Osho - The Empty Boat
Chapter 10. Wholeness
How does the true man of Tao
Walk through walls without obstruction
And stand in fire without being burnt?
Not because of cunning or daring,
Not because he has learned -
But because he has unlearned.
His nature sinks to its root in the one.
His vitality, his power,
Hide in secret Tao.
When he is all one,
There is no flaw in him
By which a wedge can enter.
So a drunken man who falls out of a wagon
Is bruised, but not destroyed.
His bones are like the bones of other men,
But his fall is different.
His spirit is entire.
He is not aware of getting into a wagon,
Or falling out of one.
Life and death are nothing to him.
He knows no alarm,
He meets obstacles without thought, without care,
And takes them without knowing they are there.
If there is such security in wine,
How much more in tao?
The wise man is hidden in Tao,
Nothing can touch him.
How does the true man of Tao - walk through walls without obstruction -
And stand in fire without being burnt?
This is one of the most basic and secret teachings. Ordinarily we live through cunningness, cleverness and strategy; we don't live like small children, innocent. We plan, we protect, we make all the safeguards possible - but what is the result? Ultimately, what happens? All the safeguards are broken, all cunningness proves foolishness - ultimately death takes us away.
Tao says that your cunningness will not help you, because what is it but a fight against the whole?
With whom are you cunning - with nature, with Tao, with God? Whom do you think you are deceiving - the source from where you are born and the source to which you will finally go? Is the wave trying to deceive the ocean, is the leaf trying to deceive the tree, is a cloud trying to deceive the sky?
Whom do you think you are trying to deceive? With whom are you playing?
Once it is understood, a man becomes innocent, drops his cunningness, all strategies, and simply accepts. There is no other way than to accept nature as it is and to flow with it. Then there is no resistance, then he is just like a child who is going with his father, in deep trust.
Once, Mulla Nasruddin's son came home and said that he had trusted a friend and had given him his toy to play with, but now the friend refused to return it. "What should I do?" he asked.
Mulla Nasruddin looked at him and said, "Go up this ladder." The boy did so, he trusted his father.
When he was ten feet high, Nasruddin said, "Now jump into my arms."
The boy hesitated a little, and said, "If I fall, I will get hurt."
Nasruddin said, "When I am here, you need not worry. Take a jump." The boy jumped, and Nasruddin stood aside. The boy fell down, and started crying and weeping.
Then Nasruddin said, "Now you know. Never believe anybody, not even what your father says: don't even believe your father."
Don't believe in anybody, otherwise you will be deceived all your life. This is what every father, every parent, every school, every teacher, teaches you. This is your learning. Don't believe in anybody, don't trust, otherwise you will be deceived. You become cunning. In the name of cleverness you become cunning, untrusting. And once a man is untrusting he has lost contact with the source.
Trust is the only bridge, otherwise your whole life is wasted; you fight an impossible fight in which defeat is bound to happen, it is absolutely certain. It is better to realize it now, because at the moment of death everybody realizes that it has been a defeat. But then nothing can be done.
Real intelligence is not cunningness, it is totally different. Real intelligence is to look into things...
And whenever you look into things deeply, you will come to know that you are just a wave, that this whole is the ocean and there is no need to worry. The whole has produced you, it will take care of you. You have come out of the whole, it is no enemy to you. You need not worry, you need not plan.
And when you are not worried, not planning, for the first time life starts. For the first time you feel free of worries, and life happens to you.
This intelligence is religion. This intelligence gives you more trust, and finally, total trust. This intelligence leads you to the ultimate nature, acceptance - what Buddha called TATHATA. Buddha said: What-soever happens, happens. Nothing else can happen, nothing else is possible. Don't ask for it to be otherwise; be in a letgo, and allow the whole to function. And when you allow the whole to function and you are not a barrier, a resistance, then you cannot be defeated.
In Japan, through Buddha, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, a particular art has been developed called ZENDO. Zendo means the Zen of the sword, the art of the warrior - and nobody knows it like they do. The way they have developed it is supreme. It takes years, even a whole lifetime, to learn zendo because the learning consists in acceptance. You cannot accept in ordinary life - how can you accept when a warrior is standing before you, waiting to kill you? How can you accept when the sword is raised against you and every moment, any moment, death is near?
The art of zendo says that if you can accept the sword, the enemy, the one who is going to kill you, and there is no distrust; if even the enemy is the friend, and you are not afraid, not trembling, then you become a pillar of energy, unbreakable. The sword will break on you, but you cannot be broken.
There will not even be any possibility that you could be destroyed.
Once there was a great zendo master. He was eighty, and tradition-ally, the disciple who could defeat him would succeed him. So all the disciples hoped that someday he would accept their challenge, because now he was getting old.
There was one disciple who was the cleverest, the best strategist, very powerful, but not a master of zendo, just skilled in the art. Although he was a good warrior and he knew everything about swordsmanship, he was not yet a pillar of energy, he was still afraid while fighting. The tathata had not yet happened to him.
He went to the master again and again saying, "Now the time has come, and you are getting old.
