Taoism, Daoism, Tao, Dao, Lao Tzu's Tap Te Ching, Vol. 4 Tao: The three treasures, Chapter 1: Never be the First in the World

LAO TZU SAYS:

ALL THE WORLD SAYS:

MY TEACHING, TAO, GREATLY RESEMBLES FOLLY. BECAUSE IT IS GREAT, THEREFORE IT RESEMBLES FOLLY. IF IT DID NOT RESEMBLE FOLLY, IT WOULD HAVE LONG AGO BECOME PETTY INDEED!

I HAVE THREE TREASURES; GUARD THEM AND KEEP THEM SAFE. THE FIRST IS LOVE. THE SECOND IS, NEVER TOO MUCH. THE THIRD IS, NEVER BE THE FIRST IN THE WORLD. THROUGH LOVE, ONE HAS NO FEAR; THROUGH NOT DOING TOO MUCH ONE HAS AMPLITUDE OF RESERVE POWER; THROUGH NOT PRESUMING TO BE THE FIRST IN THE WORLD ONE CAN DEVELOP ONE'S TALENT AND LET IT MATURE.

IF ONE FORSAKES LOVE AND FEARLESSNESS, FORSAKES RESTRAINT AND RESERVE POWER, FORSAKES FOLLOWING BEHIND AND RUSHES IN FRONT, HE IS DOOMED!

THE greatest miracle in life is love, and it is the greatest mystery also; greater than life itself, because love is the very essence for which life exists.

Love is the source, and love is the end also. So one who misses love misses all.

But don't misunderstand love as an emotion -- it is not. Love is not an emotion, is not a feeling. Love is the subtlest energy; subtler than electricity. The very substratum of all energies is love.

It manifests in many ways. First try to understand love, then the other treasures will be easy to understand.

If you ask me what are my three treasures I will say: First, love; second, love, third also, love. And in fact that is what Lao Tzu is saying -- but we will understand.

Man is a trinity, as Christians have called God a trinity. God may be, may not be, but man is a trinity: body, mind, soul. In fact because of his deep understanding of human beings Christ came to say that God is a trinity.

If there is any God he has to be a trinity, because everything that exists has three layers. Hindus call them three GUNAS, three qualities: SATVA, RAJAS, TAMAS. Christ called them the trinity.

When love expresses through you it first expresses as the body. It becomes sex. If it expresses through the mind, which is higher, deeper, subtler, then it is called love. If it expresses through the spirit, it becomes prayer.

And there is something in you which is beyond the trinity also. Hindus have called that 'the fourth', TURIYA. They have not named it, because it cannot be named.

The three can be named; they belong to the manifest world. The fourth cannot be named; it belongs to the unmanifest. But it is the substratum of all. They simply called it 'the fourth', TURIYA.

In the fourth, love becomes samadhi, nirvana, enlightenment.

First, when love -- the same energy -- expresses through body, it becomes sex. If everything goes well and sex is natural and flowing it is a beautiful experience because you can have a glimpse of the second through it. If sex goes really very deep, so that you forget yourself completely in it, you can even have a glimpse of the third through it. And if sex becomes a total orgasmic experience, there are rare moments when you can even have a glimpse of the fourth, the TURIYA, the beyond, through it.

But if sex fails, then many perversions happen to the mind. These perversions are expressed in hatred. Hatred is a failure of sex, a failure of love energy. Violence, lust for money, the continuous conflicting attitudes of egos: war, politics -- these are all sex perversions.

A man whose sex is not perverted cannot become a politician. It is impossible. All politicians as such need deep sexual therapy, otherwise their whole energy will be. moving to gain more and more power. When sex is natural, you feel power, you are not seeking it. Sex is potentiality, power. You feel it showering on you, you don't seek and search for it. But when you miss it there, then a great urge arises to seek power: politics is born. Then wars, continuous violence, are born; hatred, anger, and a thousand and one types of perversions.

People become attached too much to things when sex fails, because then they cannot be attached to persons. Because to be related to a person you have to flow, you have to be open.

With things there is no need to flow or to be open. Things can be possessed, persons cannot be possessed. Things are dead, persons are not dead. Persons are freedom in essence: you can love them, you can delight in them, but you cannot possess them.

People whose natural function of sex has failed become much too possessive about money, things of the world.

Science is also part of sexuality, the bodily phenomenon. That's why science goes on insisting that only the body exists: because sex knows nothing other than the body. Science cannot believe that even the mind exists, there is no question of the spirit; and of course 'the beyond' is completely beyond it. Science insists that man is only the body -- that shows its inclination.

And the whole enquiry of science is based on sexual curiosity. And that too is a perversion.

If science is creative then it is not a perversion. Then the sex is functioning well, then the energy has a flow, it is not stagnant and rotten. But science as it is today -- and it has been in the past the same -- is destructive.

It is simply unbelievable that man can reach the moon -- and soon they will be reaching other planets, and later on the stars -- and half humanity is starving. It is unbelievable that man can develop such complex technology that the atom bomb and the hydrogen bomb can become possible, and they cannot even find a cure for the common cold -- I was suffering for two days!

Simply, everything looks foolish. The whole of science is war-oriented, violence-oriented, destructive. If everything goes well with sex -- which is very difficult because all religions are against it, they poison your mind. It is difficult because the whole civilization, all cultures, are against it -- because they have come to know a trick: if you want to exploit a man, pervert his sex; then he can never become a master of his own being. Just pervert his sex and he will remain an automaton. Then you can send him to the wars, and you can sacrifice him for foolish ends.

