Taoism, Daoism, Tao, Dao, Lao Tzu's Tap Te Ching, Vol. 3 Tao: The three treasures, Chapter 5: Beyond Honour and Disgrace

LAO TZU SAYS:

HE WHO KNOWS DOES NOT SPEAK; HE WHO SPEAKS DOES NOT KNOW. FILL UP ITS APERTURES, CLOSE ITS DOORS, DULL ITS EDGES, UNTIE ITS TANGLES, SOFTEN ITS LIGHT, SUBMERGE ITS TURMOIL, -- THIS IS THE MYSTIC UNITY.

THEN LOVE AND HATRED CANNOT TOUCH HIM. PROFIT AND LOSS CANNOT REACH HIM. HONOUR AND DISGRACE CANNOT AFFECT HIM. THEREFORE IS HE ALWAYS THE HONOURED ONE OF THE WORLD.

Language is human; obviously it has to be very limited. It is good for objective things, it is completely useless for the inner, the inside.

Language can say something, but it cannot say the all. If you are sitting at the dinner table, language is useful for saying: Please pass me the salt. It is utilitarian. It has use, but it cannot say the truth, because truth is not a utility, and truth is not something objective. It is not there outside you, it happens somewhere at the deepest core of your being.

We can decide what we are going to call a thing, it is between you and me; it is a contract. If both the parties are willing, language is perfectly okay. But if something has happened within me, this is not something between you and me; I cannot indicate what it is. Even if I indicate, you cannot see what it is. So no contract is possible.

Religion is beyond language. At the most, language can say what it is not. It cannot say what truth is, but it can say what it is not. At the most it can be a negation. We cannot say what God is because that will be limiting him through our limited words, concepts; at the most we can say what he is not; and all the scriptures only say what he is not. They eliminate the error, but they never show the truth. But if you go on eliminating the error, one day suddenly truth is revealed to you. It is not revealed through language, it is revealed through silence.

So the first thing to be understood very deeply, because it becomes a great pitfall if you don't understand it, is that language can be dangerous, one can be deluded by it.

You know the word God, but the word God is not God. In the word God there is nothing godly. The word God is absolutely hollow and empty. It has nothing in it. You can go on repeating it millions of times; nothing will happen to you, it is an empty shell; inside it is hollow. Words cannot carry the inner experience.

It may have been true when a Jesus used the word, it may have meant something to him, but not to those who heard him. This has to be understood.

If I say 'samadhi' I mean something, I know it. But when you hear the word samadhi it is just a noise in your ears; at the most you can understand the meaning that is given in the dictionary. But a dictionary is not existence. It is not a substitute for existence. Samadhi can be known only when you go in it, when you become it; there is no other way to know it.

That's why Lao Tzu goes on insisting: Truth cannot be spoken, and that which is spoken cannot be true. But he speaks because THIS much can be said; this is a negation.

He says:

HE WHO KNOWS DOES NOT SPEAK; HE WHO SPEAKS DOES NOT KNOW.

This much can be said. Lao Tzu speaks -- whether he knows or not. According to his own principle, if he knows he should not speak. If he speaks then he is not in the know, then he does not know. Then you will fall into a riddle which cannot be solved. If he does not know, then how can he say such a great truth?

HE WHO KNOWS DOES NOT SPEAK; HE WHO SPEAKS DOES NOT KNOW.

If he KNOWS, then why is he speaking? If he does not know, then such a profundity he cannot even hint at

Try to understand this paradox. He is simply eliminating one thing. All that he is saying in these two sentences -- which are deeply pregnant with meaning, very significant -- he is saying only this much: Don't be deluded by words. They are not truth; they may appear like truth, but they are not. A lived moment cannot be expressed. A live thing can be known only by living it.

You fall in love -- then you know what it is. You may go on reading a thousand and one books about love, and they may be beautiful books, they may even have been written by those who have loved and who have known what love is, but reading them you will never come to know what love is.

Love is not a concept to be understood. It is an experience to be possessed by. When love takes over you are thrown off centre, you are no more there, love exists and you are not. You cannot manipulate love. A concept can be manipulated, you can interpret a concept, you can put this meaning or that into it; but love? Love cannot be manipulated.

It is not that YOU love, it is nothing that you do, it is something that happens to you -- suddenly you are in a whirlwind. A greater force than you has taken possession of you. You are no more yourself, you are possessed.