Soon you will be too old to challenge at all. I challenge you now. Accept my challenge, Master, and give me a chance to show what I have learned from you." The master laughed and avoided him.
The disciple started thinking that the master had become so weak and old that he was afraid, just trying to evade the challenge. So one night he insisted and insisted and got angry and said, "I will not leave until you accept my challenge. Tomorrow morning you have to accept. You are getting old and soon there will be no chance for me to show what I have learned from you. This has been a tradition always."
The master said, "If you insist, your very insistence shows that you are not ready or prepared. There is too much excitement in you, your ego wants to challenge, you have not yet become capable; but if you insist, okay. Do one thing. Go to the nearby monastery where there is a monk who was my disciple ten years ago. He became so efficient in zendo that he threw away his sword and became a sannyasin. He was my rightful successor. He never challenged me, and he was the only one who could have challenged and even defeated me. So first go and challenge that monk. If you can defeat him, then come to me. If you cannot defeat him, then just drop the idea."
The disciple immediately started out for the monastery. By morning he was there. He challenged the monk. He couldn't believe that this monk could be a zendo master - lean and thin, continuously meditating, eating only once a day. The monk listened and laughed, and he said, "You have come to give me a challenge? Even your master cannot challenge me, even he is afraid."
Listening to this, the disciple got completely mad! He said, "Stand up immediately! Here is a sword I have brought for you knowing well that you are a monk and might not have one. Come out in the garden. This is insulting, and I will not listen."
The monk looked absolutely undisturbed. He said, "You are just a child, you are not a warrior. You will be killed immediately. Why are you asking for death unnecessarily?"
That made him still more angry so they both went out. The monk said, "I will not need the sword, because a real master never needs it. I am not going to attack you, I am only going to give you a chance to attack me so your sword is broken. You are not a match for me. You are a child, and people will laugh at me if I take up the sword against you."
It was too much! The young man jumped up - but then he saw that the monk was standing. Up until now the monk had been sitting; now he stood up, closed his eyes, and started swaying from side to side - and suddenly the young man saw that the monk had disappeared. There was only a pillar of energy - no face, just a solid pillar of energy, swaying. He became afraid and started retreating, and the pillar of energy started moving towards him, swaying. He threw away his sword and screamed at the top of his voice, "Save me!"
The monk sat down again and started laughing. His face came back, the energy disappeared, and he said, "I told you before: even your master is no match for me. Go and tell him."
Perspiring, trembling, nervous, the disciple went back to his master and said, "How grateful I am for your compassion towards me. I am no match for you. Even that monk destroyed me completely.
But one thing I couldn't tolerate, that is why I got involved in it. He said, 'Even your master is not a match for me.' "
The master started laughing and he said, "So that rascal played the trick on you too? You got angry?
Then he could see through you, because anger is a hole in the being. And that has become his basic trick. Whenever I send somebody to him, he starts talking against me, and my disciples of course become angry. When they are angry, he finds out that they have loopholes, and when you have holes you cannot fight."
Whenever you are angry, your being has leakages. Whenever you desire, your being has holes in it. Whenever you are jealous, filled with hatred, sexuality, you are not a pillar of energy. Hence buddhas have been teaching us to be desireless, because whenever you are desireless energy does not move outwards, energy moves within. It becomes an inner circle, it becomes an electric field, a bioelectric field. When that field is there, without any leakage, you are a pillar; you cannot be defeated. But you are not thinking of victory, remember, because if you are thinking of victory you cannot be a pillar of energy. Then that desire becomes a leakage.
You are weak, not because others are strong, you are weak because you are filled with so many desires. You are defeated, not because others are more cunning and clever - you are defeated because you have so many leakages.
Tathata - acceptance, total acceptance, means no desire. Desire arises out of nonacceptance. You cannot accept a certain situation, so desire arises. You live in a hut and you cannot accept it; this is too much for the ego, you want a palace - then you are a poor man, but not because you live in a hut, no. In huts, emperors have lived. Buddha has lived under a tree, and he was not a poor man.
You cannot find a richer man anywhere.
No, your hut doesn't make you poor. The moment you desire the palace you are a poor man. And you are not poor because others are living in palaces, you are poor because the desire to live in the palace creates a comparison with the hut. You become envious. You are poor.
Whenever there is discontent, there is poverty; whenever there is no discontent, you are rich. And you have such riches that no thief can steal them; you have such riches, no government can take them by taxation; you have riches which cannot be taken away from you in any way. You have a fort for your being, unbreakable, impenetrable.
Once a desire moves and your energy starts falling you become weak through desire, you become weak through longing. Whenever you are not longing and are content, whenever nothing is moving, when your whole being is still, then, says Chuang Tzu, you are an impenetrable fort. Fire cannot burn you, death is impossible. That is the meaning of: Fire cannot burn you; death is impossible, you cannot die. You have got the secret key of eternal life.
And sometimes this happens in ordinary circumstances too. A house is on fire - everybody dies but a small child survives. There is an accident - the old people die and the small children survive.
