TAO
Tao The Three Treasures Vol 3 07
Seventh 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 difficult and easy, Lao Tzu says:
Accomplish do-nothing.
Attend to no-affairs.
Taste the flavorless.
Whether it is big or small, many or few,
requite hatred with virtue.
Deal with the difficult while yet it is easy;
deal with the big while yet it is small.
The difficult problems of the world
must be dealt with while they are yet easy;
the great problems of the world
must be dealt with while they are yet small.
Therefore the sage by never dealing with great problems
accomplishes greatness.
He who lightly makes a promise
will find it often hard to keep his faith.
He who makes light of many things
will encounter many difficulties.
Hence even the sage regards things as difficult,
and for that reason never meets with difficulties.
Life is not a problem. Rather, it is a mystery to be lived: not a problem to be solved. But it becomes a problem; and it becomes a problem because you go on postponing things, postponing them for tomorrow. That which can be done today, that which should be done today, cannot be done tomorrow. That which would have been a beautiful phenomenon today – a mystery to be lived – tomorrow will become a very, very hard and cold problem to be solved.
Life in itself, if lived here and now, is not a problem. Postponement creates problems and then you go on piling up. Then so much gathers around you that it becomes almost impossible to live – you are paralyzed, crippled, in a straitjacket, imprisoned. First try to understand this, then it will be easy to enter the sutra.
I was saying just a few days ago that even a genius, a very talented person may be a Nobel Prize winner, a great intellectual, world-known but behave in a childish way. If in the morning when he wakes he finds that his slippers are not in the right place, he is angry, irritated. If he could pay attention to his anger that very moment, he would laugh because it is so foolish. Ridiculous! But he does not pay attention to it.
He goes to the bathroom, irritated, in a bad mood, starts shaving his beard, but he is almost unconscious that a problem has not been dealt with, that a problem is there, poking its nose again and again into his being. And it is growing all the time, because in life nothing is nongrowing. Everything alive is growing, and when you are alive, your anger is alive, it grows. It never remains the same. Moment to moment it is gathering more momentum and force.
He goes on shaving, but irritated; he is not enjoying the act, the freshness of it, the beautiful moment when one feels unburdened, no, he is not in an enjoying mood. Unconscious, the razor slips from his hand, fall to the floor. Now he is even angrier. If he can deal with it right now he will laugh. It is foolish to be angry because a razor is not a being. A razor is never responsible for anything – how can you be angry at a razor? But now he is more irritated. Now his hands are moving more foolishly, unconsciously; it again slips, strikes the old antique mirror which he loves very much and the mirror is broken.
Now he is no longer sane. He comes out, bumps against the furniture, slams the door, slaps the child because he has not done his homework, starts arguing, becomes quarrelsome with his wife – and only for a small thing that was nothing! Because his slippers were not found in the right place.
Now our so-called genius takes his car and goes toward the office, but never reaches it because there is an accident. It was always going to be so. And just because of the slippers, because they were not found in the right place. Now he drives like a maniac, all his anger moves to his feet: he goes on pressing the accelerator, he is a drunkard! Drunk with his anger. There is an accident. After twelve hours or fifteen hours, when he opens his eyes, he is in hospital. And he will never be able to connect the whole thing.
And the story can go on and on – he falls in love with the nurse – and you can go on! Just because his slippers were not found in the right place. The whole family disturbed, then divorce. And the whole world will not be the same again – just because his slippers were not found in the right place.
Deal with things moment to moment, don’t let them pile up within you. Don’t accumulate. Life is really beautiful. It becomes ugly. Life is not a problem: every problem is so small that it is foolish to call life a problem. It is not a problem for the trees, it is not a problem for the birds, it is not a problem for the earth, for the sky. It is only a problem for man, because only man has learned a trick – the trick of postponement. Then small things become bigger. Then a moment comes when you cannot cope with them. Then you become so small and the problem is so big, it is almost impossible to cope with it. And then you always carry its burden on your head. And with that much burden, how can you enjoy? How can you delight? How can you celebrate? How can you dance?
And then somebody says, “There is a God” and you hear the words but you cannot believe. Maybe there is a Devil who is running the whole world, but not a God. Your whole life has become so crippled, so paralyzed, so burdensome, you would like to commit suicide. It is rare to find a man who has not contemplated committing suicide some time or other.
Psychoanalysts say that each man, each woman, in the long run of life thinks almost ten times of committing suicide. You don’t commit it because you are cowards. There is nothing in not committing it to take credit for. You contemplate it – that’s enough! That means life has become so unlivable that rather than being dragged more and more into it, you would like to drop it; you would like to become a dropout.
How can you love God? How can you pray? Because prayer comes out of great gratitude; prayer comes out of gratefulness. A life lived well becomes a life of prayer. It has nothing to do with churches and temples and mosques, it has something to do with the quality of your life. A life lived well, moment to moment, aware, alert, not postponed, becomes a prayerful life – and prayer by and by turns into meditation. Then you don’t even pray because the words disturb. Then your prayer becomes silent. When prayer is silent it is meditation.
So to understand that existence is beautiful, sacred, that existence is a benediction, a blessing, you will have to live a different type of life: a life which is not of postponement. This is the meaning of living moment to moment.
Unburden yourself from the past. It is no longer there, it has already flown away. It exists not. You are unnecessarily burdened by ghosts – they are no more. And don’t burden yourself with the future – it is not yet. When it comes, you will be there to meet it. Why plan about it right now? Because the way you are going to plan it, is never going to happen. Your planning is bound to be a greater problem, because when you plan beforehand, you want to impose your plan on existence.
Existence is not to follow you; you can follow existence and feel graceful. But existence cannot follow you. You don’t know the whole. You don’t know the desire of the whole, the destiny of the whole. And you make private plans – they are bound to be against the whole and they are bound to be broken. Then your heart is broken.
Drop the past. And don’t bring the future in. This moment is all. If you live this moment alert, then things, small things, will be dealt with. And, with those small things dealt with, you will grow and there will be no great problems.
Lao Tzu says that for a great man there are no great problems. Ordinarily you must be thinking the other way round, that great men exist because they tackle great problems. And Lao Tzu says there are no great problems for a great man because he never allows the problems to become great. He always deals with them when they are small, within his hands; then something can be done. And when you deal with problems moment to moment you are always fresh, unburdened; dust never collects on your being. Fresh, young, virgin, you slip into the next moment as a snake slips out of its old skin, the old left behind. The fresher and younger skin comes. Then life is a mystery, it is not a problem to be solved. It has to be lived and lived totally. Then you feel grateful. Then it has been a blessing.
Remember this, and then try to understand Lao Tzu’s sutras.
Accomplish do-nothing.
Attend to no affairs.
Taste the flavorless.
In action, do nothing – this is the very deepest secret of Lao Tzu. He says when things can be done by non-doing, why do you bother to do? When things can be done by non-doing, if you do, if you try to do, you will only create troubles for yourself.
Let me give you a few examples.
You must have heard the name of Archimedes; his story is famous. He was trying to solve a scientific problem. He tried hard, tried his best, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t do anything else. The king had given him a problem to be solved and it had to be solved immediately. And he was the first man to tackle that problem – so there was no precedent, no history, nothing in the past which could be of any help. The problem had never before been raised, this was the first time.
He worked hard, became tense, as tense as one can be. Then what can you do? If you cannot solve you cannot solve! One feels helpless – he felt the helplessness.
One day, while he was taking his bath, lying in the bath, relaxed… He had dropped the idea of solving the problem, it could not be solved – and suddenly, it was solved! He became so ecstatic that he forgot that he was naked in the bath, he ran into the streets crying loud, “Eureka! Eureka!” – eureka means “I have found it! I have found it!”
The king thought that he had gone mad; the whole town thought that he had gone mad. He had not gone mad, he had found the solution. And when the king asked, “How?” he said, “By non-doing. I was not doing anything, I was not even trying to solve it. In fact I had dropped it. I had completely stopped all activity about it, I was relaxing.”
What happened then? When you relax you become one with the whole. When you relax you are no longer an ego. When you relax you are no longer an individual. When you relax you become the whole. When you are tense you become individual. The more you are tense, the more you are a concentrated ego.
The ego is very small, how can it solve anything? It can fuss around, but it cannot solve anything. When the ego is not there, you are relaxing in a bathtub – suddenly the problem is solved!