That's why people think that lovers are mad -- they are. Love is a beautiful madness. It is like madness, it has a quality of madness, because one becomes possessed by it. People say: Love is blind. They are right, love is blind. Because love has its own eyes! These ordinary eyes don't work. Love has its own ways of seeing and feeling and being. All ordinary ways are thrown -- off the track. Love has its own sort of world -- a new world is created around the lover. He looks blind to everybody else, but he is not blind in himself; in fact for the first time he has attained to eyes, to vision, to insight.

Love can be known only by falling in love; by becoming, not even a lover, but by becoming love itself. If you are a lover, love has not happened yet. You still remain in control. If you want, you can change, if you want, you can move away. There is still a choice, love has not happened; you are still not possessed by it. You will not KNOW.

You may be moving according to some pattern, theories, of how to love and how not to love. You must be moving through some conditioning -- love has not become your heart, it does not beat within you, it still remains part of your mind. Language is of the mind and experience is of the heart. And heart has its own world, has its own dimension. So love cannot be expressed -- and truth is even deeper than love.

Three planes have to be remembered. The first plane is of the head -- which is the most superficial: the world of language, concepts, theories. You can manipulate it very easily, you are the master there.

Then there is a second plane, deeper than the head -- that is of the heart. There your mastery is not at all. You become a slave. You cannot control it; love becomes the master, you become the slave. It possesses you completely.

But still mind can say something about love, because heart is not very far away from the head, the distance is not very far. Mind can have a few glimpses, it can look back, it can look within, and have a few glimpses -- that's why poetry is possible, painting is possible, music is possible. These are all glimpses from the head of the heart.

But then there is a third layer of your being which is the last layer, the very substratum, the very ground. That is your BEING. Head is thinking, heart is feeling, being is simply being.

God, truth, ecstasy, nirvana, enlightenment -- they belong to being. The head has not even heard about it. It can have a little glimpse of the second layer, that is of the heart, love; it has not even heard that there exists another layer deeper than the heart... Heart can have a little glimpse of the being, because it is nearer to it. So people who are in love can have a little understanding -- I say A LITTLE -- of prayer. Because prayer is just like love.

When Jesus says: God is love, he is talking to the people of the heart. He was talking to his disciples. If he had been talking in a university to university professors and academicians he would not have said such a foolish thing, that God is love. He would have said God is mathematics, God is logic, or something else.

But he was talking to his very intimate disciples, very close, who were in deep love with him -- that is why he could say: God is love. He was talking to the heart in the language of the heart. He was indicating to the people of the heart that this is a further goal: that further goal is God and where you are standing is love. Jesus is trying to create a bridge between God and love, that's why he says God is love, or love is God.

He was not talking to popes, theologians, people well versed in religious matters, no; he was talking to fishermen, farmers, carpenters -- people who are not HEADY. People who are still of the feeling world, belong to feeling. That's why he could say God is love. Heart can have a little glimpse.

So the first step is from the head towards the heart. And the second step is from the heart towards the being.

Nothing can be said about being, because even to say something about heart is impossible. Nothing can be said about being. You have to move, you have to know to know. There is no shortcut to it.

Says Lao Tzu:

HE WHO KNOWS DOES NOT SPEAK;

All those who have known have not spoken. You will not believe it, because Buddha spoke for forty years continuously. Every day for forty years he was speaking and speaking and speaking. And still those who have known Buddha, they say he never spoke a single word. I go on speaking continuously every day, but those amidst you who will know me will know that I have not spoken a single word.

Because all that is spoken is just a hint. Nothing is spoken in it. It is just a net, a fisherman's net, so that those who live in their heads can be caught. Once they are caught, the use of language is finished. Then their heart starts throbbing. Then a communion -- not communication, a communion -- happens between the Master and the disciple, then their hearts start beating in the same rhythm. Then they breathe in the same rhythm. No need to say anything then. Then everything is understood without being said.

All talk is to prepare you for silence, and only in silence can the truth be given.

Bodhidharma went to China many centuries before, to search for a disciple. He had something within him and his days were numbered; soon he would have to disappear from the body. And he was seeking somebody with whom communion would be possible. India was full of great scholars, but he had to go to China to find somebody who could understand the language of heart, the language of silence -- which is no language at all.

