
That’s why the child is innocent because when he is born he is just the intrinsic center; the two circles have not yet gathered around the center. That’s why every child looks so beautiful. Have you ever come across an ugly child? It is impossible. And what happens to all the beautiful children? – because if all children are beautiful, all people should be beautiful because these same children become grown-up people. But somewhere on the way they all disappear and something ugly sets in. We give them wrong circumferences; we give them wrong minds, wrong desires. We create such a dichotomy in their being that they become a crowd, not a unity. They are no longer integrated beings. They become fragments. And to be fragmentary is to be ugly because you lose all harmony and without harmony there is no beauty, no grace.
The soul of man loves purity… If you reach your innermost core you will suddenly find innocence arising in you, roses of innocence flowering.
…but his mind is often rebellious.
But the mind is not willing just to be innocent. Innocence says yes, it is trust. The mind says no, it is doubt. The mind always lives through the no, it is negative; the soul is always positive. The soul has no idea of saying no, it knows nothing about the no. And the mind knows nothing about the yes. If the mind sometimes has to say yes, it only says it unwillingly. You can watch it in yourself: whenever your mind says yes it says it unwillingly because it cannot find any way of saying no, that’s why it says yes. Yes is not spontaneous for the mind, no is spontaneous.
Watch the truth of this statement. These are not theories, hypotheses, these are simple facts. You can just watch it in yourself. The first thing that happens to your mind is no. It immediately says no – even if there is no reason to say no.
Just the other day I received a letter from a sannyasin: “Osho, when you talked about Prem Chinmaya’s coming back, his dying from the sixth center and that he will have to live only one more life, I cannot believe you or trust you.”
You may not know anything about reincarnation; you can simply say, “I don’t know about it, so how can I believe or disbelieve?” You can remain open.
But you will not miss any opportunity of saying no. Now this sannyasin must be waiting for something to say no to. Do you know what it means to die from the sixth center? Have you any idea of the inner physiology of man?
Ask Puja and Sheela what happened when Chinmaya died. They were surprised – they could not believe what was happening: his whole body became cool, his head became very hot. He complained also that “Something strange is happening, as if my whole energy has come into the head. My body is cool and calm, but my head is feeling almost as if it is on fire.”
Whenever the soul leaves the body, the center that becomes its leaving center becomes hot – naturally because the whole energy concentrates there. The energy that is spread all over the body gathers together at one point and that point certainly becomes absolute fire.
You don’t know anything about the inner physiology. If you don’t know, I am not telling you to believe in it – I am the last person to tell you to believe in anything – but there is no need to say no either. You can simply remain open, you can say, “I will see what happens when I die.”
And then he says, “I don’t believe you, I don’t trust you. Does it matter?” To me it does not matter, not at all because I don’t depend on your belief, but it matters immensely for you. I am not saying force yourself to say yes to me because a forced yes will be only a disguised no. I am simply saying be here and be open. There is no need to say yes or no, you can simply say, “I don’t know.” Function out of a state of not-knowing so that you remain available to experiment, to experience. If you say no you have become closed and you can say yes only when you have experienced.
So I am not asking you to believe in it, but I will certainly request you not to disbelieve. There is no need for belief and no need for disbelief. But this sannyasin’s mind must have been waiting for some opportunity.
It is very rare here because I don’t talk about things which you will find difficult to believe – I rarely talk about things which are beyond you. I leave them; I prepare you so that you can experience them one day. But once in a while something happens. For example, Prem Chinmaya’s death was such an occasion that I had to say something about death, something about which center he died from. I had to say this, that he will be back here soon. And these things are not beyond your comprehension if you are going deep into meditation, but if you are not going into deep meditation they are beyond comprehension.
The mind wants to say no and if you listen to the mind you stop listening to the master. If you want to listen to the master, first you have to be open so that one day yes can surface in you spontaneously. It matters much as far as you are concerned.
Being here and saying no in some way simply means you will be physically here and spiritually absent. It will be a sheer waste of your time. Then there is no need to be here.
The whole effort of this buddhafield, the whole purpose of it, is to help you to go beyond mind, to go beyond no.
Ko Hsuan’s sutra says:
The soul of man loves purity, but his mind is often rebellious. The mind of man loves stillness, but his desires draw him into activity.