It happened to Buddha…
For six years he was doing – and really doing too much; nobody has been in search of the innermost meaning of life as deeply as Gautam Buddha. For six years he did whatever could be done, whatever was humanly possible. He went to teachers, all the known teachers of those days, and the teachers became helpless because whatever they said, Buddha did. And did it so perfectly that they couldn’t say, “You are not doing enough, that’s why you are not achieving.” He was doing so well – better than his own masters – that they said, “Now, forgive us, go somewhere else. It is not happening, and we cannot help you in any way anymore. Find some other teacher.”
Then he became fed up with all the teachers, fed up with all the systems, philosophies, fed up with all the techniques, methods. He started doing things on his own – but then too nothing happened. Six years passed, six years of a nightmarish existence; he lived in deepest anguish.
Then one day, while crossing the river Niranjana near Bodhgaya, he had become so weak because of a long fast – somebody had suggested that he go on a long fast, that it would help – he had become so weak he couldn’t cross the river. The river Niranjana is not a very big river, but he was really weak. He remained clinging to the roots of a tree, otherwise the current would have taken him.
There, clinging to the roots of a tree, he started thinking, “What have I been doing? I have simply destroyed myself. I have reached nowhere. The world is finished, that I have left behind, and now this moksha, salvation, God, truth, whatever you call it – that too is finished, I don’t care. I drop that too.” That moment he became unburdened.
When you search and seek there is a tension. That very tension becomes the barrier. When there was no search, no seeking, everything relaxed – the same happened to Buddha in the river Niranjana as had happened to Archimedes in his bathtub. He was relaxed, and when he was relaxed he felt an upsurge of energy.
Now this energy is not his, this energy is of the whole. He is no longer there. You exist because of your seeking, greed, desire. When there is no greed, no desire, nothing to be attained – this moment is enough, an end unto itself – then you are not. The ego disappears.
Then Buddha got out, relaxed under the bodhi tree. For years he had not relaxed. That night he slept perfectly well. For the first time he really slept, without dreams – because dreams are part of desires. In the day you dream, the daydreaming continues inside in your thinking, desires continue – a thousand and one desires, unfulfilled.
And dreams create some consolation for the mind: that which has not been fulfilled in the day is fulfilled in the dream. Dreams are consolations. But when you do not desire, dreams disappear. And when dreams disappear, for the first time you sleep. For the first time you are so relaxed, you disappear into the whole.
He slept well; for the first time he really slept. Early in the morning, when the last star was going to disappear, he opened his eyes: fresh, as fresh as a newly-born child, with no attitude, no mind to look through, no desire – what Buddha calls no trishna, no desire.
That moment was eternity, because when you desire you are always moving into the future. That moment was eternity, no movement in the future, that moment was all. At that time Buddha became like a flower. A flower flowers here and now. A bird sings here and now. A man always thinks somewhere else, goes moving in the mind somewhere else. A man is never where he is. You can find him anywhere else, but you cannot find him where he is. Never!
That time, Buddha was really in that moment under the bodhi tree. Physically he was there, mentally he was there, spiritually he was there. That’s why that tree became the tree of enlightenment.
Not a single thought, not a ripple in the lake of his consciousness, everything silent, no desire disturbing, no turmoil. He looked at the last star disappearing and he became enlightened. And when later on people used to ask, “How did you attain?” he would say, “When I stopped searching, seeking. When I stopped being active, then, in deep inaction it happened.” It always happens so.
Sometimes you also may have observed – not Buddha-like, not like Archimedes – but sometimes you try to remember a name, it is just on the tip of the tongue. You say, “It is just on the tip of my tongue,” and it is not coming. You feel very suffocated and very tense, but what can you do? If it is not coming it is not coming! The more you try, the more impossible it seems. Then you drop it. You take a cigarette and you smoke, or you go outside in the garden for a small walk. You just engage yourself somewhere else. You put on the radio, or you sip tea, or do something else and forget about it – and suddenly it pops up, it is there. A very small enlightenment, but it is of the same quality. A very, very small satori, very tiny, nothing much to brag about, but of the same nature.
If you can understand the process you have understood what Lao Tzu means by inaction. There are things you cannot attain by action. This is the criterion: if there is something which you can attain by action, that belongs to this world. Anything that can be attained by action belongs to the world of matter, and anything that belongs to the world of spirit cannot be attained by action. That can be attained only through inaction, relaxation, total let-go.
Accomplish do-nothing – accomplish total let-go, accomplish relaxation. Relax in your search for truth. When you come to seek truth you come with the worldly mind. There, ambition is needed, effort is needed, because the competition is very hard. There, you are not alone: millions of people struggling, fighting with each other, a constant war goes on.
The world is a constant war and everybody is fighting with everybody else. The son fighting with the father – he may not be aware. The father fighting with the son – he may not be aware. The mother fighting with the child, the child fighting with the mother, brothers fighting brothers, nations fighting nations, families fighting other families, everybody is in a deep conflict and fight.
There, if you relax, you cannot become a prime minister. There, if you relax, you cannot become a president of a country. There, if you relax, you cannot become a Rockefeller or a Ford. No, that’s not possible. If you relax there, you will be a beggar like Buddha or Lao Tzu. There, fight is needed. The world belongs to violence, and the world belongs to the ego, and the world belongs to those who are more aggressive than others.
You come from the world completely trained for violence, action: do something! People come to me and they say, “Tell us to do and we can do, but you say – just relax, don’t do. That is impossible.” Not to do anything even for a single moment seems impossible because of an old habit, an old deep-rooted pattern: “Do something!” Lao Tzu says, “Do nothing.”
In the world of being, doing is not needed. That is the meaning of being – where doing is not needed. There you flower in your profoundest depth; there you flower in your greatest height.
But no effort is needed. Says a Zen master: Sitting quietly, doing nothing, the grass grows by itself. He is talking about the innermost core of your being where doing nothing, sitting quietly, is the only way to do something. The grass grows by itself. There is no need to pull at the grass, there is no need to pull the plants up, they grow by themselves. You simply wait by the side. While you are waiting the grass is growing.
Once you understand that no effort is needed for the innermost being, suddenly, a new dimension has opened for you. There is no strain. A religious man is without strain. In fact a religious man is not trying to achieve anything. If you see that a religious man is trying to achieve something he is not religious, he is as worldly as others. He has only changed the name of his god, that’s all. Before he used to call it money, now he calls it meditation. Before he used to call it matter, now he calls it something else – God. But, the achieving mind is there, and an achieving mind is the hindrance, the only barrier.
Accomplish do-nothing. Enjoy not doing anything. Simple – but it looks difficult. It looks difficult because of you, otherwise it is simple. Find time to do nothing. Whenever you can find some time just close your eyes and do nothing. Soon you will have the taste of: …the flavorless. Soon you will enter a different kind of existence, where Jesus lives, Krishna lives, Lao Tzu lives.
Accomplish do-nothing. Attend to no-affairs. Constantly attending to affairs creates anxiety. Sometimes attend to no-affairs; not doing anything.
In my childhood my grandfather was very worried about me. He was a very loving man and very clever, old and wise. Whenever he would see me sitting – because that’s how I was my whole childhood, doing nothing, just sitting silently – he would say, “Get up! Do something! Otherwise you will not accomplish anything in life. You will be a failure.”
And he was right! Perfectly right. Out of deep compassion he was saying that. He would say, “At least go and play! Don’t sit like that, you create anxiety for me.”
So I would move from that room to another, and sit there. Because once you …taste the flavorless, there is nothing to compare with it, it is incomparable. Once you know that attending to no-affairs is the greatest affair in the world, then all things seem to be so small, so juvenile, childish, foolish.
But in the West particularly, there has never been a teacher who has said, “Do nothing.” Jesus tried, but they killed him – and Jesus also tried very guardedly because he would not have been understood at all. If he had talked like Lao Tzu nobody would have understood him.
Jews are great doers. They accomplish many things. It is difficult to defeat the Jews in anything; never compete with a Jew, he will defeat you. They are great doers. The whole world has been against them. Many Hitlers come and go; they try to destroy the Jews but – nothing: they are standing again stronger than before. Jews are the most worldly race in the world. They believe in doing. They would not have understood Jesus, but still he was saying something like Lao Tzu in a guarded way, in a masked language – but no other teacher has even tried. On the contrary the proverb goes: “When you do nothing you become a workshop for the Devil.” And Lao Tzu says when you do nothing, only then do you become the workshop for God, not for the Devil.