He waited for nine years. Then came his disciple. Nobody knows what happened between these two people, nobody can know! But a transfer happened. Bodhidharma gave all that he had to Hui-neng. The tradition of Zen was born.

Now people go on saying that Bodhidharma gave Zen to Hui-neng: a transfer without scriptures, a communication without words. Even if you had been present there you would not have known what had transpired. It was a jump of being, from being to another being. Hui-neng was open, Bodhidharma jumped in. Something which cannot be said was said -- not in words but in being. Existentially it was transferred, and that has been the way. Since then, Zen Masters go on giving their final word wordlessly.

It happened to another Zen Master who was dying. He called his most beloved disciple and said: Now the moment has come, and I must give you the scripture that I have been carrying long; it was given to me by my Master when he was dying; now I am dying. He pulled out a book, a book he had been hiding under his pillow Everybody knew about it but nobody had ever been allowed to look into it. He was very secretive about it. When he went to the bathroom he would carry the book with him, nobody had ever been allowed to see what was in the book; and everybody of course was curious, tremendously curious. Now he had called this disciple and said: The last moment has come and I have to give you the scripture that was given to me by my Master. Keep it! Preserve it as carefully as possible -- protect it so that it should not be destroyed. It is a valuable treasure. Once lost -- lost for centuries.

The disciple laughed and said: But whatsoever has to be attained I have attained without this scripture, so what is the need? You can take it with you. The Master insisted. The disciple said: Okay, if you insist then it's okay. The book was given to him -- it was a winter evening, very cold, and the fire was burning in the room -- the disciple took the book and without even looking at it he threw it into the fire. The Master jumped and said: What are you doing! And the disciple shouted even more loudly: What are you saying! To preserve a scripture? The Master started laughing, he said: You passed the examination. Had you preserved it you would have missed! And there was nothing in it, to tell you the truth, it is completely empty. It was just to see whether you have become capable of understanding silence, or if you still cling deep down to words, concepts, theories, philosophies.

All philosophies, all that can be said, are just like the porch of a palace. I see you every evening in DARSHAN, in the porch -- because all questions can be solved only in the porch. Once you are ready there is no question, then you can enter the palace. Have you ever heard the name of a Greek wise man, Zeno? He was the founder of the Stoic philosophy. Just like me, he used to teach in the porch. The word 'stoic' comes from a Greek word STOIKAS, which in turn is from STOA, which means porch. His whole life he was teaching in the porch and people would say: You have such a beautiful house, why do you teach in the porch.' He said: All teaching is just like the porch; when you are ready to listen to the silence you enter the temple -- then there is no talk. From the word STOA, porch, his whole philosophy is known as Stoicism.

All words at the most can become porches; they lead you towards the inner temple; but if you cling to them then you remain in the porch -- the porch is not the palace. Lao Tzu is saying something which is just like a porch, a door. If you understand it, you will drop all words, language -- in fact the whole mind. Where you leave your shoes in the porch, you should leave your mind also. Then only you enter the innermost shrine of being.

HE WHO KNOWS DOES NOT SPEAK;

Even if he speaks, he speaks Only to say this much. Even if he speaks, he speaks only against speaking. He does not want to say something in it, he simply wants to destroy all the words within you -- his speech is destructive. He simply wants to create a vacuum within you, and of course words can be destroyed by words only. Poison can be destroyed by poison only. You have a thorn in your foot -- another thorn is needed to pull it out. All that I am saying is like another thorn to pull out the thorns that are already in your beings. Once the first thorn is out, the second is also useless -- you throw both of them. All words are used by knowers to pull out other words which have already settled within you. Once you are empty -- finished.

There has been a great man in India, a very rare being: men like him you can count on your fingers. His name was Nagarjuna. He has contradicted everything. He has debated against everything. He has criticized all theories. And people were puzzled. They would ask: Okay, whatsoever you say is okay, but what is YOUR standpoint? He would say: I don't have any standpoint. I am here just to destroy theories, I don't have a theory to replace them with. Whatsoever is your theory -- Come! And I will criticize it and destroy it. But don't ask for a substitute because I have none. You become empty, that's perfect, there is no need to do anything.

If you believe in God, Nagarjuna will criticize God. If you don't believe in God and you are an atheist, he will criticize atheism. If you believe in a soul, he is the enemy of soul, If you don't believe in a soul, then he is your enemy also. If you ask: What is your philosophy? he will simply shrug his shoulders; he will say: None. I am here to destroy!

