Taoism, Daoism, Tao, Dao, Lao Tzu's Tap Te Ching, Vol. 2 Tao: The three treasures, Chapter 6: Discipline And Control, Question 1

The first question:

Question 1

YOU SAID THAT THOSE WHO WANT TO ATTAIN NEED DISCIPLINE AND EFFORT AT FIRST. IS THAT NOT A THING OF THE EGO, AND WILL IT NOT BECOME MORE STRENGTHENED? I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HARD ON MYSELF AND MISSED MUCH OF THE JOYS OF LIFE. PLEASE EXPLAIN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DISCIPLINE AND CONTROL.

There is not only a difference, there is a vast difference: discipline and control are polar opposites.

Control is from the ego, discipline is from the non-ego; control is manipulating yourself, discipline is to understand yourself; discipline is a natural phenomenon, control is unnatural; discipline is spontaneous, control is a sort of suppression. Discipline needs only understanding -- you understand and you act according to your understanding. Discipline has no ideal to follow, discipline has no dogma to follow, discipline is not perfectionistic -- discipline leads you by and by towards a wholeness.

Control is perfectionistic, it has an ideal to be achieved; you have an idea in the mind about how you should be. Control has many shoulds and many should-nots, discipline has none. Discipline is a natural understanding, a flowering.

The very word 'discipline' comes from a root which means 'to learn'; it comes from the same root as the word 'disciple'. A disciple is one who is ready to learn -- and discipline is that capacity of openness which helps you to learn.

Discipline has nothing to do with control. In fact, a disciplined mind is never a mind which thinks in terms of control, there is no need for it. A disciplined mind needs no control, a disciplined mind is absolutely free.

An undisciplined mind needs control because an undisciplined mind feels that without control there is danger. An undisciplined mind cannot trust itself, hence the control. For example: If you don't control yourself you may kill somebody -- in anger, in rage you can be a murderer. You need control, because you are afraid of yourselves.

A man of understanding, a man who understands himself and others, always feels compassion. Even if somebody is an enemy, a man of understanding has compassion towards him because a man of understanding can understand the viewpoint of the other also. He knows why the other feels as he feels, he knows why the other is angry, because he knows his own self, and in knowing that, he has known all others. He has compassion, he understands, and he follows understanding. When I say this don't misunderstand me -- understanding in fact need not be followed. The very word 'following' gives the idea of having to do something: you understand, then you have to do something -- follow. No -- understand, and everything settles by itself. You need not follow. It starts happening.

So the first thing to understand is the difference between control and discipline. Control is a false coin, invented by society as a substitute for discipline. It looks exactly like discipline: every false coin looks that way, otherwise you could not make it current, it could not circulate in the market. There are many false coins about inner life. For example, control is a false coin for the real coin of discipline, and for the real coin of understanding, knowledge is a false coin.

For religion, sect is a false coin. To fulfil your need of being religious many false sects are offered to you -- Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism. All '-isms' are false. Religion has no '-ism' about it, it is not a dogma. It is something that flowers within you, not something which is enforced from without. Always be aware of the false coins because they are in circulation, and they have been in circulation for so long that people have almost forgotten about the real coins. Religion is neither Christian, nor Hindu, nor Mohammedan; religion is simply religion. It is an attitude which one has to grow into, one cannot be born into it.

Nobody can be religious by birth; it comes through creative effort, it comes through suffering and experience, it comes through wandering and coming home, it comes through going astray and coming back to the right path. Through much suffering and experience, by and by a certain quality of being starts crystallizing within you: that crystalized being is religious and the fragrance that surrounds that crystalized being is religion. It is indefinable.

The same is true about control and discipline. Beware of control. Never try to control yourself. Who will control really? If you understand, there is no need to control; if you don't understand, then who will control? This is the crux of the whole problem.

If you understand, what is the need to control? You understand, so you do whatsoever is right. Not that you have to do it, you simply do it because how can you do the wrong? If you are hungry, you don't start eating stones -- you understand that stones cannot be eaten, finished! There is no need to give you a commandment: 'Never eat stones when you are hungry.' It will be foolish, simply foolish to say it. When you are thirsty you drink water. What is the need to make any should or should-not about it?

Life is simple when you understand. There are no regulations or rules around it, there is no need, because your very understanding is the rule of all rules. There is only one golden rule and that is understanding; all other rules are useless, they can be thrown away. If you understand, you can drop all controls, you can be free because whatsoever you do, you will do through understanding.

If you ask me the definition of what is right, I will say: That which is done through understanding. Right and wrong have no objective values; there is nothing like a right action and a wrong action, there are only actions done through understanding and actions done through non-understanding. So sometimes it is possible that one action may be wrong this moment and right the next moment because the situation has changed and now the understanding says something else. Understanding is to live moment to moment, with a sensitive response to life.

You don't have a fixed dogma of how to act; you look around, you feel, you see, and then you act out of that feeling, seeing, knowing -- the action comes.