The Devil takes possession of you when you want to do something. Then you are in the hands of the Devil; then he can possess you, he can tempt you, he can force you, he can make you run toward things, toward achievements. But a man who does not want to do anything, who pays attention to no affairs – the Devil simply cannot come near him. It is impossible, because the Devil is the doer.
I would like to tell you again, from a different standpoint, the story of why Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden, from paradise.
Adam lived a life like the animals, trees, and birds, doing nothing. It was sheer delight, enjoying as children do. Doing nothing, they enjoy, playing. And God had said, “Don’t go and eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge” – because the moment you eat the fruit of knowledge, immediately you become a doer. Knowledge is useless unless it functions as a means to do something. Knowledge means know-how. Knowledge is a technical help to do things more skillfully. Knowledge makes you more efficient doers.
But the serpent, the Devil, seduced them. First he seduced Eve. That too is meaningful because wherever you go, you will always find Eves pushing their husbands toward doing something: “Go and do something! We have to build a bigger house, and purchase a bigger car. And more diamonds are needed. Go and do something, don’t sit in the house!” Women go on pushing their husbands.
The parable is meaningful. If man is allowed, he will relax, he will become a bum. He will just relax. He will just play on the flute under a tree, have a flask of wine with him, and that will do! He will not bother about the world.
The parable says the serpent first convinced Eve: “This tree, the Tree of Knowledge, has been prohibited because God does not want you to become like God. If you eat the fruit of knowledge you will be like gods!” All advertisers appeal to women, not to men. The serpent was the first advertising agency. He was the pioneer. He approached the right source. If you want to catch the husband, catch the wife. Once a new car enters her mind, then it will be difficult – she is going to put the new car in the husband’s mind.
And once Eve tasted the fruit of knowledge, she seduced poor Adam also. They were expelled. They were thrown out of paradise. The meaning is: after that they became such cunning, knowing, doers that they lost the innocence of being that they used to delight in. There was no time before.
The parable says that God, when he was expelling them, said, “Now there will be death for you.” There was no time before, so death could not exist. Not that Adam was not going to die, but death could not exist. Birds die, but they don’t know anything about death; they simply live and they simply die. Not for a single moment are they worried about death. Animals live and die, but death is not a problem for them. They don’t sit and brood about what death is and whether one survives after death or not. Death is not a problem. When time enters, death enters. Knowledge enters, time comes in, then death – and all the problems.
Man has to become innocent again. He has to drop knowledge. But you can drop knowledge only when you come to know that all that is beautiful, true, and good can happen without doing; otherwise you will not be able to drop knowledge.
Lao Tzu is trying to make you understand. He is trying to give you a vision that knowledge has to be dropped. But then you will immediately ask, “If knowledge is dropped, how will we be able to do so many things?” He says those “so many things” are not needed. The innermost being can flower in non-doing.
Accomplish do-nothing. Attend to no-affairs. Taste the flavorless. Lao Tzu never uses the name God. He consistently remains with indications; he never uses any direct expressions: …the flavorless. God has no flavor because flavor can exist only in duality. If something is sweet, then something has to be bitter. If something is good, then something else has to be bad. If something is divine, then something has to be evil. Flavorless means the nondual, what Hindus call advaita: not two. Flavorless is a poetic expression, it just gives a hint, not a direct instruction.
Whether it is big or small, many or few,
requite hatred with virtue.
This is a very revolutionary concept. It has to be understood very, very delicately.
You have heard the famous dictum of Jesus: Love your enemies. Lao Tzu goes deeper than that. He says: …requite hatred with virtue, not with love. It would have been easier to say: Respond with love when somebody hates you. Love the enemy. But why is he not saying love?
There are very profound reasons. First: when Jesus says “Love your enemy,” he is accepting the duality of love and hate, he accepts the dual phenomenon. Deep down you already love your enemy, otherwise how can you hate? Unless you have loved the enemy you cannot hate him. You love the enemy already in your deep unconscious, that’s why you hate. Love and hate exist together. When you love a person, you forget that you hate him also.
If you become aware, you will become aware of the fact that if you love a person, then you hate him also; and if you hate a person, then you love him also. Enemies and friends are not very different. You love the friend consciously, you hate him unconsciously; you hate the enemy consciously, you love him unconsciously – because they cannot exist separately, they are two aspects of the same coin: love–hate.
Sometimes you become worried: “Why do I want to kill?” Sometimes you start thinking of killing your wife or your husband, or of murdering your mother or your father, and you feel much guilt: “Why?” Don’t feel guilty. It is natural. In each love, hate is hidden. And think about your enemy, go deeper into your hatred. You will find that you love him. Maybe it is a negative way of loving; hate is a negative way of loving.
It happened that Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, two great politicians of India, were long-standing enemies. And of course when you are enemies for so long, you become too attached to each other. When Gandhi was murdered and Jinnah heard the news, the man who brought the news to Jinnah was thinking that he would be happy, but he became sad – because without Gandhi where would Jinnah be? The enemy is dead, you are almost dead. You don’t miss only your friends; you miss your enemies also. They have become part of your being.
When Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is not saying a very, very revolutionary thing. It appears revolutionary. You already love them in fact; the love is hidden and he wants to bring it up, that’s all.
Lao Tzu says: …requite hatred with virtue. What is virtue? Virtue is balance. Virtue is compassion not love. The distinction is subtle, but great. When you love a person the emotion is hot. When you hate a person then too the emotion is hot. One thing is the same: that you are in a hot relationship. If you are indifferent to a person you are cold, no heat in you either way. You are simply unrelated. You don’t love, you don’t hate; you don’t bother, you don’t care. You are indifferent. You go on your own way. That’s why nothing hurts people more than indifference.
If you hate a person it is not so much of a problem to him. He knows you are paying him attention – maybe negative, but you are paying attention. But if you are indifferent it hurts very deeply. If people simply do not bother about you – you pass by and they don’t pay any attention this way or that – then you feel that you are almost dead.
Indifference kills, not hate. Hate brings energy. Love brings energy. Love is a pleasant feeling, hate is unpleasant – but if you have to choose between hate and indifference, you will certainly choose hate. You will never choose indifference. Indifference is absolutely cold, killing.
Compassion is not cold, compassion is cool. Cold means dead; cool means balanced. Let me tell you in another way. Compassion is cool, indifference is cold. If you compare compassion with love and hate, it is cool; if you compare compassion with indifference, it is warm. It is warm in comparison to indifference and its coldness. It is cool in comparison to love and hate and their heat.
Virtue is compassion. It is not love, it is not hate, it is a balance between the two. It is not indifference either. It is life-giving. But if you don’t know, compassion will look like indifference. The distinction is very subtle. Coolness will look like coldness, but coolness is alive, fresh. Coldness is simply dead. Virtue is compassion.
Requite hatred with compassion.
Deal with the difficult while it is easy…
Everything difficult has a phase when it is easy, if you are alert you will know it. It is so easy to destroy a seed, it is very difficult to destroy a big tree. And everything has a seed form. When anger arises it is just like a seed. If you want to drop it at that moment there is no problem, but if you allow it to take root within you, to spread within your being, to overwhelm you, then destroying anger will be very, very difficult. It will look like destroying yourself; it will have become such a deep part of you.
Whether it is big or small, many or few,
requite hatred with virtue.
Deal with the difficult while yet it is easy;
deal with the big while yet it is small.
And everything is small and easy in the present. If you don’t postpone, everything is easy and small. You are powerful enough to change it, to transform it. But if you say, “I will see to it tomorrow,” if you say, “There is no hurry,” if you take it easy and you say, “Someday when I have enough time I will see to the problem.” Meanwhile the problem is growing and taking root.
Don’t postpone it because then you will not be able to do much about it. That’s what you have been doing up to now. You have been postponing for lives. And then you come to me and you say, “We would like to be silent. We would like to be peaceful” – and for many lives you have been postponing problems which are boiling within you. They have to be tackled. A great surgery is needed.
But you are in such a hurry again. People meditate a few days, four or five days, and they come to me and they say, “Nothing is happening yet.” Can’t you see the ridiculousness of it? What are you asking?