Those who know, they have spoken just to destroy. So that emptiness is left behind. In that emptiness is communion.

The word communion means: come to union. There is a deep unity then. In that unity that which cannot be said CAN be said. No words are needed, not even gestures are needed. It is simply transferred without any scripture.

HE WHO KNOWS DOES NOT SPEAK; HE WHO SPEAKS DOES NOT KNOW. FILL UP ITS APERTURES...

Now he is saying what to do; how to attain to that silence which knows truth; how to attain to that emptiness in which truth descends in you, in which you become a vehicle, and God takes possession. You become a temple, and God comes, and settles within you.

FILL UP ITS APERTURES...

Mind has many apertures through which it is constantly refilled and refuelled. You go on looking -- what are you looking at? You are not looking for something in particular, you are just looking; anything that passes by, you look at it. The mind is hankering through the eyes, to collect whatsoever information it can collect. The mind is curious -- you even read advertisements written on the walls, and you pass by the same wall every day, and you read it again and again and again. And you know what is written there, you have read it so many times, but again when you pass, unconsciously like a robot you read it again. You go on collecting information for the mind: mind needs to be fed by information -- it is a computer, it is asking constantly: I am hungry, bring me more knowledge. Knowledge is mind's food, it thrives on it.

Ears go on listening to what is happening -- all the senses are apertures from where the mind goes on seeking and searching for knowledge. Even absolutely useless knowledge. You cannot even imagine of what use this knowledge is going to be. But mind goes on collecting in the hope some day, maybe, it can use it. That day never comes.

Says Lao Tzu:

FILL UP ITS APERTURES...

If you want to attain to silence, fill up its apertures. Open your eyes only when it is absolutely necessary. Look only when it is absolutely needed; otherwise there is no need! Bypass things, without looking at them. Keep your eyes empty. Look at the world with empty eyes so that you are not looking at it, you are not looking at anything.

You may have that feeling about an enlightened man when you come to encounter him. He looks at you, but he is not looking at you. He looks and looks not. His eyes are like empty mirrors. He is not indifferent; he is not interested either. He hears, and hears not. If you say something he hears, but if you stop in the middle he is not curious for the remaining half sentence. Even if in the middle of the sentence you stop -- there comes the full point for him; it's finished! He is not curious. Then the mind stops accumulating.

In Tibetan monasteries, whenever a new disciple wants to enter into the monastery, he has to sit at the door for twenty four hours, sometimes even for forty.eight hours, sometimes even more -- hungry, with closed eyes. The Master will pass many times by the door, disciples will pass, other people will come and go and he has to sit there with closed eyes.

That is the first examination: whether he is capable of becoming non-curious; otherwise he would like to look and see who is going and coming, just a little bit he would like to open the eyes: who has come, who has gone; he will be curious. If a person is so much restless and curious that he cannot keep his eyes closed for twenty-four hours, then he will be rejected by the monastery. Even small children when they want to enter a monastery have to pass this test.

But if you can keep your eyes closed for twenty-four hours, it is a feat, because the mind is so restless and continuously asking for information that if you don't give it information it starts suffocating. In fact it starts dying.

That's why sense deprivation can become the death of the mind. Many experiments have been done, are being carried on, all over the world in sensory deprivation. When all your senses are deprived of their usual food, time seems unending. One hour has passed actually -- you think eternity.

You may be totally comfortable, resting in a tank which is made like the womb of a mother, in lukewarm water, floating, no anxiety, darkness surrounds you -- beautiful; no worry, you simply relax in the womb again -- but within minutes you start feeling such deep restlessness. The mind asks for the constant supply of food.

Sense deprivation has been one of the most used methods in the East. One who wants to reach to ecstasy, to samadhi, has to learn to be without this constant hankering of the mind to be fed.

You are doing two things together -- people come to me, they say: We would like to get rid of this mind, it is just anguish and nothing else -- a hell. But if I say to them: Then close your apertures more and more because on one hand you want to drop the mind and on another hand you go on feeding it, that seems difficult.

I send people on twenty one days silence. It becomes really a hell after four, five days. They are not doing -- they are allowed just to sit with closed eyes, with closed ears, to move, walk -- but not to look around, just to look on the path that they are following four feet ahead at the most; to eat, rest -- nothing in particular, but just to relax the senses, close the apertures...

