Taoism, Daoism, Tao, Dao, Lao Tzu's Tap Te Ching, Vol. 4 Tao: The three treasures, Chapter 6: This is the Whole World I Have, Question 4

Question 4

IN MOMENTS OF DEEP LOVE AND MERGING WITH THE SURROUNDING EXISTENCE, O FRAGRANCE, YOUR FRAGRANCE, COMES TO ME, AND GRATITUDE ARISES IN MY HEART. IS LOVE THE ONLY COMMUNION POSSIBLE WITH A MASTER?

There is no other communion, not only with a Master -- there is no other communion with anybody except love.

There are three ways to be related. One we call communication. It is mind to mind. You talk. Words meet, not you. Intellects grope, try to understand each other, but you remain far away. It is a very guarded relationship. Not really a relationship, just a groping, trying to find whether you would like to come closer or not.

Intellect is very suspicious, non-trusting. In ordinary life ninety-nine per cent of your relationships remain intellectual. You talk to judge You talk to protect. You talk to avoid. In fact when you are talking to people you are not saying much, in fact you are trying not to say much.

Words create an illusion that you are saying many things. It may be just otherwise, you may be hiding. Have you watched? When you don't want to say something to somebody you talk MUCH. Not about that thing, about many other things. Because if you don't talk, the silence may be revealing.

A husband comes homes, he does not really want to talk with his wife but he talks about many trivial things, this and that -- he is avoiding some fact. If he remains silent the wife may start feeling something. the wife may be able to penetrate the silence, she is intuitive; he has to create a smoke around him of words so his real face is hidden.

People talk not to communicate but to avoid communication.

This is your ordinary relationship with people. Only rarely in this relationship are there contacts, otherwise there is no contact.

Everybody is suffering, starving for human contact, but cannot come out of his armour, and cannot spread his hands. Everybody is waiting under his shell for somebody to come and break the shell. But the others are also afraid. Everybody is hiding in his cocoon, deep in need of love, deep in need to be related -- because man is not an island; you cannot exist alone. A relationship is nourishment, you need to be related.

If you move into aloneness for a few days, it will be good. Then you will start feeling starved. A subtle energy is missing. When you come in contact with people, you become again alive.

Now researchers say that the mother is not only feeding the child with the breast, she is feeding it with her love -- and love now is a nourishment; a subtle quality of her warmth, of her love, acceptance, is being transferred to the body of the child.

It is very subtle energy, but if a child is not given that... food can be given, milk can be given, care can be given, and if a child is not given love he shrinks in himself, dies.

If love is given, just the feeling of love -- now they have been experimenting on plants: you can take two plants of the same size, of the same age, and for one you sit every day for thirty minutes. forty minutes, with a deep feeling of love -- touch the plant, feel for it, have a little talk, say something to the plant, talk about the weather, the clouds, say that: Today the sun has not arisen but don't be afraid, it will be coming soon -- just spread your warmth around the plant. And the other plant -- you give exact nourishment to the other plant, but no love. You give fertilizers, water, sun, everything -- the same of these to both -- but no love; and suddenly you will see -- the first plant is going higher; within weeks it has doubled; and the other plant is shrinking, struggling hard to grow -- but something is missing. You can do it with three plants; the third plant every day you curse, say bad things, discouraging things, such as: Don't think that this cloud is going to leave, it is going to remain for ever, you are doomed.... And these are now scientific facts -- the cursed plant will die. With every care you cannot revive it. And the loved plant will grow, and bigger flowers will come to the loved plant. It will be almost double the size of the other plant which has not been loved.

A subtle aroma surrounds love. It is a food. Go into isolation. For a few days you will feel good. Then suddenly an urge arises to move and to go to the people, because there are your roots. That's why I am not in favour of total renunciation, I am not in favour of renouncing life, because you have been born here, you are part of this continent, you cannot be islands.

For a few days it is beautiful because sometimes to be in the crowd is too much, too tiring -- because you don't have the space. And everybody needs a certain space around him, a certain territory, where he is totally free.

These are the two needs: love, which is not possible when you are alone, and space, which is not possible when you are in a crowd -- and both are needs.

You need space, otherwise you feel suffocated. Look at people going in a train -- crowded, everybody is standing in a SHRUNK state, suffocated, even if others are touching you you are not feeling the touch. You have to become insensitive, you have to become hard, closed.

If you are too much in the crowd you will need space. If you go to the Himalayas, move to the desert, you will have infinite space, but then suddenly, after a few days, when the need is fulfilled for space and freedom, you will want to come back to the world.

Life should be a rhythm between opposites. That's why I say -- remain in the house, remain in the market, and become a sannyasin. Move sometimes to the lonely world, again come back to the market. Between meditation and market there should be a rhythm. Then you will be nourished by both. You will thrive more. You will attain to abundance of life.

The second type of relationship is communion. Communication is of the head. Communion is of the heart. You don't say much, you mean much. Two lovers sitting by each other's side holding hands -- they don't say much, they mean much. Ordinarily you say much but you don't mean much. Two lovers, just sitting, nothing to say in fact, what is there to say? Love is enough when it is there; nothing else needs to be said -- deeply merging into each other, losing their boundaries, becoming part and members of each other, just being silent, feeling, sensitive, alert, merging, in that moment, to talk will be a disturbance, to say something will not be a communication, it will be a hindrance, an obstacle. Silence is enough, it encompasses them both, they both become part of a deeper silence, a higher silence. That silence takes possession. This is communion, from heart to heart. This is love.

And then there is a third for which no name exists because it is so rare: being to being.

Communication: head to head; communion: heart to heart; and then there is a third phenomenon for which no word exists, because it is so rare -- after centuries sometimes one or two persons attain to it -- being to being. Even silence is a disturbance.

In that moment the music of silence is a noise. Absolute emptiness is needed.

That must have happened When Buddha gave the flower to Mahakashyap.

Buddha came one day with a flower in his hand. People were waiting and he wouldn't speak -- he looked at the flower, and he continued looking at the flower. Minutes passed, it became heavy, hard. The time looked like infinity -- and it had never happened before. Half an hour passed, the whole hour passed. people were feeling restless now. What has happened to Buddha? Then one unknown monk -- not known up to that time, a certain Mahakashyap, started laughing.

Buddha called him, gave him the flower, and told the audience: All that can be said I have given to you, and that which cannot be said I give to Mahakashyap.

That day, that morning, two beings met. It was not head to head, not heart to heart, it was being to being.

The Master can transfer his keys only from a contact which is being and being. Now for centuries Buddhists have been asking: What was given to Mahakashyap? It has become a koan in Japan: What was transferred? What did Buddha give to Mahakashyap that Mahakashyap gave to somebody else and it then passed on? And then Bodhidharma went to China in search of somebody to give the same thing to. It was given to Hui-neng. It has continued -- a chain, being to being.

That happens in a state of samadhi.

So -- ordinary communication; then the communion of love, and then the union of being. These are the three phenomena. When you become a disciple you have to attain to the second -- heart to heart; if you are a student -- to the first. A few are students here, who listen from head to head. A few are disciples who listen from heart to heart. And I hope some day somebody will listen from being to being, will be a Mahakashyap to whom I can give my flower, so that it can be carried from century to century.

Taoism - Daoism - Tao - Dao

VOL. 4, TAO: THE THREE TREASURES

Chapter-6

This is the Whole World I Have