A man who has known love cannot be forced to hate. A man who has even come to glimpses of love will be so loving, it will be very difficult for him to be destructive. But all nations need destructive people who are boiling within with destructiveness, who are in a way insane; otherwise what will happen to the armies of the world? A certain insanity is needed for a man to become a soldier.

If life is beautiful and love is showering who bothers to go to the war? And who wants to become a soldier? You are here not to destroy but to fulfil. So every culture, every religion, every nation, without any exception tries to pervert your sexuality, they don't allow you to enjoy yourself. They don't allow you to be natural. Once you are natural then you are beyond their control. You can be controlled only when you are ill.

That's why I say: If everything goes well, and if sex remains natural, then -- the second: through deeper sex, love arises.

Love is not sexual but it arises out of sexuality, that has to be understood.

It is just like a lotus flower coming out of dirt and mud. But it is not dirt, and it is not mud. It is a total transformation of them. Between sex and love there is as much distance as there is between muddy water, mud, and a lotus flower. If you had not known it already you could not have imagined that this lotus has come out of ordinary mud. Impossible to conceive, to comprehend, because the lotus is such a transformed phenomenon. So different. Of some other world. It does not seem to be part of THIS earth. But it comes out of this earth.

Love arises as a lotus.

As science -- particularly destructive science -- politics, money and money-oriented search, possessiveness, belong to the body and belong to sex, so, art, poetry, music, painting, sculpture, belong to the second layer of love. When your love is flowing, when you have come to know a certain EN RAPPORTness with a person, a certain oneness with a person, although only for moments -- that too is enough to change the whole life. If even for a single moment you have come to feel that two persons have dissolved and become one -- in sex two bodies dissolve and become one; in love two minds dissolve and become one -- if for a single moment you have known that oneness, your life wi]l become a poetry, your life will have a dance to it, your life will have a deep harmony and music in it.

The third is prayer. When you have looked into existence through one person -- your beloved, your husband, your wife, your friend, your child, your Master, if you have looked into one person and you have seen infinity, if you looked into one person's window and the whole sky of infinity opened, now you know that love can move higher -- it can become prayer.

Prayer is meeting of spirit with spirit. Sex is very confined to the material body, very limited. Love is vaster, but still limited to a person. Prayer is unlimited. Then you know that you can move from every person to the infinite. Then every person becomes a jumping-board. You look into the eyes of your child -- and God is there. You look into the eyes of your beloved, and suddenly the beloved has disappeared, she is no more there, he is no more there -- God is smiling. You look into the flower and the whole has entered there. This is prayer.

These are the three layers of man.

Christianity, Judaism -- they could reach only to the third. They have no conception of the fourth; but in the East, Buddha, Krishna, Mahavir, Lao Tzu -- they have looked into the fourth, the beyond that goes beyond alI. That fourth, the TURIYA, is ecstasy, exultation, samadhi, nirvana, Tao. In that fourth even the other disappears.

First in sex the body disappears but the mind remains. In love the mind disappears but the spirit remains. In prayer the spirit also disappear but the other, the Tao, the God, remains. In the fourth even God disappears. Nothing remains -- or only nothing remains.

In that total emptiness where all dualities dissolve, love is absolutely fulfilled. Love is the key to all treasures. Love is not an emotion. Love is not a feeling. Love is energy, and the energy can express on four layers. And always remember that the energy has to be transcended, transformed, led into a higher rhythm, a higher state. But nothing is wrong; only if you are stuck somewhere, then it is wrong.

Sex is beautiful, nothing is wrong in it, but if you are stuck there, something has gone wrong. It is as if you are stuck at the door and could not enter the palace. Nothing is wrong in the door itself, it is a door, and you should be thankful for it; it is not a wall. But if you are stuck at the door it has become a wall.

It is because of you that the door has become a wall. Now you cannot enter.

Sex is beautiful. Use that energy to flow within. Move ahead, allow it to change into love. But don't get stuck at love, allow it to become prayer. But don't get stuck at prayer. Unless nothingness is achieved one should go on moving and moving. When everything is dissolved you have come to the ultimate flowering of the lotus.

That's why Hindus, who are the deepest searchers of the inner world, have said that when the energy comes to its highest peak it is a flowering of the lotus, SAHASRAR, the thousand-petalled lotus. It is the last CHAKRA in your body. The first is sex, the last is the lotus, the SAHASRAR.

Don't get stuck anywhere! That should be remembered always. If you can remember that then nothing can become a barrier to you.

It depends on you whether you use it as a barrier or as a ladder. A stone is there -- a rock is there on the way. You can think of it as a hindrance; but you can step over it, and then it becomes a step and you move higher. That's why I accept everything. I don't condemn anything.

Whatsoever you are and whatsoever you are doing, don't get stuck there. Move on. Unless you reach to total absolute silence where you have disappeared, the other has disappeared, and only love flows, without there being a lover or a beloved -- only then has it become the ultimate flowering of the lotus: love flowering, with no lover, no beloved; both the shores have disappeared, only the river remains. And when the shores disappear -- the river becomes the ocean.

Now, try to follow the very potent, pregnant sutra of Lao Tzu.

ALL THE WORLD SAYS: MY TEACHING, TAO, GREATLY RESEMBLES FOLLY.

Love always looks foolish: foolish to those who are stuck somewhere, foolish to those who have not known anything higher than their body, foolish to those who have not known anything valuable other than money, foolish to those who have not known anything paradoxical, who, in fact, have not known anything mysterious, who have lived with logic, who are Aristotelian.

