TAO
Tao The Three Treasures Vol 3 05
Fifth Discourse from the series of 10 discourses - Tao The Three Treasures Vol 3 by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
On beyond honor and disgrace, Lao Tzu says:
He who knows does not speak;
he who speaks does not know.
Fill up its apertures,
close its doors,
dull its edges,
untie its tangles,
soften its light,
submerge its turmoil
– this is the mystic unity.
Then love and hatred cannot touch him.
Profit and loss cannot reach him.
Honor and disgrace cannot affect him.
Therefore is he always the honored one of the world.
Language is human. Obviously it has to be very limited. It is good for objective things; it is completely useless for the inner, the inside.
Language can say something, but it cannot say the all. If you are sitting at the dinner table, language is useful for saying, “Please pass me the salt.” It is utilitarian. It has a use, but it cannot say the truth because truth is not a utility, and truth is not something objective. It is not there outside you, it happens somewhere at the deepest core of your being.
Something is between you and me: we can decide what we are going to call it – it is a contract. If both parties are willing, language is perfectly okay. But when something has happened within me, it is not something between me and you, I cannot indicate what it is. Even if I indicate, you cannot see what it is. So no contract is possible.
Religion is beyond language. At the most, language can say what it is not. It cannot say what truth is, but it can say what it is not. At the most it can be a negation. We cannot say what God is because that will be limiting him through our limited words, concepts; at the most we can say what he is not. And all the scriptures only say what he is not. They eliminate the error, but they never show the truth. But if you can go on eliminating the error, one day suddenly the truth is revealed to you. It is not revealed through language, it is revealed through silence.
So the first thing to be understood very deeply – because it becomes a great pitfall if you don’t understand it – is that language can be dangerous, one can be deluded by it.
You know the word God, but the word God is not God. In the word God there is nothing godly. The word God is absolutely hollow and empty. It has nothing in it. You can go on repeating it millions of times, nothing will happen to you. It is an empty shell, inside it is hollow. Words cannot carry the inner experience.
It may have been true when Jesus used the word, it may have meant something to him – but not to those who heard him. This has to be understood. If I say samadhi I mean something, I know it. But when you hear the word samadhi it is just a noise in your ears; at the most you can understand the meaning that is given in the dictionary. But a dictionary is not existence. It is not a substitute for existence. Samadhi can be known only when you go in it, when you become it; there is no other way to know it.
That’s why Lao Tzu goes on insisting that truth cannot be spoken, and that which is spoken cannot be true. But he speaks because this much can be said. This is a negation.
He says:
He who knows does not speak;
he who speaks does not know.
This much can be said. Lao Tzu speaks – whether he knows or not. According to his own principle, if he knows he should not speak. If he speaks then he is not in the know, then he does not know. Then you will fall into a riddle which cannot be solved. If he does not know, then how can he say such a great truth?
He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know. If he knows, then why is he speaking? If he does not know, then he cannot even hint at such a profundity. Try to understand this paradox. He is simply eliminating one thing. All that he is saying in these two sentences – which are deeply pregnant with meaning, very significant – he is saying: Don’t be deluded by words. They are not truth. They may appear like truth, but they are not. A lived moment cannot be expressed. A live thing can be known only by living it.
You fall in love – then you know what it is. You may go on reading a thousand and one books about love, and they may be beautiful books, they may even have been written by those who have loved and who have known what love is, but by reading them you will never come to know what love is.
Love is not a concept to be understood. It is an experience to be possessed by. When love takes over, you are thrown off center. You are no longer there: love exists and you are not. You cannot manipulate love. A concept can be manipulated, you can interpret a concept, you can put this meaning or that into it – but love? Love cannot be manipulated.
It is not that you love, it is nothing that you do, it is something that happens to you. Suddenly you are in a whirlwind. A greater force than you has taken possession. You are no longer yourself, you are possessed.
That’s why people think that lovers are mad – they are. Love is a beautiful madness. It is like madness, it has a quality like madness, because one becomes possessed by it. People say, “Love is blind.” They are right, love is blind, because love has its own eyes. These ordinary eyes don’t work. Love has its own ways of seeing and feeling and being. All ordinary ways are thrown off track. Love has its own sort of world: a new world is created around the lover. He looks blind to everybody else, but he is not blind in himself; in fact for the first time he has attained eyes, vision, insight.
Love can be known only by falling in love; by becoming, not even a lover, but by becoming love itself. If you are a lover, love has not happened yet. You still remain in control. If you want, you can change. If you want, you can move away. There is still a choice, love has not happened; you are still not possessed by it. You will not know.
You may be moving according to some pattern, theory, of how to love and how not to love. You must be moving through some conditioning – but love has not become your heart, it does not beat within you, it still remains part of your mind. Language is of the mind and experience is of the heart. And the heart has its own world, has its own dimension. So love cannot be expressed – and truth is even deeper than love.
Three layers have to be remembered. The first layer is of the head, which is the most superficial: the world of language, concepts, theories. You can manipulate it very easily, you are the master there.
Then there is a second layer, deeper than the head: that is of the heart. There your mastery is not at all. You become a slave. You cannot control it; love becomes the master, you become the slave. It possesses you completely.
But still the mind can say something about love, because the heart is not very far away from the head, the distance is not very far. The mind can have a few glimpses. It can look back, it can look within, and have a few glimpses. That’s why poetry is possible, painting is possible, music is possible. These are all glimpses, from the head, of the heart.
But then there is a third layer of your being which is the last layer, the very substratum, the very ground. That is your being. The head is thinking, the heart is feeling, the being is simply being.
Godliness, truth, ecstasy, nirvana, enlightenment – they belong to being. The head has not even heard about it. It can have a little glimpse of the second layer, of the heart, of love. It has not even heard that there exists another layer deeper than the heart. The heart can have a little glimpse of the being, because it is nearer to it. So people who are in love can have a little understanding – I say a little – of prayer. Because prayer is just like love.
When Jesus says “God is love,” he is talking to the people of the heart. He was talking to his disciples. If he had been talking in a university to university professors and academicians, he would not have said such a foolish thing, that God is love. He would have said God is mathematics, God is logic, or something else.
But he was talking to his very intimate disciples, very close, who were in deep love with him. That is why he could say, “God is love.” He was talking to the heart in the language of the heart. He was indicating to the people of the heart that there is a further goal: that further goal is godliness, and where you are standing is love. Jesus is trying to create a bridge between God and love; that’s why he says God is love, or love is God.
He was not talking to popes, theologians, people well-versed in religious matters, no. He was talking to fishermen, farmers, carpenters – people who are not heady, people who are still of the feeling world, belong to feeling. That’s why he could say God is love. The heart can have a little glimpse.
So the first step is from the head toward the heart. And the second step is from the heart toward the being. Nothing can be said about the being, because even to say something about the heart is impossible. Nothing can be said about the being. You have to move, you have to know to know. There is no shortcut to it.
Says Lao Tzu: He who knows does not speak… All those who have known have not spoken. You will not believe it, because Buddha spoke for forty years continuously. Every day for forty years he was speaking and speaking and speaking. And still, those who have known Buddha, they say he never spoke a single word. I go on speaking continuously every day, but those amidst you who know me will know that I have not spoken a single word.
Because all that is spoken is just a hint. Nothing is spoken in it. It is just a net, a fisherman’s net, so that those who live in their heads can be caught. Once they are caught, the use of language is finished. Then their hearts start throbbing. Then a communion – not communication but communion – happens between the master and the disciple; then their hearts start beating in the same rhythm. Then they breathe in the same rhythm. No need to say anything then. Then everything is understood without being said.
All talk is to prepare you for silence, and only in silence can truth be given.
Bodhidharma went to China many centuries ago to search for a disciple. He had something within him and his days were numbered; soon he would have to disappear from the body. And he was searching for somebody with whom communion would be possible. India was full of great scholars, but he had to go to China to find somebody who could understand the language of heart, the language of silence – which is no language at all.
He waited for nine years. Then came his disciple. Nobody knows what happened between these two people, nobody can know. But a transfer happened. Bodhidharma gave all that he had to Hui Neng and the tradition of Zen was born.