After the fourth, fifth day the mind starts rebelling.

If they can continue then near the fourteenth or fifteenth day mind starts accepting the fact -- just like a person who is dying in hospital; when you say to him: You are dying -- he wants to deny, reject the fac but by and by what can he do? Helplessly he accepts; once he accepts, then there is no worry. Then he relaxes.

On the fourteenth, fifteenth day, if you continue, and remain indifferent to the constant hammering of the mind to seek more, more food for itself, the mind relaxes. And once mind relaxes within you your being starts flowering. Mind is the bondage on the being.

So try to live in the senses as minimally as possible.

Mulla Nasrudin came to me once. Hearing about meditations he became interested. So I told him first for one year just to sit with closed eyes -- knowing him well, I thought even that was going to be impossible. He said: But I won't close my eyes. I said to him: Have you understood met Do you understand me or not? Close your eyes! So he closed them a little bit -- half, fifty-fifty, and he said: More than this I cannot do. I said: What is the matter? He said I am strictly a middle of the road man. At the most I can half close my eyes. I cannot close them completely. Who knows what is going to happen? I may miss something beautiful, so that I cannot do. Half I can close, and half I will keep open, alert to what is going on.

He said to me: I absolutely agree with the old lady who used to go to church: whenever the name of God was mentioned she would bow down -- that was okay, but the priest there became a little worried because whenever the name of the devil was mentioned, then too she would bow down. One day the priest could not contain his curiosity. After the congregation left he came to the old lady, caught her outside the church, and asked: What is the matter? Why do you do this? I can understand that when the name of God is mentioned you bow down, but why when the name of the devil is mentioned do you bow down? She said: You never know, it may come in handy any time.

Mulla Nasrudin told me: I am strictly a middle of the way man, I bow down to God -- and to the devil also; one never knows, it may come in handy.

People go on trying to create a compromise with the mind. You cannot win. If you compromise, mind is going to win. All compromises are defeats in the inner world. If you decide that you would like to know your innermost core of being, then this is the way: FILL UP ITS APERTURES, CLOSE ITS DOORS, DULL ITS EDGES, UNTIE ITS TANGLES, SOFTEN ITS LIGHT, SUBMERGE ITS TURMOIL -- THIS IS THE MYSTIC UNITY. Then you come to know that which is one. This is the mystic unity, the communion.

I will repeat again: FILL UP ITS APERTURES...

Use the senses as minimally as possible. And if you look, you will find that you are using them absolutely unnecessarily, ninety-nine per cent of their usage can be stopped; one per cent will be enough -- and you will be surprised, when you use your senses as minimally as possible they become very very sharp. Because the whole energy becomes concentrated.

When you don't go on looking at anybody and everybody, then suddenly you look at a rose flower -- your eyes are so clear, without any clouds; otherwise you go on seeing things, so many things -- in those so many things that rose flower is just one of the things; your eyes are dusty, the rose cannot flower for you.

You come and look at your child but you don't look, you have a screen of so many experiences on the eyes, your eyes are already filled. How can you see the face of your child? -- otherwise you would have seen the face of God there. How can you see the rose flower? -- otherwise the rose would have disappeared, and you would have seen the flowering of the divine.

Your eyes will become fresh, clean, very perceptive you will become, if you don't use your senses unnecessarily. The more you use them the more your senses are bored, tired. They lose sharpness, they lose sensitivity; they become very very dull.

FILL UP ITS APERTURES, CLOSE ITS DOORS,

Wherever you find the mind has made a door to go into the world -- close it. Mind has very cunning ways to go into the world. Just watch from where it escapes into the world.

Freud discovered that the whole functioning of the mind is associative -- that is a door. You look at a dog. In fact you should contain yourself to THIS dog, there is no need to move on, but suddenly you remember a dog that you used to know in your childhood, and that dog belonged to a girl, and you had fallen in love with that girl -- now you go on and on. Now this dog, the fact, the factual, is no more there -- it simply worked as a key; now you are moving: you loved that girl but you couldn't manage to possess her, then all the other possessions -- then all the other girls -- a long queue is there.