The soul loves purity, innocence; that’s its natural joy. The mind is not interested in purity, in innocence because innocence needs yes as a foundation and the mind lives through no. But because the mind continuously says no it has to suffer much turmoil, hence there is a great need in the mind to be still, to be silent, to be calm and quiet: The mind loves stillness…
But then there is another outer circle in your being – the circle of desires which don’t even allow you silence. They drag you into activity. The mind drags you into no’s, into negativity; that disturbs your purity. Yes is your innocence, no means you have lost your innocence. Then there are desires which don’t leave you at the mind, they want some activity; just no won’t do. They drag you into a thousand and one activities – the Chinese expression is into “ten thousand things.” They keep you constantly occupied – money, power, prestige; they go on goading you, “Do this. Achieve this. Without achieving this you are not a real man. Prove that you are powerful, prove that you are great, prove that you are special.” And to prove it you have to move almost into a state of insanity. That’s what politics is.
Politics is the other pole, exactly the opposite pole to religion. Religion takes you to the essence of your being and politics takes you to the accidents of your desires. The desires keep you so occupied with the mundane, with the futile, that you start forgetting everything that is intrinsic, that is really valuable. Running after money, you forget all about the inner treasure. Running after power, you forget all about the power of Tao, which is the supreme power. Running after name and fame, you forget completely that name and fame are just momentary. But they go on goading you; they won’t leave you for a single moment. In the night you will dream about desires, in the day you will run after desires. And all desires are mirages, like the horizon that looks so close that you will be able to reach it within an hour. But you never reach it because it does not really exist.
But you go on forgetting everything: you forget the soul, heaven; you even forget the body, the earth. You become almost mad. All your politicians are mad. All your people who are running after money are mad, who are running after fame are mad. But because they are in the majority, they appear to be absolutely right. In fact, the person who is not interested in name and fame, power and prestige, seems to be a little out of his senses. What has happened to this man?
You will be asked again and again, “What has happened to you? Why are you not interested in accumulating more money? What do you do just by sitting silently looking inward?” You will be condemned by the world because the world consists of extroverts. They will call you introverts, they will tell you that introversion is a kind of perversion, they will tell you that you are selfish, that you are narcissistic, that you are only interested in your own joy, that you should be concerned with others, that you should live like everybody else, that you should be part of the crowd. Of course, they are many and you will be very alone.
Jesus has said to his disciples, “I am sending you amongst wolves.” And I know what he means. When I send you into the world I also know I am sending you amongst wolves. You are trying to be silent, innocent, childlike, and the world is trying to achieve just the opposite ends.
When a man is constantly able to govern his desires, his mind becomes spontaneously still.
Again wrong words have been used: When a man is constantly able to govern his desires…
No, Ko Hsuan cannot say …to govern his desires… because that means repression, that means control. He can only say: When a man is able to understand his desires, his mind becomes spontaneously still.
Only understanding is needed; nothing else ever helps. If you understand a desire it disappears. Desires are like darkness: you bring light and darkness disappears. You need not throw it out, you need not repress it, you need not close doors to keep it out – you cannot do anything directly with darkness, you just have to bring light in. A small candle will do and all darkness disappears. Just a little light of understanding and desires start disappearing. Then arises spontaneous stillness.
Remember this word spontaneous. That is the key word as far as Tao is concerned.
When the mind is unclouded, the soul is seen to be pure.
And when there are no desires, thoughts automatically disappear because thoughts are servants of desires. When there are desires, your mind is full of thoughts, full of plans – what to do, how to do, how to fulfill these desires. When desires disappear you have cut the tree from the very root. Then leaves start disappearing, branches disappear, the tree itself disappears of its own accord and the mind is unclouded. In that unclouded state of mind, in that thoughtless state of mind you will be able to see the purity of your inner being.
Then, with certainty the six desires will cease to be begotten and the three poisons will be eliminated and dissolved.
This is something very significant to remember.
All the religions have talked only about five senses. It is only Tao that talks about six senses. All the religions have talked about five desires because man consists of five senses; Tao talks about six desires. The insight is tremendous because just recently, just in this century, science has discovered the sixth sense – otherwise the sixth sense was not known. Your ear has two senses. Your ear is not a single sense – hidden inside it is another sense: the sense that keeps your body balanced.
That’s why when you see a drunkard walking you can see that he cannot walk straight; zigzag he goes. His steps are not in harmony for the simple reason that alcohol affects the sixth sense, that which keeps your body balanced. It is a Taoist insight for the last five thousand years that there are six senses. Through the eye the desire for beauty arises, through the ear the desire for music arises, from the nose the desire for nice smells arises, from the tongue the desire for taste and from the whole skin the desire to touch – these are the five traditional senses – and from the sixth sense the desire to remain in control, balanced. If somebody hits your ear hard you will lose balance; you will see stars in the day.