For many lives you postpone. Then your being becomes like a ruin. Your garden is no longer there: everything destroyed, only weeds subsist. And suddenly one day you want to have a beautiful lawn. It will take time. The weeds have to be thrown out. Their roots and seeds have to be thrown out. The soil has to be changed. Now it is not easy.
But you can do at least one thing: start living moment to moment, so at least you are not gathering more nonsense around you, more rubbish around you. At least you can clean one part of the garden and start working moment to moment. And once you know how problems have become difficult, and once you come to understand that they are easy if you tackle them in the beginning, everything will become easy again. But that feeling, that nuance, that knack, has to be learned.
The difficult problems of the world
must be dealt with while they are yet easy;
the great problems of the world
must be dealt with while they are yet small.
Therefore the sage by never dealing with great problems
accomplishes greatness.
These things look like paradoxes – they are not. They are simple statements with no contradiction in them.
Therefore the sage by never dealing with great problems… Because he has no great problems. He never deals with great problems, that’s why he is great.
In your understanding just the opposite is the case. You think a man is so great because he has dealt with such great problems. Such great challenges, and he has conquered them. This is foolish. A great man has nothing to conquer. The greater he is, the less to conquer. If he is really great there is nothing to conquer. The greatest man has no problems to solve, either great or small, because he never allows them to accumulate. They become problems only when postponed. Right now, lived, they are not problems; they are part of life, and beautiful.
Just start being alert. Whenever you see a problem is arising, drop all activity. Look at it, pay attention to it. Just look within at what it is. Sometimes a smile will be enough to change it; laughter will do, and you will be out of the vicious circle. Sometimes nothing will be needed, not even a smile and a laugh – just the very attention, that you looked into it, and it will disappear as dewdrops disappear in the morning when the sun rises.
Just look. Bring the sun of consciousness to it, it will disappear – it is so small and you are so big and so vast. Just the very encounter, that you look at it, and it changes its quality. It is no longer a problem. You can delight in it, you can enjoy it. Then life becomes a play.
He who lightly makes a promise
will find it often hard to keep his faith.
If you understand life you will never make promises because a promise is a postponement. You must either do it now or you will say, “I don’t know, I will see tomorrow.”
In Mahabharata there is a beautiful anecdote…
Pandavas, the five brothers, are hiding in the forest. One day a beggar comes. Yudhishthira is sitting outside the hut and the beggar asks for nothing much, just some bread, a few chapattis.
Yudhishthira is brooding – and as happens always whenever there is a beggar, you would like to postpone. You say, “Come tomorrow,” just to avoid. He may not come again tomorrow. You don’t want to be so rude as to say, “I will not give anything.” Also you want to protect your image that you are a great giver. So you say, “Come tomorrow. Don’t disturb me now.” Yudhishthira did the same; he said, “Come tomorrow.”
Bhim, another brother – who is not known much for his wisdom or intelligence, but sometimes it happens that people who are not very intelligent flare up – suddenly started laughing and he ran out of the house laughing, going toward the town.
Yudhishthira asked, “Where are you going?”
He said, “I am going to tell the people in the town that my brother has conquered time! He has promised something to a beggar if he comes tomorrow.”
Suddenly Yudhishthira became aware. Because how can you say, “Come tomorrow?” You may not be here tomorrow. The beggar may not be here tomorrow. Yudhishthira ran off, caught hold of the beggar, gave him whatever he could give him, and dropped the habit of promising.
Because a promise is possible only if tomorrow is certain. But who knows anything about tomorrow?
There is a great old Chinese story…
A king was very angry with his prime minister. He had done something, so the king ordered him to be sentenced to death. It was the tradition that if somebody was to be executed by the king’s order, the king had to visit him one day before, to ask if he had some desire to be fulfilled. And the last desire of the condemned man had to be fulfilled. This man was no ordinary man – he had served the king for many years as his prime minister; he had been an intimate. But something went wrong, he did something and the king was angry, so the next morning he was to be executed, hanged. The king came to see him twenty-four hours before.
The prime minister was a brave man. He had been to many wars as a general. When the king came, the prime minister started weeping and crying, tears rolling down. The king said, “I would never have imagined that you, a man of such bravery, would be weeping and crying because you are going to be hanged tomorrow. Are you afraid of death?”
The prime minister said, “That is not the point. Death I have never been afraid of. It is something else but – leave it aside, now there is no time to do it.”
The king became curious. He said, “What is the matter? Tell me. I am here to fulfill your last desire. I promise to fulfill it. Tell me. You have served the kingdom long and I would like to fulfill it, whatever it is. Just tell me.”
The prime minister said, “If you insist, then I will tell you. This is a long story. When I was young I was with a great master. He was an enlightened being and he had many secrets with him. One secret I learned, and that secret was that there is a rare type of horse that can be taught to fly. My whole life I have been searching for that type of horse that can be taught to fly, but I couldn’t find one – and look at the irony of fate: the horse that you have come on is the right horse, and tomorrow morning I will be dead! The whole science will die with me. The secret will be lost to humanity – that’s why I am crying.”
The king said, “The horse can fly? How much time will you take to teach it?” The king became interested. If this horse could fly in the sky it would be something superb, incomparable, that no other king in the world could claim. He said, “Forget about your sentence; tell me how much time you will take.”
The man said, “It will take one year.”
The king said, “Okay. There is no harm in it. Try for one year. If the horse flies, then not only will you not be hanged, but you will share my kingdom, half-half. But if the horse cannot fly, then you will be executed. So there is no harm in it. Come, take the horse.”
The man took the horse and went home. There his wife and children were crying and weeping because this was the last day, the next morning their husband, father, would be dead. They could not believe their eyes – that he was coming back riding on a horse. They thought they must be dreaming. They wiped their eyes and asked, “What is the matter? How could you manage to come home?”
He told them the whole story. The wife again started crying and said, “You are a fool! I know very well you don’t know anything like that. You created a lie. If you were going to lie, why say one year? You should have asked for fifty years, twenty years at least! The one year will pass so soon, and it will be a nightmare because the whole year we will be trembling that again soon you have to die.
The man said, “Don’t be afraid, one year is so long. The king can die, I can die, even the horse can die – don’t be worried! Don’t be worried, a year is so long.”
Lao Tzu says:
He who lightly makes a promise
will find it often hard to keep his faith.
He who makes light of many things
will encounter many difficulties.
Hence even the sage regards things as difficult,
and for that reason never meets with difficulties.
Lao Tzu is saying: Don’t promise, otherwise you will lose faith – because time goes on changing. Don’t say anything certain about the future because the future itself is not certain. At the most you can be certain for this moment, that’s all. And one who lives in this moment without promising, postponing, thinking, planning about the future lives such a simple life, such an innocent life, that his faith grows, his trust grows, his gratefulness grows. He becomes a vehicle for the ultimate grace to flow from him. He becomes a passage for the divine, for Tao.
But one who lightly gives promises, who lightly postpones things, who never thinks that things are difficult… Try to understand this. Lao Tzu says: Everything is simple if you take it rightly in the beginning. But don’t think that it is simple, and don’t think that it is easy, because if you think that it is easy there will be a tendency to postpone – “Such an easy thing, why bother now? It can be done tomorrow.” Things are easy, but think that they are very difficult. Tackle them immediately otherwise they will become difficult.
Hence even the sage regards things as difficult… Knowing well that they are easy. But he regards them as difficult so that the inner tendency to postponement is curbed. Small things, very ordinary – they can be done very easily, but the sage regards them as difficult: …and for that reason never meets with difficulties, because then he goes on solving everything. Things never accumulate, they are never too much. He moves from moment to moment, completely unburdened from the past, completely unburdened for the future. He moves like a mirror, empty.
“The empty mirror” is the right term for the sage. You come before it, he mirrors you. When you move away, the reflection has gone. The mirror is again empty, again ready to reflect something if it comes. The mirror never says, “I will reflect tomorrow.” If the mirror could say, “I will reflect tomorrow,” there would be such a crowd, nothing would be reflected. That is the state of your mind.
You have been postponing. Now stop postponing. Look into your problems. By that very look they are almost all solved. And the small things that remain? – they can be tackled. Everybody is capable of solving his problems. Everybody has to be capable. When you are capable of creating problems, who else is going to be capable of solving them? You create, you can solve.
These sutras of Lao Tzu are very significant. Pay attention to them. Meditate over them. Let your being be soaked with them.