It is said that Aristotle's Master, Plato, used to call Aristotle THE MIND. That was his name for Aristotle -- THE MIND. Whenever he wanted to ask, Where is Aristotle? he would ask, Where is The Mind?

Those who are just minds -- heart is a folly to them because heart has its own reasons which the mind cannot understand. The heart has its own dimension of being, which is completely dark for the mind. Heart is higher and deeper than the mind, beyond the reach of it. It looks foolish. Love always looks foolish because love is not utilitarian. Mind is utilitarian. It uses everything for something else -- that is the meaning of being utilitarian. Mind is purposive, end-oriented. it turns everything into a means; and love cannot be turned into a means -- that is the problem. Love in itself is the goal.

If you love a person you don't say why you love them. You can't answer the question, Why do you love? You simply shrug your shoulders. If you are really honest you will say, I don't know. If you are dishonest you can find a thousand and one reasons. But no lover worth the name has ever been able to show any reason. He simply says, It happened. I just fell into love, I don't know why! That's why the mind says it is foolish. If you can't answer the why you must be moving in some foolish way: Stop! Come back! Be reasonable!

And I must tell you one thing: If you try always to be reasonable you can never be happy because happiness has something unreasonable in it. The very ingredient of being happy is to be unreasonable. If you can be unreasonably happy, only then can you be happy, otherwise not. If you try to find out the reason then you will simply be miserable. Misery has reasons, happiness has none. You can answer: Why are you miserable? but you cannot answer: Why are you happy? Always you are miserable because of you. And always you are happy in spite of you. It has no reason to it. The 'why' cannot be answered. And heart is not arithmetic, it is poetry, paradoxical! It moves from one extreme to another. It comprehends all extremes. It is so vast, it contains all the contradictions in it.

SAYS LAO TZU: ALL THE WORLD SAYS: MY TEACHING, TAO, GREATLY RESEMBLES FOLLY.

Because whatsoever Lao Tzu is saying he is saying: Live here and now! This is folly! Because a reasonable man always sacrifices today for tomorrow. He says, I will live tomorrow. When things are put right, when the time is right, and I have leisure, enough money, a big palace to live in, then I will live -- right now how can I live?

Every parent is teaching to every child: Sacrifice the present for the future. Sacrifice this moment for the next. Sacrifice yourself for something else.

This is reasonableness -- to postpone life. Heart says: Live now. That's what Lao Tzu says -- Live now. In fact there is no other way of living. Either you live now, or you just pretend to live. You never live, you just postpone. You only die, you never live. Because to live there is no other time than the present. Existence is always in the present. But the reason always thinks and plans for the future.

Of course if somebody says -- Live now, you will say, How is it possible? I have to make arrangements first. I have to plan. When the right time comes I will live.

It never comes. Millions and millions of people have died; it never came for them, it will never come to you.

MY TEACHING GREATLY RESEMBLES FOLLY, people say.

It has to resemble folly. All great wisdom resembles folly. Only fools look reasonable in this world. Only fools are rational. All wise people look a little eccentric. They don't belong to the crowd. They don't belong to the notions of the crowd. They live their being. They look like idiots -- this word idiot is beautiful. It comes from a Greek word IDIOTI And IDIOTIKI in Greek means private. This is something! An idiot is somebody who is living his private life! Not a life of the crowd. Not part of a collective mass. He who is living his own life in his own way is an idiot.

Dostoevsky has written a beautiful novel, THE IDIOT. Had Lao Tzu read it he would have appreciated it. The idiot in Dostoevsky's novel is exactly the man who will be called foolish, but who is wise. The world has gone so foolish that if you want to be wise you have to be foolish according to the people around you.

ALL THE WORLD SAYS: MY TEACHING GREATLY RESEMBLES FOLLY. BECAUSE IT IS GREAT, THEREFORE IT RESEMBLES FOLLY.

All greatness is so beyond the mediocre mind! And mind is mediocre! Remember it; mind itself is mediocre. The mind can never be great; there have never been great minds. If you have heard about great minds you have heard wrongly. If you ask all the great minds they will say that whatsoever they have attained has come from beyond the mind, not from the mind; something that filters through the mind but is not part of the mind.

Ask Madame Curie how she solved her problem and became a Nobel laureate. She tried for years, for three years almost, to solve a single mathematical problem upon which her whole research depended; she failed and failed and failed. Frustrated one night, she dropped the whole Project, went to sleep; and in the night, in a dream, the problem was solved. She got up, wrote it down at the desk, went back to sleep; in the morning she completely forgot about it.

When she came to work at the desk she was surprised -- there was the answer, miraculously there! For three years she had been working at it -- where had it come from? And there was nobody else, she was alone in the room, and nobody else could have solved it even if there had been somebody there. Nobody, no servant, could have done that trick, she herself had been working on it for three years. Then she remembered a dream. In the dream she had seen the whole answer written. Then she remembered that she had got up in the night; and then she looked at the handwriting -- it was her own.

Now, the Nobel Prize should not go to the mind -- but it has gone to the mind. Now Madame Curie is a great mind -- and the answer has come from beyond the mind.

Always it has been so. Always it will be so. Mind is mediocre. It is good at small things, petty things of the market -- you can run a small business, you can earn a little money, you can have a bank balance, there it is okay. But not beyond that.

BECAUSE IT IS GREAT, that's why it looks like folly.

