Taoism, Daoism, Tao, Dao, Lao Tzu's Tap Te Ching, Vol. 3 Tao: The three treasures, Chapter 2: Don't do Nothing!, Question 3

Question 3

WHEN MEDITATING WITH NO SET TIME LIMIT I BECOME AWARE OF MY GREAT ANXIETY ABOUT TIME. YOU SAID THAT TIME CONSCIOUSNESS IS FRUSTRATION. COULD YOU PLEASE SPEAK ABOUT THIS FEAR OF TIME?

That is the only fear there is: the fear of time. The fear of death is also fear of time because death stops all time.

Nobody is afraid of death. How can you be afraid of something that you have not known? How can you be afraid of the absolutely unknown, unfamiliar, strange? Fear can only exist with something which is known. No, when you say 'I am afraid of death' you are not afraid of death -- you don't know! Who knows? -- death may be better than life.

The fear is not of death, the fear is of time.

In India we have the same term for both. Time we call KALA and death also we call KALA. We have one term for both death and time. It is meaningful, the word KALA is meaningful, very significant, because time is death, and death is nothing but time.

Time passing means life passing. Fear arises. In the West the fear is more acute; it has almost become chronic. In the East the fear is not so much, and the reason is that the East believes that life continues for ever and ever; death is not the end; this life is not the only life; there have been thousands and thousands of lives in the past and there will be thousands and thousands in the future. There is no hurry. That's why the East is lazy: there is no hurry! That's why in the East there is no time-consciousness -- somebody says: I will come at five o'clock SHARP, and he never turns up. He does not feel any responsibility towards time, and you are waiting and waiting, and he comes after four, five hours and he says, What is wrong in it? So what?

In the West time is very short, because Christianity, Judaism, both believe in only one life. That has created the anxiety. There is only one life, seventy years at the most; one third lost in sleep -- if you live sixty years, twenty years are lost in sleep, twenty of the remaining years are lost in education, this and that; the remaining twenty years -- the job, the occupation, the family, marriage and divorce, and if you really calculate you will find there is no time to live!

When will I live? Fear grips the heart, and life is passing, time is flowing out of your hands and death is reaching every moment with such a constant pace -- any moment it can knock at the door. And time is irrecoverable, you cannot recover it back, gone -- gone for ever.

Fear, anxiety, a time neurosis -- it is becoming chronic, it is almost as if it has become second-nature to Western man, continuously alert that time is going, and afraid.

The fear is basically that: I have not yet been able to live, and time is moving, and it cannot be recovered, I cannot undo it; gone -- gone for ever. And every day life is shrinking, becoming smaller and smaller and smaller...

The fear is not of death, the fear is of time, and if you look deeply into it then you find that the fear is of unlived life -- you have not been able to live. If you live, then there is no fear. If life comes to a fulfilment, there is no fear. If you have enjoyed, attained to the peaks that life can give, if your life has been an orgasmic experience, a deep poetry vibrating within you, a song, a festival, a ceremony, and you lived each moment of it to its totality, then there is no fear of time, then the fear disappears.

You are ready even if death comes today, you are ready. You have known life -- in fact you will welcome death because now a new opportunity opens, a new door, a new mystery is revealed: I have lived life, now death is knocking at the door; I will jump to open the door -- Come in! Because life I have known, I would like to know you also.

That's what happened to Socrates when hc was dying. His disciples started crying and weeping -- and it was natural. Socrates opened his eyes and said, Stop! What are you doing? Why are you crying and weeping? I have lived my life, and I have lived it totally. Now death is coming and I'm very very enthusiastic about it. I am waiting with such great love and longing; with hope. A new door opens, life reveals a new mystery.

Somebody asked, Are you not afraid? Socrates said: I don't see the point why one should be afraid of death? Because in the first place I don't know what is going to be, and secondly: there are only two possibilities, either I will survive -- then there is no problem of fear, or I will not survive -- then too there is no problem of fear. If I don't survive there is no problem -- when I am not, there cannot be any problem, and if I survive as I am here, if my consciousness survives, there is no problem because I am still there.

Problems were there in life also -- I solved them, so if I am there and there are problems I will solve them -- and it is always a joy to solve a problem, it gives a challenge. You take the challenge and you move in it, and when you solve it a great release of happiness happens.

The fear of death is fear of time, and the fear of time is, deeply, fear of unlived moments, unlived life.