Enough for today.
Accomplish do-nothing.
Attend to no-affairs.
Taste the flavorless.
Whether it is big or small, many or few,
requite hatred with virtue.
Deal with the difficult while yet it is easy;
deal with the big while yet it is small.
The difficult problems of the world
must be dealt with while they are yet easy;
the great problems of the world
must be dealt with while they are yet small.
Therefore the sage by never dealing with great problems
accomplishes greatness.
He who lightly makes a promise
will find it often hard to keep his faith.
He who makes light of many things
will encounter many difficulties.
Hence even the sage regards things as difficult,
and for that reason never meets with difficulties.
Life is not a problem. Rather, it is a mystery to be lived: not a problem to be solved. But it becomes a problem; and it becomes a problem because you go on postponing things, postponing them for tomorrow. That which can be done today, that which should be done today, cannot be done tomorrow. That which would have been a beautiful phenomenon today – a mystery to be lived – tomorrow will become a very, very hard and cold problem to be solved.
Life in itself, if lived here and now, is not a problem. Postponement creates problems and then you go on piling up. Then so much gathers around you that it becomes almost impossible to live – you are paralyzed, crippled, in a straitjacket, imprisoned. First try to understand this, then it will be easy to enter the sutra.
I was saying just a few days ago that even a genius, a very talented person may be a Nobel Prize winner, a great intellectual, world-known but behave in a childish way. If in the morning when he wakes he finds that his slippers are not in the right place, he is angry, irritated. If he could pay attention to his anger that very moment, he would laugh because it is so foolish. Ridiculous! But he does not pay attention to it.
He goes to the bathroom, irritated, in a bad mood, starts shaving his beard, but he is almost unconscious that a problem has not been dealt with, that a problem is there, poking its nose again and again into his being. And it is growing all the time, because in life nothing is nongrowing. Everything alive is growing, and when you are alive, your anger is alive, it grows. It never remains the same. Moment to moment it is gathering more momentum and force.
He goes on shaving, but irritated; he is not enjoying the act, the freshness of it, the beautiful moment when one feels unburdened, no, he is not in an enjoying mood. Unconscious, the razor slips from his hand, fall to the floor. Now he is even angrier. If he can deal with it right now he will laugh. It is foolish to be angry because a razor is not a being. A razor is never responsible for anything – how can you be angry at a razor? But now he is more irritated. Now his hands are moving more foolishly, unconsciously; it again slips, strikes the old antique mirror which he loves very much and the mirror is broken.
Now he is no longer sane. He comes out, bumps against the furniture, slams the door, slaps the child because he has not done his homework, starts arguing, becomes quarrelsome with his wife – and only for a small thing that was nothing! Because his slippers were not found in the right place.
Now our so-called genius takes his car and goes toward the office, but never reaches it because there is an accident. It was always going to be so. And just because of the slippers, because they were not found in the right place. Now he drives like a maniac, all his anger moves to his feet: he goes on pressing the accelerator, he is a drunkard! Drunk with his anger. There is an accident. After twelve hours or fifteen hours, when he opens his eyes, he is in hospital. And he will never be able to connect the whole thing.
And the story can go on and on – he falls in love with the nurse – and you can go on! Just because his slippers were not found in the right place. The whole family disturbed, then divorce. And the whole world will not be the same again – just because his slippers were not found in the right place.
Deal with things moment to moment, don’t let them pile up within you. Don’t accumulate. Life is really beautiful. It becomes ugly. Life is not a problem: every problem is so small that it is foolish to call life a problem. It is not a problem for the trees, it is not a problem for the birds, it is not a problem for the earth, for the sky. It is only a problem for man, because only man has learned a trick – the trick of postponement. Then small things become bigger. Then a moment comes when you cannot cope with them. Then you become so small and the problem is so big, it is almost impossible to cope with it. And then you always carry its burden on your head. And with that much burden, how can you enjoy? How can you delight? How can you celebrate? How can you dance?
And then somebody says, “There is a God” and you hear the words but you cannot believe. Maybe there is a Devil who is running the whole world, but not a God. Your whole life has become so crippled, so paralyzed, so burdensome, you would like to commit suicide. It is rare to find a man who has not contemplated committing suicide some time or other.
Psychoanalysts say that each man, each woman, in the long run of life thinks almost ten times of committing suicide. You don’t commit it because you are cowards. There is nothing in not committing it to take credit for. You contemplate it – that’s enough! That means life has become so unlivable that rather than being dragged more and more into it, you would like to drop it; you would like to become a dropout.
How can you love God? How can you pray? Because prayer comes out of great gratitude; prayer comes out of gratefulness. A life lived well becomes a life of prayer. It has nothing to do with churches and temples and mosques, it has something to do with the quality of your life. A life lived well, moment to moment, aware, alert, not postponed, becomes a prayerful life – and prayer by and by turns into meditation. Then you don’t even pray because the words disturb. Then your prayer becomes silent. When prayer is silent it is meditation.
So to understand that existence is beautiful, sacred, that existence is a benediction, a blessing, you will have to live a different type of life: a life which is not of postponement. This is the meaning of living moment to moment.
Unburden yourself from the past. It is no longer there, it has already flown away. It exists not. You are unnecessarily burdened by ghosts – they are no more. And don’t burden yourself with the future – it is not yet. When it comes, you will be there to meet it. Why plan about it right now? Because the way you are going to plan it, is never going to happen. Your planning is bound to be a greater problem, because when you plan beforehand, you want to impose your plan on existence.
Existence is not to follow you; you can follow existence and feel graceful. But existence cannot follow you. You don’t know the whole. You don’t know the desire of the whole, the destiny of the whole. And you make private plans – they are bound to be against the whole and they are bound to be broken. Then your heart is broken.
Drop the past. And don’t bring the future in. This moment is all. If you live this moment alert, then things, small things, will be dealt with. And, with those small things dealt with, you will grow and there will be no great problems.
Lao Tzu says that for a great man there are no great problems. Ordinarily you must be thinking the other way round, that great men exist because they tackle great problems. And Lao Tzu says there are no great problems for a great man because he never allows the problems to become great. He always deals with them when they are small, within his hands; then something can be done. And when you deal with problems moment to moment you are always fresh, unburdened; dust never collects on your being. Fresh, young, virgin, you slip into the next moment as a snake slips out of its old skin, the old left behind. The fresher and younger skin comes. Then life is a mystery, it is not a problem to be solved. It has to be lived and lived totally. Then you feel grateful. Then it has been a blessing.
Remember this, and then try to understand Lao Tzu’s sutras.
Accomplish do-nothing.
Attend to no affairs.
Taste the flavorless.
In action, do nothing – this is the very deepest secret of Lao Tzu. He says when things can be done by non-doing, why do you bother to do? When things can be done by non-doing, if you do, if you try to do, you will only create troubles for yourself.
Let me give you a few examples.
You must have heard the name of Archimedes; his story is famous. He was trying to solve a scientific problem. He tried hard, tried his best, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t do anything else. The king had given him a problem to be solved and it had to be solved immediately. And he was the first man to tackle that problem – so there was no precedent, no history, nothing in the past which could be of any help. The problem had never before been raised, this was the first time.
He worked hard, became tense, as tense as one can be. Then what can you do? If you cannot solve you cannot solve! One feels helpless – he felt the helplessness.
One day, while he was taking his bath, lying in the bath, relaxed… He had dropped the idea of solving the problem, it could not be solved – and suddenly, it was solved! He became so ecstatic that he forgot that he was naked in the bath, he ran into the streets crying loud, “Eureka! Eureka!” – eureka means “I have found it! I have found it!”
The king thought that he had gone mad; the whole town thought that he had gone mad. He had not gone mad, he had found the solution. And when the king asked, “How?” he said, “By non-doing. I was not doing anything, I was not even trying to solve it. In fact I had dropped it. I had completely stopped all activity about it, I was relaxing.”
What happened then? When you relax you become one with the whole. When you relax you are no longer an ego. When you relax you are no longer an individual. When you relax you become the whole. When you are tense you become individual. The more you are tense, the more you are a concentrated ego.
The ego is very small, how can it solve anything? It can fuss around, but it cannot solve anything. When the ego is not there, you are relaxing in a bathtub – suddenly the problem is solved!