Then you go on jumping, hopping from one thing to another. From anywhere the mind moves into a mad world, and then there is no end to it. Freud used this door for his whole psychoanalytic method: thought association. That's why psychoanalysis goes on for years and years -- and with no result in fact. You can go on forever and forever. One thought leads to another, another thought leads to another, and there are millions and millions of thoughts.

I have heard, Mulla Nasrudin was in love with a woman. He brought her home and when they were going to bed, resting on the bed, relaxing on the bed, the woman said, Nasrudin, how many women have been here before me, in your bed? Nasrudin kept silent, minutes passed; almost half an hour had passed, then the woman said, I am still waiting! Nasrudin said, And what do you think I am doing? I am still counting!

That's how things are related. If you start counting, if you start on the associative journey, there is no end to it. Association is a door. You will have to find them -- there are many doors.

And through the same doors you always come, and get into the same troubles, and you never become aware that it has become a repetitive thing, a vicious circle -- you go on moving in circles.

Close all the doors. It will be difficult in the beginning because you will feel it is just like suicide. Samadhi IS like suicide. The only difference is that no suicide is so complete as samadhi. But it is not only a suicide, it is a resurrection also. It is a cross and a resurrection. The old dies and the new is born. And then there is no problem, you can come back to the world -- but you come back totally different. Then the world doesn't disturb you. Then there is no problem. Then you can use your eyes and ears and do whatsoever you want to do nothing disturbs you once you are settled and rooted and centred in your being, nothing disturbs. You remain in the world, and the world is not there. You move in the darkest night and the inner light never leaves you. You live in that inner light; now there is no problem with that outer darkness.

CLOSE ITS DOORS, DULL ITS EDGES,

Mind is very cunning, clever, logical. It is a great rationalizer. Whatsoever the mind wants to do, it gives you reasons. All reasons are false. If you look deep down you will find they are not reasons but rationalizations.

You want to be angry -- you find an excuse. The excuse is not the cause, but you deceive yourself and others that because of this you became angry. That excuse was just an excuse, you rationalized it.

You come home, you are angry with the boss, and then you jump on your wife; you were feeling jittery, you were feeling angry, a rage was boiling within you, but it was difficult to throw it on the boss, it would have cost too much. It was not going to pay. You thought: Better be economical; you contained your anger there, you continued smiling, you went on wagging your tail. Then you come home. You have to throw it on somebody, you have to find a weaker link in your life where you can throw it without any loss to you; you throw it on your wife, or on your child.

Or if you are a henpecked husband, as almost all husbands are, then the wife is also a boss and you cannot throw it on her, so you have to do something with your dog, with your cat, or with something you can destroy -- your radio; or you can go mad when driving your car -- you can bring the whole anger to your feet, and you can go on pressing the accelerator more and more.

Now psychologists say that almost fifty per cent of car accidents happen because of anger. They have nothing to do with the traffic, they have something to do with the inner traffic of the mind. Fifty per cent! It is too much!

Angry? -- the car goes on gathering more and more speed; you are throwing your anger through speed, but you may be thinking: The wind is beautiful and the morning is good, and I would like to have a good drive; that is just an excuse. The morning is good every day, it is not only that it is good today.

When somebody passes or tries to overtake your car... Once it happened I was travelling with a friend -- he was driving; suddenly I became aware that he was driving too fast; and not only that, I looked at the milestones and we were going in the wrong direction, so I asked him: What is the matter? He said: You keep quiet. Just half an hour more.

So I waited. I saw what he was doing -- he was trying to overtake a car which had overtaken our car. When he overtook that car, then he stopped the car and said: Now we can go in our own direction. What did this man think himself to be? I never travelled again with this man -- this man was mad!

But he rationalized it; he said: If you give in in small things, you start giving in in big things. So he told me: Never give in in anything. Give a good fight! Whatsoever the cost! Because life is a struggle. It is a survival of the fittest.

We were late; people were waiting for me in another town; we reached two hours late; but he had to give a good fight -- to the unknown man who may not even have been aware of what was happening. And he may have killed me, and himself, because he was MAD.

The mind goes on finding rationalizations -- it calls them reasons, they are not reasons.

DULL ITS EDGES,

Try to find out; and the more you try to find out the more the edge will be dulled; then you will suddenly see the whole irrationality of the mind -- and it goes on insisting: I am rational! This is one of the greatest discoveries of this century -- that man is not rational.