Now people go on saying that Bodhidharma gave Zen to Hui Neng: a transfer without scriptures, a communication without words. Even if you had been present there you would not have known what had transpired. It was a jump of being, from being to another being. Hui Neng was open, Bodhidharma jumped in. Something that cannot be said was said – not in words but in being. Existentially it was transferred, and that has been the way. Since then, Zen masters go on giving their final word wordlessly.
It happened to another Zen master who was dying… He called his most beloved disciple and said, “Now the moment has come, and I must give you the scripture that I have been carrying for long. It was given to me by my master when he was dying; now I am dying.”
He pulled out a book, a book he had been hiding under his pillow. Everybody knew about it but nobody had ever been allowed to look into it. He was very secretive about it. When he went to his bath he would carry the book with him. Nobody had ever been allowed to see what was in the book – and everybody of course was curious, tremendously curious.
And now he had called this disciple and said, “The last moment has come and I have to give you the scripture that was given to me by my master. Keep it. Preserve it as carefully as possible – protect it so that it should not be destroyed. It is a valuable treasure. Once lost – lost for centuries.”
The disciple laughed and said, “But whatever has to be attained I have attained without this scripture, so what is the need? You can take it with you.”
The master insisted. The disciple said, “Okay, if you insist then it’s okay.” The book was given to him. It was a winter evening, very cold, and a fire was burning in the room – the disciple took the book and without even looking at it, he threw it into the fire.
The master jumped and said, “What are you doing!”
And the disciple shouted even more loudly, “What are you saying! To preserve a scripture?”
The master started laughing. He said, “You passed the examination. Had you preserved it, you would have missed! And there was nothing in it; to tell you the truth, it is completely empty. It was just to see whether you have become capable of understanding silence, or if you still cling deep down to words, concepts, theories, philosophies.”
All philosophies, all that can be said, are just like the porch of a palace. I see you every evening in darshan in the porch – because all questions can be solved only in the porch. Once you are ready, there is no question; then you can enter the palace. Have you ever heard the name of a Greek wise man, Zeno? He was the founder of the Stoic philosophy. Just like me, he used to teach in the porch. The word stoic comes from a Greek word stoikas, from stoa, which means porch. His whole life he was teaching in the porch and people would say, “You have such a beautiful house, why do you teach in the porch?” He said, “All teaching is just like the porch. When you are ready to listen to the silence you enter the temple – then there is no talk.” From the word stoa, porch, his whole philosophy is known as Stoicism.
All words can at the most become porches; they lead you toward the inner temple; but if you cling to them you remain in the porch – the porch is not the palace. Lao Tzu is saying something which is just like a porch, a door. If you understand it, you will drop all words, language – in fact the whole mind. Where you leave your shoes in the porch, you should leave your mind also. Only then do you enter the innermost shrine of being.
He who knows does not speak… Even if he speaks, he speaks only to say this much. Even if he speaks, he speaks only against speaking. He does not want to say something in it, he simply wants to destroy all the words within you – his speech is destructive. He simply wants to create a vacuum within you, and of course words can be destroyed only by words. Poison can be destroyed only by poison. You have a thorn in your foot – another thorn is needed to pull it out. All that I am saying is like another thorn to pull out the thorns that are already in your being. Once the first thorn is out, the second is also useless – you throw both of them away. All words are used by knowers to pull out other words which have already settled within you. Once you are empty – finished.
There has been a great man in India, a very rare being: men like him you can count on your fingers. His name was Nagarjuna. He has contradicted everything. He has debated against everything. He has criticized all theories. And people were puzzled. They would ask, “Okay, whatever you say is okay, but what is your standpoint?”
And Nagarjuna would say, “I don’t have any standpoint. I am here just to destroy theories. I don’t have a theory to replace them with. Whatever is your theory – come! I will criticize it and destroy it. But don’t ask for a substitute because I have none. You become empty, that’s perfect, there is no need to do anything.”
If you believe in God, Nagarjuna will criticize God. If you don’t believe in God and you are an atheist, he will criticize atheism. If you believe in the soul, he is the enemy of the soul. If you don’t believe in the soul, then he is also your enemy. If you ask, “What is your philosophy?” he will simply shrug his shoulders. He will say, “None. I am here to destroy.”
Those who know, they have spoken just to destroy, so that emptiness is left behind. In that emptiness is communion.
The word communion means: come to union. There is a deep unity then. In that unity, that which cannot be said can be said. No words are needed, not even gestures are needed. It is simply transferred without any scripture.
He who knows does not speak;
he who speaks does not know.
Fill up its apertures…
Now he is saying what to do: how to attain that silence which knows truth; how to attain that emptiness in which truth descends in you, in which you become a vehicle and godliness takes possession. You become a temple, and godliness comes and settles within you.
Fill up its apertures… The mind has many apertures through which it is constantly refilled and refueled. You go on looking – what are you looking at? You are not looking for something in particular, you are just looking; anything that passes by, you look. The mind is hankering, through the eyes, to collect whatever information it can collect. The mind is curious – you even read advertisements written on walls, and you pass by the same wall every day, and you read it again and again and again. And you know what is written there, you have read it so many times, but again when you pass, unconsciously like a robot you read it again. You go on collecting information for the mind: the mind needs to be fed by information. It is a computer, it is asking constantly, “I am hungry, bring me more knowledge.” Knowledge is the mind’s food, it thrives on it.
The ears go on listening to what is happening; all the senses are apertures from where the mind goes on seeking and searching for knowledge. Even absolutely useless knowledge. You cannot even imagine of what use this knowledge is going to be. But the mind goes on collecting in the hope that someday, maybe, it can use it. That day never comes.
Says Lao Tzu: Fill up its apertures… If you want to attain silence, fill up its apertures. Open your eyes only when it is absolutely necessary. Look only when it is absolutely needed; otherwise there is no need. Bypass things without looking at them. Keep your eyes empty. Look at the world with empty eyes so that you are not looking at it, you are not looking at anything.
You may have that feeling when you encounter an enlightened man. He looks at you, but he is not looking at you. He looks and looks not. His eyes are like empty mirrors. He is not indifferent; he is not interested either. He hears, and hears not. If you say something he hears, but if you stop in the middle he is not curious for the remaining half sentence. Even if you stop in the middle of the sentence, there comes the full point for him: it’s finished! He is not curious. Then the mind stops accumulating.
In Tibetan monasteries, whenever a new disciple wants to enter the monastery, he has to sit at the door for twenty-four hours, sometimes even for forty-eight hours, sometimes even more – hungry, with closed eyes. The master will pass many times by the door, disciples will pass, other people will come and go, and he has to sit there with closed eyes.
That is the first examination: whether he is capable of becoming non-curious. Otherwise he would like to look at who is going out, he would like to open the eyes just a little bit: who has come, who has gone. He will be curious. If a person is so restless and curious that he cannot keep his eyes closed for twenty-four hours, then he will be rejected by the monastery. Even small children when they want to enter a monastery have to pass this.
But if you can keep your eyes closed for twenty-four hours, it is a feat, because the mind is so restless and continuously asking for information that if you don’t give it information, it starts suffocating. In fact it starts dying.
That’s why sense deprivation can become the death of the mind. Many experiments have been done, are being carried out, all over the world on sensory deprivation. When all your senses are deprived of their usual food, time seems to be unending. One hour has passed – you think eternity.
You may be totally comfortable, resting in a tank which is made like the womb of a mother, in lukewarm water, floating; no anxiety, darkness surrounds you. Beautiful – no worry, you simply relax in the womb again. But within minutes you start feeling such deep restlessness. The mind asks for the constant supply of food.
Sense deprivation has been one of the most used methods in the East. One who wants to reach ecstasy, samadhi, has to learn to be without this constant hankering of the mind to be fed.
You are doing two things together. People come to me, they say, “We would like to get rid of this mind, it is just anguish and nothing else – a hell.” But if I say to them, “Then close your apertures more and more” – because on one hand you want to drop the mind and on another hand you go on feeding it – that seems difficult.
I send people on twenty-one days silence. It becomes really a hell after four, five days. They are not doing: they are allowed just to sit with closed eyes, with closed ears, to move, walk – but not to look around, just to look on the path that they are following, four feet ahead at the most. To eat, rest – nothing in particular – but just to relax the senses, close the apertures. After the fourth, fifth day the mind starts rebelling.