People say that this is a miracle, God's grace. No, it is nothing of the sort, it is because the child accepted that situation too. Those who were cunning started running and trying to save themselves; they got themselves into trouble. The child rested. He was not even aware that anything was happening, that he was going to die. The child is saved through his innocence.
It happens every day. Go and observe at night near a bar, a wine shop, drunkards falling down in the street, lying in the gutter, absolutely happy. In the morning they will get up. They may be bruised a little but no harm has happened to their bodies. Their bones are intact. They have got no fractures.
You try to fall like a drunkard on the street - immediately you will have fractures. And he falls like this every day, every night, many times, but nothing happens to him. What is the matter, what is the secret? When he is drunk there is no desire. He is absolutely at ease, here and now. When he is drunk he is not afraid, there is no fear, and when there is no fear, there is no cunningness.
Cunningness comes out of fear. So the more fearful a person, the more cunningness you will find in him. A brave man is not cunning, he can depend on his bravery; but a man who is afraid, who is a coward, can depend only on cunningness. The more inferior a person, the more cunning. The more superior a person, the more innocent. Cunningness is a substitute. When one is drunk, absolutely drunk, future disappears and past disappears.
I have heard: Once it happened that Mulla Nasruddin was walking along with his wife, absolutely drunk. She had found him lying in the street and was bringing him home. Of course, as usual, she was arguing, and winning all the arguments, because she was alone. Mulla Nasrud-din was not there; he was simply coming along with her.
Then suddenly she saw a mad bull approaching. There was no time to warn Nasruddin, so she jumped into a bush. The bull came up and spun Nasruddin almost fifty feet in the air. He fell into a ditch, and as he crawled out of it he looked at his wife and said, "If you do this to me again, I shall really lose my temper. This is too much!"
Ordinary wine gives so much power when one is drunk, what about Tao, the absolute drunkenness?
What about Krishna or Buddha, the greatest drunkards - so drunk with the divine that not even a trace of the ego is left? You cannot hurt them because they are not there, you cannot insult them because there is no one who will resist the insult and create a wound. Your insult will pass through them, as if passing through an empty house. Their boats are empty. A breeze comes in and passes with no barrier. When the breeze has gone the house is not even aware that the breeze has been there.
The appeal of wine is really because you are so egoistic. You are too burdened by it and sometimes you want to forget it. So the world will have to follow alcohol or Tao - these are the alternatives. Only a religious man, a really religious man, can be beyond alcohol, marijuana, lsd - any type of drug.
Only a religious man can be beyond them; otherwise how can you be beyond them? The ego is too much, the burden is too much, it is constantly on your head. You HAVE to forget yourselves.
But if wine can do so much, you cannot conceive of what the divine wine can do. What is the wine doing? For certain moments, through chemical changes in the brain, in the body, you forget yourself.
But this is momentary. Deep down you are there, and after a few hours the chemical effect is gone, your body has thrown the wine out and the ego asserts itself again.
But there is a wine, I tell you - God is that wine, Tao, or whatsoever name you like to call it. Once you taste it, the ego is gone forever. Nobody ever comes back from that drunkenness.
That is why Sufis always talk of wine, Sufis always talk of women. Their woman is not the woman you know - God is the woman. And their wine is not the wine that you know - God is the wine.
Omar Khayyam has been misunderstood, tremendously misunderstood; because of Fitzgerald he has been misunderstood all over the world. Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat appears to be written in praise of wine and women, but it is not at all. Omar Khayyam is a Sufi, a mystic. He talks of the wine which comes through Tao; he talks of the wine in which you are lost forever and forever. This intoxicant, this divine intoxicant, is not temporary, it is nontemporal, not momentary - it is eternal.
And Sufis talk of God as the woman. That embrace is eternal, it is ultimate; then there is no separation. If you can understand this then you are intelligent, but not through your strategies, cunningness, arithmetic, your logic.
If you can, look deep into existence. From where have you come? Where are you going? With whom are you fighting, and why? These same moments that you are losing in fighting can become ecstatic. Now look at the sutra: Wholeness.
You think of yourself as the individual. You are wrong. Only the whole exists. This is false - this appearance that: I think I am. This is the most false thing in the world. And because of this "I am,"
fight arises. If I am, then this whole seems inimical; then everything seems to be against me.
It is not that anything is against you - it cannot be! These trees have helped you, this sky has helped you, this water has helped you, this earth created you. Then nature is your mother. How can the mother be against you? You have come out of her. But you think I am as an individual, and then the fight arises. It is one-sided. You start the fight, and nature goes on laughing, God goes on enjoying.
Even in a small child, the moment he starts feeling I, the fight arises.
In a supermarket, a small child was insisting on a toy. The mother said positively, "No, I am not going to buy it. You have got enough."
The child got angry and said, "Mum, I have never seen a meaner girl than you, you are the meanest."
The mother looked at the child, at his face, the anger on it, and she said, "Just wait, you will certainly meet a really mean girl. Just wait!"
In one house, the mother was insisting that the child do his homework. He was not listening and went on playing with his toys, so she said, "Are you listening to me or not?"
