HE WHO RULES MEN, LIVES IN CONFUSION;
HE WHO IS RULED BY MEN LIVES IN SORROW.
TAO THEREFORE DESIRED
NEITHER TO INFLUENCE OTHERS
NOR BE INFLUENCED BY THEM.
THE WAY TO GET CLEAR OF CONFUSION AND FREE OF SORROW
IS TO LIVE WITH TAO IN THE LAND OF THE VOID.
IF A MAN IS CROSSING A RIVER
AND AN EMPTY BOAT COLLIDES WITH HIS OWN SKIFF,
EVEN THOUGH HE BE A BAD-TEMPERED MAN
HE WILL NOT BECOME VERY ANGRY.
BUT IF HE SEES A MAN IN THE BOAT,
HE WILL SHOUT TO HIM TO STEER CLEAR.
AND IF THE SHOUT IS NOT HEARD HE WILL SHOUT
AGAIN AND YET AGAIN, AND BEGIN CURSING --
AND ALL BECAUSE THERE IS SOMEBODY IN THAT BOAT.
YET IF THE BOAT WERE EMPTY, HE WOULD NOT BE SHOUTING,
AND HE WOULD NOT BE ANGRY.
IF YOU CAN EMPTY YOUR OWN BOAT
CROSSING THE RIVER OF THE WORLD,
NO ONE WILL OPPOSE YOU,
NO ONE WILL SEEK TO HARM YOU.
THE STRAIGHT TREE IS THE FIRST TO BE CUT DOWN,
THE SPRING OF CLEAR WATER IS THE FIRST TO BE DRAINED DRY.
IF YOU WISH TO IMPROVE YOUR WISDOM
AND SHAME THE IGNORANT,
TO CULTIVATE YOUR CHARACTER AND OUTSHINE OTHERS,
A LIGHT WILL SHINE AROUND YOU
AS IF YOU HAD SWALLOWED THE SUN AND THE MOON --
AND YOU WILL NOT AVOID CALAMITY.
A WISE MAN HAS SAID:
"HE WHO IS CONTENT WITH HIMSELF
HAS DONE WORTHLESS WORK.
ACHIEVEMENT IS THE BEGINNING OF FAILURE,
FAME IS THE BEGINNING OF DISGRACE."
WHO CAN FREE HIMSELF OF ACHIEVEMENT AND FAME
THEN DESCEND AND BE LOST
AMID THE MASSES OF MEN?
HE WILL FLOW LIKE TAO, UNSEEN,
HE WILL GO ABOUT LIKE LIFE ITSELF
WITH NO NAME AND NO HOME.
SIMPLE IS HE, WITHOUT DISTINCTION.
TO ALL APPEARANCES HE IS A FOOL.
HIS STEPS LEAVE NO TRACE. HE HAS NO POWER.
HE ACHIEVES NOTHING, HE HAS NO REPUTATION.
SINCE HE JUDGES NO ONE,
NO ONE JUDGES HIM.
SUCH IS THE PERFECT MAN --
HIS BOAT IS EMPTY.
You have come to me. You have taken a dangerous step. It is a risk because
near me you can be lost forever. To come closer will mean death and cannot
mean anything else. I am just like an abyss. Come closer to me and you will
fall into me. For this, the invitation has been given to you. You have heard
it and you have come.
Be aware that through me you are not going to gain anything. Through me you
can only lose all -- because unless you are lost, the divine cannot happen;
unless you disappear totally, the real cannot arise. You are the barrier.
And you are so much, so stubbornly much, you are so filled with yourself
that nothing can penetrate you. Your doors are closed. When you disappear,
when you are not, the doors open. Then you become just like the vast,
infinite sky.
And that is your nature. That is Tao.
…
This parable of Chuang Tzu is beautiful. He says that a wise man is like an
empty boat.
SUCH IS THE PERFECT MAN --
HIS BOAT IS EMPTY.
There is nobody inside.
If you meet a Chuang Tzu, or a Lao Tzu, or me, the boat is there, but it is
empty, nobody is in it. If you simply look at the surface, then somebody is
there, because the boat is there. But if you penetrate deeper, if you really
become intimate with me, if you forget the body, the boat, then you come to
encounter a nothingness.
Chuang Tzu is a rare flowering, because to become nobody is the most
difficult, almost impossible, most extraordinary thing in the world.
The ordinary mind hankers to be extraordinary, that is part of ordinariness;
the ordinary mind desires to be somebody in particular, that is part of
ordinariness. You may become an Alexander, but you remain ordinary -- then
who is the extraordinary one? The extraordinariness starts only when you
don't hanker after extraordinariness. Then the journey has started, then a
new seed has sprouted.