If they can continue, near the fourteenth or fifteenth day the mind starts accepting the fact – just like a person who is dying in hospital; when you say, “You are dying,” he wants to deny, reject the fact. But by and by what can he do? Helplessly he accepts and once he accepts, then there is no worry. Then he relaxes.
On the fourteenth, fifteenth day, if you continue, and remain indifferent to the constant hammering of the mind to seek more…more food for itself…the mind relaxes. And once the mind relaxes within you, your being starts flowering. The mind is the bondage on the being.
So try to live in the senses as minimally as possible.
Mulla Nasruddin came to me once. Hearing about meditations, he became interested. So I told him first just to sit for a year with closed eyes. Knowing him well, I thought even that was going to be impossible. He said, “But I won’t close my eyes.”
I said to him, “Have you understood me? Do you understand me or not? Close your eyes!”
So he closed them a little bit – half, fifty-fifty – and he said, “More than this I cannot do.”
I asked, “What is the matter?”
He said, “I am strictly a middle-of-the-road man. At the most I can half close my eyes. I cannot close them completely. Who knows what is going to happen? I may miss something beautiful, so that I cannot do. I can close half and I will keep half open, alert to what is going on.”
He said to me, “I absolutely agree with the old lady who used to go to church: whenever the name of God was mentioned, she would bow down – that was okay. But the priest there became a little worried because whenever the name of the Devil was mentioned, then too she would bow down. One day the priest could not contain his curiosity. After the congregation left, he went to the old lady, caught her outside the church, and asked, ‘What is the matter? Why do you do this? I can understand that when the name of God is mentioned you bow down, but why do you bow down when the name of the Devil is mentioned?’ She said, ‘You never know, it may come in handy any time.’”
Mulla Nasruddin told me, “I am strictly a middle-of-the-way man. I bow down to God and to the Devil also; one never knows, it may come in handy.”
People go on trying to create a compromise with the mind. You cannot win. If you compromise, the mind is going to win. All compromise is a defeat in the inner world. If you decide that you would like to know your innermost core of being, then this is the way:
Fill up its apertures,
close its doors,
dull its edges,
untie its tangles,
soften its light,
submerge its turmoil
– this is the mystic unity.
Then you come to know that which is one. This is the mystic unity, the communion.
I will repeat again: Fill up its apertures… Use the senses as minimally as possible. And if you look, you will find that you are using them absolutely unnecessarily. Ninety-nine percent of their usage can be stopped; one percent will be enough. And you will be surprised, when you use your senses as minimally as possible they become very, very sharp. Because the whole energy becomes concentrated.
When you don’t go on looking at anybody and everybody, then suddenly you look at a roseflower – your eyes are so clear, without any clouds. Otherwise you go on seeing things, so many things – in those many things, the roseflower is just one of the things; your eyes are dusty, the rose cannot flower for you.
You come and look at your child but you don’t look; you have a screen of so many experiences on the eyes, your eyes are already filled. How can you see the face of your child? Otherwise you would have seen the face of God there. How can you see the roseflower? Otherwise the rose would have disappeared and you would have seen the flowering of the divine.
Your eyes will become fresh, clean and you will become very perceptive – if you don’t use your senses unnecessarily. The more you use them the more your senses are bored, tired. They lose sharpness, they lose sensitivity; they become very, very dull.
Fill up its apertures, close its doors… Wherever you find the mind has made a door to go into the world, close it. The mind has very cunning ways to go into the world. Just watch from where it escapes into the world.
Freud discovered that the whole functioning of the mind is associative – that is, a door. You look at a dog. In fact you should contain yourself to this dog; there is no need to move on. But suddenly you remember a dog that you used to know in your childhood, and that dog belonged to a girl and you had fallen in love with that girl. Now you go on and on. Now this dog – the fact, the factual – is no longer there. It simply worked as a key. Now you are moving: you loved that girl but you couldn’t manage to possess her, then all the other possessions, then all the other girls – a long queue is there.
Then you go on jumping, hopping from one thing to another. The mind moves into a mad world from anywhere, and then there is no end to it. Freud used this door for his whole psychoanalytic method: thought association. That’s why psychoanalysis goes on for years and years – and with no result, in fact. You can go on forever and forever. One thought leads to another, another thought leads to another, and there are millions and millions of thoughts.
I have heard…
Mulla Nasruddin was in love with a woman. He brought her home and when they were going to bed, resting on the bed, relaxing on the bed, the woman asked, “Nasruddin, how many women have been here before me, in your bed?”
Nasruddin kept silent, minutes passed. Almost half an hour had passed, then the woman said, “I am still waiting!”
Nasruddin said, “And what do you think I am doing? I am still counting!”
That’s how things are related. If you start counting, if you start on the associative journey, there is no end to it. Association is a door. You will have to find them – there are many doors.
And you always go through the same doors, and get into the same troubles, and you never become aware that it has become a repetitive thing, a vicious circle. You go on moving in circles. Close all the doors. It will be difficult in the beginning because you will feel it is just like suicide. Samadhi is like suicide. The only difference is that no suicide is as complete as samadhi. But it is not only suicide, it is a resurrection also. It is a cross and a resurrection. The old dies and the new is born.
And then there is no problem, you can go back to the world, but you come back totally different. Then the world doesn’t disturb you. Then there is no problem. Then you can use your eyes and ears and do whatever you want to do; nothing disturbs you once you are settled and rooted and centered in your being, nothing disturbs. You remain in the world and the world is not there. You move in the darkest night and the inner light never leaves you. You live in that inner light; now there is no problem with the outer darkness.
…close its doors, dull its edges… The mind is very cunning, clever, logical. It is a great rationalizer. Whatever the mind wants to do, it gives you reasons. All reasons are false. If you look deep down you will find they are not reasons but rationalizations. You want to be angry – you find an excuse. The excuse is not the cause, but you deceive yourself and others that because of this you became angry. That excuse was just an excuse, you rationalized it.
You come home, you are angry with the boss – and then you jump on your wife. You were feeling jittery, you were feeling angry, a rage was boiling within you, but it was difficult to throw it on the boss, it would have cost too much. It was not going to pay. You thought, “Better to be economical.” You contained your anger there, you continued smiling, you went on wagging your tail. Then you come home. You have to throw it on somebody; you have to find a weaker link in your life where you can throw it without any loss to you. You throw it on your wife or on your child.
Or, if you are a henpecked husband, as almost all husbands are, then the wife is also a boss and you cannot throw it on her, so you have to do something with your dog, with your cat, or with something you can destroy – your radio. Or you can go mad when driving your car: you can bring the all the anger to your feet and you can go on pressing the accelerator more and more.
Now psychologists say that almost fifty percent of car accidents happen because of anger. They have nothing to do with the traffic; they have something to do with the inner traffic of the mind. Fifty percent! It is too much.
Angry? The car goes on gathering more and more speed; you are throwing out your anger through speed. But you may be thinking, “The wind is beautiful and the morning is good, and I would like to have a good drive.” That is just an excuse. The morning is good every day, it is not only that it is good today. When somebody passes or tries to overtake your car…
Once it happened I was traveling with a friend – he was driving. Suddenly I became aware that he was driving too fast, and not only that, I looked at the milestones and we were going in the wrong direction. So I asked him, “What is the matter?”
He said, “Keep quiet. Just half an hour more.”
So I waited. I saw what he was doing – he was trying to overtake a car which had overtaken our car. When he had overtaken that car, he stopped the car and said, “Now we can go in our own direction.”
What did this man think himself to be? I never traveled again with him – the man was mad!
But he rationalized it. He said, “If you give in to small things, you start giving in to big things.” So he told me, “Never give in to anything. Give a good fight, whatever the cost! Because life is a struggle. It is a survival of the fittest.”
We were late, people were waiting for me in another town and we reached two hours late. But he had to give a good fight – to the unknown man who may not even have been aware of what was happening. And he may have killed me, and himself, because he was mad.