It happened to Buddha…
For six years he was doing – and really doing too much; nobody has been in search of the innermost meaning of life as deeply as Gautam Buddha. For six years he did whatever could be done, whatever was humanly possible. He went to teachers, all the known teachers of those days, and the teachers became helpless because whatever they said, Buddha did. And did it so perfectly that they couldn’t say, “You are not doing enough, that’s why you are not achieving.” He was doing so well – better than his own masters – that they said, “Now, forgive us, go somewhere else. It is not happening, and we cannot help you in any way anymore. Find some other teacher.”
Then he became fed up with all the teachers, fed up with all the systems, philosophies, fed up with all the techniques, methods. He started doing things on his own – but then too nothing happened. Six years passed, six years of a nightmarish existence; he lived in deepest anguish.
Then one day, while crossing the river Niranjana near Bodhgaya, he had become so weak because of a long fast – somebody had suggested that he go on a long fast, that it would help – he had become so weak he couldn’t cross the river. The river Niranjana is not a very big river, but he was really weak. He remained clinging to the roots of a tree, otherwise the current would have taken him.
There, clinging to the roots of a tree, he started thinking, “What have I been doing? I have simply destroyed myself. I have reached nowhere. The world is finished, that I have left behind, and now this moksha, salvation, God, truth, whatever you call it – that too is finished, I don’t care. I drop that too.” That moment he became unburdened.
When you search and seek there is a tension. That very tension becomes the barrier. When there was no search, no seeking, everything relaxed – the same happened to Buddha in the river Niranjana as had happened to Archimedes in his bathtub. He was relaxed, and when he was relaxed he felt an upsurge of energy.
Now this energy is not his, this energy is of the whole. He is no longer there. You exist because of your seeking, greed, desire. When there is no greed, no desire, nothing to be attained – this moment is enough, an end unto itself – then you are not. The ego disappears.
Then Buddha got out, relaxed under the bodhi tree. For years he had not relaxed. That night he slept perfectly well. For the first time he really slept, without dreams – because dreams are part of desires. In the day you dream, the daydreaming continues inside in your thinking, desires continue – a thousand and one desires, unfulfilled.
And dreams create some consolation for the mind: that which has not been fulfilled in the day is fulfilled in the dream. Dreams are consolations. But when you do not desire, dreams disappear. And when dreams disappear, for the first time you sleep. For the first time you are so relaxed, you disappear into the whole.
He slept well; for the first time he really slept. Early in the morning, when the last star was going to disappear, he opened his eyes: fresh, as fresh as a newly-born child, with no attitude, no mind to look through, no desire – what Buddha calls no trishna, no desire.
That moment was eternity, because when you desire you are always moving into the future. That moment was eternity, no movement in the future, that moment was all. At that time Buddha became like a flower. A flower flowers here and now. A bird sings here and now. A man always thinks somewhere else, goes moving in the mind somewhere else. A man is never where he is. You can find him anywhere else, but you cannot find him where he is. Never!
That time, Buddha was really in that moment under the bodhi tree. Physically he was there, mentally he was there, spiritually he was there. That’s why that tree became the tree of enlightenment.
Not a single thought, not a ripple in the lake of his consciousness, everything silent, no desire disturbing, no turmoil. He looked at the last star disappearing and he became enlightened. And when later on people used to ask, “How did you attain?” he would say, “When I stopped searching, seeking. When I stopped being active, then, in deep inaction it happened.” It always happens so.
Sometimes you also may have observed – not Buddha-like, not like Archimedes – but sometimes you try to remember a name, it is just on the tip of the tongue. You say, “It is just on the tip of my tongue,” and it is not coming. You feel very suffocated and very tense, but what can you do? If it is not coming it is not coming! The more you try, the more impossible it seems. Then you drop it. You take a cigarette and you smoke, or you go outside in the garden for a small walk. You just engage yourself somewhere else. You put on the radio, or you sip tea, or do something else and forget about it – and suddenly it pops up, it is there. A very small enlightenment, but it is of the same quality. A very, very small satori, very tiny, nothing much to brag about, but of the same nature.
If you can understand the process you have understood what Lao Tzu means by inaction. There are things you cannot attain by action. This is the criterion: if there is something which you can attain by action, that belongs to this world. Anything that can be attained by action belongs to the world of matter, and anything that belongs to the world of spirit cannot be attained by action. That can be attained only through inaction, relaxation, total let-go.
Accomplish do-nothing – accomplish total let-go, accomplish relaxation. Relax in your search for truth. When you come to seek truth you come with the worldly mind. There, ambition is needed, effort is needed, because the competition is very hard. There, you are not alone: millions of people struggling, fighting with each other, a constant war goes on.
The world is a constant war and everybody is fighting with everybody else. The son fighting with the father – he may not be aware. The father fighting with the son – he may not be aware. The mother fighting with the child, the child fighting with the mother, brothers fighting brothers, nations fighting nations, families fighting other families, everybody is in a deep conflict and fight.
There, if you relax, you cannot become a prime minister. There, if you relax, you cannot become a president of a country. There, if you relax, you cannot become a Rockefeller or a Ford. No, that’s not possible. If you relax there, you will be a beggar like Buddha or Lao Tzu. There, fight is needed. The world belongs to violence, and the world belongs to the ego, and the world belongs to those who are more aggressive than others.
You come from the world completely trained for violence, action: do something! People come to me and they say, “Tell us to do and we can do, but you say – just relax, don’t do. That is impossible.” Not to do anything even for a single moment seems impossible because of an old habit, an old deep-rooted pattern: “Do something!” Lao Tzu says, “Do nothing.”
In the world of being, doing is not needed. That is the meaning of being – where doing is not needed. There you flower in your profoundest depth; there you flower in your greatest height.
But no effort is needed. Says a Zen master: Sitting quietly, doing nothing, the grass grows by itself. He is talking about the innermost core of your being where doing nothing, sitting quietly, is the only way to do something. The grass grows by itself. There is no need to pull at the grass, there is no need to pull the plants up, they grow by themselves. You simply wait by the side. While you are waiting the grass is growing.
Once you understand that no effort is needed for the innermost being, suddenly, a new dimension has opened for you. There is no strain. A religious man is without strain. In fact a religious man is not trying to achieve anything. If you see that a religious man is trying to achieve something he is not religious, he is as worldly as others. He has only changed the name of his god, that’s all. Before he used to call it money, now he calls it meditation. Before he used to call it matter, now he calls it something else – God. But, the achieving mind is there, and an achieving mind is the hindrance, the only barrier.
Accomplish do-nothing. Enjoy not doing anything. Simple – but it looks difficult. It looks difficult because of you, otherwise it is simple. Find time to do nothing. Whenever you can find some time just close your eyes and do nothing. Soon you will have the taste of: …the flavorless. Soon you will enter a different kind of existence, where Jesus lives, Krishna lives, Lao Tzu lives.
Accomplish do-nothing. Attend to no-affairs. Constantly attending to affairs creates anxiety. Sometimes attend to no-affairs; not doing anything.
In my childhood my grandfather was very worried about me. He was a very loving man and very clever, old and wise. Whenever he would see me sitting – because that’s how I was my whole childhood, doing nothing, just sitting silently – he would say, “Get up! Do something! Otherwise you will not accomplish anything in life. You will be a failure.”
And he was right! Perfectly right. Out of deep compassion he was saying that. He would say, “At least go and play! Don’t sit like that, you create anxiety for me.”
So I would move from that room to another, and sit there. Because once you …taste the flavorless, there is nothing to compare with it, it is incomparable. Once you know that attending to no-affairs is the greatest affair in the world, then all things seem to be so small, so juvenile, childish, foolish.
But in the West particularly, there has never been a teacher who has said, “Do nothing.” Jesus tried, but they killed him – and Jesus also tried very guardedly because he would not have been understood at all. If he had talked like Lao Tzu nobody would have understood him.
Jews are great doers. They accomplish many things. It is difficult to defeat the Jews in anything; never compete with a Jew, he will defeat you. They are great doers. The whole world has been against them. Many Hitlers come and go; they try to destroy the Jews but – nothing: they are standing again stronger than before. Jews are the most worldly race in the world. They believe in doing. They would not have understood Jesus, but still he was saying something like Lao Tzu in a guarded way, in a masked language – but no other teacher has even tried. On the contrary the proverb goes: “When you do nothing you become a workshop for the Devil.” And Lao Tzu says when you do nothing, only then do you become the workshop for God, not for the Devil.