The child looked up and said, "Who do you think I am - Daddy?"
Only a small child, and the fighting starts - the ego has arisen. He knows Daddy can be silenced, but not him. The moment the child feels he is separate the natural unity is broken, and then his whole life becomes a struggle and fight.
Western psychology insists that the ego should be strengthened. That is the difference between the Eastern attitude and the Western. Western psychology insists that the ego should be strengthened; the child must have a strong ego, he must fight, struggle, only then will he be mature.
The child is in the mother's womb, one with the mother, not even aware that he is - he is, without any consciousness. In a deep sense all consciousness is illness. Not that he is unconscious - he IS aware. His being is there, but without any self-consciousness. The am is there, but the I has not been born yet. The child feels, lives, is fully alive, but never feels that he is separate. The mother and the child are one.
Then the child is born. The first separation happens, and the first cry. Now he is moving, the wave is moving away from the ocean. Western psychologists say: We will train the child to be independent, to be individual. Jung's psychology is known as the way of individu-ation. He must become an individual, absolutely separate. He must fight. That is why, in the West, there is so much rebellion in the younger generation. This rebellion was not created by the younger generation, this rebellion was created by Freud, Jung, Adler and company. They have given the basis.
Fight will give you a stronger ego. It will shape you. So fight the mother, fight the father, fight the teacher, fight the society. Life is struggle. And Darwin started the whole trend when he said only the fittest survive; life means survival of the fittest. So the stronger you are in your ego, the more chance you will have of surviving.
The West lives through politics, the East has a totally different attitude...and Tao is the core, the very essence of the Eastern consciousness. It says: No individuality, no ego, no fight; become one with the mother; there is no enemy, the question is not of conquering.
Even a man, a very knowledgeable man, a very penetrating, logical man like Bertrand Russell, thinks in terms of conquest - conquering nature, the conquest of nature. Science seems to be a struggle, a fight with nature: how to break the lock, how to open the secrets, how to grab the secrets from nature.
Eastern consciousness is totally different. Eastern consciousness says: Ego is the problem, don't make it stronger, don't create any fight. And not the fittest but the humblest survive.
That is why I insist again and again that Jesus is from the East; that is why he could not be understood in the West. The West has misunderstood him. The East could have understood him because the East knows Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Buddha, and Jesus belongs to them. He says:
Those who are last will be the first in my kingdom of God. The humblest, the meekest, will possess the kingdom of God. The poor in spirit is the goal. Who is poor in spirit? The empty boat, he who is not at all - no claim on anything, no possession of anything, no self. He lives as an absence.
Nature gives her secrets. There is no need to grab, there is no need to kill, there is no need to break the lock. Love nature, and nature gives you her secrets. Love is the key. Conquering is absurd.
So what has happened in the West? This conquering has destroyed the whole of nature. So now there is a cry for ecology, how to restore the balance. We have destroyed nature completely, because we have broken all the locks and we have destroyed the whole balance. And now through that imbalance humanity will die sooner or later.
Chuang Tzu can be understood now, because he says: Don't fight with nature. Be in such deep love, become so one that through love, from heart to heart, the secret is given. And the secret is that you are not the individual, you are the whole. And why be satisfied with just being a part? Why not be the whole? Why not possess the whole universe? Why possess small things?
Ramateertha used to say, "When I close my eyes I see stars moving within me, sun rising within me, moon rising within me. I see oceans and skies. I am the vast, I am the whole universe."
When for the first time he went to the West and started saying these things, people thought he had gone crazy. Somebody asked him, "Who created the world?"
He said, "I, it is within me."
This I is not the ego, not the individual; this I is the universe, God. He looks crazy. This claim looks too much. But look in his eyes: there is no ego. He is not asserting anything, he is simply stating a fact.
You are the world! Why be a part, a tiny part, and why unnecessarily create trouble when you can be the whole?
This sutra is concerned with wholeness. Don't be the individual, be the whole. Don't be the ego.
When you can become the divine, why be satisfied with such a small, tiny, ugly thing?
How does the true man of Tao
Walk through walls without obstruction
And stand in fire without being burnt?
Someone asked Chuang Tzu, "We have heard that a man of Tao can walk through walls without obstruction. Why?" If you don't have any obstruction within you, no obstruction can obstruct you.
This is the rule. If you have no resistance within you, in your heart, the whole world is open for you.
There is no resistance. The world is just a reflection, it is a big mirror; if you have resistance, then the whole world has resistance.
It happened once that a king built a great palace, a palace of millions of mirrors - all the walls were covered with mirrors. A dog entered the palace and he saw millions of dogs all around him. So, being a very intelligent dog, he started barking to protect himself from the millions of dogs all around him. His life was in danger. He must have become tense, he started barking. And when he started barking, those millions of dogs started barking too.
In the morning the dog was found dead. And he was there alone, there were only mirrors. Nobody was fighting with him, nobody was there to fight, but he looked at himself in the mirror and became afraid. And when he started fighting, the mirror reflection also started fighting. He was alone, with millions and millions of dogs around him. Can you imagine the hell he lived through that night?