A man of control has no vision of life, he has no sensitivity to life. When the road is right in front of him, open, he consults a map; when the door is just in front of him he asks others: Where is the door? He is blind. Then he has to control himself because the door is changing every moment. Life is not a dead, static thing -- it is not. It is dynamic.

So the same rule that was good for yesterday will not be good for today and cannot be good for tomorrow. But a man who lives through control has a fixed ideology, he follows his map. Roads go on being changed every day, life goes on moving into new dimensions, but he goes on carrying his old rubbishy ideology. He looks at his idea, then he follows it, and then he is always in the wrong situation.

That's why you feel that you have missed many joys in life. You have to miss, because the only joy that life can give is a response of understanding. Then you feel many joys, but then you don't have any rules, any ideas, any ideals, then you are not here to follow certain codes -- you are here to live and discover your own code of life.

When you become aware of your own code of life, you will see that it is not a fixed thing. It is as dynamic as life itself.

If you try to control, it is the ego; it is the ego manipulating you in many ways. Through the ego, society manipulates you, and through society, the dead, all those who are dead now, manipulate you. Every living being, if he follows a dead ideology, is following dead people.

Zarathustra is beautiful, Buddha is beautiful, Lao Tzu is beautiful, Jesus is beautiful -- but they are no longer applicable. They lived their lives, they flowered beautifully: learn through them -- but don't be a stupid follower. Be a disciple, but don't be a student.

A student learns the word, the dead word; a disciple just learns the secrets of understanding, and when he has his own understanding, he goes on his own way. He pays his respect to Lao Tzu and says: Now I'm ready, I'm grateful, I go my own way. He will always be grateful to Lao Tzu -- and this is the paradox: people who have been deadly following Jesus, Buddha or Mohammed can never forgive them. If you miss your joys of life because of them how can you forgive them? How can you really be in gratitude? In fact you are deeply in anger. If you come across them you will kill them, you will murder them because these are the people who have forced you into a controlled life; these are the people who didn't allow you to live as you would have liked to live; these are the people, Moses and Mohammed, who have given you commandments about how to live. You cannot forgive them. Your gratitude is false. You are so miserable, how can you be grateful? For what? For your misery can you be grateful? No, you can be grateful only when you are blissful.

Gratitude follows like a shadow when you have an inner blessing, a feeling of constant benediction.

Be a man of discipline but never be a man of control. Then how can you be disciplined? You know only one meaning of discipline and that is being controlled -- by yourself or by others. Drop all rules and regulations and live life with a deeper alertness, that's all. Understanding should be the only law. If you understand you will love, if you love you will not commit any harm to anybody; if you understand you will be happy, if you are happy you will share; if you understand you will become so blissful that from your whole being, continuously as a continuum, like a river, will arise a thankfulness towards existence. That is the prayer.

Try to understand life, don't force, and remain always free from the past; because if the past is there and you are controlling, you cannot understand life. And life is so fleeting, it doesn't wait.

But why do people try to make rules? Why do they fall into the trap at all? They fall into the trap because a life of understanding is a life of danger. You have to rely upon yourself. The life of control is comfortable and secure, you need not rely on yourself: Moses will do, the Bible will do, the Koran will do, the Gita will do -- you need not bother about the problems, you can escape from them. You take shelter in old words, disciplines, thoughts, you cling to them. This is how you make a comfortable life, a life of convenience -- but a life of convenience is not a life of bliss. Then you miss joys because joys are possible only when you live dangerously. There is no other way to live.

Live dangerously, and when I say 'live dangerously' I mean live according to your own self, whatsoever the cost. Whatsoever is at stake, live according to your own consciousness, according to your own heart and feeling.

If all security is lost, all comfort and convenience is lost then too you will be happy. You may be a beggar, you may not be a king, you may be on the streets in rags, but no emperor can compete with you. Even emperors will feel jealous of you because you will have a richness, a richness not of things, a richness of consciousness. You will have a subtle light around you and you will have a feeling of blissfulness. Even others can touch that feeling: it is so visible, so substantial, others will be affected by it, it will become a magnet.

You may outwardly be a beggar but inwardly you have become a king.

But if you live a life of convenience and security and comfort you will avoid danger, you will avoid many difficulties and sufferings; but by avoiding those difficulties and sufferings you will avoid all the bliss that is possible in life. When you avoid suffering you avoid bliss, remember that. When you try to escape a problem you are escaping the solution also. When you don't want to face a situation you are crippling your own life. Never live a controlled life -- that is the life of an escapist -- but be disciplined. Disciplined not according to me, not according to anybody, but according to your own light. 'Be a light unto yourself.' That was Buddha's last saying before he died; the last thing that he uttered was, 'Be a light unto yourself.' That is discipline.

Taoism - Daoism - Tao - Dao

VOL. 2, TAO: THE THREE TREASURES

Chapter-6

Discipline And Control