Taoblog

Whenever you demonstrate, you demonstrate your inner poverty. If your taoism becomes a demonstration you are not a taoist. If your meditation becomes a demonstration you are not meditative, because whenever the real exists, it is such a light that there is no need to demonstrate it. When your house is lighted, when there is a flame, you need not go to the neighbors and tell them, "Look, our house has got a lamp." It is there. But when your house is in darkness you try to convince your neighbors that light is there. Convincing them, you try to convince yourself. This is the reason why you want to demonstrate. If the other is convinced, his conviction, her conviction, will help you to be convinced.

This is what Chuang Tzu means when he says: A perfect man is like an empty boat. Many things are implied in it. First, an empty boat is not going anywhere because there is nobody to direct it, nobody to manipulate it, nobody to drive it somewhere. An empty boat is just there, it is not going anywhere. Even if it is moving it is not going anywhere.

A man of Tao said, "The whole world is my home, the sky is my shelter; I go everywhere, there is no barrier. I am a free man."

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=208438777963459742&ei=S0tmStmCOKGC2wLGyo03&q=

Hindus make their sacred places by the side of rivers. Because Hindus have already monopolized the rivers, Jainas had to do something to defeat them -- the same competitive mind is everywhere. So they thought that the best thing would be to choose the highest peaks of the mountains and to show these fools that the rivers are dirty. And people in India even throw dead bodies, half -- burned bodies, dead animals into the rivers. These are their sacred places! So the Jainas made their sacred places on high mountains. Whether I keep you starving or I keep myself starving, it is the same; the same principle and the same standard should be applied: I am a violent man, if not to your body, then to my own body. And in being violent with you, there was a possibility that you may have retaliated -- you may have stopped me being violent to you. But to be violent with your own body is the easiest thing in the world. What can your body do? It cannot retaliate, it cannot prevent you. It has no defense against you. So the person who is violent to others, at least is violent to someone who has the right to defend himself and can be violent in return. But the person who is violent with himself is really cunning, very cunning. He has found the most innocent victim in the world, defenseless. You can do anything you want to your own body. There have been monks who have been beating their body every morning, till the blood starts oozing all over the body. And they were thought to be great saints! There was one Christian saint in Alexandria who remained on a sixty-foot-high pillar -- on top of it there was space enough just to sit. For thirty years he remained sitting on that pillar. He was sleeping there; people were sending food and he was pulling the food up by rope. He was defecating, urinating from the pillar... but this was thought to be great austerity. And from hundreds of miles people would come to pay respect to this madman. He had no other quality, but even kings came to pay respect to him. What was he doing? Just torturing himself.

As long as thoughts race within, the thought of No-Thought is also a thought. It is merely a thought that: I am 'Thought-less'. On the one hand there is the movement of thoughts within and on the other; I think I am 'thought-less'. But you can only visualise this state when there are no thoughts within. What is most interesting is the fact that when your mind is in a No-Thought condition, you will not even be aware that there are no thoughts within! To be thought-less is also a thought. It is just like a perfectly healthy man -- he is never conscious of the fact that he is healthy. The consciousness of health is an indication of sickness. Therefore we find that a sick person always talks of health. Such a man is not healthy, he is sick. If sickness persists in some corner, the idea of health lingers within. Many a time this consciousness of health proves to be a new type of illness. If a person becomes too conscious of health, he becomes ill. This is a disease. So it happens that by incessant thinking, by hearing continuously, by regular pondering over it, you develop this expectation of becoming 'Thought-less'. For we have heard that that alone is holy, that alone is the ultimate Bliss, that in itself is the joy of Samadhi, that everything else pales in significance before this supreme bliss. Then this becomes a desire -- the desire to become 'Thought-less'. Remember the 'No-Thought' condition cannot be turned into a desire -- but it invariably becomes so.