The mind goes on finding rationalizations; it calls them reasons – they are not reasons. …dull its edges… Try to find out, and the more you try to find out, the more the edge will be dulled. Then you will suddenly see the whole irrationality of the mind – and it goes on trying, “I am rational!” It is one of the greatest discoveries of this century that man is not rational.
Aristotle defined man as a rational animal. It took twenty centuries to find the truth. The credit goes to Freud; he discovered that man is not rational at all. He is a rationalizing animal, not rational. In fact there are no reasons, he just goes on finding reasons. There are unconscious instincts and he goes on creating a facade of reasons around it, which are all false.
Watch and soon you will see. And once you see, the edges of the mind will be dulled. Then it won’t look so sharp, so clever, so intelligent. It is not, no mind is intelligent. The mind cannot be intelligent, the mind is mediocre. The very quality of the mind is mediocre.
People you call genius, talented, very intelligent – just watch them! A great genius, he may have got a Nobel Prize, gets up in the morning and finds that his slippers are not there in the right place, and he goes mad – great genius! Because the slippers were not found in the right place in the morning, his whole day is destroyed. He is angry at the whole world. And from that, many things will happen – because the slippers were not in the right place. And you call this man a genius. Many things will happen which will have faraway consequences.
Angry, he will go to the office. Angry, he will talk to people, he will create chains of anger. And one anger leads to another, deeper layer of anger. He may do something of which he will repent later on. And the whole cause was that his slippers were not found in the right place.
And you call this man a genius? You call this man very intelligent? He may be clever, but he is not wise. He may be clever, but he is not intelligent. He may be knowledgeable, but he has no capacity of knowing. And what does it matter if the slippers are not found in the right place?
No, that may be again just an excuse. It may be connected with other things – in the night he had a nightmare and he was afraid, and when he got up, trembling, then he found that his slippers were not in the right place. Now the whole anger is focused on this fact. He may throw the servant out, fire him, or this may become a cause for a divorce. You may think that I am going too far – I am not. I have watched many divorces and I have never found any better reasons for them – just like this, small things. In life there are no big things, only small things.
…dull its edges, untie its tangles… The mind is very entangled: chains and chains, associations. It is a net, a mad net. Everything goes into the mind and becomes more and more confusing. The more you know, the more the mind is confused – because all that you add to it adds to its confusion.
…untie its tangles… Try to see things more clearly. Try to see the confusion. Watch the confusion. Become a watcher and don’t get identified with it; create a little distance between you and your mind. To create this distance is to become a sannyasin. To create this distance is to create the possibility of an inner evolution.
…untie its tangles… How will you untie them? If you try to untie them you will never be able to untie them. The only way to untie them is to create a distance. You have observed many times – you may not be alert to it – that when someone else is in difficulty you always give good advice. If the same difficulty happens to you, you may not be so wise. Why? Why does it happen? Why does your intelligence function so well when somebody else is in difficulty? Because there is a distance.
I was reading the biography of a great actress, Sarah Bernhardt. Once it happened, she was watching a drama. A new actress was working, and the new actress got so identified with her acting in the role and the play that she completely forgot that she was an actress. She started crying and weeping with tears streaming down. She created a mess of herself: in the middle of the play she had to be suddenly pulled away from the stage, because she had completely forgotten that she was just playing a role, was just an actress. She became confused – as if this was her life.
When Sarah went out, she called that new actress to her and told her, “When you cry, the audience does not. You should act, but you should keep a distance. You should not become identified with it.”
And this should be the key for your whole life because the whole of life is a big drama. The stage is vast, but it is a drama. You should keep a distance. Whatever happens, happens in the play, in the drama. You are a witness, you should not become one with it. If you become one with it, you are entangled. If you remain aloof, and you can look at it from a distance, your mind never gets in confusion. If you are away, the mind remains crystal clear. The whole entanglement is of identification.
…soften its light… Don’t look at everything in the light of the mind, in the glare of the mind. Soften its light. Look at things sometimes from the heart also. Bring the soft light of the heart to things, look with the light of love also.
Don’t go on looking at things only from a logical standpoint. Don’t be too logical. Sometimes you need to be illogical also; only then can the balance be kept. Rational and irrational too, because you are both. You have to keep a balance. There are sane moments, and you need some insane moments also. Do mathematics – but sometimes become mad in music also. Calculate – but sometimes dance also. Work – but play also, so that the balance is not lost.
If the mind becomes your only way of seeing things, then the light is too much. It is destructive. Then the very glare will not allow you to see things as they are. It is just as when you look at the sun and then you look at other things – everything looks dark, not in its right proportion.
…submerge its turmoil… The mind is constantly in a turmoil within. A continuous chaos; a storm goes on and on and on. Submerge it, otherwise it won’t allow you to listen to the softer music of life. It won’t allow you to see the delicate things in life. It won’t allow you to feel.
How to submerge that turmoil within? What to do? – three things. One: if you look inside and you feel turmoil there, just sit on the bank – don’t jump into it. The river is moving, you sit on the bank, let it flow. Don’t do anything. Learn the art of doing things by non-doing. Just sit and watch. It is really a great secret. If you can see and watch the turmoil of the mind, it settles by itself by and by. It is just as you come into a house, the dust is stirred up; you sit again, the dust settles. If you start trying to settle the dust, you will unsettle it more. So don’t jump in, and don’t try to submerge the turmoil. Who will try? And how will you try? You will stir even deeper layers of it. Don’t do anything, just sit. And this sitting is meditation.
In Japan they call meditation zazen. Zazen simply means sitting and doing nothing. A Zen monk sits for six to eight hours every day, doing nothing. And just sitting like that for a few days, a few months, the mind settles by itself. Mad people are brought to Zen monasteries. There, the monks don’t do anything to them, no treatment is given. They simply help the people to sit. They feed them, they don’t disturb them, they don’t force any discipline on them. They are left in faraway huts, their needs are taken care of, and they are told just to sit or lie or just to stand – and don’t bother! Within twenty-one days, the madness subsides; their turmoil disappears.
Now Western psychiatrists have become interested in this fact because they cannot do this in years. They give electric shocks, and insulin shocks, and this and that – they create more turmoil. And even if they help in some way, the man loses his consciousness. Madness may be suppressed but the man has lost his aliveness also. After the electric shock you are not the same man again. And if the shock has gone very deep, you will lose some intelligence also. The madness will go, but your character will be affected permanently. It is not a gain really – or a gain at a very great loss. You may become normal, forced to be normal, but you will become a little stupid also.
In Zen monasteries they don’t do anything. They know a great secret of Lao Tzu’s. They don’t do, they just sit, just watch. Things settle by themselves. Why? – because to remain unsettled is unnatural. This is the law. If you don’t do anything, everything is going to settle by itself. How can something remain unsettled forever?
You are angry. Just sit with closed eyes – watch. How long can you remain angry – try! Suddenly after a few minutes you will feel it is no longer there, or the acuteness of it has gone, or suddenly half an hour afterward you may recognize and remember that you had completely forgotten that you were angry, and you were thinking of something else.
If the anger had been followed, you may have killed somebody; or killed yourself; or killed a relationship; or killed a love – and this is more dangerous than killing a beloved. You may have destroyed something beautiful and delicate. And just by sitting, it settles.
It settles because there is a deep law working. Life does not allow turmoil to be permanent – it cannot be permanent, only rest can be permanent. Everything settles, just give it time. Only time is needed.
…submerge its turmoil
– this is the mystic way.
Then love and hatred cannot touch him.
Profit and loss cannot reach him.
Honor and disgrace cannot affect him.
Therefore is he always the honored one of the world.
Then duality disappears. When you have reached your innermost core, the one, duality disappears. Love and hate, honor and disgrace, failure and success, all disappear. And the greatest duality also disappears: that duality is of the soul and the body, God and the world.
Then everything is one, a vast ocean of oneness. An oceanic feeling pervades. It is ecstatic. It is a benediction. It is the greatest blessing that can happen to a man – and when this blessing happens, this blessing of oneness: Therefore is he always the honored one of the world.
Only such beings are honored forever and forever. Centuries pass, kings come and go, empires are built and destroyed, but a Buddha, or a Jesus, or a Krishna – they remain. They are no longer a part of the temporal changing world. They remain like eternal stars, unmoving, unchanging, guiding those who are ready to be guided, ready to pour down all they have to those whose hearts are open, who are not closed.