Deep down, if you search within yourself you will also see that if suddenly Mahavir comes and stands here naked you will think that he is a fool, what is he doing here? If Lao Tzu comes here you will not be able to recognize him, it will be impossible for you to recognize him. He will look like a perfect fool!

Bodhidharma reached China. The whole country was waiting for him. The king himself had come to the border of the country to receive him. A million people had gathered, because a great Master was coming. And when the Master appeared, people started giggling. It was impossible to believe their own eyes. Even the emperor felt very uneasy because this man Bodhidharma had one shoe on one foot and the other he was carrying on his head. What manner of man was this?

The king said, Excuse me, sir, but what are you doing? We had come to receive a sane man; are you insane?

Bodhidharma laughed and said: So you have failed in the examination. If you can understand this only then can you understand other things that I have to say. If you cannot tolerate such a small contradiction, it's not much, just carrying a shoe on the head, if you cannot tolerate and understand this much it will be useless for me to stay here. He turned back. He left the town, went into the forest; he said: There is no need to stay, nobody will be able to understand me; now I will wait. Those who can understand me, they should come to me.

He never entered into the capital again.

Contradictions are very difficult for the mind. Mind lives in a routine. The shoe must be on the foot, that's the accepted thing. It should not be carried on the head. Such an innocent thing -- he was not doing any harm to anybody. But no, impossible.

We have a levelling of everything.

I was just reading a man's memoirs. He was a great scientist, and once a friend played a joke. The friend invited many people for a party: great doctors, scientists, engineers, poets, artists, musicians, and when they had all gathered the host said: I am not going to introduce you to each other, and please don't introduce yourselves to each other, because I don't like labels. So you meet each other man to man -- forget that you are an engineer, a doctor -- I have not invited doctors and engineers and lawyers and advocates, just people, friends.

This scientist who was there says: We were so puzzled. What to do? How to approach each other? Because we cannot approach man as man. If he is a doctor, of course; engineer -- then there is something to proceed by; but just a man? You cannot hook yourself with him. From where, how? Just a man or a woman! And he said it was such an uneasy affair that people became completely silent. How to start? Without labels the mind simply doesn't function.

He writes: I have never seen such a silent party. People somehow finished and escaped, because if you cannot say that you are a great writer and you have written this and that, then who are you? The identity disappears. And without identity you are a nobody.

ALL THE WORLD SAYS: MY TEACHING GREATLY RESEMBLES FOLLY.

Because Lao Tzu's whole teaching is how to lose the identity, how to forget the labels that the world has given to you, how not to be labels, but to be authentically beings.

BECAUSE IT IS GREAT (it is vast), THEREFORE IT RESEMBLES FOLLY.

Life is a circle. A child is a fool, innocently foolish, and that is the beauty of a child. All children are beautiful. You cannot come across an ugly child. But then where does all that beauty disappear to? Behind the labels, all that beauty disappears. Then masks are there, not faces. Behind the dishonesties, the reality disappears.

But each child is beautiful, beautiful and foolish! And innocent! Then you learn much, and you lose much in your learning. Then you move into the world. You become knowledgeable, you become worldly wise, but then you are losing your innocence. Then layers and layers of worldly knowledge, of the so-called worldly wisdom, gather around you. You are encaged.

If you can understand Lao Tzu you suddenly drop out of this imprisonment -- which you yourself are carrying around you. Nobody is insisting, nobody is forcing it on you -- you simply drop all the identities and all the deadness that has accumulated around you. This is renunciation. If you ask me, this is SANNYAS. You simply drop all that you have gathered, you simply become completely unburdened, and again become a child.

Of course the whole world will say you have become a fool, because the world now cannot account for you.

In Jesus' life there are many parables. Once he came to a house -- -he was invited there; the hosts were two sisters, Mary and Martha. Mary was sitting just near Jesus, not doing anything, just happy being near him, massaging his feet and crying, in deep benediction, tears of happiness flowing; and the other sister Martha was working in the house, Preparing food for Jesus -- and other guests were coming, and she became jealous. She came to Jesus and said, Look, I am working alone and she is just sitting here not doing anything. Tell her to come and help me.

Jesus said: You are end-oriented, she is not. You are preparing for the guest and the guest is here. She is enjoying the guest. You do things in your own way and let her be herself. Of course, ordinarily you cannot think why Jesus should say such a thing. He is in favour of the lazy. If Mahatma Gandhi had been there he would have said, Yes, you go and help in the kitchen. SERVICE IS PRAYER. Go and serve! But Jesus said: You do things in your own way, leave her alone. One is reason, the other is unreasonable heart.

In another house that he was invited to a woman came and she poured costly perfume on his feet, the whole bottle of it -- it was very rare. And Judas was there, who became later on the traitor -- which he had to become; he was the businessman around there, he was the perfect Jew. Looking at this, Judas said: What is this? And you are allowing it? (He must have been the first communist, that Judas.) Stop her! She is wasting valuable perfume! The perfume can be sold, and many poor people can be fed.

Of course, absolutely reasonable. Who can find a fault with Judas? He said: People are poor, and you are allowing her to waste money like that!

Jesus said: Poor people will always be there, you can serve them, I will not always be here.

Difficult to understand. Unreasonable. Absolutely unreasonable! This man Jesus was not a socialist at all. It was simple mathematics. Mahatma Gandhi would have supported Judas not Jesus. Jesus is allowing people to waste while people are hungry! Looks foolish.