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.
When the mind is not there life will remain a movement, but it will not be
directed. You will move, you will change, you will be a riverlike flow, but
not going anywhere, with no goal in view. A perfect man lives without any
purpose; a perfect man moves but without any motive. If you ask a perfect
man, "What are you doing?" he will say, "I don't know, but this is what is
happening." If you ask me why I am talking to you, I will say, "Ask the
flower why the flower is flowering." This is happening, this is not
manipulated. There is no one to manipulate it, the boat is empty. When there
is purpose you will always be in misery. Why?
Once a man asked a miser, a great miser, "How did you succeed in
accumulating so much wealth?"
The miser said, "This is my motto: whatsoever is to be done tomorrow should
be done today, and whatsoever is to be enjoyed today should be enjoyed
tomorrow. This has been my motto." He succeeded in accumulating wealth --
and this is how people succeed in accumulating nonsense also!
That miser was also miserable. On one hand he had succeeded in accumulating
wealth, on the other hand he had succeeded in accumulating misery. And the
motto is the same for accumulating money as it is for accumulating misery:
whatsoever is to be done tomorrow do it today, right now, don't postpone it.
And whatsoever can be enjoyed right now, never enjoy it right now, postpone
it for tomorrow.
This is the way to enter hell. It always succeeds, it has never been a
failure. Try it and you will succeed -- or, you may have already succeeded.
You may have been trying it without knowing. Postpone all that which can be
enjoyed, just think of the tomorrow.
Jesus was crucified by the Jews for this reason, not for any other reason.
Not that they were against Jesus -- Jesus was a perfect man, a beautiful
man, why should the Jews have been against him? Rather, on the contrary,
they had been waiting for this man. For centuries they had been hoping and
waiting: When will the messiah come?
And then suddenly this Jesus declared, "I am the messiah for whom you have
been waiting, and I have come now. Now look at me."
They were disturbed -- because the mind can wait, it always enjoys waiting,
but the mind cannot face the fact, the mind cannot encounter this moment. It
can always postpone, it was easy to postpone: The messiah is to come, soon
he will be coming.... For centuries the Jews had been thinking and
postponing and then suddenly this man destroyed all hope, because he said,
"I am here." The mind was disturbed. They had to kill this man, otherwise
they would not have been able to live with the hope of the tomorrow.
And not only Jesus, many others have declared since then, "I am here, I am
the messiah!" And Jews always deny, because if they don't deny, then how
will they be able to hope and how will they be able to postpone? They have
lived with this hope with such fervor, with such deep intensity, you can
hardly believe it. There have been Jews who would go to bed at night hoping
that this would be the last night, that in the morning the messiah would be
there....
I have heard about one rabbi who used to say to his wife, "If he comes in
the night, don't waste a single minute, wake me up immediately." The messiah
is coming and coming, he may come at any moment.
I have heard of another rabbi whose son was going to be married, so he sent
invitations to the marriage to friends and he wrote on the invitation, "My
son is going to be married in Jerusalem on such-and-such a date, but if the
messiah hasn't come by then, my son will be married in this village of Korz."
Who knows, by the time the day of the marriage comes, the messiah may have
come. Then I will not be here, I will be in Jerusalem, celebrating. So if he
has not come by the date of the marriage, only then will it be held here in
this village; otherwise, it will be in Jerusalem.
They have been waiting and waiting, dreaming. The whole Jewish mind has been
obsessed with the coming messiah. But whenever the messiah comes, they
immediately deny him. This has to be understood. This is how the mind
functions: you wait for the bliss, for the ecstasy, and whenever it comes
you deny it, you just turn your back towards it.
Mind can live in the future, but cannot live in the present. In the present
you can simply hope and desire. And that's how you create misery. If you
start living this very moment, here and now, misery disappears.
But how is it related to the ego? Ego is the past accumulated. Whatsoever
you have known, experienced, read, whatsoever has happened to you in the
past, the whole is accumulated there. That whole past is the ego, it is you.
The past can project into the future -- the future is nothing but the past
extended -- but the past cannot face the present. The present is totally
different, it has a quality of being here and now. The past is always dead,
the present is life, the very source of all aliveness. The past cannot face
the present so it moves into the future -- but both are dead, both are
nonexistential. The present is life; the future cannot encounter the
present, nor can the past encounter the present. And your ego, your
somebodiness, is your past. Unless you are empty you cannot be here, and
unless you are here you cannot be alive.
How can you know the bliss of life? Every moment it is showering on you and
you are bypassing it.
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The need to win