Enough for today.
He who knows does not speak;
he who speaks does not know.
Fill up its apertures,
close its doors,
dull its edges,
untie its tangles,
soften its light,
submerge its turmoil
– this is the mystic unity.
Then love and hatred cannot touch him.
Profit and loss cannot reach him.
Honor and disgrace cannot affect him.
Therefore is he always the honored one of the world.
Language is human. Obviously it has to be very limited. It is good for objective things; it is completely useless for the inner, the inside.
Language can say something, but it cannot say the all. If you are sitting at the dinner table, language is useful for saying, “Please pass me the salt.” It is utilitarian. It has a use, but it cannot say the truth because truth is not a utility, and truth is not something objective. It is not there outside you, it happens somewhere at the deepest core of your being.
Something is between you and me: we can decide what we are going to call it – it is a contract. If both parties are willing, language is perfectly okay. But when something has happened within me, it is not something between me and you, I cannot indicate what it is. Even if I indicate, you cannot see what it is. So no contract is possible.
Religion is beyond language. At the most, language can say what it is not. It cannot say what truth is, but it can say what it is not. At the most it can be a negation. We cannot say what God is because that will be limiting him through our limited words, concepts; at the most we can say what he is not. And all the scriptures only say what he is not. They eliminate the error, but they never show the truth. But if you can go on eliminating the error, one day suddenly the truth is revealed to you. It is not revealed through language, it is revealed through silence.
So the first thing to be understood very deeply – because it becomes a great pitfall if you don’t understand it – is that language can be dangerous, one can be deluded by it.
You know the word God, but the word God is not God. In the word God there is nothing godly. The word God is absolutely hollow and empty. It has nothing in it. You can go on repeating it millions of times, nothing will happen to you. It is an empty shell, inside it is hollow. Words cannot carry the inner experience.
It may have been true when Jesus used the word, it may have meant something to him – but not to those who heard him. This has to be understood. If I say samadhi I mean something, I know it. But when you hear the word samadhi it is just a noise in your ears; at the most you can understand the meaning that is given in the dictionary. But a dictionary is not existence. It is not a substitute for existence. Samadhi can be known only when you go in it, when you become it; there is no other way to know it.
That’s why Lao Tzu goes on insisting that truth cannot be spoken, and that which is spoken cannot be true. But he speaks because this much can be said. This is a negation.
He says:
He who knows does not speak;
he who speaks does not know.
This much can be said. Lao Tzu speaks – whether he knows or not. According to his own principle, if he knows he should not speak. If he speaks then he is not in the know, then he does not know. Then you will fall into a riddle which cannot be solved. If he does not know, then how can he say such a great truth?
He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know. If he knows, then why is he speaking? If he does not know, then he cannot even hint at such a profundity. Try to understand this paradox. He is simply eliminating one thing. All that he is saying in these two sentences – which are deeply pregnant with meaning, very significant – he is saying: Don’t be deluded by words. They are not truth. They may appear like truth, but they are not. A lived moment cannot be expressed. A live thing can be known only by living it.
You fall in love – then you know what it is. You may go on reading a thousand and one books about love, and they may be beautiful books, they may even have been written by those who have loved and who have known what love is, but by reading them you will never come to know what love is.
Love is not a concept to be understood. It is an experience to be possessed by. When love takes over, you are thrown off center. You are no longer there: love exists and you are not. You cannot manipulate love. A concept can be manipulated, you can interpret a concept, you can put this meaning or that into it – but love? Love cannot be manipulated.
It is not that you love, it is nothing that you do, it is something that happens to you. Suddenly you are in a whirlwind. A greater force than you has taken possession. You are no longer yourself, you are possessed.
That’s why people think that lovers are mad – they are. Love is a beautiful madness. It is like madness, it has a quality like madness, because one becomes possessed by it. People say, “Love is blind.” They are right, love is blind, because love has its own eyes. These ordinary eyes don’t work. Love has its own ways of seeing and feeling and being. All ordinary ways are thrown off track. Love has its own sort of world: a new world is created around the lover. He looks blind to everybody else, but he is not blind in himself; in fact for the first time he has attained eyes, vision, insight.
Love can be known only by falling in love; by becoming, not even a lover, but by becoming love itself. If you are a lover, love has not happened yet. You still remain in control. If you want, you can change. If you want, you can move away. There is still a choice, love has not happened; you are still not possessed by it. You will not know.
You may be moving according to some pattern, theory, of how to love and how not to love. You must be moving through some conditioning – but love has not become your heart, it does not beat within you, it still remains part of your mind. Language is of the mind and experience is of the heart. And the heart has its own world, has its own dimension. So love cannot be expressed – and truth is even deeper than love.
Three layers have to be remembered. The first layer is of the head, which is the most superficial: the world of language, concepts, theories. You can manipulate it very easily, you are the master there.
Then there is a second layer, deeper than the head: that is of the heart. There your mastery is not at all. You become a slave. You cannot control it; love becomes the master, you become the slave. It possesses you completely.
But still the mind can say something about love, because the heart is not very far away from the head, the distance is not very far. The mind can have a few glimpses. It can look back, it can look within, and have a few glimpses. That’s why poetry is possible, painting is possible, music is possible. These are all glimpses, from the head, of the heart.
But then there is a third layer of your being which is the last layer, the very substratum, the very ground. That is your being. The head is thinking, the heart is feeling, the being is simply being.
Godliness, truth, ecstasy, nirvana, enlightenment – they belong to being. The head has not even heard about it. It can have a little glimpse of the second layer, of the heart, of love. It has not even heard that there exists another layer deeper than the heart. The heart can have a little glimpse of the being, because it is nearer to it. So people who are in love can have a little understanding – I say a little – of prayer. Because prayer is just like love.
When Jesus says “God is love,” he is talking to the people of the heart. He was talking to his disciples. If he had been talking in a university to university professors and academicians, he would not have said such a foolish thing, that God is love. He would have said God is mathematics, God is logic, or something else.
But he was talking to his very intimate disciples, very close, who were in deep love with him. That is why he could say, “God is love.” He was talking to the heart in the language of the heart. He was indicating to the people of the heart that there is a further goal: that further goal is godliness, and where you are standing is love. Jesus is trying to create a bridge between God and love; that’s why he says God is love, or love is God.
He was not talking to popes, theologians, people well-versed in religious matters, no. He was talking to fishermen, farmers, carpenters – people who are not heady, people who are still of the feeling world, belong to feeling. That’s why he could say God is love. The heart can have a little glimpse.
So the first step is from the head toward the heart. And the second step is from the heart toward the being. Nothing can be said about the being, because even to say something about the heart is impossible. Nothing can be said about the being. You have to move, you have to know to know. There is no shortcut to it.
Says Lao Tzu: He who knows does not speak… All those who have known have not spoken. You will not believe it, because Buddha spoke for forty years continuously. Every day for forty years he was speaking and speaking and speaking. And still, those who have known Buddha, they say he never spoke a single word. I go on speaking continuously every day, but those amidst you who know me will know that I have not spoken a single word.
Because all that is spoken is just a hint. Nothing is spoken in it. It is just a net, a fisherman’s net, so that those who live in their heads can be caught. Once they are caught, the use of language is finished. Then their hearts start throbbing. Then a communion – not communication but communion – happens between the master and the disciple; then their hearts start beating in the same rhythm. Then they breathe in the same rhythm. No need to say anything then. Then everything is understood without being said.
All talk is to prepare you for silence, and only in silence can truth be given.
Bodhidharma went to China many centuries ago to search for a disciple. He had something within him and his days were numbered; soon he would have to disappear from the body. And he was searching for somebody with whom communion would be possible. India was full of great scholars, but he had to go to China to find somebody who could understand the language of heart, the language of silence – which is no language at all.
He waited for nine years. Then came his disciple. Nobody knows what happened between these two people, nobody can know. But a transfer happened. Bodhidharma gave all that he had to Hui Neng and the tradition of Zen was born.