Christians don't talk much about these stories because they themselves feel a little guilty. It looks guilty when people are poor. He should have stopped it. Nothing should happen around him like that. But what Jesus said is really something. He said: I will not be here again. And I'll not be here for long, Judas. Poor people will always be there -- you can serve them. There is no hurry. But let her do whatsoever she wants to do.

Reason is not the question, love is the question.

IF IT DID NOT RESEMBLE FOLLY, IT WOULD HAVE LONG AGO BECOME PETTY INDEED!

And, says Lao Tzu, if it didn't resemble folly it would have become mediocre, petty. But my teaching will never become mediocre because the mind will never be able to comprehend it and convert it into a petty thing. It will always remain beyond the mind.

Even a Buddha can be understood through the mind. Krishna can be understood through the mind. With Lao Tzu it is impossible.

Many times people ask me why in the name of Lao Tzu there has not been a great organized religion. It was not possible. The man is impossible. The man is so wisely foolish that it is difficult to create an establishment around him. He remains a lonely rebel, beautiful in his aloneness, but incomprehensible, very very far away, distant, like Everest -- you can look at it, but to create a mass organization around him, and to lead the mass towards the Everest is not possible.

I HAVE THREE TREASURES; GUARD THEM AND KEEP THEM SAFE. THE FIRST IS LOVE. THE SECOND IS, NEVER TOO MUCH. THE THIRD IS, NEVER BE THE FIRST IN THE WORLD.

In fact the first is enough, the other two are nothing but elaborations of the first -- try to understand

THE FIRST IS LOVE. What is love in fact? What happens? What is this phenomenon, love? First thing: With love you function as a heart and you don't function as a mind. You don't function as reason, you function as feeling. You don't think, you feel. This is the first thing to be understood about love; that you become a feeling phenomenon not a thinking entity. Your centre of being falls from the head to the heart. You become headless. You don't identify with the head, you become identified with the heart -- and the heart is absolutely foolish; foolish in the eyes of the world, wise in its own ways. You start feeling.

It has become very difficult because whenever you feel, you in fact only think that you feel. It is not direct.

Sometimes people come to me and they say that they have fallen in love, and I ask, Are you certain? They say, We THINK that we have fallen in love. Even feeling has to pass through thinking first, then it comes to you. You heart has to beg the mind to be allowed a little freedom.

This is absurd. Because thinking is a device. It is useful, but it is not your whole being. It is like a radar, it helps you to look around, to have a little peep into the future so that you can move well, but it is not YOU.

And howsoever you train your mind you will never be happy with it because happiness is not a quality which is felt by the mind. It is just as if you are trying to smell something through the eyes. The eyes are not meant to smell, they are meant to see. Or it is as if you are trying to see something through the ears; those ears are not meant to see, they are meant to hear.

Mind is a bio-computer. The very mechanism exists there to help you to move safely in an unknown world, in a strange world. It is just a safety guard. It is not meant that you should be happy through it -- and that is what you have been trying to do! And that is how you have created hell around you: you are trying to be happy through the mind, which is not possible!

Mind people are the most unhappy in the world, and this is as it should be. Mind is to look around as a watchdog, to feel the way. Whenever it is needed it should be used. Whenever it is not needed it should be put aside.

But you have become so dependent on the slave that the slave has become the master. And the master has become completely lost. You are not even able to feel where the master is. Lao Tzu says: Drop down towards the heart. Love things, don't THINK things. Love people, don't THINK people. Feel more, think less, and you will be more and more happy. The trees are more happy than man, the birds are more happy than man, the animals are more happy than man -- this is unbelievable! What has happened to man? He has got hooked into the mechanism of mind.

It is good that the mind is there! It is beautiful if you can use it. But you should not be a head, rather you should be a head master. You should use it as one uses a mechanism -- just as you drive a car. Don't become identified with the car. Be the driver, remain the driver. And when you don't want to drive, don't allow the car to force you. If you need it, you use it. If you don't need it, you don't use it.

Head is a subtle mechanism around you. You are just like a driver, hidden behind the mechanism.

Drop the identity with the mind, then only will you know what love is -- because once you drop the identity with the mind suddenly you fall towards the heart.

The heart is the driver. But how is it to be done? -- because just by saying that the first treasure is love makes nothing clear nothing is attained by repeating it.

You start slowly to move in that direction. Sit by the side of a rock, close your eyes and feel the rock. Don't think, and don't say it is beautiful -- these are all mind trips. Just lie down on the rock, spread your hands and body on the rock as if you are on the breast of your mother feel the rock, close your eyes, touch the rock with your tongue, kiss the rock, and let it give you A FEELING.

In the beginning it may not be so easy because rocks have become afraid of man, they won't believe it: What are you doing? because you have never done such a foolish thing! In the beginning they may be apprehensive: There must be something wrong with this man, has he gone mad? Because men are not meant to do such beautiful things and he is doing this; only mad people do such things -- or sometimes people like Lao Tzu.

But allow the rock to get accustomed to you and soon you will find an upsurge of energy from the rock hitting directly to your heart.

Go and embrace a tree. Just put your head on a tree and rest there, and feel how the energy of the tree starts flowing in you, and how it rejuvenates you, how it makes you absolutely fresh and clean, how suddenly deep down in you some flowers start opening and flowering. Listen to the sound of a bird, just listen, because the bird is not saying anything, he is simply singing.

Listen to the poetry of the waters.

Just listen to the poetry of the trees and their colour, and FEEL.

In the beginning it will be hard; again and again you will start thinking. Remember -- drop thinking, again feel. By and by you will come to have the knack of it.