 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7308171700962325804&ei=P8DrSaCDNIiQ2AL44pXmCw&q=

In der Attila-the-Hun-Show reiten zwei Gruppen von Soldaten auf Pferden – Hunnen und Römer – aufeinander zu und beginnen zu kämpfen. Dann sieht man Attila den Hunnen und seine Frau in Zeitlupe aufeinander zu laufen. Es beginnt ein US-Sitcom-typischer Vorspann der „Attila the Hun Show“, danach sitzen Herr und Frau Hunne mit Sohn Robin und Tochter Jenny. Der farbige Butler Onkel Tom bringt Getränke und erklärt nach einem Blick aus dem Fenster, dass Horden von plündernden Westgoten da seien, Attila zu sehen. Vor diesen wird ein Ansager mit seinem Schreibtisch eingeblendet und sagt wie üblich: „And now for something completely different“. Der „It´s“-Mann startet den Vorspann. Der absurde Gameshow-Sketch „Spot the Brain Cell“, in der eine besonders renitent-tumbe Version der Pepperpots völlig schwachsinnige Antworten auf Fragen wie „Was essen Pinguine?“ („Themselves?“ „Horses?“ „Armchairs?“), tauchte in abgeänderter Variante auch in vielen Live-Shows der Pythons auf. „Cat on Parrot“ ist eine Folge nur für echte Tierfreunde. Erst entdeckt der Rattenfänger Schafe statt Ratten in den Wänden, dann entpuppt sich das Schaf als das wegen bewaffneten Raubüberfalls gesuchte Killerschaf Basil. Dann kündigen Papageien die „News for Parrots“ an, gefolgt von den „News für Gibbons“ und den „News für Wombats“. Aber alles immer noch besser als die Papageien-Version des Charles-Dickens-Klassikers „A Tale of Two Cities“, gespielt mit unerträglichen Piepstimmen.

Was man zusammendrücken will,

muss sich erst richtig ausdehnen.

Was man schwächen will,

muss erst richtig stark werden.

Was man beseitigen will,

muss sich erst richtig erheben.

Wo man nehmen will,

muss man erst richtig geben.

Dies nennt man:

Klares Erkennen des Verborgenen.

Das Weiche und Schwache bezwingt das Harte und Starke.

Nie darf der Fisch die Wassertiefe verlassen.

Des Landes wirksamste Waffen

Darf man nicht den Menschen zeigen.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3408822685024304278&ei=iKr7SNTJMqKy2gLszKHrDg&q=

Awareness means bringing the mind closer and closer to the body, penetrating the body with awareness. and when it happens, a great thrill passes through the whole body mechanism, and then it is no more a mechanism at all: it becomes an organic unity with the soul. Then the body vibrates in unison. You don't have the division, you don't possess the body; you are the body -- there is no possessor, no possessed. That's where sanity and health and wholeness arise; otherwise everybody remains schizophrenic. So that is going to be your work here: become more and more alert in small things. In drinking water, drink it with absolute alertness, as if everything depends on it. In that moment don't do anything else. Taste the water, feel its coolness going down your throat. Feel the quenching of the thirst, feel the entry of the water in the body. In that moment only be that. Eating, do the same. In walking, sleeping, loving, remember one thing: the body has not to be used as a robot. It is not a machine, you are not the manipulator. It is you; it is your visible being, you are its invisible source. But you are not two, you are two aspects of one energy. Matter and mind are not two but two states of the same energy; matter is more condensed, the mind is more abstract. No time should be lost unnecessarily. Just be alert, because our minds are very accidental. The mind is like driftwood: it has no sense of direction. Unless you remember it you can be hooked into something, you can get involved in something and then the time will be prolonged unnecessarily. It is urgent to come back and to be with me. Keep alert about that urgency. That will help and will not allow the mind to drift anywhere. Stop drifting. Make your work your meditation. Whenever you are with things which grow, you grow. That is the difficulty with machines: they don't grow, so if you work with machines you are stuck. They don't keep the growing energy flowing around you. So people who work with machines, by and by, slowly slowly become mechanical. Machines reduce man to a machine. To be with trees and plants is beautiful because they go on growing, they become an impetus, an inspiration, and the whole energy is flowing upwards with the growth. You cannot remain low, you have to go high. If you are alert, then farming can turn you on as no drug can ever do. Just the smell of the wet earth, the smell of the growing plants, the joy of the birds and the sun -- all that becomes a milieu for spiritual growth. To be close to nature is to be close to god. Even if it is not very economical, even if it is not very paying, don't be worried; that is irrelevant.