Aristotle defined man as a rational animal. It took twenty centuries to find the truth. The credit goes to Freud, that he discovered that man is not rational at all. He is a rationalIZING animal, not rational. In fact there are no reasons, he just goes on finding reasons. There are unconscious instincts and he goes on creating a facade of reasons around it which are all false.

Watch! And soon you will see. And once you see, the edges of the mind will be dulled. Then it won't look so sharp, so clever, so intelligent -- it is not, no mind is intelligent. Mind cannot be intelligent, mind is mediocre. The very quality of mind is mediocre.

People you call genius, talented, very intelligent -- just watch them! A great genius, he may have got a Nobel prize, gets up in the morning and finds that his slippers are not there in the right place, and he goes mad -- great genius! Because the slippers were not found in the right p]ace in the morning, his whole day is destroyed! He is angry at the whole world! And from that many things will happen, because the slippers were not in the right place -- -and you call this man a genius! Many things will happen which will have far away consequences.

Angry, he will go to the office; angry, he will talk to people, he will create chains of anger; and one anger leads to another and deeper layer of anger. He may do something of which he will repent later on. And the whole cause was that his slippers were not found in the right place.

And you call this man a genius! You call this man very very intelligent? He may be clever, but he is not wise. He may be clever, but he is not intelligent. He may be knowledgeable, but he has no capacity of knowing. And what does it matter if slippers are not found in the right place?

No, that may be just again an excuse. That may be connected with other things -- in the night he had a nightmare, and he was afraid, and trembling when he got up, and then he found that the slippers were not in the right place; now the whole anger is focussed on this fact. He may throw the servant out, fire him, or this may become a cause for a divorce. You may think that I am going too far -- I am not. I have watched many divorces and I have never found better reasons for them -- just like this, small things: in life there are no big things, only small things.

DULL ITS EDGES, UNTIE ITS TANGLES,

Mind is very entangled; chains and chains; associations; it is a net, a mad net. Everything goes into mind, and becomes more and more confusing. The more you know, the more the mind is confused, because all that you add to it adds to its confusion.

UNTIE ITS TANGLES,

Try to see things more clearly. Try to see the confusion. Watch the confusion. Become a watcher and don't get identified with it. Create a little distance between you and your mind. To create this distance is to become a SANNYASIN. To create this distance is to create the possibility of the inner evolution.

Untie its tangles -- how will you untie them? If you try to untie them you will never be able to untie them. The only way to untie them is to create distance.

You must have observed many times -- you may not be alert to it, that when someone else is in difficulty you always give good advice. If the same difficulty happens to you, you may not be so wise. Why? Why does it happen? Why does your intelligence function so well when somebody else is in difficulty? Because there is a distance.

I was reading the biography of a great actress: Sarah Bernhardt. Once it happened, she was watching a drama; a new actress was working, and the new actress got so identified with her acting in the role, and the play, that she completely forgot that she was an actress. she started crying and weeping with tears streaming down, and she created a mess of herself; and she had to be pulled away from the stage, suddenly in the middle of the play because she had completely forgotten that she was just playing a role, she was an actress. She became confused -- as if this was her life. When Sarah left, she called that new actress to her and told her: When you CRY, the audience does not. You should do the act, but you should keep a distance. You should not become identified with it.

And this should be the key for your whole life, because the whole life is a big drama. The stage is vast, but it is a drama. You should keep a distance. Whatsoever happens, happens in the play, in the drama. You are a witness, you should not become one with it. If you become one with it, you are entangled. If you remain aloof, and you can look at it from a distance, your mind never gets in confusion. If you are away, the mind remains crystal clear. The whole entanglement is of identification.

SOFTEN ITS LIGHT,

Don't look at everything in the light of the mind, in the glare of the mind. Soften its light. Look at things sometimes from the heart also. Bring the soft light of the heart to things, look with the light of love also.

Don't go on looking at things only from a logical standpoint. Don't be too logical. Sometimes you need to be illogical also, only then the balance can be kept. Rational -- and irrational also. Because you are both. You have to keep balance. There are sane moments, and you need some insane moments also. Do mathematics -- but sometimes become mad in music also. Calculate -- but sometimes dance also. Work -- but play also, so that the balance is not lost.

If mind becomes your only way of seeing things then the light is too much. It is destructive. Then the very glare will not allow you to see things as they are -- it is just like when you look at the sun, and then you look at things -- everything looks dark, not in its right proportion.