Once you have the knack of feeling you will laugh! How you were missing! Behind the mechanism you were hiding. The driver was lost and the car had become the totality. Now the driver is separate, now you can come. You can put the car off, or you can put the car on, it is for you to decide. Mind is a mechanism, it can be put off and on.

When I talk to you I have to put it on, when you are gone I take the key out of it. It is non-functioning. It stops. Your car is continuously on, your motors are continuously functioning. They create such noise within you. The inner chatter.

THE FIRST IS LOVE.

The first step towards love is to feel more. And the second step towards love is: Be more. Don't pay much attention to that which you do, pay attention to that which you are.

You always think in terms of doing: you are an engineer, you are a doctor, you have done this and that... Forget all this doing! Just try to BE MORE. Have the feeling of being; just sitting, feel YOU ARE. ISNESS, BEING, should be the mantra. Just feel you ARE, and let this feeling get deeply rooted within you.

Never get identified with what you have done. That is nothing. That is just dirt. Get clean out of it and just feel who you are -- that's why in the East the greatest mantra is Who am I?

Not that you start thinking about yourself, because that is how it is happening in the West. Coming to know that in the East the teaching has been: Know who you are, there are many people who sit silently and repeat inside: Who am I? Who am I? If you do this then you are making a fool of yourself. It is stupid. Don't say, Who am I? otherwise you are thinking again. Just FEEL, BE. Just close your eyes and grope in the dark for the being. Grope!

The new generation has a beautiful word for it; that is to GROOVE. Groove for it, focus on it. In darkness, try to grope. There is nothing like it. Once you can groove on it, once you can focus on it, it is the most groovy thing possible.

First drop thinking and come nearer and closer to feeling; and then drop doing and come closer and nearer to being.

If these two things can be done you will be able to gain the first glimpse of what love is.

And then your life will be filled more and more by love and love's light. Then you can enter into a relationship which will not be sexual. Sex may be part of it, but if it is part of love sex itself becomes beautiful. And if love is part of prayer then love becomes religious and sacred. And if prayer is part of meditation it becomes the ultimate, beyond which there is no goal.

The last fulfilment.

THE FIRST IS LOVE. THE SECOND IS, NEVER TOO MUCH.

Why does Lao Tzu say, Never too much -- the disease I called O/D: overdose, or overdoing? Because mind is fed by overdoing, and heart is always fed by balance.

A loving person is always balanced, he is always in the middle; never too much tb the left, never too much to the right. Even if sometimes he has to lean towards the right he leans only to gain balance. That's all. Otherwise he remains exactly in the middle: still, tranquil, silent. He is always in equilibrium.

Mind is always after the extreme. It exists because of the extreme. Mind IS the extremist. The disease I call O/D is the mind. It is always overdoing -- either on the left or on the right, but it is always overdoing. Whenever you are overdoing a thing you are becoming a slave to the mind. Whenever you are balanced, non-extremist, you are going deeper than the mind, you are moving in the heart.

That's why I say: Don't renounce the world. People have renounced it and that became their mind trip. That's why I don't say: Just indulge in the world and forget about religion, because that too has been done by mind people, and that too has been destructive. I say: Renounce IN the world. Don't renounce the world, renounce IN the world. Be in the world but don't be OF it.

Be in the world but don't allow the world to be in you, then an equilibrium is attained. That's why my sannyas looks contradictory, paradoxical, because I am giving sannyas to people who are going to live in the world, I am not telling anybody to move to the monastries. I am insisting -- Remain in the market. If the market and the meditation can both go together there will be an equilibrium attained -- which is what Lao Tzu says: THE SECOND IS, NEVER TOO MUCH.

Even too much of God is bad. Too much of meditation is a disease. Too much of anything is wrong. It has happened in the East, we have done too much meditation. In Zen monastries they are doing eight hours, ten hours, per day. It seems they are born here only to meditate, nothing else. Their whole life seems to be just sitting. They don't enrich life. They don't enrich themselves by life experiences. They don't move in the world -- they are afraid; fear-ridden. And all their meditation is nothing but deep suppression. Meditate, but go to the market, because there is the test -- whether you have been meditating rightly or not.

THE THIRD IS: NEVER BE THE FIRST IN THE WORLD.

That's very beautiful -- and that too is a part of love. Whenever you love you don't want to be first in the world; that's why I said: When love goes wrong, politics is born. Politics is the effort to be first in the world -- to be the president, to be the prime minister, to be the richest person in the world, to be the most famous in the world, to be first in the world.

Have you watched? If you love somebody you would like HIM to be the first in the world, not yourself. Suddenly a change of inner being happens. If you love somebody you would like HIM to be the first. And if you love the whole world -- then you would like to be the last.

That's what Jesus says: Those who are first in this world will be the last in the kingdom of my God. And vice versa.

Lao Tzu says: THE THIRD IS: NEVER BE THE FIRST IN THE WORLD. The very ambition of being first shows that you missed life. You are not blessed. You are not exalted. You are not fulfilled.

Ambition is insanity. Ambition shows that you are not at ease with yourself, that you are not at home. Ambition shows that now you want that others should know you are very great. That is just to hide your smallness. You would like the whole world to know that 'I am the greatest man in the world'. This is just the opposite of what you feel inside -- you feel inferior. Only an inferior mind is ambitious. A superior mind need not be ambitious; there is no point in being ambitious. He is so fulfilled, if you put him last he will be happy there. He knows how to be happy! So wherever he is he is happy. If you throw him in hell he will be happy there.