You are living in that hell right now; millions and millions of dogs are barking around you. In every mirror, in every relationship, you see the enemy. A man of Tao can walk through the walls because he has no wall in his heart. A man of Tao finds nowhere the enemy because he is not the enemy inside. A man of Tao finds all mirrors vacant, all boats empty, because his own boat is empty. He is mirrored, he has no face of his own, so how can you mirror, how can you reflect a man of Tao? All mirrors keep silent. A man of Tao passes - no footprints are left behind, no trace. All mirrors remain silent. Nothing reflects him, because he is not there, he is absent.
When the ego disappears you are absent, and then you are whole. When the ego is there you are present, and you are just a tiny part, a very tiny part, and very ugly at that. The part will always be ugly. That is why we have to try to make it beautiful in so many ways. But a man with ego cannot be beautiful. Beauty happens only to those who are without egos. Then the beauty has something of the unknown in it, something immeasurable.
Remember this: ugliness can be measured. It has limits. Beauty, the so-called beauty, can be measured. It has limits. But the real beauty cannot be measured - it has no limits. It is mysterious - it goes on and on and on. You cannot be finished with a buddha. You can enter him, and you will never come out. Endless! His beauty is never finished.
But the ego goes on trying to be beautiful. Somehow you remember the beauty of the whole; somehow you remember the silence of the womb; somehow deep down you know the bliss of being one, the union, the unity with existence. Because of that, many desires arise. You know the beauty of being a god and you have to live like a beggar. So what do you do? You create faces, you paint yourself. But deep down the ugliness remains, because all paints are just paints.
It happened once that a woman was walking on the seashore. She found a bottle, opened it, and a genie came out. And, like all true genies, this genie said, "You have broken my prison, you have set me free. So now you can ask anything, and I will fulfill your fondest desire or wish."
Genies are not found every day, on every shore, in every bottle. It rarely happens, and only in stories.
But the woman didn't think even for a single moment. She said, "I want to become a beautiful person - hair like Elizabeth Taylor, eyes like Brigitte Bardot, body like Sophia Loren."
The genie looked again, and said, "Honey, put me back in the bottle!"
And this is what you are all asking for - everybody is asking for this - this is why genies have disappeared from the world. They are so afraid of you, you are asking the impossible. It cannot happen because the part can never be beautiful.
Just think: my hand can be cut off - can that hand be beautiful? It will grow more and more ugly, it will deteriorate, it will start smelling. How can my hand be beautiful, separate from me? The separation brings death; unison brings life. In the whole you are alive; alone, separate, you are already dead or dying.
My eyes, take them out, then what are they? Even stones, colored stones, will be more beautiful than they because they are still with the whole. Pluck a flower; then it is not beautiful, the glory is gone. It was beautiful just a moment ago when it was joined with the roots, with the earth. Uprooted, you float like egos. You are ill, and you will remain ill, and nothing can be of any help. All your efforts, however clever, are going to fail.
Only in the whole are you beautiful.
Only in the whole are you lovely.
Only in the whole is grace possible.
It is not because of cunningness that the man of Tao walks through walls without obstruction, and stands in fire without being burnt. It is:
Not because of cunning or daring,
And not because he has learned -
But because he has unlearned.
Learning goes into the ego; learning strengthens the ego. That is why pundits, brahmins, scholars, have the subtlest egos. Learning gives them scope, learning gives them space. They become tumors, egos. Their whole being is then exploited by the ego.
The more learned a man, the more difficult he is to live with, the more difficult he is to relate to, the more difficult it is for him to reach the temple. It is almost impossible for him to know God because he himself now lives like a tumor, and the tumor has its own life - now it is the ego tumor. And it exploits. The more you know, the less possibility there is for prayer to happen.
So, says Chuang Tzu, it is not because of cunningness; he is not calculating, he is not cunning or daring, because daring, cunning, calculating, are all part of the ego. A man of Tao is neither a coward nor a brave man. He does not know what bravery is, what cowardice is. He lives. He is not self-conscious, not because he has learned but because he has unlearned. The whole of religion is a process of unlearning. Learning is the process of the ego, unlearning is the process of the non-ego. Learned, your boat is full, filled with yourself.
It happened that Mulla Nasruddin used to have a ferryboat, and when times were not good he would carry passengers from one bank to the other.
One day a great scholar, a grammarian, a pundit, was crossing in his ferryboat to the other shore.
The pundit asked Nasruddin, "Do you know the Koran? Have you learned the scriptures?"
Nasruddin said, "No, no time."
The scholar said, "Half your life has been wasted."
Then suddenly there arose a storm and the small boat was far from the shore. At any moment it would sink. Asked Nasruddin, "Schoolmaster, do you know how to swim?"
The man was very afraid, perspiring. He said, "No."
Said Nasruddin, "Then your WHOLE life has been wasted. I am going!"
Now, this boat cannot go to the other shore. But people think learning can become a boat, or learning can become a substitute for swimming. No! Can scriptures become boats? No, they are too heavy. You can drown with them but you cannot cross the river. Unlearning will make you weightless; unlearning will make you innocent again.
