Taoism, Daoism, Tao, Dao, Lao Tzu's Tap Te Ching, Vol. 1 Tao: The three treasures, Chapter 4: Emptiness, Question 2

The second question:

Question 2

YOU SAID THAT YOU ENCOMPASS ALL OPPOSITES IN YOU, THAT YOU DO NOT DENY THE SINNER OR THE HATE IN YOU. IN ANOTHER LECTURE ONCE YOU SAID YOU DO NOT DENY THE DEVIL IN YOU, YOU ARE TOTAL THIS PUZZLES ME THOUGH. ALL I HAVE EVER FELT FROM YOU ARE VAST VAST REACHES OF LOVE AND COMPASSION AND A FEELING OF ABSOLUTE GOODNESS. WHEN AND WHERE IS YOUR DEVIL AND YOUR HATE?

WHEN YOU ARE BOTH, the devil is absorbed by the divine -- because it is a part of it. In fact this is the inner arithmetic. If you live a part life you will be the devil, because the devil is nothing but a part claiming to be the whole. A part claiming that it is the whole -- this is what devilishness is. When you accept it, it is absorbed by the whole. If you fight with it, then you will be fighting with yourself and you will always remain divided. In division the devil can exist -- it exists in division. It cannot exist when you are whole and total. When you are divided then in the cracks it exists; it gets rooted in the cracks, in between two parts. When you accept everything, the whole of life as it is, without denying, without renouncing, without calling it names -- this is bad and that is good -- when you accept life as it is, whatsoever it is, whatsoever the case, when you accept it in its totality, the devi? disappears. It is absorbed by God, it is absorbed by the divine.

The devil is divine -- in the very word also. Devil comes from the same root as divine -- they both come from the Sanskrit root dev. Devil is divine -- that is the root meaning of the term. Things have gone a little astray, but the devil is divine. He has to be called back, and by fighting you cannot call him back. By fighting he goes away and away, and you will always miss a part. That missing part will not allow you peace. It has to be called home, it has to be absorbed into the whole.

If you accept everything suddenly love flowers, hate disappears. So when I say accept hate, I am not saying be hateful; in fact, I am cutting the very root of being hateful. When I say accept, in that acceptance I am cutting the very root. You will never be hateful again if you accept; if you don't accept you will remain hateful, and your love will lack something. This has to be understood deeply because it is not a metaphysical problem, it is existential. It is a problem that everybody has in him.

You hate somebody. When you hate, what happens inside? What is hate? What do you want to do to the other person? You want to kill him, destroy him. You want to throw him away, as far away as possible. You don't want to see him, you don't want him to be near you. You would like him to disappear, to exist no more -- that's why you want to kill and destroy. When you love a person what do you want to do to him? You want him to be always and always alive, never to die, to be near and close, to be available. You would like to protect him, care about him, and you cannot believe that your love is going to be destroyed by anything. You would like your lover or beloved to be immortal.

Look at both the phenomena. They are opposite. But can't you feel? -- they are two aspects of the same coin. Love is creative, hate is destructive. But have you observed? -- no creation is possible without destruction; no destruction is meaningful unless it is for creation. So now: you can destroy if you are going to create, then there is no problem. You can demolish a house if you are going to create a better house -- nobody will say that you are destructive. You can destroy a society if a better society is possible, you can destroy a morality for a better morality -- nobody will say that you are destructive because you are destroying to create, and no creation is possible without destruction. Destruction is absorbed by the creation; then it is beautiful, then it is part of the creative process. But you destroy. You destroy a society with no idea what you are going to do next, with no creative idea in mind. You simply enjoy destruction.

You demolish a house, you destroy a thing, and if somebody asks, "Why are you doing that?" then you say simply, "I like to destroy" -- then you are mad, something has gone wrong in you. Destruction has become whole in itself, it is trying to claim that it is the whole. When destruction claims that it is the whole then it is the devil; when destruction is part of a greater whole, creation, then it is divine.

When you love a person, many many times you will have to hate him also, but then it is part of love. A father loves his child. Many times he will be angry also and he will hit and beat the child. And a child is never offended by anger, never. A child is offended when you are simply angry without any cause, when you are destructive without any cause. When a child cannot understand why, then he cannot forgive you. If he can understand why -- he has broken a clock, now he understands that the father is going to hit him, and he accepts it. In fact, if the father does not hit him he will carry the guilt and that is very destructive. He will continuously be afraid that some day or other it is going to be known that he has broken a precious watch or a clock or something, and guilt will be there and a wound will be there. He wants it to be cleared up, he wants it to be finished, and the only way it can be finished is that the father becomes angry -- now everything is in balance. He committed something wrong, father became angry, he is punished: things are finished. He is clean. Now he can move unburdened.