It is a momentum, a gathering momentum. You are standing on the shoulders of the Buddhas -- the whole part is yours. For example, in Osho Buddha is a part, Jesus is a part, Abraham is a part, Krishna is a part, Mohammed is a part... in that way Buddha was poorer than Osho, Jesus was poorer than Osho. And some future enlightened person will be richer than Osho, because Osho will be part of his being but he cannot be part of Osho’s being. Evolution goes on gathering momentum.

Each child should be more intelligent than the parents -- but that brings trouble, because that is what offends the parents. Parents would like to pretend that they are all-knowing. In the past it was easy to pretend because there was no other way to impart knowledge to the children than by the oral communication from the parents.

For example, a carpenter's son would learn all that he would ever learn through the father. The father would not only be the father but the teacher also. And the son would always be in awe and respect of him, because the father knew so much -- he knew everything about all kinds of trees and wood and this and that, and the son knew nothing. He would have tremendous respect.

Age used to be respected: the older a man was in the ancient days, the more wise, of course, because of his experiences. But now we have invented better means of communication. The father is no more the teacher; now the teaching profession is a totally different profession. The child goes to the school. The father had gone to the school thirty or forty years before. In these thirty, forty years there has happened a knowledge explosion. The child will learn something which the father is not aware of, and when the child comes home, how can he feel any awe? -- because he knows more than the father, he is more up to date than the father. The father seems to be out-moded.

This is the problem, and this is going to be so more and more, because our expectations are old and we still want the child to respect the parents as he used to respect them in the past -- but the whole situation has changed. You will have to learn something new now: start respecting the child. Now, the new has to be respected more than the old. Start learning from the child because he knows better than you. When your son comes from the university, he certainly knows better than you.

The new generations are not really a problem: your expectation that they should respect you, that they should respect you as children have always respected their parents -- it is impossible.

Fresno, visiting San Francisco, got quite a thrill out of attending a daring party in the Bohemia known as Telegraph Hill.

A friend who was showing her the sights pointed out a familiar-looking young couple and whispered, "Don't look now, but those two artists there are living in sin."

"Sin, my foot!" exclaimed the Fresno lady. "I know them. It is just Lois and Maurice, and they were married in the Fresno Baptist Church five years ago."

The young couple overheard and quickly drew the Fresno lady aside. "For God's sake don't tell anybody we are married," said the young man in a tense undertone. "It would ruin our artistic reputation."

Pornography is a by-product of religious repression. The whole credit goes to the priests. Pornography has nothing to do with pornographers. The pornography is created, managed by the Church, by the religious people. In a primitive, natural state, man is not pornographic. When human beings are naked and nude and man knows the woman's body and woman knows the man's body, you cannot sell PLAYBOY. It is impossible. Who will purchase PLAYBOY? And who will look into all that crap? They have repressed so much that man's mind is boiling. The man wants to see the woman's body. Nothing wrong in it, a simple desire, a human desire. And the woman wants to know the man's body. A simple desire, nothing wrong about it. Just think of a world where trees are covered with clothes. There are people.... There are some English ladies who cover their dogs and cats with clothes. Just think, cows and horses and dogs dressed. Then you will find new pornography arising. Somebody will publish a nude picture of a tree -- and you will hide it in a Bible and look at it! This whole foolishness is out of religious repression. Make man free, allow people to be nude. I am not saying they should continuously be nude, but nudity should be accepted. On the beach, at the swimming pool, in the home... nudity should be accepted. The children should take a bath with the mother, with the father, in the bathroom. There is no need for the father to lock the bathroom when he goes in. The children can come and have a talk and chitchat and go out. Pornography will disappear. Each child wants to know. "How does my daddy look?" Each child wants to know, "How does my mother look?" And this is simply intelligence, curiosity. And the child cannot know what the mother looks like, and the child cannot know what the father looks like; now you are creating illness in the child's mind. It is you, you are ill, and the illness will be reflected in the child's mind.