When you don't know, in that not knowing what happens? The most beautiful phenomenon... The greatest ecstasy happens when you don't know - there is a silence when you don't know. Someone asks a question and you don't know. Life is a riddle, and you don't know. Everywhere is mystery and you are standing there not knowing, wondering. When you don't know there is wonder, and wonder is the most religious quality. The deepest religious quality is wonder. Only a child can wonder. A man who knows cannot wonder, and without wonder no one has ever reached the divine. It is the wondering heart to which everything is a mystery...a butterfly is a mystery, a seed sprouting is a mystery.
And remember, nothing has been solved: all your science has done nothing. The seed sprouting is still a mystery and it is going to remain a mystery. Even if science can create the seed, the sprouting will remain a mystery. A child is born; it is a mystery that is born. Even if the child can be produced in a test-tube, it makes no difference. The mystery remains the same.
You are here. It is such a mystery. You have not earned it, you cannot say to the universe, "I am here because I have earned it." It is a sheer gift, you are here for no reason at all. If you were not here, what difference would it make? If you were not here, to what court could you appeal?
This sheer existence, this breathing that goes in and out, this moment that you are here, listening to me, to the breeze, to the birds, this moment that you are alive, is such a mystery. If you can face it without any knowledge you will enter into it. If you face it with knowledge and you say, "I know, I know the answer," the doors are closed - not because of the mystery, the doors are closed because of your knowledge, your theories, your philosophy, your theology, your Christianity, your Hin-duism - they close the door.
A man who thinks he knows does not know. The Upanishads go on saying that a man who thinks that he does not know, knows. Says Socrates: When a man really knows, he knows only one thing, that he does not know. Chuang Tzu says: It is because he has unlearned. Whatsoever the world taught him, whatsoever society taught him, whatsoever parents and the utilitarians taught him, he has dropped. He has again become a child, a small child. His eyes are again filled with wonder. He looks all around and everywhere is mystery.
Ego kills the mystery. Whether it is the ego of a scientist or whether it is the ego of a scholar or of a philosopher, makes no difference. The ego says, "I know." And the ego says, "If I don't know now, then sooner or later I will come to know." The ego says that there is nothing un-knowable.
There are two categories for the ego: the known and the unknown. The known is that part which the ego has already traveled, and the unknown is that part which the ego will travel: the ego feels that it is possible to travel, but there is nothing unknowable.
The ego leaves no mystery in the world. And when there is no mystery around you, there cannot be any mystery within. When mystery disappears, all songs disappear; when mystery disappears, poetry is dead; when mystery disappears, God is not in the temple, there is nothing but a dead statue; when mystery disappears there is no possibility of love, because only two mysteries fall in love with each other. If you know, then there is no possibility of love - knowledge is against love.
And love is always for unlearning. But because he has unlearned:
His nature sinks to its root in the one.
His vitality, his power,
Hide in secret Tao.
His nature sinks to its root... The ego exists in the head, remember, and you carry your head very high. The root is just at the other pole of your being.
Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu used to say: Concentrate on the toe. Close your eyes and move into the toe and remain there. That will give you a balance. The head has given you much imbalance. The toe...? It looks as if they are joking. They mean it, they are not joking. They are right. Move from the head because the head is not the root, and we are in the head too much.
His nature sinks to its root, to the very source. The wave goes deeper into the ocean, into the one. And remember, the source is one. The waves may be many, millions, but the ocean is one.
You are separate there, I am separate here, but just look a little deeper at the roots and we are one; we are like branches of the same tree. Look at the bran-ches and they are separate, but deep down they are one.
The deeper you go, you will find less and less multiplicity, more and more unity. At the deepest it is one. That is why Hindus talk of the nondual, the one, ADVAIT.
His vitality, his power,
Hide in secret Tao.
And whatsoever vitality comes to the man of Tao is not manipulated, is not created by him, it is given by the roots. He is vital because he is rooted; he is vital because he has rejoined the ocean, the one. He is back at the source, he has come to the mother.
When he is all one,
There is no flaw in him
By which a wedge can enter.
And whenever one is rooted in the deepest core of his being, which is one, then there is no flaw.
You cannot penetrate such a man. Swords cannot go into him, fire cannot burn him. How can you destroy the ultimate? You can destroy the momentary, how can you destroy the ultimate? You can destroy the wave, how can you destroy the ocean? You can destroy the individual, but you cannot destroy the soul. The form can be killed, but the formless...? How will you kill the formless? Where will you find the sword that can kill the formless?
Krishna said in the Gita, "NAINAM CHHEDANTI SASHTRANI - no sword can kill it, no fire can burn it." Not that if you go and kill Chuang Tzu you will not be able to kill him. You will be able to kill the form, but the form is not Chuang Tzu - and he will laugh.
It happened that Alexander was returning from India when suddenly he remembered Aristotle, his teacher, one of the greatest logicians.
Aristotle is the original source of all Western stupidity, he is the father. He created the logical mind.