I have heard: There was an English thinker, Edmund Burke. He used to go to church on Suhdays -- he was not a believer but he liked the preacher and the way he talked about things.

Somebody asked him: You are not a believer and you are not a religious man, so why do you go every Sunday, and so regularly? He said: Once in a while I like to see a person who really believes. Just to see a person who has faith is beautiful in itself. I don't have any faith, but this preacher is a man of faith. He may be wrong -- I know that he is wrong, but that doesn't matter. He is beautiful in his faith. It seems that he has attained. Maybe he is in a delusion, but that is not the point. I am continuously trying to achieve something and he has attained. So just to look at him, I go there.

One day he asked the priest -- because the priest had preached that evening that people who are good, virtuous, and believe in God will go to heaven -- after the sermon Burke asked the priest: What about people who are good and virtuous but don't believe in God? Where will they go? Will they go to heaven? If you say Yes, then to believe in God is not necessary. Then the belief, the whole hypothesis is useless! If a person can go to heaven just by being virtuous then what is the point of belief? And if you say that people who are virtuous and good and don't believe in God will have to go to hell, then what is the point of being virtuous and good? Just believing in God will do.

This Burke was a logician, and the priest was puzzled. He said: Give me a few days, I will have to enquire. I don't know exactly what happens.

He tried for seven days to think from every nook and comer, but he couldn't get it, because the puzzle was THERE. If he says Yes, then there is a problem. If he says No, then too there is a problem.

On the seventh day he came to the church one hour before his sermon; he went to the terrace, was brooding there, closed his eyes -- the whole of the previous night he could not sleep because he was thinking and thinking and thinking -- and again he fell into sleep, and he had a dream.

In dream he saw himself going in a train somewhere. He asked: Where is this train going? and people said: We are going to heaven. He said: This is good. This is the right thing. I will ask where those people are who are virtuous, for example Socrates -- good, virtuous, but he never believed in God; where are they? So he went into heaven. But he didn't like the look of the place. It looked a little ruinuous, no happiness, a little boring, no excitement -- of course, silent -- but it looked dead. He could not believe that this was heaven.

Then he asked: When does the train leave for hell? The train was ready, so he entered. He went to hell. He could not believe his eyes again because things were really beautiful. Beautiful trees, greenery, flowers, birds singing, and everybody was happy. He said, There is something wrong! THIS seems to be like heaven.

He went into the town. He asked people: Is Socrates here? They said, Yes, he is working in the fields. So he went to Socrates and he said: Are you here? You, good and virtuous, but you didn't believe in God? So you have been thrown in hell? He said: I don't know about hell at all, but since we came here we have turned it into heaven.

SHOCKED, his eyes opened.

Edmund Burke was waiting downstairs. He came there and he said: I don't know now exactly, but a dream I had I will tell you. In the dream I came to realize that people who are goo-d and virtuous, wherever they go -- that place becomes heaven. People who are not virtuous and good, even if they believe in God, wherever they go -- that place becomes a hell. This is how it has been revealed to me in my dream.

The world has become a hell because nobody trusts himself. Nobody is fulfilled. Nobody is happy with himself. Everybody is ambitious. Ambition creates hell.

If you ask me who is the non-religious person I will say: the ambitious mind. If you ask me who is the religious person I will say: the non-ambitious mind. A non-ambitious mind is religion incarnated. He has the quality, because he is so fulfilled. Around him you will find an aura of fulfilment. He is not competing with anybody else. There is no need. He feels enough! More than enough. He feels grateful. Whatsoever he has got is ecstatic. More is not possible. And he is not competing with anybody else because there is no need. And the inner riches are such -- there is no need to compete. That is the meaning of inner treasures. If you go for outer treasures you will be in competition. If you go for inner treasures there is no competition, no need for it. There is an infinite sky; you can have the whole sky for yourself, there is nobody else to compete with you.

That's the difference between religion and politics. Politics attracts inferior people, people who are filled with inferiority complexes. To be religious is to drop the inferiority complex. That's why I go on insisting that you are not to achieve anything. It is already there within you. You are not to become gods, you are gods.

And you are not to postpone it for tomorrow. There is no need. You can enjoy it right now. The question is not to achieve something, the question is to delight in it -- it is already there! You lack nothing! If you want to be happy you can be happy THIS VERY MOMENT. Not for a single moment has it to be delayed, there is no need because all that is needed for being happy is there. You have just to become alert, aware. You have just to open your eyes and find. Everything is there, all guests have come, the food is ready, the celebration is on. You have just to open your eyes and participate.

I don't say: Become gods, because that is politics, then you are running to achieve something. You become ambitious. I say: You are gods. Realize it, it is not to be attained. You have just to pay a little attention to it. You have become oblivious of the fact that you are gods.

THE THIRD IS, NEVER BE THE FIRST IN THE WORLD.

And then who bothers to be the first in the world? You are already the first. Everybody is the first in the world, that is the meaning of it. Nobody is comparable to you, has never been, will never be; you are incomparable, unique. You are already the first.

THROUGH LOVE, ONE HAS NO FEAR;

Unless you attain to love you will always be afraid. A deep turmoil and fear will be there in your being. You will go on trembling, because unless you attain to love you cannot know that you are deathless. Fear will be there.

One who loves deeply becomes deathless. One who loves deeply goes beyond death. One who knows love knows also that death does not exist. Because in deep love you come to know death. You die! And you resurrect.

