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.