He created analysis, he created the method of dissection, he created the ego and the individual, and he was the teacher of Alexander.
He had told Alexander to bring a Hindu mystic, a sannyasin, when he came back, because polar opposites are always interesting. He must have been deeply interested to know what this Hindu mystic is. What type of man can he be who lives beyond logic, who says there is only one not two, who joins all the contradictions and paradoxes, whose whole attitude is of synthesis, not of analysis?
A man who never believes in the part, who always believes in the whole, what type of man can he be?
So he told Alexander, "When you come back, bring with you a Hindu mystic, a sannyasin. I would like to see one. A man who lives beyond mind and says that there is something beyond mind, is a rare phenomenon." And Aristotle never believed that there could be anything beyond mind; for him mind was all.
When Alexander was returning, he suddenly remembered. So he asked his soldiers to go and find a great Hindu mystic, a great sannyasin, a saint, a sage. They inquired in the town and were told, "Yes. On the bank of the river a naked man stands. For years he has been standing there, and we think he is a mystic. We cannot be certain be-cause he never speaks much, and we cannot be certain because we don't understand him much. What he says seems to be very illogical. Maybe it is true, maybe it is not true."
Alexander said, "This is the right man. My master, who has created logic, would like to see this illogical man. Go and tell him that Alex-ander invites him."
The soldiers went and they told this naked man that Alexander the Great invites him; he would be a royal guest, every comfort and convenience would be given to him, so he shouldn't worry.
The man started laughing and said, "The man who calls himself The Great, is a fool. Go and tell him I don't keep company with fools. That is why I have been standing here alone for many years.
If I want to keep company with fools, do you think that India has less than his country? The town is full of them."
They were very disturbed, those soldiers, but they had to report back. Alexander asked what the man had said - Dandami was the name of this man. Alexander in his reports has used the name Dandamas. When he heard Alexander felt annoyed, but this was the last village on the border and soon he would be out of India, so he said, "It is best that I go and see what type of man this is."
He may have remembered Diogenes - maybe this man was the same type, standing naked near a river. The same thing happened with Diogenes. He also laughed and thought Alexander a fool.
So Alexander approached Dandami with a naked sword and said, "Follow me, or I will cut your head off immediately. I don't believe in discussion, I believe in orders."
The man laughed and said, "Cut it off - don't wait! The head that you will be cutting off, I have cut it off long ago. This is nothing new, I am already headless. Cut it off, and I tell you, that when the head falls down onto the earth you will see it fall and I will also see it fall, because I am not the head.
The man of Tao can be burnt, but still the man of Tao cannot be burnt. The form is always on fire. It is burning already. But the formless...the formless is never touched by any fire. From where comes the power, from where comes this vitality? They hide in secret Tao. Tao means the great nature, Tao means the great ocean, Tao means the great source.
So a drunken man who falls out of a wagon
Is bruised, but not destroyed.
His bones are like the bones of other men,
But his fall is different.
The ego is not there...
His spirit is entire.
He is not aware of getting into a wagon,
Or falling out of one.
Life and death are nothing to him.
He knows no alarm,
He meets obstacles without thought, without care
And takes them without knowing they are there.
If there is such security in wine,
How much more in Tao?
The wise man is hidden in tao,
Nothing can touch him.
Watch a drunkard, because the man of Tao is in many ways similar to him. He walks, but there is no walker; that is why he looks unbalanced, wobbling. He walks, but there is no direction, he is not going anywhere. He walks, but the boat is empty, only momentarily, but it is empty.
Watch a drunkard. Follow him and see what is happening to him. If somebody hits him he is not annoyed. If he falls down he accepts the falling, he doesn't resist, he falls down as if dead. If people laugh and joke about him he is not worried. He may even joke with them, he may start laughing with them, he may start laughing at himself. What has happened? Momentarily, through chemicals, his ego is not there.
The ego is a construction: you can drop it through chemicals too. It is just a construction; it is not a reality, it is not substantial in you. It is through society that you have learned it. Alcohol simply drops you out of society. That is why society is always against alcohol, the government is always against alcohol, the university is always against alcohol, all the moralists are always against alcohol - because alcohol is dangerous, it gives you a glimpse of the outside of society. That is why there is so much propaganda in America and in the West against drugs.
The governments, the politicians, the church, the pope, they have all become scared because the new generation is too involved in drugs. They are very dangerous for society, because once you have glimpses beyond society you can never become a really adjusted part of it. You will always remain an outsider. Once you have a glimpse of the non-ego then society cannot dominate you easily. And if one goes too deep into drugs then it is possible for the ego to be shattered completely.
Then you will become as if mad.
Once or twice a drug will give you a glimpse; it is just as if a window opens and closes. If you persist and you become addicted to it, the ego may suddenly drop. But this is the problem: the ego will drop, but the non-ego will not arise. You will go mad, schizophrenic, split.
Religion works from the other corner, from the other end: it tries to bring up the non-ego first. And the more the non-ego comes up, the more the whole asserts, the more the ego will drop automatically, by and by. Before the ego drops, the whole has taken possession. You will not go mad, you will not become abnormal, you will simply be natural. You will fall outside society into nature.