Now people go on saying that Bodhidharma gave Zen to Hui Neng: a transfer without scriptures, a communication without words. Even if you had been present there you would not have known what had transpired. It was a jump of being, from being to another being. Hui Neng was open, Bodhidharma jumped in. Something that cannot be said was said – not in words but in being. Existentially it was transferred, and that has been the way. Since then, Zen masters go on giving their final word wordlessly.
It happened to another Zen master who was dying… He called his most beloved disciple and said, “Now the moment has come, and I must give you the scripture that I have been carrying for long. It was given to me by my master when he was dying; now I am dying.”
He pulled out a book, a book he had been hiding under his pillow. Everybody knew about it but nobody had ever been allowed to look into it. He was very secretive about it. When he went to his bath he would carry the book with him. Nobody had ever been allowed to see what was in the book – and everybody of course was curious, tremendously curious.
And now he had called this disciple and said, “The last moment has come and I have to give you the scripture that was given to me by my master. Keep it. Preserve it as carefully as possible – protect it so that it should not be destroyed. It is a valuable treasure. Once lost – lost for centuries.”
The disciple laughed and said, “But whatever has to be attained I have attained without this scripture, so what is the need? You can take it with you.”
The master insisted. The disciple said, “Okay, if you insist then it’s okay.” The book was given to him. It was a winter evening, very cold, and a fire was burning in the room – the disciple took the book and without even looking at it, he threw it into the fire.
The master jumped and said, “What are you doing!”
And the disciple shouted even more loudly, “What are you saying! To preserve a scripture?”
The master started laughing. He said, “You passed the examination. Had you preserved it, you would have missed! And there was nothing in it; to tell you the truth, it is completely empty. It was just to see whether you have become capable of understanding silence, or if you still cling deep down to words, concepts, theories, philosophies.”
All philosophies, all that can be said, are just like the porch of a palace. I see you every evening in darshan in the porch – because all questions can be solved only in the porch. Once you are ready, there is no question; then you can enter the palace. Have you ever heard the name of a Greek wise man, Zeno? He was the founder of the Stoic philosophy. Just like me, he used to teach in the porch. The word stoic comes from a Greek word stoikas, from stoa, which means porch. His whole life he was teaching in the porch and people would say, “You have such a beautiful house, why do you teach in the porch?” He said, “All teaching is just like the porch. When you are ready to listen to the silence you enter the temple – then there is no talk.” From the word stoa, porch, his whole philosophy is known as Stoicism.
All words can at the most become porches; they lead you toward the inner temple; but if you cling to them you remain in the porch – the porch is not the palace. Lao Tzu is saying something which is just like a porch, a door. If you understand it, you will drop all words, language – in fact the whole mind. Where you leave your shoes in the porch, you should leave your mind also. Only then do you enter the innermost shrine of being.
He who knows does not speak… Even if he speaks, he speaks only to say this much. Even if he speaks, he speaks only against speaking. He does not want to say something in it, he simply wants to destroy all the words within you – his speech is destructive. He simply wants to create a vacuum within you, and of course words can be destroyed only by words. Poison can be destroyed only by poison. You have a thorn in your foot – another thorn is needed to pull it out. All that I am saying is like another thorn to pull out the thorns that are already in your being. Once the first thorn is out, the second is also useless – you throw both of them away. All words are used by knowers to pull out other words which have already settled within you. Once you are empty – finished.
There has been a great man in India, a very rare being: men like him you can count on your fingers. His name was Nagarjuna. He has contradicted everything. He has debated against everything. He has criticized all theories. And people were puzzled. They would ask, “Okay, whatever you say is okay, but what is your standpoint?”
And Nagarjuna would say, “I don’t have any standpoint. I am here just to destroy theories. I don’t have a theory to replace them with. Whatever is your theory – come! I will criticize it and destroy it. But don’t ask for a substitute because I have none. You become empty, that’s perfect, there is no need to do anything.”
If you believe in God, Nagarjuna will criticize God. If you don’t believe in God and you are an atheist, he will criticize atheism. If you believe in the soul, he is the enemy of the soul. If you don’t believe in the soul, then he is also your enemy. If you ask, “What is your philosophy?” he will simply shrug his shoulders. He will say, “None. I am here to destroy.”
Those who know, they have spoken just to destroy, so that emptiness is left behind. In that emptiness is communion.
The word communion means: come to union. There is a deep unity then. In that unity, that which cannot be said can be said. No words are needed, not even gestures are needed. It is simply transferred without any scripture.
He who knows does not speak;
he who speaks does not know.
Fill up its apertures…
Now he is saying what to do: how to attain that silence which knows truth; how to attain that emptiness in which truth descends in you, in which you become a vehicle and godliness takes possession. You become a temple, and godliness comes and settles within you.
Fill up its apertures… The mind has many apertures through which it is constantly refilled and refueled. You go on looking – what are you looking at? You are not looking for something in particular, you are just looking; anything that passes by, you look. The mind is hankering, through the eyes, to collect whatever information it can collect. The mind is curious – you even read advertisements written on walls, and you pass by the same wall every day, and you read it again and again and again. And you know what is written there, you have read it so many times, but again when you pass, unconsciously like a robot you read it again. You go on collecting information for the mind: the mind needs to be fed by information. It is a computer, it is asking constantly, “I am hungry, bring me more knowledge.” Knowledge is the mind’s food, it thrives on it.
The ears go on listening to what is happening; all the senses are apertures from where the mind goes on seeking and searching for knowledge. Even absolutely useless knowledge. You cannot even imagine of what use this knowledge is going to be. But the mind goes on collecting in the hope that someday, maybe, it can use it. That day never comes.
Says Lao Tzu: Fill up its apertures… If you want to attain silence, fill up its apertures. Open your eyes only when it is absolutely necessary. Look only when it is absolutely needed; otherwise there is no need. Bypass things without looking at them. Keep your eyes empty. Look at the world with empty eyes so that you are not looking at it, you are not looking at anything.
You may have that feeling when you encounter an enlightened man. He looks at you, but he is not looking at you. He looks and looks not. His eyes are like empty mirrors. He is not indifferent; he is not interested either. He hears, and hears not. If you say something he hears, but if you stop in the middle he is not curious for the remaining half sentence. Even if you stop in the middle of the sentence, there comes the full point for him: it’s finished! He is not curious. Then the mind stops accumulating.
In Tibetan monasteries, whenever a new disciple wants to enter the monastery, he has to sit at the door for twenty-four hours, sometimes even for forty-eight hours, sometimes even more – hungry, with closed eyes. The master will pass many times by the door, disciples will pass, other people will come and go, and he has to sit there with closed eyes.
That is the first examination: whether he is capable of becoming non-curious. Otherwise he would like to look at who is going out, he would like to open the eyes just a little bit: who has come, who has gone. He will be curious. If a person is so restless and curious that he cannot keep his eyes closed for twenty-four hours, then he will be rejected by the monastery. Even small children when they want to enter a monastery have to pass this.
But if you can keep your eyes closed for twenty-four hours, it is a feat, because the mind is so restless and continuously asking for information that if you don’t give it information, it starts suffocating. In fact it starts dying.
That’s why sense deprivation can become the death of the mind. Many experiments have been done, are being carried out, all over the world on sensory deprivation. When all your senses are deprived of their usual food, time seems to be unending. One hour has passed – you think eternity.
You may be totally comfortable, resting in a tank which is made like the womb of a mother, in lukewarm water, floating; no anxiety, darkness surrounds you. Beautiful – no worry, you simply relax in the womb again. But within minutes you start feeling such deep restlessness. The mind asks for the constant supply of food.
Sense deprivation has been one of the most used methods in the East. One who wants to reach ecstasy, samadhi, has to learn to be without this constant hankering of the mind to be fed.
You are doing two things together. People come to me, they say, “We would like to get rid of this mind, it is just anguish and nothing else – a hell.” But if I say to them, “Then close your apertures more and more” – because on one hand you want to drop the mind and on another hand you go on feeding it – that seems difficult.
I send people on twenty-one days silence. It becomes really a hell after four, five days. They are not doing: they are allowed just to sit with closed eyes, with closed ears, to move, walk – but not to look around, just to look on the path that they are following, four feet ahead at the most. To eat, rest – nothing in particular – but just to relax the senses, close the apertures. After the fourth, fifth day the mind starts rebelling.
