---
section: Library
booktitle: "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "TREAS4"
dategiven: "25 August 1975 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #3"
chaptertitle: "They know me not"
acode: "7508250"
shorttitle: "TREAS403"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "74mins"
displaytitle: "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4: Chapter #3"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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<p class="sutra">LAO TZU SAYS:
MY TEACHINGS ARE VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND AND VERY EASY TO PRACTISE, BUT NO ONE CAN UNDERSTAND THEM AND NO ONE CAN PRACTISE THEM. IN MY WORDS THERE IS A PRINCIPLE. IN THE AFFAIRS OF MEN THERE IS A SYSTEM. BECAUSE THEY KNOW NOT THESE, THEY ALSO KNOW ME NOT. SINCE THERE ARE FEW THAT KNOW ME, THEREFORE I AM DISTINGUISHED. THEREFORE THE SAGE WEARS A COARSE CLOTH ON TOP AND CARRIES JADE WITHIN HIS BOSOM.</p>


The easy is not always easy, and the obvious not obvious.


This happens because of you. You are very difficult and puzzled, complicated, complex. Your whole being is topsy-turvy, fragmentary, divided in compartments.


To understand an easy thing as easy you have to be undivided, and to understand a thing which is obvious is to bring the mind to a certain quality of awareness. Otherwise the distant seems near and the near is forgotten.


Lao Tzu's teachings are very easy, you cannot find more easy teachings than them. Buddha is a little complex, Jesus also, Krishna, very much, but Lao Tzu is absolutely simple, and because of that simplicity he is the most elusive.


People have not been able to comprehend him, not because he is difficult, but because he is so easy. There is nothing to comprehend in fact, there is nothing to solve. If the mind has something to solve, the mind tries to solve it. In the effort to solve it, it comes to a certain understanding. But if the thing is absolutely easy, the mind has no challenge. There is no question of solving it, it is already solved. The mind simply forgets about it. It is not a problem, so it is not of interest to the mind, not a curiosity for the mind. There is no challenge in it, the mind cannot overcome it, conquer it, there is no point -- the victory is so easy that the mind thinks victory is useless.


That's why Lao Tzu has been missed, and he is the most profound. But his teaching is very easy. This has to be understood.


Right now your mind can comprehend many complex things. You can understand Hegel: not very profound, but very complicated. You can understand Kant: not very deep, but very puzzling. You can understand philosophers, philosophies, systems, because they don't require any different awareness than you have. As you are, a little effort is needed and you will be able to understand Hegel: Just a little more effort on your part -- but no transformation in your being. They are just ahead of you, you have to walk a few miles more. Their quality is not different. But to understand Lao Tzu you have to pass through a deep mutation, a total revolution. You have to become like children -- innocent.


It is not a question of a very intelligent mind, it is a question of a very innocent mind. Innocence is needed to understand the easy, intelligence is needed to understand the complicated -- intelligent you are, and that's what is proving to be your whole stupidity. You cannot understand innocent things, you have lost that capacity completely, that mirror-like clarity of a child. He may not be able to say that he understands because he lacks vocabulary, logic; but just look into his eyes -- everything is reflected, uncorrupted.


A childlike consciousness is needed, then.Lao Tzu is so simple -- and there is no one like Lao Tzu; he does not create any problems, he is not a philosopher, not a system-maker, he is someone who has fallen back to the original source of innocence, and from there he looks at life, and he simply cannot understand why you are so puzzled. I also cannot understand where the problem lies, why you are chasing continuously and reaching nowhere! Why you are continuously trying to solve, and nothing is solved. Just on the contrary, the more you try to solve things the more they fall into bad shape, the more disturbance, the more tensions, the more anguish, the more anxiety.


You try to solve one problem and a hundred and one problems arise out of your efforts. Something very basic is missing.


This mind that you already have is not the mind which can solve. So, whatsoever you do with this mind, it complicates it more. It is a vicious circle. When it complicates a thing more you try to solve it more, then it complicates it even more, and this goes on and on.


If this mind is allowed to go to the very logical extreme of its capacity, you will become mad. Insanity is going to be the logical outcome of it. You don't become mad because you don't go to the very extreme, that's all. Between mad people and you there is a difference of degree, nothing else. One step more and you will become mad.