Through drugs you can also fall out of society, but into madness. That is why religions are also against drugs. Society has given you a working arrangement for the ego: through it you manage somehow, you steer your life somehow. But if the whole takes possession then there is no problem - you become a man of Tao. Then there is no need for this ego, you can throw it to the dogs.
But you can do otherwise also. You can simply destroy this ego through chemicals. This can be done. Then there WILL be a problem because you will simply become abnormal. You will feel a certain power, but that power will be false, because the whole has not taken possession of you.
Many cases of this have been reported. One girl in New York, under lsd, just jumped out of a window on the thirtieth floor because she thought she could fly. And when you are under a drug, if the thought comes that you can fly, there is no doubt. You believe in it totally, because the doubter, the ego, is not there. Who is there to doubt? You believe it. But the whole has not asserted itself.
Chuang Tzu might have flown. Chuang Tzu might have gone out of the window like a bird on wings, but under lsd you cannot. The ego is not there so you cannot doubt, but the whole has not taken possession so you are not powerful. The power is not there, only the illusion of power. That creates trouble.
Under alcohol you can do certain things...
A circus was traveling in a special train from one town to another and a cage was damaged and the lion escaped. So the manager gathered all his strong men and said, "Before you go into the night, into the jungle to find the lion, I will give you some wine. It will give you courage."
All twenty of them took big shots. The night was cold and dangerous and courage was needed - but Mulla Nasruddin refused. He said, "I will only have soda."
The manager protested, "But you will need courage!"
Nasruddin replied, "In such moments I don't need courage. These moments are dangerous - night time and the lion, and courage can be dangerous. I would rather be a coward and alert."
When you don't have power and a drug can give you courage, it is dangerous. You can move madly on a certain path - this is the danger of drugs.
But society is not afraid because of this. Society is afraid that if you have a glimpse beyond society then you will never be adjusted to it. And society is such a madhouse - to be adjusted to it you must not be allowed any glimpse outside.
Religions are also against drugs and alcohol, but for a different reason. They say: Be a drunkard, a drunkard of the divine wine, because then you are rooted, centered. Then you are powerful.
If there is such security in wine,
How much more in Tao?
The wise man is hidden in tao,
Nothing can touch him.
Absolutely nothing can touch him. Why? If you follow me rightly, only the ego can be touched. It is very touchy. If somebody just looks at you in a certain way, it is touched. He has not done anything.
If somebody smiles a little, it is touched; if somebody just turns his head and does not look at you, it is touched. It is very touchy. It is like a wound, always open, green. You touch it and the pain arises.
A single word, a single gesture - the other may not even be aware of what he has done to you, but he has touched it.
And you always think the other is responsible, that he has wounded you. No, you carry your wound.
With the ego your whole being is a wound. And you carry it around. Nobody is interested in hurting you, nobody is positively waiting to hurt you; everybody is engaged in safeguarding his own wound.
Who has got the energy? But still it happens, because you are so ready to be wounded, so ready, just waiting on the brink for anything.
You cannot touch a man of Tao. Why? - because there is no one to be touched. There is no wound.
He is healthy, healed, whole. This word whole is beautiful. The word heal comes from the whole, and the word holy also comes from the whole. He is whole, healed, holy.
Be aware of your wound. Don't help it to grow, let it be healed; and it will be healed only when you move to the roots. The less the head, the more the wound will heal - with no head there is no wound.
Live a headless life. Move as a total being, and accept things. Just for twenty-four hours, try it - total acceptance, whatsoever happens. Someone insults you, accept it, don't react, and see what happens. Suddenly you will feel an energy flowing in you that you have not felt before. Somebody insults you: you feel weak, you feel disturbed, you start thinking of how to get your revenge. That man has hooked you, and now you will move round and round. For days, nights, months, even years, you will not be able to sleep, you will have bad dreams. People can waste their whole life over a small thing, just because someone insulted them.
Just look back into your past and you will remember a few things. You were a small child and the teacher in the class called you an idiot, and you still remember it and you feel resentment. Your father said something. Your parents have forgotten, and even if you remind them, they will not be able to remember it. Your mother looked at you in a certain way and since then the wound has been there. And it is still open, fresh; if anybody touches it, you will explode. Don't help this wound to grow. Don't make this wound your soul. Go to the roots, be with the whole. For twenty-four hours, just twenty-four hours, try not to react, not to reject, whatsoever happens.
If someone pushes you and you fall to the ground - fall! Then get up and go home. Don't do anything about it. If somebody hits you, bow down your head, accept it with gratitude. Go home, don't do anything, just for twenty-four hours, and you will know a new upsurge of energy that you have never known before, a new vitality arising from the roots. And once you know it, once you have tasted it, your life will be different. Then you will laugh at all the foolish things you have been doing, at all the resentments, reactions, revenges, with which you have been destroying yourself.
Nobody else can destroy you except you; nobody else can save you except you. You are the Judas and you are the Jesus.
Enough for today.