If they can continue, near the fourteenth or fifteenth day the mind starts accepting the fact – just like a person who is dying in hospital; when you say, “You are dying,” he wants to deny, reject the fact. But by and by what can he do? Helplessly he accepts and once he accepts, then there is no worry. Then he relaxes.
On the fourteenth, fifteenth day, if you continue, and remain indifferent to the constant hammering of the mind to seek more…more food for itself…the mind relaxes. And once the mind relaxes within you, your being starts flowering. The mind is the bondage on the being.
So try to live in the senses as minimally as possible.
Mulla Nasruddin came to me once. Hearing about meditations, he became interested. So I told him first just to sit for a year with closed eyes. Knowing him well, I thought even that was going to be impossible. He said, “But I won’t close my eyes.”
I said to him, “Have you understood me? Do you understand me or not? Close your eyes!”
So he closed them a little bit – half, fifty-fifty – and he said, “More than this I cannot do.”
I asked, “What is the matter?”
He said, “I am strictly a middle-of-the-road man. At the most I can half close my eyes. I cannot close them completely. Who knows what is going to happen? I may miss something beautiful, so that I cannot do. I can close half and I will keep half open, alert to what is going on.”
He said to me, “I absolutely agree with the old lady who used to go to church: whenever the name of God was mentioned, she would bow down – that was okay. But the priest there became a little worried because whenever the name of the Devil was mentioned, then too she would bow down. One day the priest could not contain his curiosity. After the congregation left, he went to the old lady, caught her outside the church, and asked, ‘What is the matter? Why do you do this? I can understand that when the name of God is mentioned you bow down, but why do you bow down when the name of the Devil is mentioned?’ She said, ‘You never know, it may come in handy any time.’”
Mulla Nasruddin told me, “I am strictly a middle-of-the-way man. I bow down to God and to the Devil also; one never knows, it may come in handy.”
People go on trying to create a compromise with the mind. You cannot win. If you compromise, the mind is going to win. All compromise is a defeat in the inner world. If you decide that you would like to know your innermost core of being, then this is the way:
Fill up its apertures,
close its doors,
dull its edges,
untie its tangles,
soften its light,
submerge its turmoil
– this is the mystic unity.
Then you come to know that which is one. This is the mystic unity, the communion.
I will repeat again: Fill up its apertures… Use the senses as minimally as possible. And if you look, you will find that you are using them absolutely unnecessarily. Ninety-nine percent of their usage can be stopped; one percent will be enough. And you will be surprised, when you use your senses as minimally as possible they become very, very sharp. Because the whole energy becomes concentrated.
When you don’t go on looking at anybody and everybody, then suddenly you look at a roseflower – your eyes are so clear, without any clouds. Otherwise you go on seeing things, so many things – in those many things, the roseflower is just one of the things; your eyes are dusty, the rose cannot flower for you.
You come and look at your child but you don’t look; you have a screen of so many experiences on the eyes, your eyes are already filled. How can you see the face of your child? Otherwise you would have seen the face of God there. How can you see the roseflower? Otherwise the rose would have disappeared and you would have seen the flowering of the divine.
Your eyes will become fresh, clean and you will become very perceptive – if you don’t use your senses unnecessarily. The more you use them the more your senses are bored, tired. They lose sharpness, they lose sensitivity; they become very, very dull.
Fill up its apertures, close its doors… Wherever you find the mind has made a door to go into the world, close it. The mind has very cunning ways to go into the world. Just watch from where it escapes into the world.
Freud discovered that the whole functioning of the mind is associative – that is, a door. You look at a dog. In fact you should contain yourself to this dog; there is no need to move on. But suddenly you remember a dog that you used to know in your childhood, and that dog belonged to a girl and you had fallen in love with that girl. Now you go on and on. Now this dog – the fact, the factual – is no longer there. It simply worked as a key. Now you are moving: you loved that girl but you couldn’t manage to possess her, then all the other possessions, then all the other girls – a long queue is there.
Then you go on jumping, hopping from one thing to another. The mind moves into a mad world from anywhere, and then there is no end to it. Freud used this door for his whole psychoanalytic method: thought association. That’s why psychoanalysis goes on for years and years – and with no result, in fact. You can go on forever and forever. One thought leads to another, another thought leads to another, and there are millions and millions of thoughts.
I have heard…
Mulla Nasruddin was in love with a woman. He brought her home and when they were going to bed, resting on the bed, relaxing on the bed, the woman asked, “Nasruddin, how many women have been here before me, in your bed?”
Nasruddin kept silent, minutes passed. Almost half an hour had passed, then the woman said, “I am still waiting!”
Nasruddin said, “And what do you think I am doing? I am still counting!”
That’s how things are related. If you start counting, if you start on the associative journey, there is no end to it. Association is a door. You will have to find them – there are many doors.
And you always go through the same doors, and get into the same troubles, and you never become aware that it has become a repetitive thing, a vicious circle. You go on moving in circles. Close all the doors. It will be difficult in the beginning because you will feel it is just like suicide. Samadhi is like suicide. The only difference is that no suicide is as complete as samadhi. But it is not only suicide, it is a resurrection also. It is a cross and a resurrection. The old dies and the new is born.
And then there is no problem, you can go back to the world, but you come back totally different. Then the world doesn’t disturb you. Then there is no problem. Then you can use your eyes and ears and do whatever you want to do; nothing disturbs you once you are settled and rooted and centered in your being, nothing disturbs. You remain in the world and the world is not there. You move in the darkest night and the inner light never leaves you. You live in that inner light; now there is no problem with the outer darkness.
…close its doors, dull its edges… The mind is very cunning, clever, logical. It is a great rationalizer. Whatever the mind wants to do, it gives you reasons. All reasons are false. If you look deep down you will find they are not reasons but rationalizations. You want to be angry – you find an excuse. The excuse is not the cause, but you deceive yourself and others that because of this you became angry. That excuse was just an excuse, you rationalized it.
You come home, you are angry with the boss – and then you jump on your wife. You were feeling jittery, you were feeling angry, a rage was boiling within you, but it was difficult to throw it on the boss, it would have cost too much. It was not going to pay. You thought, “Better to be economical.” You contained your anger there, you continued smiling, you went on wagging your tail. Then you come home. You have to throw it on somebody; you have to find a weaker link in your life where you can throw it without any loss to you. You throw it on your wife or on your child.
Or, if you are a henpecked husband, as almost all husbands are, then the wife is also a boss and you cannot throw it on her, so you have to do something with your dog, with your cat, or with something you can destroy – your radio. Or you can go mad when driving your car: you can bring the all the anger to your feet and you can go on pressing the accelerator more and more.
Now psychologists say that almost fifty percent of car accidents happen because of anger. They have nothing to do with the traffic; they have something to do with the inner traffic of the mind. Fifty percent! It is too much.
Angry? The car goes on gathering more and more speed; you are throwing out your anger through speed. But you may be thinking, “The wind is beautiful and the morning is good, and I would like to have a good drive.” That is just an excuse. The morning is good every day, it is not only that it is good today. When somebody passes or tries to overtake your car…
Once it happened I was traveling with a friend – he was driving. Suddenly I became aware that he was driving too fast, and not only that, I looked at the milestones and we were going in the wrong direction. So I asked him, “What is the matter?”
He said, “Keep quiet. Just half an hour more.”
So I waited. I saw what he was doing – he was trying to overtake a car which had overtaken our car. When he had overtaken that car, he stopped the car and said, “Now we can go in our own direction.”
What did this man think himself to be? I never traveled again with him – the man was mad!
But he rationalized it. He said, “If you give in to small things, you start giving in to big things.” So he told me, “Never give in to anything. Give a good fight, whatever the cost! Because life is a struggle. It is a survival of the fittest.”
We were late, people were waiting for me in another town and we reached two hours late. But he had to give a good fight – to the unknown man who may not even have been aware of what was happening. And he may have killed me, and himself, because he was mad.
The mind goes on finding rationalizations; it calls them reasons – they are not reasons. …dull its edges… Try to find out, and the more you try to find out, the more the edge will be dulled. Then you will suddenly see the whole irrationality of the mind – and it goes on trying, “I am rational!” It is one of the greatest discoveries of this century that man is not rational.