In the West, because of the psychologists in this century, much absurdity has happened in the relationship between the parents and the children. And one of the absurd things that they have taught is: never be angry with your child, never hit him, never hate him. Because of this teaching parents have become afraid. This is something new. Children have always been afraid of parents, but now in America parents are afraid of children. Something may go wrong psychologically and then their child may be crazy or go mad or become schizophrenic or split -- neurosis, psychosis, something may happen in the future and they will be responsible. So what is happening? A father, if he loves the child, feels the anger -- so what will he do? He will suppress the anger. And that a child can never forgive, because when a father suppresses anger the anger becomes cold.

Try to understand this. Whenever anger is cold it is of the devil; whenever anger is hot it is of God. A hot anger is beautiful, alive; a cold anger is deadly, poisonous.

When a father really is hot, perspiring, red in the face, and hits the child, the child knows that the father loves him, otherwise why bother so much? But when the father is cold, sarcastic, not angry, but in subtle ways showing his anger -- in a cold way, the way he moves, the way he enters the house, the way he looks at the child or doesn't look at the child.... This coldness shows that the father doesn't love him, doesn't love him enough to be hotly angry.

And that has created the generation gap in the West, nothing else. Children have moved on their own; parents have remained in a cold, dead emotion, imprisoned. Vast distances have appeared. There is no communication. A father cannot talk to the child because he is afraid that if he talks -- really communicates, becomes hot -- anger will come. So it is better not to talk: avoid the situation, don't communicate.

The same has happened between wives and husbands in the West, and now it is happening in the East -- because in fact the East is disappearing. By the end of this century, the whole world will be West. There will be no East, it will exist only in the books of history, in museums; it will be a nostalgia. The East is disappearing -- it will be there in geography, but in the human consciousness it will have no place.

What has happened in the West? The same -- if you love your wife how can you hate her? If you love your wife how can you hit her? If she loves you she loves you twenty-four hours a day, constantly. You are demanding impossible things.

In life everything is a rhythm. Only in death are things absolute and there is no rhythm. In life there is a rhythm -- the day comes and then the night. Says Heraclitus: God is summer and winter, day and night, hunger and satiety, life and death. Life is a rhythm, a constantly vibrating phenomenon between two polarities. You cannot love a person twenty-four hours a day; if you try the love will become dead. You can love a person intensely for a few moments, then you have to move because you have to relax. Otherwise love will become such a fever -- and such a feverish state, how can you remain in it twenty-four hours? Day has to be followed by night, a rest, a relaxation. Love is excitement. You cannot remain excited forever. You have to love and you have to hate the same person, and nothing is wrong if you love. Remember, that is the point to be remembered: if you love then nothing is wrong. Love sanctifies everything, even hate. Love purifies everything, even hate. Love makes everything holy, even hate. You love your wife and then you hate her, she loves you and she hates you. This makes life a rhythm. It is not a dead monotony. There are changes of moods, changes of seasons. And the change is good, because change is an alive phenomenon; otherwise, if somebody loves you and loves you and loves you, even love will become a boredom. And nobody can love like that, a twenty-four-hour-a-day love can only be pretended.

Try to understand this: if you pretend love then you can pretend twenty-four hours a day, but then it is false. Only a plastic flower will not fade, only a plastic flower will not die. If you are really alive you will die also; that is part of life. If you really love a person you will be angry also, that is part of it. And nothing is wrong in it. It becomes a sin only when it becomes the whole. If it is surrounded by love... the island of hate surrounded by an ocean of love is beautiful. It is beautiful: it gives tension to love, relaxation to love. It gives a rhythm to love, it makes life a harmonious whole. Just think of a world where the sun never sets and you have to be awake twenty-four hours a day -- within three weeks you all will go mad. And that is what has happened in love -- you all have gone mad, pretending, pretending, false faces, masks, hypocrisy, showing that which is not there....

The real trouble is that when you are angry and you don't show it, by and by this mechanism of suppression becomes so deep-rooted that everything becomes false. You will not feel love and you will show it, you will not feel compassion and you will show it -- then your life is not authentic, not honest. An honest life is riverlike: it changes, it moves. Sometimes it is summer and the river has completely disappeared, only a dry bed is left. And sometimes it is the rainy season and the river is in flood and breaks all the banks, and flows all over, becomes oceanic.

Just try to see: in life there is a rhythm between polarities, and humanity is caught in a trap because we have decided to remain on one pole. You cannot remain there; you will move inside, only on the surface you will try to pose. Then the whole life becomes poisonous. Then everything enters into everything else. In your love hate is hidden, because when there was hate you tried to smile and pose; now it is in your blood and when you love it is mixed in it. Man now is an adulterated phenomenon, impure. And this has happened because of the wrong teachings of your so-called religions and moralists. They have all tried to make you live on one pole. That pole they call God, compassion, love -- all that is good, all goodie-goodie. The other pole they call the devil, all that is bad.

Lao Tzu or I -- we are not in favor of this division, this dichotomy, this schizophrenia. We are for both. And then a sudden transformation happens: destruction becomes part of creation -- it is! -- and hate becomes part of love. Love is bigger than hate, creation is bigger than destruction. Life is bigger than death, and death should be a part of it. And if death is part of it, it is beautiful. Remember this, and then by and by you will see that even your hate has taken the color of love; your destruction has taken the shape of construction, creation, creativity; your anger has a compassion in it.