Shen Tsan was giving a bath to his old teacher. Rubbing his back, he said: "This is such a fine temple..." Every body is a fine temple, according to Zen. Every body is a shrine of Tao; Tao is enshrined in everyone. You need not go anywhere else to find Tao; if you can find yourself you have found Tao. It is hiding within you -- it is your within. "THIS IS SUCH A FINE TEMPLE," SHEN TSAN SAID, "BUT THE BUDDHA IN IT IS NOT AT ALL HOLY!" Maybe the old teacher was taking a bath and also reciting a sutra. That's what Buddhist monks do; they will go on taking a bath and reciting a sutra. Hindu pundits do the same, Hindu sannyasins do the same. They will go to take a dip in the Ganges and they will recite gayatri and other mantras. They are divided! If you want to recite gayatri, recite gayatri -- forget about taking a bath. And when you are taking a bath, take the bath, forget about gayatri. Then let this bath be your only mantra. He must have been reciting some mantra because they think, "Why waste time? You can do both the things." They will go on eating and they will go on reciting inside a certain sacred mantra. Why waste time? But then you are missing the totality of eating, then you do not taste your food. How can you do it? The mind is capable of doing only one thing at a time; it cannot do two things together -- it is impossible. If you are eating, then let your whole consciousness be that of taste, of smell. Forget everything! Then even ordinary bread may taste like the most delicious food possible. But you are not present. Look at people eating -- they are talking, there are people who are listening to the radio or seeing to the TV. I have heard about stupid Americans even making love while seeing the TV! -- what to say about eating? Why miss? You can do both the things -- you can make love and you can go on seeing the TV. Now, neither you will be seeing the TV nor you will be making love; you will not be able to enjoy either, you will miss both. There are people who cannot eat if they don't have company to talk and gossip and to discuss. When you are talking you go on swallowing -- swallowing is not eating. Eating should be meditative, prayerful. You should be more respectful to food because it is life, it is nourishment. And then thousand and one problems arise out of it. Because while you are eating you are reading the newspaper or quarrelling with the wife or listening to the radio or looking at the TV or talking to a friend or holding the phone, you will miss the joy of eating. You will eat more because your taste buds will not feel fulfilled and contented. Then you will gather unnecessary fat in the body. Then one has to start dieting, fasting, naturopathy and all kinds of nonsense follow. But the simple thing that should have been done in the first place was: just eating and not doing anything else.

Nadir shah heard about a great wise man in India, and he asked him to come. The wise man said, "To come to you will be enough proof that I am not wise, so the thing will be useless. You will have to come to the well." Nadir shah felt intrigued and excited too. He had never seen anybody disobey him. This man must have some guts. He went to the man and he felt some strange aura and energy around him. He said, "I have come. I want to ask you: it is said in the scriptures that to sleep too much is bad, but I love to sleep. In fact, I drink too much, and then to get up becomes difficult. The hangover... and then it is better to have more to drink and go to sleep again. What is your suggestion? Should I stop it?" The old man said, "No. Whatever the scriptures say means nothing. They were not written for you. They had no idea that a man like you will take instructions from the books. I would suggest you should sleep twenty-four hours, you should sleep forever. There is no need to wake up." Nadir shah said, "This is strange advice. Twenty-four hours? Forever?" The old man said, "Yes. Although it is against all the scriptures, but I say on my own authority that people like you need twenty-four hours of sleep, because whenever you are awake you will do some mischief. Asleep, much violence, much war, much trouble to the world will be stopped." So there is not much wrong.

All enlightened people have to lie, because truth cannot be said to you. You won't understand it; you are fast asleep, snoring. Truth cannot be said in language. The moment you put the experience of truth in language, it becomes untrue. So, rather than distorting the truth and making it untrue, it is far better to create a device -- which is a lie. But it works!

When love calls you, listen to it. That's the only responsibility. When love says something to you, let it enter into the deepest core of your being. When love knocks on your door, open the door. The real beloved, in fact, does not close the door at all, but waits at the door for the lover to come, so that he need not even knock.

Taoism is a love affair. It has nothing to do with ruled and the rulers, leaders and the led. It has certainly to do with love and lovers. And the beauty of love is: it does not create hierarchy.

You have every capacity, ability, potentiality to be enlightened. It is just a question of your decision. At the most, love persuades. And love has many ways to persuade. It is only hate that imposes. Just look at silence, and we all have become one. All divisions are lost and there is an immense peace, a tremendous feeling of joy arising in you.