Question 3

SEVERAL SANNYASINS HAVE TOLD ME THAT YOU DO NOT APPROVE OF MACROBIOTICS. IS THIS SO? I WONDER WHETHER YOUR CRITICISMS WERE DIRECTED AT OBSESSIVE ATTITUDES TOWARDS DIET RATHER THAN AT THE PRINCIPLES OF MACROBIOTICS.

MACROBIOTICS IS PURE TAOISM. THERE ARE NO RULES AND NO PROHIBITIONS. ITS EMPHASIS IS ON AWARENESS, FREEDOM, SENSIBILITY AND FLEXIBILITY. IT HAS NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH FOOD FADS, RIGID DIETS OR OBSESSIVE ATTITUDES. BROWN RICE IS MISTAKENLY REGARDED BY SOME AS THE BASIS OF MACROBIOTICS, BUT IT IS ONLY ONE ELEMENT AND CAN BE USED OR DISCARDED, RECOGNIZED OR IGNORED. COULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

The first thing: I am against all fads. Irrespective of what the fad is, I am against all fads, because fads attract obsessive people. Fads become hiding-places for insane people. People who are abnormal, they hide themselves behind fads, and they create systems, theories, dogmas, to rationalize.

I used to live with a woman. She was a very lovely woman, but almost crazy about cleanliness. The whole day she was cleaning the house, the whole day she was decorating -- for no purpose, because she never allowed anybody in the house. If guests would come she would meet them on the lawn.

I asked her, 'You continuously go on decorating and cleaning your house, but I see that nobody is ever allowed in.' She said, 'Those people, they may make everything dirty.' 'Then what is the purpose of it?'

She said, 'Cleanliness is next to god.'

Now, this woman is mad. Cleanliness has become just a hiding-place. It has become a ritual. Now, cleaning the whole day, she remains occupied. Cleaning the whole day has become her whole life -- it is a sheer wastage. But you cannot say that cleanliness is bad; cleanliness is good. So she has a reason. She is mad with a perfect rationality.

Even her husband was not allowed to come into the drawing-room. And she never allowed herself to have any children, because children are dirty and they would create trouble and they would make things messy. Her whole life was sacrificed at the altar of cleanliness.

I said, 'Of course, you have proved that cleanliness is second to god. You have made it an altar of god and you are sacrificing your whole life to it.'

But she would say, 'Am I wrong?'..

You cannot say she is wrong. Cleanliness is good, hygenic -- but there is a limit to it. The faddist always goes beyond the limit. He is deep down very troubled. I told the woman, 'You do one thing: for three days you don't clean the house. If you can remain sane for three days without cleaning the house, I will also join you and I will also clean your house the whole day.'

She said, 'Three days without cleaning? That is impossible. I will go mad.' She is already mad.

So whenever there is someone who is hiding behind a fad, whatsoever the fad is -- it may be macrobiotics or something else -- I am against it. I am against the attitude of obsessiveness.

Let me tell you one anecdote:

"A man came home from the match. His wife looked up from the paper and said, 'Look here, Fred, there's a report in the paper about a man who's just given his wife to a friend in return for a football season-ticket. You're a keen fan but you wouldn't do a thing like that, would you?'

Fred said, 'Of course I wouldn't. It is ridiculous and criminal -- the season is half over!"'

This is the mind of a fan, of a faddist. But these people can go on hiding behind beautiful reasons.

Mahatma Gandhi was continuously concerned about his bowel movements. He was almost obsessive about it. Sometimes when your stomach is disturbed, one can think about it, but continuously pondering and meditating and brooding over it is nonsense. But he was continuously brooding -- as if that was the greatest subject in the world to think about.

He would do his prayer, or he was going to see the viceroy, or he was going to take part in the round-table conference which was going to decide the fate of India and its freedom, but first he would take an enema. You would be surprised: in his diary, enema is as much referred to as god. Enema seems to be a second god.

But if you argued with him, he would look perfectly clear about it: the stomach has to be completely clean, because without a clean stomach the whole body gets toxins, this and that, and only with a clean stomach can the mind be clean. How can the mind be healthy without a healthy body? Then he would go on and on, arguing about it, thinking about it. But in fact, it is a fad and a sort of illness. And it doesn't show a healthy mind; it shows an unhealthy mind.

This type of attitude I am against. I have said to many sannyasins... because they come to me with their fads. One young man came and he said he had come to me to learn how to live only on water! I told him, 'You will make me a criminal. If I tell you how to live on water, you will die!'