For a buddha, these six desires no longer arise. Not that the eyes go blind. In fact, now they can see beauty more truly, but there is no desire to possess beauty. Not that you become deaf to music, but now there is no desire to possess anything. You enjoy more because your energy is free and your senses are more clear, more transparent.
Nobody can see beauty more clearly than a Buddha, nobody can hear music more deeply than a Lao Tzu, nobody can taste better than Jesus. All their senses become truly sensitive, they are then really senses. Your senses are dull. Your society helps you to keep them dull because the society is afraid. If your senses are really very keen and very sensitive then you can be a dangerous person because of your desire to possess. You see a beautiful woman: she is somebody else’s wife and if your eyes are really able to see the beauty and you have the desire to possess also, you will grab the woman, you will escape with the woman, you will rape the woman. Something criminal is bound to happen.
Nature allows you total sensitivity only when you become capable of dropping all possessiveness, all ideas to possess. Then you can touch and then even rocks feel velvety. Then everything starts having a divine quality, everything is transformed.
…and the three poisons will be eliminated and dissolved. What are the three poisons? The first is sexuality – not sex, remember, but sexuality. Sex is natural. Tao is not against sex, it is the only religious approach which is in total agreement with sex. Tao has its own science of sex, it has its own Tantra, which really goes far deeper than Indian Tantra. But sexuality is a totally different phenomenon; sexuality means a perverted state of sex energy. Then it becomes poisonous.
The second poison is anger and the third poison is greed. Sexuality, anger, greed: these three poisons combined together, this unholy trinity, creates your ego. And all these three can be dissolved, eliminated. If sexuality disappears you will be surprised that anger disappears – without any effort on your part. Anger simply means that your sexuality is hindered. Anybody who hinders your sexuality creates anger in you; he is your enemy. And sexuality creates greed – greed is a form of sexuality, it is a perverted form. Money becomes your object of love because the society does not allow any other kind of love. It allows money, power. They can become your objects of love. It helps to change your object of love. First it changes your sex into sexuality…
See the difference. Sex is a natural phenomenon; it is your capacity to reproduce. Sexuality means your mind is continuously occupied by sex. It is no longer a natural phenomenon, it has become cerebral. It is no longer confined to the sex center, it has gone to the head. Now you are constantly thinking of sex.
Just watch for one hour how many times you think of sex – you will be surprised. Psychologists say that you are in for a great surprise if you watch your mind to see how many times in an hour you think about sex. Men think about it twice as much as women do; that may be one of the causes of conflict between them. They have a different kind of sexuality. Man’s sexuality is more repressed than woman’s for the simple reason that man has to earn money, has to become famous, has to be a prime minister or a politician. Naturally, from where is he going to get all this energy to be the president? There is only one energy; you don’t have many energies in you, mind you, you have only one kind of energy. Whatsoever name you want to give to it you can give, XYZ, but you have only one kind of energy. Sigmund Freud has called it libido, but it simply means sex – that is your only energy. Now if you want to have more money or more power, you want to be the president or the prime minister of the country, then you have to take your sexuality and channel it.
I have heard…
One day Carter and Brezhnev met for a long meeting. The two wives waited outside the meeting room for so many hours, they eventually struck up a conversation. Soon they were finding they liked each other and were sharing intimacies.
Rosalyn Carter confessed, “You won’t believe this, my dear Brezhnova, but Jimmy just isn’t the same man that I married. For such a long time now he hasn’t even looked at me. He comes home so tired he immediately goes to bed and falls asleep.”
“With me it is the same,” said Brezhnova. “I just don’t know what to do.”
“The other night,” explained Rosalyn Carter, “I finally decided to tempt Jimmy. I put on my transparent black negligee and some expensive perfume, turned down the lights, put some sexy French music on the stereo and piled pillows on the bed. And then I waited for him in the bedroom.”
“He came into the bedroom already talking about all the problems in the Middle East, the dollar going down, etcetera, etcetera and I threw him down on the pile of pillows, took off his shirt, opened up my negligee to show him my bare breasts and asked him, ‘Jimmy, does this remind you of anything?’”
“He looked at my tits, put his hand to his forehead and said, ‘Of course. I must call Moshe Dayan!’”
“That’s nothing,” said Brezhnova. “With me it was worse. I did everything you did, except I didn’t bother with the negligee. As soon as he lay down on the bed I jumped on him and put my cunt right in front of his face and said, ‘Look at this, Brezy. Does it remind you of something?’ And he replied, ‘Oh yes! I forgot to call Fidel Castro!’”