The cross and resurrection both happen in love, that's why people are afraid of love. They come to me and they say, We would like to love but we are afraid. Man is afraid of woman, women are afraid of men. Even if you are in love you are not wholeheartedly in it. You move with very very safe secured steps. And you move always to that point from where withdrawal is easy, you never move to that point where withdrawal will be impossible. You never move to that depth from where return is not possible. You stretch out your hand, but you are always ready to take it back any moment if danger comes. That's why your love remains superficial.

Love is a death, death of the ego. And when you die only then you know that you cannot die, that something in you transcends death.

THROUGH LOVE, ONE HAS NO FEAR; THROUGH NOT DOING TOO MUCH ONE HAS AMPLITUDE OF RESERVE POWER;

When you are not a doer you have so much energy you become a reservoir, a great lake, full of energy; and that lake becomes a mirror in which the whole is mirrored and reflected.

Ordinarily if you are a doer -- and all are doers -- you are always frustrated, always your energy is less, lower, than your need. You are always on the low -- down; you are never high and up. Rarely does it happen that your energy is so much it is overflowing, and if it does happen you immediately move into activity to destroy it, to dissipate it -- and then you always feel as if you are being sucked. Nobody else is responsible.

A doer will always remain on a low level of energy. And how can you reach the ultimate on such a low level of energy? Energy should be preserved. It should become a deep lake within you so that you can reflect the whole.

THROUGH NOT DOING TOO MUCH ONE HAS AMPLITUDE OF RESERVE POWER; THROUGH NOT PRESUMING TO BE FIRST IN THE WORLD ONE CAN DEVELOP ONE'S TALENT AND LET IT MATURE.

If you are in competition, trying to be first in the world, you will miss your being totally because there will be no time to allow it to grow and mature. If you are not competitive and ambitious, then the whole energy is available for your own being to grow, to mature, to bloom; otherwise the whole energy moves in so many directions...

Somebody has got a beautiful car. Now you cannot tolerate this. You have to have a better car than your neighbour, you have to waste your energy for a better car. Then somebody has got a better bungalow. Now you have to get a better bungalow, because how can you be defeated by ordinary neighbours? The whole life is wasted. And finally you find that in competing with your neighbours you have committed suicide.

Remember, you are here to be yourself. Live in the world as if you are alone. Live in the world as if there is nobody who lives by your side; there is no neighbour -- just you alone. And then choose your path.

There will be no competition. There will be only inner growth and maturity.

And if you can become that which you are already, only then there is fulfilment. You can become somebody else, but there will be no fulfilment. You can become a Rockefeller, a Ford, you can become anything; but when you have achieved it you will simply come to realize that this was not your destiny. You have achieved somebody else's destiny -- how can it fulfil you? Your destiny may have been a small one, a simple one -- that you were going to become a flute player. Now you have become President Ford of America. Now what to do with this? The whole life wasted.

And now if you start playing a flute people will think you are absolutely foolish. The time is wrong. And now you will be so confused you won't know. All sense of direction will be lost. Remember you are here to be only you and nobody else. Don't allow anybody else to manipulate you, and don't try to manipulate anybody else. You are not here to fulfil anybody else's expectations, nor is anybody else here to fulfil your expectations. Each individual is unique, sacred, divine. And each individual has his own destiny, and he has to fulfil his own destiny. His own destiny fulfilled -- he fulfils the whole. Unfulfilled -- he remains like a wound in the heart of the whole.

There is only one sin if you ask me, and that sin is: not to fulfil your destiny. And there is only one virtue: to become that which you are meant to be, non-competitively.

Just think if the whole world disappears and you are alone on the earth -- what will you do? Just think -- what will you do if the whole of humanity disappears. leaving only you on the earth; what will you do? Just close your eyes sometimes and see what you will do. If it comes to you that you will dance, then that is your destiny. Dance! Or if you think that you will just relax under a tree and go to sleep -- go under a tree and go to sleep! That is your destiny. Just think of yourself alone -- and you are alone really -- and then you will feel fulfilled.

Small things fulfil if they are IN TUNE with your being. Even great things cannot fulfil if they are not in tune with you.

... THROUGH NOT PRESUMING TO BE THE FIRST IN THE WORLD ONE CAN DEVELOP ONE'S TALENT AND LET IT MATURE.

IF ONE FORSAKES LOVE AND FEARLESSNESS, FORSAKES RESTRAINT AND RESERVE POWER, FORSAKES FOLLOWING BEHIND AND RUSHES IN FRONT, HE IS DOOMED.

So these are the two paths: if you follow your own inner being, the still small voice within, you will be fulfilled. If you don't follow it, you are doomed.

And if you feel that you are already doomed, don't be miserable -- there is always enough time to drop out. Even in the last moment one can drop out. In a single moment one's destiny can be fulfilled.

But don't go on playing roles which others have imposed on you. Others are trying to say, Be this; Be that. Just be yourself.

That's why when many people come to me and they say: Why don't you ask your sannyasins to be a little more disciplined? I say, I cannot. If the discipline comes from their own understanding it is okay. If it is not coming, that too is okay. Who am I to force any discipline on you? I am here to make you free.

If out of freedom a discipline is born, and you become mature, understanding, responsible, it is good. If not, that too is good.

But, I am not here to impose any discipline on you. An imposed discipline is a slavery, and when it comes from your innermost core it is freedom, freedom fulfilled, freedom come to its ultimate blossoming.

Taoism - Daoism - Tao - Dao

VOL. 4, TAO: THE THREE TREASURES

Chapter-1

Never be the First in the World