Aristotle defined man as a rational animal. It took twenty centuries to find the truth. The credit goes to Freud; he discovered that man is not rational at all. He is a rationalizing animal, not rational. In fact there are no reasons, he just goes on finding reasons. There are unconscious instincts and he goes on creating a facade of reasons around it, which are all false.
Watch and soon you will see. And once you see, the edges of the mind will be dulled. Then it won’t look so sharp, so clever, so intelligent. It is not, no mind is intelligent. The mind cannot be intelligent, the mind is mediocre. The very quality of the mind is mediocre.
People you call genius, talented, very intelligent – just watch them! A great genius, he may have got a Nobel Prize, gets up in the morning and finds that his slippers are not there in the right place, and he goes mad – great genius! Because the slippers were not found in the right place in the morning, his whole day is destroyed. He is angry at the whole world. And from that, many things will happen – because the slippers were not in the right place. And you call this man a genius. Many things will happen which will have faraway consequences.
Angry, he will go to the office. Angry, he will talk to people, he will create chains of anger. And one anger leads to another, deeper layer of anger. He may do something of which he will repent later on. And the whole cause was that his slippers were not found in the right place.
And you call this man a genius? You call this man very intelligent? He may be clever, but he is not wise. He may be clever, but he is not intelligent. He may be knowledgeable, but he has no capacity of knowing. And what does it matter if the slippers are not found in the right place?
No, that may be again just an excuse. It may be connected with other things – in the night he had a nightmare and he was afraid, and when he got up, trembling, then he found that his slippers were not in the right place. Now the whole anger is focused on this fact. He may throw the servant out, fire him, or this may become a cause for a divorce. You may think that I am going too far – I am not. I have watched many divorces and I have never found any better reasons for them – just like this, small things. In life there are no big things, only small things.
…dull its edges, untie its tangles… The mind is very entangled: chains and chains, associations. It is a net, a mad net. Everything goes into the mind and becomes more and more confusing. The more you know, the more the mind is confused – because all that you add to it adds to its confusion.
…untie its tangles… Try to see things more clearly. Try to see the confusion. Watch the confusion. Become a watcher and don’t get identified with it; create a little distance between you and your mind. To create this distance is to become a sannyasin. To create this distance is to create the possibility of an inner evolution.
…untie its tangles… How will you untie them? If you try to untie them you will never be able to untie them. The only way to untie them is to create a distance. You have observed many times – you may not be alert to it – that when someone else is in difficulty you always give good advice. If the same difficulty happens to you, you may not be so wise. Why? Why does it happen? Why does your intelligence function so well when somebody else is in difficulty? Because there is a distance.
I was reading the biography of a great actress, Sarah Bernhardt. Once it happened, she was watching a drama. A new actress was working, and the new actress got so identified with her acting in the role and the play that she completely forgot that she was an actress. She started crying and weeping with tears streaming down. She created a mess of herself: in the middle of the play she had to be suddenly pulled away from the stage, because she had completely forgotten that she was just playing a role, was just an actress. She became confused – as if this was her life.
When Sarah went out, she called that new actress to her and told her, “When you cry, the audience does not. You should act, but you should keep a distance. You should not become identified with it.”
And this should be the key for your whole life because the whole of life is a big drama. The stage is vast, but it is a drama. You should keep a distance. Whatever happens, happens in the play, in the drama. You are a witness, you should not become one with it. If you become one with it, you are entangled. If you remain aloof, and you can look at it from a distance, your mind never gets in confusion. If you are away, the mind remains crystal clear. The whole entanglement is of identification.
…soften its light… Don’t look at everything in the light of the mind, in the glare of the mind. Soften its light. Look at things sometimes from the heart also. Bring the soft light of the heart to things, look with the light of love also.
Don’t go on looking at things only from a logical standpoint. Don’t be too logical. Sometimes you need to be illogical also; only then can the balance be kept. Rational and irrational too, because you are both. You have to keep a balance. There are sane moments, and you need some insane moments also. Do mathematics – but sometimes become mad in music also. Calculate – but sometimes dance also. Work – but play also, so that the balance is not lost.
If the mind becomes your only way of seeing things, then the light is too much. It is destructive. Then the very glare will not allow you to see things as they are. It is just as when you look at the sun and then you look at other things – everything looks dark, not in its right proportion.
…submerge its turmoil… The mind is constantly in a turmoil within. A continuous chaos; a storm goes on and on and on. Submerge it, otherwise it won’t allow you to listen to the softer music of life. It won’t allow you to see the delicate things in life. It won’t allow you to feel.
How to submerge that turmoil within? What to do? – three things. One: if you look inside and you feel turmoil there, just sit on the bank – don’t jump into it. The river is moving, you sit on the bank, let it flow. Don’t do anything. Learn the art of doing things by non-doing. Just sit and watch. It is really a great secret. If you can see and watch the turmoil of the mind, it settles by itself by and by. It is just as you come into a house, the dust is stirred up; you sit again, the dust settles. If you start trying to settle the dust, you will unsettle it more. So don’t jump in, and don’t try to submerge the turmoil. Who will try? And how will you try? You will stir even deeper layers of it. Don’t do anything, just sit. And this sitting is meditation.
In Japan they call meditation zazen. Zazen simply means sitting and doing nothing. A Zen monk sits for six to eight hours every day, doing nothing. And just sitting like that for a few days, a few months, the mind settles by itself. Mad people are brought to Zen monasteries. There, the monks don’t do anything to them, no treatment is given. They simply help the people to sit. They feed them, they don’t disturb them, they don’t force any discipline on them. They are left in faraway huts, their needs are taken care of, and they are told just to sit or lie or just to stand – and don’t bother! Within twenty-one days, the madness subsides; their turmoil disappears.
Now Western psychiatrists have become interested in this fact because they cannot do this in years. They give electric shocks, and insulin shocks, and this and that – they create more turmoil. And even if they help in some way, the man loses his consciousness. Madness may be suppressed but the man has lost his aliveness also. After the electric shock you are not the same man again. And if the shock has gone very deep, you will lose some intelligence also. The madness will go, but your character will be affected permanently. It is not a gain really – or a gain at a very great loss. You may become normal, forced to be normal, but you will become a little stupid also.
In Zen monasteries they don’t do anything. They know a great secret of Lao Tzu’s. They don’t do, they just sit, just watch. Things settle by themselves. Why? – because to remain unsettled is unnatural. This is the law. If you don’t do anything, everything is going to settle by itself. How can something remain unsettled forever?
You are angry. Just sit with closed eyes – watch. How long can you remain angry – try! Suddenly after a few minutes you will feel it is no longer there, or the acuteness of it has gone, or suddenly half an hour afterward you may recognize and remember that you had completely forgotten that you were angry, and you were thinking of something else.
If the anger had been followed, you may have killed somebody; or killed yourself; or killed a relationship; or killed a love – and this is more dangerous than killing a beloved. You may have destroyed something beautiful and delicate. And just by sitting, it settles.
It settles because there is a deep law working. Life does not allow turmoil to be permanent – it cannot be permanent, only rest can be permanent. Everything settles, just give it time. Only time is needed.
…submerge its turmoil
– this is the mystic way.
Then love and hatred cannot touch him.
Profit and loss cannot reach him.
Honor and disgrace cannot affect him.
Therefore is he always the honored one of the world.
Then duality disappears. When you have reached your innermost core, the one, duality disappears. Love and hate, honor and disgrace, failure and success, all disappear. And the greatest duality also disappears: that duality is of the soul and the body, God and the world.
Then everything is one, a vast ocean of oneness. An oceanic feeling pervades. It is ecstatic. It is a benediction. It is the greatest blessing that can happen to a man – and when this blessing happens, this blessing of oneness: Therefore is he always the honored one of the world.
Only such beings are honored forever and forever. Centuries pass, kings come and go, empires are built and destroyed, but a Buddha, or a Jesus, or a Krishna – they remain. They are no longer a part of the temporal changing world. They remain like eternal stars, unmoving, unchanging, guiding those who are ready to be guided, ready to pour down all they have to those whose hearts are open, who are not closed.
Enough for today.