So what to do? Live more, and live more intensely. Live dangerously. It is your life, don't sacrifice it for any sort of foolishness that has been taught to you. It is your life, live it. Don't sacrifice it for words, theories, countries, politics, don't sacrifice it for anybody.

There are many who are ready like butchers; they can get hold of you; and they have implanted within you conditionings: Your nation is in danger -- die for it! Absolute foolishness. Your religion is in danger -- die for it! Nonsense. It is your life, LIVE IT! Don't die for anything else, die only for life.

That's the message. And then there will be no fear.

But there are people who are ready to exploit you. They go on saying -- Die for this, Die for that. They are ready for only one thing -- that you should become a martyr, and then there will be fears.

Live it! And don't think that it is a courage to die. The only courage is to live life totally, there is no other courage. Dying is very simple and easy. You can go and jump off a cliff, you can hang yourself -- it is such an easy thing. You can become a martyr to a country, to a god, to a religion, to a church -- all butchers! all murderers!

Don't sacrifice yourself. You are here for yourself, for nobody else.

And then live. And live in total freedom so intensely that every moment is transformed into eternity. If you live a moment intensely it is transformed into eternity. If you live a moment intensely you move into the vertical, you drop out of the horizontal.

There are two ways of being related with time: one is just to swim on the surface of the ocean, another is to dive deep, to go to the depths.

If you are just swimming on the ocean of time you will be always afraid because the surface is not the reality. The surface is not really the ocean, it is just the boundary, it is just the periphery. Go to the depth, move towards the depth. When you live a moment deeply you are no more part of time.

If you have been in love, and deeply in love, time disappears. When you are with your beloved or your lover or your friend suddenly there is no time. You are moving in depth. If you have loved music, if you have a musical heart, you know time stops. If you have the sense of beauty, aesthetic sensibility and sensitiveness -- look at a rose and time disappears, look at the moon and where is time? The clock immediately stops. The hands go on moving but time stops.

If you have loved anything deeply you know that you transcend time. The secret has been revealed to you many times. Life itself reveals it to you.

Life would like you to enjoy. Life would like you to celebrate. Life would like you to participate so deeply that there is no repentance for the past, that you don't remember the past, because every moment you go more and more deep -- every moment life becomes more and more beautiful, more orgasmic, a peak experience, and by and by, when you become attuned to the peak, that becomes your abode.

That's how an enlightened man lives, he lives totally and moment to moment.

Somebody asked a Zen Master: Since enlightenment what have you been doing? He said: I carry water from the well, I cut wood in the forest, when I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel sleepy I sleep, that's all.

But remember well, when a man who has come to a deep understanding of his own being cuts wood, he simply cuts wood. There is nobody else there. In fact the cutter is not there, only the cutting of the wood, the chopping. The chopper is not there because the chopper is the past. When he eats he simply eats.

One great Zen Master has said: When sitting sit, when walking walk, above all, don't wobble.

Time is a problem because you have not been living rightly -- it is symbolic, it is symptomatic. If you live rightly the problem of time disappears, the fear of time disappears.

So, what to do? Each moment, whatsoever you are doing, do it totally. Simple things -- taking a bath; take it totally, forget the whole world; sitting, sit; walking, walk, above all don't wobble; sit under the shower and let the whole existence fall on you. Be merged with those beautiful drops of water falling on you. Small things: cleaning the house, preparing food, washing clothes, going for a morning walk -- do them totally, then there is no need for any meditation.

Meditation is nothing but a way to learn how to do a thing totally -- once you have learnt, make your whole life a meditation, forget all about meditations, let the life be the only law, let the life be the only meditation. And then time disappears.

And remember, when time disappears, death disappears. Then you are not afraid of death. In fact you wait.

Just think of the phenomenon. When you wait for death how can death exist?

This waiting is not suicidal. This waiting is not pathological. You lived your life. If you have lived your life death becomes the very peak of it all. Death is the climax of life, the pinnacle, the crescendo.

You lived all small waves of eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, making love, small waves, great waves, you lived -- then comes the greatest wave. You die! You have to live that too in its totality. And then one is ready to die. That very readiness is the death of death itself.

That's how people have come to know that nothing dies. Death is impotent if you are ready to live it, death is very powerful if you are afraid. Unlived life gives power to death. A totally lived life takes all power from death. Death is not.

Taoism - Daoism - Tao - Dao

VOL. 3, TAO: THE THREE TREASURES

Chapter-2

Don't do Nothing!