It is bound to happen. You have to divert your sexual energy; then money, power, prestige, they become your sexual objects. And these people can talk about morality and discipline easily. They can teach others how to control their sexuality very easily, but in fact what they are doing is nothing but sex perversion. And these people become very violent. They are violent – they keep the whole world always on the brink of war.
When sex becomes perverted, love becomes hatred. Nothing is wrong with sex, but everything is wrong with sexuality. Sex should be allowed a natural flow. Yes, one day, if you live it naturally, transcendence happens. But it is spontaneous, it is not celibacy. It comes through celebration.
Just as at the age of fourteen you become mature sexually, at the age of forty-two, if you have lived your sex naturally, you will go beyond it. But it is a strange world. Children become sexual, children who are not sexually mature because the whole atmosphere is poisoned. Small children start thinking of sex. Seeing films, reading novels, looking at obscene magazines, they start thinking about sex.
Italian Piero comes to a village. He asks a farmer, “Do ya know where little children come-a from?”
“They grow out of cabbages!” the farmer answers.
Piero walks a little further and meets the milkman. “Hey!” says Piero. “Do ya know where little children come-a from!”
“Sure,” answers the milkman, “the stork brings them.”
Piero continues on his way a little despondent, then… “Ah!” he thinks, “here comes-a the right-a man to ask-a! Vicar! Do ya know where little children come-a from?”
“Yes, my son,” responds the Vicar. “God sends them from heaven.”
“Shit-a!” exclaims Piero. “Isn’t there anyone in this-a village who fucks-a?”
Children become sexual before the normal age and you can also find eighty year-old men running after women. Both are ugly and in an unnatural state.
Tao believes in total naturalness. It is not against sex, it is against sexuality because it knows that if sexuality does not enter your life – that means if perversion does not enter your life – if nobody teaches you to be against sex there will be no perversion. It is because of your saints and moralists and puritans that you all have become perverted – children and old men, all. If sex is left alone without interference from any moral teaching, then one day the child will become sexually mature nearabout fourteen and one day nearabout forty-two he will transcend it. He will have seen by that time that it is child’s play and enough is enough. And that transcendence is beautiful. Anything that happens on its own is beautiful because it comes through Tao. And then anger will not be there in your life, neither will greed.
The reason men do not possess the ability to achieve this is because their minds are not clear and their desires are unrestrained.
Meditation brings both clarity and a certain inner discipline. And by “meditation” Tao simply means watching your mind and its functions.
He who has the power to transcend his desires, looking within and contemplating mind…
That is the definition of meditation according to Ko Hsuan: …looking within and contemplating mind… Just silently watching all the processes of the mind – thoughts, memories, imagination, dreams, desires – then a realization happens, a realization that:
…in his mind, mind is not…
This sutra is immensely significant. When you watch the mind clearly, silently, the mind starts disappearing. More watchfulness, less mind. One percent watchfulness, ninety-nine percent mind. Ninety-nine percent watchfulness, one percent mind. One hundred percent watchfulness and there is no mind in the mind. All thoughts have gone, the mind is absolutely empty. And in that emptiness Tao comes in, rushes in. You have created the right space for it.
…looking without and contemplating form…
Then you are capable of looking without. First look within, let the mind disappear, attain clarity, then look without: …looking without and contemplating form… Then meditate on the forms outside: the trees, the clouds, the stars, the moon…
…he realizes that in form, form is not…
Then you will be surprised to see that the waves are not there, only the ocean. In the form there is no form. The trees are not there but only life expressing itself in millions of forms – but not confined to any form; it is formless.
…looking at things still more remote and contemplating matter, he realizes that in matter, matter is not.
That too is of great significance. It is only now that modern physicists have said that matter does not exist, but Tao was saying for five thousand years that: …in matter, matter is not.
If you can meditate, start from within, then look around, and then look into things at their deepest core. First the mind disappears, then form disappears, then matter disappears. Then what is left? That which is left is Tao, is nature. And to live in that nature is to live in freedom, is to live in eternal bliss.
Tao is the word of Ko Hsuan for God. Dhamma is the word of Buddha for Tao. Buddha says, “Aes dhammo sanantano – this is the eternal law.” Once you have seen the eternal law you become part of eternity. Time is transcended, space is transcended. You are no more and for the first time you are. You are no more as a separate entity, but for the first time you are the whole.
This is my vision too. My agreement with Tao is absolute. I cannot say that about other religions; with Tao I can say it without any hesitation. Tao is the most profound insight that has ever been achieved on the earth.
Enough for today.