Jesus was angry. Christians have not been able to solve the puzzle up to now because they think, "How can Jesus be angry? " He has to be always smiling like a politician. How can he be angry? He was angry; he was deadly angry. He entered the temple of Jerusalem and he was so angry he attacked, physically attacked, the money-changers. He must have been really tremendously angry because he was alone and he disturbed many money-changers. And he threw them out, tables and all, he chased them out of the temple, alone. When a man is really angry he has the strength of hundreds.

You may also have felt it. When you are angry you can throw a big rock easily, when you are not angry you cannot even move it. Anger is energy, concentrated energy. Anger is a deep concentration of being: one-pointed, the whole existence forgotten, all energies narrowed down to one point.

Jesus must have been beautiful in that moment. Christians hide the fact, they try to avoid the story. Jesus, and angry? -- the man who says that if somebody hits you on one side of your face show him the other side, angry? This man angry? It looks contradictory. The man who says that if somebody snatches your coat give him your shirt also -- this man angry? It doesn't fit.

But I say to you that only this man can be angry because his anger will be part of compassion; only this man can be really angry because he knows what compassion is. He has known one pole, he knows the other pole also and he can move, he is alive, he is not dead. He is not a fixed thing, he is not a thing; he is an alive movement -- alive, throbbing -- he can move to the other pole. And he threw those money-changers out of the temple because of compassion. He was angry because of compassion. He was so compassionate, and sometimes I feel that his compassion is deeper than Mahavir's and Buddha's because it is so true and so lively. Mahavir and Buddha look more like wax figures -- fixed. Maybe it is because of the descriptions of their disciples, maybe true stories have not been recorded, because in India the concept that a man of enlightenment cannot be angry is very old. It was not so in Jerusalem. The Jewish God can also be angry so there is no fear about an enlightened man being angry. No fear. Even the Jewish God can be angry. He behaves in a very human way. The Jewish God behaves in a human way, but Jain and Buddhist human beings are always expected to behave like a dead God. Maybe that's why disciples edited the lives of Buddha and Mahavir. They have chosen parts and dropped other parts out. That seems to be so; there are grounds for one to say so.

There are two sects of Jains, two sects of Mahavir's followers: Swetambaras and Digambaras. Digambaras in their life story of Mahavir say that he was never married, that he remained an absolute brahmachari, a celibate, from his very childhood. Swetambaras say that he was married; not only married, he had a daughter. Now what is the matter? Why do Digambaras say that he was not married? They are afraid that marriage is too human a phenomenon. Mahavir falling in love with a woman? No! That doesn't suit their concept of a TEERTHANKARA -- Mahavir not only falling in love with a woman and getting married, but making love to the woman, because a daughter was born. They cannot conceive of Mahavir in a posture of intercourse. Impossible! They have simply dropped the whole thing because it is dangerous. Mahavir was never married.

The Swetambaras' story seems to be truer. Why do I say so? Because if it were not the case even Swetambaras wouldn't add it. If it was not already the case that he was married and a daughter was born to him, Swetambaras wouldn't invent it; it is so against the rules, they would not invent it. So the only possibility is that Digambaras dropped the idea. And later on Digambaras dropped the whole idea of Mahavir's life -- a life is a life, it is bound to have both the polarities in it. So Digambaras say that the real life story has disappeared, because man in this age is not capable of understanding it. So the original scriptures have disappeared, they are lost -- there is no life story of Mahavir. They completely deny his life in this way. So you can make an ideal out of him -- he is a wax figure, not a real man then, with no human biography, with no human biology.

Digambaras say that he never perspired. How can Mahavir perspire? It is ordinary human weaklings who perspire. How can Mahavir perspire? He never perspired.

It looks foolish, looks blind, but this is how we fix things and then we try to make our ideals out of them -- false ideals -- then false personalities are created around them.

Christians could not do it. They were not so clever. They didn't know that later on it was going to be difficult. Jesus' life seems to be more real, more historical, but then there are troubles. For me there is no trouble. For me this is how things should be. Only a Jesus can be really angry, but his anger is because of compassion. You think: How can he be angry if he has compassion? And I say: He can be angry only because he has compassion. Then compassion covers anger -- then it changes the very quality of anger, because it becomes a vital part of the compassion. Once you absorb both, you have a different quality of being. Hate becomes also part of love, anger part of compassion.

Don't try to choose. Rather remain choiceless and create a harmony, become a harmony. Don't create any conflict within you -- whatsoever you are, you are beautiful. You have all the ingredients to create a harmony. If you discard something, later on you will repent because that discarded part will some day be needed. Some day you will miss it and you will see then that it was necessary. It was to be there, and you discarded it. Don't discard anything. Use everything that God has given to you, make a harmony out of it. Harmony should be the goal.

Taoism - Daoism - Tao - Dao

VOL. 1, TAO: THE THREE TREASURES

Chapter-4

Emptiness