He was lean and thin, almost on the verge of collapse, but he had a fad that purity is possible only through water. Only water is pure and everything else is impure. His eyes were getting yellow, ill. He was not eating well, his body was starved, and by and by his brain would start being feverish. And the more feverish he would become, the more he would make efforts to purify himself. I have to tell such people that they are moving in a very very dangerous direction.

Macrobiotic addicts also come to me. Now, this question is from Dharmananda. He has exactly caught the point. I am not against anything in particular, because I am not in favour of anything in particular. I am just in favour of life -- life in its tremendous richness.

So if it is as Dharmananda says, I don't think macrobiotic people will agree with him. Now let me read the whole question again. I don't think macrobiotic people will agree with him, because he has destroyed the whole thing.

He says: MACROBIOTICS IS PURE TAOISM. No principle, no theory, can be pure taoism. Even taoism is not pure taoism. Lao Tzu resisted for his whole life. He denied his disciples, he rejected all appeals to him to make a theory about his whole principle, because he said, 'Once tao is said, it is no more tao. Truth cannot be said, cannot be theorized.' Only in the end he wrote something -- and that too under pressure.

He was leaving China. It seems he was coming to India. Everybody has to come finally to India. India is not a geographical point; it is the very source of all human consciousness. Everyone who wants to be reoriented has to come to the orient. 'Orient' simply means orientation.

Lao Tzu.... Of course, chinese scholars never say that he was going to India; that offends their ego. They say he was going to the south, but India is the south. They say he moved towards the south, but India is the south for China. And of course, it seems meaningful -- Lao Tzu coming back to India. That seems absolutely relevant. Everybody has to come. India is everybody's home.

He was caught on the boundaries of China by the government officials and they said, 'We will not allow you to go out of the country with your treasure. You have to leave the treasure.'

He asked, 'What do you mean?'

They said, 'You have to write a book before you leave our country. You know something; you have to write it down and hand it over to the government. Then you can leave.'

So he was forced on the boundary by these officials. In three days he went and quickly wrote the whole 'Tao Teh Ching'. But in the first line he says, 'Tao cannot be uttered, and the tao that is uttered is no more tao.' So even taoism is not pure tao -- the 'ism' makes it impure. So forget about macrobiotics -- that it can be pure taoism. It is a theory, an hypothesis.

THERE ARE NO RULES AND NO PROHIBITIONS. If there are no rules and no prohibitions, then why be unnecessarily worried about macrobiotics? Then what is the point of calling yourself a follower of macrobiotics if there are no rules and no regulations? There are.

I would like that Dharmananda is right. I would like it perfectly; that is what my whole standpoint is. But Dharmananda cannot be approved of by macrobiotic people. They have rules and regulations. In fact, Dharmananda is smuggling me into macrobiotics. He is my follower, so of course, it can be understood.

ITS EMPHASIS IS ON AWARENESS, FREEDOM, SENSITIVITY AND FLEXIBILITY. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH FOOD FADS, RIGID DIETS OR OBSESSIVE ATTITUDES. No, they will not agree with you, Dharmananda. They will not.

MACROBIOTICS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BROWN RICE. They are mad about brown rice. They think brown rice is god, and unless you live on brown rice you will miss. But he says: BROWN RICE IS MISTAKENLY REGARDED BY SOME AS THE BASIS OF MACROBIOTICS BUT IT IS ONLY ONE ELEMENT AND CAN BE USED OR DISCARDED, RECOGNIZED OR IGNORED. But then what remains? If even brown rice is discarded, ignored, and there are no principles and no regulations and it is pure taoism, then what remains? Nothing remains. Then I can happily say, 'Yes, be a macrobiotic follower, no problem.'

I am against fads. I am against a disciplined life. I am not against discipline; I am against disciplined life.

Discipline should come moment to moment from your inner being. It should be an inner light, not imposed from the outside. One should move in deep response to life. One should not follow any doctrine.

Because if you follow a doctrine then you already have a conclusion with you. You live through that conclusion. You live from a center which is already fixed. Then you are not free. You cannot be flexible. Your principle, your idea, your center, your conclusion, will not allow you to be flexible. You will react according to your conclusion.

But if you are free and each moment decides its own conclusion, it is not carried over from the past, then it is perfectly okay. Then you have a discipline -- real discipline -- but you don't have a disciplined life.

Any man who is really alive has no character, cannot have a character. Character is always dead -- a dead structure around you, carried over from the past, the past experience. If you act out of your character, you don't act at all; you simply react. You don't respond. Response is immediate. Life creates a situation, a challenge, and you respond. You respond out of your being, with no center, with no conclusion. Not through the past; herenow comes the response -- pure, virgin.