The Devil takes possession of you when you want to do something. Then you are in the hands of the Devil; then he can possess you, he can tempt you, he can force you, he can make you run toward things, toward achievements. But a man who does not want to do anything, who pays attention to no affairs – the Devil simply cannot come near him. It is impossible, because the Devil is the doer.
I would like to tell you again, from a different standpoint, the story of why Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden, from paradise.
Adam lived a life like the animals, trees, and birds, doing nothing. It was sheer delight, enjoying as children do. Doing nothing, they enjoy, playing. And God had said, “Don’t go and eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge” – because the moment you eat the fruit of knowledge, immediately you become a doer. Knowledge is useless unless it functions as a means to do something. Knowledge means know-how. Knowledge is a technical help to do things more skillfully. Knowledge makes you more efficient doers.
But the serpent, the Devil, seduced them. First he seduced Eve. That too is meaningful because wherever you go, you will always find Eves pushing their husbands toward doing something: “Go and do something! We have to build a bigger house, and purchase a bigger car. And more diamonds are needed. Go and do something, don’t sit in the house!” Women go on pushing their husbands.
The parable is meaningful. If man is allowed, he will relax, he will become a bum. He will just relax. He will just play on the flute under a tree, have a flask of wine with him, and that will do! He will not bother about the world.
The parable says the serpent first convinced Eve: “This tree, the Tree of Knowledge, has been prohibited because God does not want you to become like God. If you eat the fruit of knowledge you will be like gods!” All advertisers appeal to women, not to men. The serpent was the first advertising agency. He was the pioneer. He approached the right source. If you want to catch the husband, catch the wife. Once a new car enters her mind, then it will be difficult – she is going to put the new car in the husband’s mind.
And once Eve tasted the fruit of knowledge, she seduced poor Adam also. They were expelled. They were thrown out of paradise. The meaning is: after that they became such cunning, knowing, doers that they lost the innocence of being that they used to delight in. There was no time before.
The parable says that God, when he was expelling them, said, “Now there will be death for you.” There was no time before, so death could not exist. Not that Adam was not going to die, but death could not exist. Birds die, but they don’t know anything about death; they simply live and they simply die. Not for a single moment are they worried about death. Animals live and die, but death is not a problem for them. They don’t sit and brood about what death is and whether one survives after death or not. Death is not a problem. When time enters, death enters. Knowledge enters, time comes in, then death – and all the problems.
Man has to become innocent again. He has to drop knowledge. But you can drop knowledge only when you come to know that all that is beautiful, true, and good can happen without doing; otherwise you will not be able to drop knowledge.
Lao Tzu is trying to make you understand. He is trying to give you a vision that knowledge has to be dropped. But then you will immediately ask, “If knowledge is dropped, how will we be able to do so many things?” He says those “so many things” are not needed. The innermost being can flower in non-doing.
Accomplish do-nothing. Attend to no-affairs. Taste the flavorless. Lao Tzu never uses the name God. He consistently remains with indications; he never uses any direct expressions: …the flavorless. God has no flavor because flavor can exist only in duality. If something is sweet, then something has to be bitter. If something is good, then something else has to be bad. If something is divine, then something has to be evil. Flavorless means the nondual, what Hindus call advaita: not two. Flavorless is a poetic expression, it just gives a hint, not a direct instruction.
Whether it is big or small, many or few,
requite hatred with virtue.
This is a very revolutionary concept. It has to be understood very, very delicately.
You have heard the famous dictum of Jesus: Love your enemies. Lao Tzu goes deeper than that. He says: …requite hatred with virtue, not with love. It would have been easier to say: Respond with love when somebody hates you. Love the enemy. But why is he not saying love?
There are very profound reasons. First: when Jesus says “Love your enemy,” he is accepting the duality of love and hate, he accepts the dual phenomenon. Deep down you already love your enemy, otherwise how can you hate? Unless you have loved the enemy you cannot hate him. You love the enemy already in your deep unconscious, that’s why you hate. Love and hate exist together. When you love a person, you forget that you hate him also.
If you become aware, you will become aware of the fact that if you love a person, then you hate him also; and if you hate a person, then you love him also. Enemies and friends are not very different. You love the friend consciously, you hate him unconsciously; you hate the enemy consciously, you love him unconsciously – because they cannot exist separately, they are two aspects of the same coin: love–hate.
Sometimes you become worried: “Why do I want to kill?” Sometimes you start thinking of killing your wife or your husband, or of murdering your mother or your father, and you feel much guilt: “Why?” Don’t feel guilty. It is natural. In each love, hate is hidden. And think about your enemy, go deeper into your hatred. You will find that you love him. Maybe it is a negative way of loving; hate is a negative way of loving.
It happened that Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, two great politicians of India, were long-standing enemies. And of course when you are enemies for so long, you become too attached to each other. When Gandhi was murdered and Jinnah heard the news, the man who brought the news to Jinnah was thinking that he would be happy, but he became sad – because without Gandhi where would Jinnah be? The enemy is dead, you are almost dead. You don’t miss only your friends; you miss your enemies also. They have become part of your being.
When Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is not saying a very, very revolutionary thing. It appears revolutionary. You already love them in fact; the love is hidden and he wants to bring it up, that’s all.
Lao Tzu says: …requite hatred with virtue. What is virtue? Virtue is balance. Virtue is compassion not love. The distinction is subtle, but great. When you love a person the emotion is hot. When you hate a person then too the emotion is hot. One thing is the same: that you are in a hot relationship. If you are indifferent to a person you are cold, no heat in you either way. You are simply unrelated. You don’t love, you don’t hate; you don’t bother, you don’t care. You are indifferent. You go on your own way. That’s why nothing hurts people more than indifference.
If you hate a person it is not so much of a problem to him. He knows you are paying him attention – maybe negative, but you are paying attention. But if you are indifferent it hurts very deeply. If people simply do not bother about you – you pass by and they don’t pay any attention this way or that – then you feel that you are almost dead.
Indifference kills, not hate. Hate brings energy. Love brings energy. Love is a pleasant feeling, hate is unpleasant – but if you have to choose between hate and indifference, you will certainly choose hate. You will never choose indifference. Indifference is absolutely cold, killing.
Compassion is not cold, compassion is cool. Cold means dead; cool means balanced. Let me tell you in another way. Compassion is cool, indifference is cold. If you compare compassion with love and hate, it is cool; if you compare compassion with indifference, it is warm. It is warm in comparison to indifference and its coldness. It is cool in comparison to love and hate and their heat.
Virtue is compassion. It is not love, it is not hate, it is a balance between the two. It is not indifference either. It is life-giving. But if you don’t know, compassion will look like indifference. The distinction is very subtle. Coolness will look like coldness, but coolness is alive, fresh. Coldness is simply dead. Virtue is compassion.
Requite hatred with compassion.
Deal with the difficult while it is easy…
Everything difficult has a phase when it is easy, if you are alert you will know it. It is so easy to destroy a seed, it is very difficult to destroy a big tree. And everything has a seed form. When anger arises it is just like a seed. If you want to drop it at that moment there is no problem, but if you allow it to take root within you, to spread within your being, to overwhelm you, then destroying anger will be very, very difficult. It will look like destroying yourself; it will have become such a deep part of you.
Whether it is big or small, many or few,
requite hatred with virtue.
Deal with the difficult while yet it is easy;
deal with the big while yet it is small.
And everything is small and easy in the present. If you don’t postpone, everything is easy and small. You are powerful enough to change it, to transform it. But if you say, “I will see to it tomorrow,” if you say, “There is no hurry,” if you take it easy and you say, “Someday when I have enough time I will see to the problem.” Meanwhile the problem is growing and taking root.
Don’t postpone it because then you will not be able to do much about it. That’s what you have been doing up to now. You have been postponing for lives. And then you come to me and you say, “We would like to be silent. We would like to be peaceful” – and for many lives you have been postponing problems which are boiling within you. They have to be tackled. A great surgery is needed.
But you are in such a hurry again. People meditate a few days, four or five days, and they come to me and they say, “Nothing is happening yet.” Can’t you see the ridiculousness of it? What are you asking?