.. SUBMERGE ITS TURMOIL,

The mind is constantly in a turmoil within. A chaos -- continuous; a storm goes on and on and on. Submerge it, otherwise it won't allow you to listen to the softer music of life. It won't allow you to see delicate things of life. It won't allow you to feel.

How to submerge that turmoil within? What to do? Three things. One: If you see inside, and you feel turmoil there, just sit on the bank -- don't jump into it. The river is moving, you sit on the bank, let it flow. Don't do anything. Learn the art of doing things by non.doing. Just sit and watch. It is really a great secret. If you can see and watch the turmoil of the mind, it by and by settles by itself. It is just like you come into the house, the dust is stirred up, you sit again, the dust settles. If you start settling the dust, you will unsettle it more. So don't jump in, and don't try to submerge the turmoil. Who will try? And how will you try? You will stir even deeper layers of it. Don't do anything, just sit. And this sitting is meditation.

In Japan they call meditation ZA ZEN. Za zen simply means SITTING -- and doing nothing. A Zen monk sits for six to eight hours every day, just doing nothing. And just sitting like that for a few days, a few months, mind settles by itself. Mad people are brought to Zen monasteries. There they don't do anything to them, no treatment is given. They simply help them to sit. They feed them, they don't disturb them, they don't force any discipline on them, they are left in faraway huts, their needs are taken care of, and they are told just to sit or lie or just to stand -- and don't bother! Within twenty one days mad people subside. Their turmoil disappears.

Now Western psychiatrists have become interested in this fact, because they cannot do this in years; and they give electric shock, and insulin shock, and this and that -- they create more turmoil! And even if they help in some way the man loses his consciousness. Madness may be suppressed but the man has lost his aliveness also. After electric shock you are not the same man again. And if the shock has been very deep then you will lose some intelligence also. Madness will go, but your character will be affected permanently. It is not a gain really, or a gain at a very great loss. You may become normal, forced to be normal, but you will become a little stupid also.

In Zen monasteries they don't do anything. They know a great secret of Lao Tzu's: Don't do, just sit, just watch. Things settle by themselves -- Why? Because to remain unsettled is unnatural. This is the law. If you don't do anything everything is going to settle by itself -- how can something remain unsettled for ever?

You are angry: just sit with closed eyes -- watch! How long can you remain angry -- try! Suddenly after a few minutes you will feel it is no more there, or the acuteness of it has gone, or suddenly half an hour afterwards you may recognize and remember that you had completely forgotten that you were angry, and you were thinking of something else... And if the anger had been followed, you may have killed somebody; or killed yourself; or killed a relationship; or killed a love -- and this is more dangerous than killing a beloved; you may have destroyed something beautiful and delicate; and just by sitting, it settles.

It settles because there is a deep law working. Life does not allow turmoil to be permanent -- it cannot be permanent, only rest can be permanent. Everything settles, you just give it time; only time is needed.

... SUBMERGE ITS TURMOIL -- THIS IS THE MYSTIC UNITY.

THEN LOVE AND HATRED CANNOT TOUCH HIM. PROFIT AND LOSS CANNOT REACH HIM. HONOUR AND DISGRACE CANNOT AFFECT HIM. THEREFORE IS HE ALWAYS THE HONOURED ONE OF THE WORLD.

Then duality disappears. When you have reached to your innermost core, to the one, duality disappears. Love and hate, honour and disgrace, failure and success, all disappear. And the greatest duality also disappears: that duality is of the soul and the body, God and the world.

Then everything is one, a vast ocean of oneness. An oceanic feeling pervades.

It is ecstatic. It is a benediction. It is the greatest blessing that can happen to a man -- and when this blessing happens, this blessing of oneness: THEREFORE IS HE ALWAYS THE HONOURED ONE OF THE WORLD. Only such beings are honoured for ever and for ever. Centuries pass, kings come and go, empires are built and destroyed, but a Buddha, or a Jesus, or a Krishna -- they remain. They are no more a part of the temporal changing world. They remain like eternal stars, unmoving, unchanging, guiding those who are ready to be guided, ready to pour down all they have to those whose hearts are open, who are not closed.

Taoism - Daoism - Tao - Dao

VOL. 3, TAO: THE THREE TREASURES

Chapter-5

Beyond Honour and Disgrace