For many lives you postpone. Then your being becomes like a ruin. Your garden is no longer there: everything destroyed, only weeds subsist. And suddenly one day you want to have a beautiful lawn. It will take time. The weeds have to be thrown out. Their roots and seeds have to be thrown out. The soil has to be changed. Now it is not easy.
But you can do at least one thing: start living moment to moment, so at least you are not gathering more nonsense around you, more rubbish around you. At least you can clean one part of the garden and start working moment to moment. And once you know how problems have become difficult, and once you come to understand that they are easy if you tackle them in the beginning, everything will become easy again. But that feeling, that nuance, that knack, has to be learned.
The difficult problems of the world
must be dealt with while they are yet easy;
the great problems of the world
must be dealt with while they are yet small.
Therefore the sage by never dealing with great problems
accomplishes greatness.
These things look like paradoxes – they are not. They are simple statements with no contradiction in them.
Therefore the sage by never dealing with great problems… Because he has no great problems. He never deals with great problems, that’s why he is great.
In your understanding just the opposite is the case. You think a man is so great because he has dealt with such great problems. Such great challenges, and he has conquered them. This is foolish. A great man has nothing to conquer. The greater he is, the less to conquer. If he is really great there is nothing to conquer. The greatest man has no problems to solve, either great or small, because he never allows them to accumulate. They become problems only when postponed. Right now, lived, they are not problems; they are part of life, and beautiful.
Just start being alert. Whenever you see a problem is arising, drop all activity. Look at it, pay attention to it. Just look within at what it is. Sometimes a smile will be enough to change it; laughter will do, and you will be out of the vicious circle. Sometimes nothing will be needed, not even a smile and a laugh – just the very attention, that you looked into it, and it will disappear as dewdrops disappear in the morning when the sun rises.
Just look. Bring the sun of consciousness to it, it will disappear – it is so small and you are so big and so vast. Just the very encounter, that you look at it, and it changes its quality. It is no longer a problem. You can delight in it, you can enjoy it. Then life becomes a play.
He who lightly makes a promise
will find it often hard to keep his faith.
If you understand life you will never make promises because a promise is a postponement. You must either do it now or you will say, “I don’t know, I will see tomorrow.”
In Mahabharata there is a beautiful anecdote…
Pandavas, the five brothers, are hiding in the forest. One day a beggar comes. Yudhishthira is sitting outside the hut and the beggar asks for nothing much, just some bread, a few chapattis.
Yudhishthira is brooding – and as happens always whenever there is a beggar, you would like to postpone. You say, “Come tomorrow,” just to avoid. He may not come again tomorrow. You don’t want to be so rude as to say, “I will not give anything.” Also you want to protect your image that you are a great giver. So you say, “Come tomorrow. Don’t disturb me now.” Yudhishthira did the same; he said, “Come tomorrow.”
Bhim, another brother – who is not known much for his wisdom or intelligence, but sometimes it happens that people who are not very intelligent flare up – suddenly started laughing and he ran out of the house laughing, going toward the town.
Yudhishthira asked, “Where are you going?”
He said, “I am going to tell the people in the town that my brother has conquered time! He has promised something to a beggar if he comes tomorrow.”
Suddenly Yudhishthira became aware. Because how can you say, “Come tomorrow?” You may not be here tomorrow. The beggar may not be here tomorrow. Yudhishthira ran off, caught hold of the beggar, gave him whatever he could give him, and dropped the habit of promising.
Because a promise is possible only if tomorrow is certain. But who knows anything about tomorrow?
There is a great old Chinese story…
A king was very angry with his prime minister. He had done something, so the king ordered him to be sentenced to death. It was the tradition that if somebody was to be executed by the king’s order, the king had to visit him one day before, to ask if he had some desire to be fulfilled. And the last desire of the condemned man had to be fulfilled. This man was no ordinary man – he had served the king for many years as his prime minister; he had been an intimate. But something went wrong, he did something and the king was angry, so the next morning he was to be executed, hanged. The king came to see him twenty-four hours before.
The prime minister was a brave man. He had been to many wars as a general. When the king came, the prime minister started weeping and crying, tears rolling down. The king said, “I would never have imagined that you, a man of such bravery, would be weeping and crying because you are going to be hanged tomorrow. Are you afraid of death?”
The prime minister said, “That is not the point. Death I have never been afraid of. It is something else but – leave it aside, now there is no time to do it.”
The king became curious. He said, “What is the matter? Tell me. I am here to fulfill your last desire. I promise to fulfill it. Tell me. You have served the kingdom long and I would like to fulfill it, whatever it is. Just tell me.”
The prime minister said, “If you insist, then I will tell you. This is a long story. When I was young I was with a great master. He was an enlightened being and he had many secrets with him. One secret I learned, and that secret was that there is a rare type of horse that can be taught to fly. My whole life I have been searching for that type of horse that can be taught to fly, but I couldn’t find one – and look at the irony of fate: the horse that you have come on is the right horse, and tomorrow morning I will be dead! The whole science will die with me. The secret will be lost to humanity – that’s why I am crying.”
The king said, “The horse can fly? How much time will you take to teach it?” The king became interested. If this horse could fly in the sky it would be something superb, incomparable, that no other king in the world could claim. He said, “Forget about your sentence; tell me how much time you will take.”
The man said, “It will take one year.”
The king said, “Okay. There is no harm in it. Try for one year. If the horse flies, then not only will you not be hanged, but you will share my kingdom, half-half. But if the horse cannot fly, then you will be executed. So there is no harm in it. Come, take the horse.”
The man took the horse and went home. There his wife and children were crying and weeping because this was the last day, the next morning their husband, father, would be dead. They could not believe their eyes – that he was coming back riding on a horse. They thought they must be dreaming. They wiped their eyes and asked, “What is the matter? How could you manage to come home?”
He told them the whole story. The wife again started crying and said, “You are a fool! I know very well you don’t know anything like that. You created a lie. If you were going to lie, why say one year? You should have asked for fifty years, twenty years at least! The one year will pass so soon, and it will be a nightmare because the whole year we will be trembling that again soon you have to die.
The man said, “Don’t be afraid, one year is so long. The king can die, I can die, even the horse can die – don’t be worried! Don’t be worried, a year is so long.”
Lao Tzu says:
He who lightly makes a promise
will find it often hard to keep his faith.
He who makes light of many things
will encounter many difficulties.
Hence even the sage regards things as difficult,
and for that reason never meets with difficulties.
Lao Tzu is saying: Don’t promise, otherwise you will lose faith – because time goes on changing. Don’t say anything certain about the future because the future itself is not certain. At the most you can be certain for this moment, that’s all. And one who lives in this moment without promising, postponing, thinking, planning about the future lives such a simple life, such an innocent life, that his faith grows, his trust grows, his gratefulness grows. He becomes a vehicle for the ultimate grace to flow from him. He becomes a passage for the divine, for Tao.
But one who lightly gives promises, who lightly postpones things, who never thinks that things are difficult… Try to understand this. Lao Tzu says: Everything is simple if you take it rightly in the beginning. But don’t think that it is simple, and don’t think that it is easy, because if you think that it is easy there will be a tendency to postpone – “Such an easy thing, why bother now? It can be done tomorrow.” Things are easy, but think that they are very difficult. Tackle them immediately otherwise they will become difficult.
Hence even the sage regards things as difficult… Knowing well that they are easy. But he regards them as difficult so that the inner tendency to postponement is curbed. Small things, very ordinary – they can be done very easily, but the sage regards them as difficult: …and for that reason never meets with difficulties, because then he goes on solving everything. Things never accumulate, they are never too much. He moves from moment to moment, completely unburdened from the past, completely unburdened for the future. He moves like a mirror, empty.
“The empty mirror” is the right term for the sage. You come before it, he mirrors you. When you move away, the reflection has gone. The mirror is again empty, again ready to reflect something if it comes. The mirror never says, “I will reflect tomorrow.” If the mirror could say, “I will reflect tomorrow,” there would be such a crowd, nothing would be reflected. That is the state of your mind.
You have been postponing. Now stop postponing. Look into your problems. By that very look they are almost all solved. And the small things that remain? – they can be tackled. Everybody is capable of solving his problems. Everybody has to be capable. When you are capable of creating problems, who else is going to be capable of solving them? You create, you can solve.
These sutras of Lao Tzu are very significant. Pay attention to them. Meditate over them. Let your being be soaked with them.
Enough for today.