You don't go to the extreme, that's all. You cling to the middle, so somehow you manage your normalness. Otherwise, everybody seems to be pathological.


Life in itself is not a problem, so any effort to solve it is foolish. Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. Let this be a very fundamental understanding within you. It is not a problem at all. Enjoy it! Delight in it! Love it! Live it! Do whatsoever you like, but please, don't try to solve it. It is not a problem at all!


I have heard a joke. A professor of logic went to a toy shop with his small child aged five years and his wife, who was also very educated, very cultured, and they were looking for a new toy for the child for his birthday. They came across a very puzzling jigsaw puzzle. The father, himself a logician, tried to solve it. He did everything that he could but there seemed to be no possibility of solving it. He started perspiring, because people had gathered in the shop -- and a professor of logic cannot solve a simple jigsaw puzzle which is meant to be solved by children! The wife also helped. Only the child enjoyed the whole game because he was not interested in solving it. He was suggesting: Do this and that -- and he was the only one who was not troubled.


And then the logician asked the shopowner: What is the matter? If I cannot fit this puzzle together how do you expect that a child of five years will be able to fix it?


The shopowner started laughing, a mad laugh, he said: It is not meant to be solved, this toy is not meant to be solved. This is just to introduce the child to the modern world, to modern life: whatsoever you do, you cannot solve it. It has been made with a specific purpose -- that it cannot be solved!


Life has been made with a specific purpose: that it is purposeless, that it is not something to be solved but something to be lived, enjoyed. You can celebrate it. You can dance it. You can sing it. Millions of possibilities of what to do with life are there, but please, never try to solve it, otherwise you have taken a wrong step. And then never in your life will you again be in step with life.


Who told you that this is a problem -- these trees, this sky, the clouds, the sand, the sea -- who told you that these are problems to be solved? But, the mind wants challenges, something to fight with. Even if there is no problem it creates ghost-problems to solve. By solving them it feels good; ego is enhanced, fulfilled, you have conquered something.


This is the basic standpoint of religion -- that life has to be lived. It needs, not a knowledgeable mind, but a wondering heart. Wonder as much as you can. In the West they say that philosophy was born out of wonder, bu that seems to be wrong, because a philosophy is born only when the wonder is murdered. On the death of wonder philosophy erects its structure.


If wonder remains then there can be no philosophy. Wonder is a state of being: open, allowing, a let-go. You enjoy but you don't ask questions. You love life but you are not bothered why it is there. The why of it does not become an obsession. The what of it does not become an illness in you, that you first have to know it, why it is, what it is. You simply accept it as it is, and you wonder!


And wonder is not a mental thing, it is of the heart. You are surprised by everything that you come across -- a bud opening and becoming a flower. Again the whole creation is being created and you in your foolishness are asking: How did God create the world? Why did God create the world? -- and he is creating right now! In front of your eyes!


Watch it! Let that bud open there and become a flower and don't bring in your mind full of questions. Just look with a wondering heart -- and you will know! You will come to know through wonder, not through enquiry. And if wonder is attained, then Lao Tzu is absolutely simple -- so obvious! As obvious as life itself.


Truth is simple. Nothing has to be said about it. And, you will understand it because you are part of it. You have never gone out of it. You remain in the ocean, you are born out of it, you dissolve into it. The ocean lives through you, moment to moment. In every heartbeat of yours, the whole beats. In you the whole walks, in you the whole feels hunger, in you the whole feels satiety, in you the whole loves! and is loved! In you the whole is born every moment!


This is the difference between philosophy and religion. Philosophy thinks life has problems to be solved, that is its basic assumption. Religion thinks life has nothing to be solved. Life is there in all its openness -- jump into it, dance with it, dive deep into it, become one with it.


And this is the beauty -- that those who start with problems never end up with solutions, and those who never start with problems always have the solution. Those who try to solve are never capable of solving, and those who were never interested in solving, they have solved. In fact, nothing has been hidden from the very beginning. Everything is open, it is an open secret! It looks like a secret because YOU are closed. So the whole thing is how to bring a different quality of being to life; not this mental enquiry, but a wondering heart.


Have you watched sometimes how a thing can be boring, and the same thing can be very very deeply interesting? There are moments when, as for the first time, you listen to a Beethoven symphony, and it is so absorbing, so fulfilling, you become almost pregnant with it, you throb with it, you forget yourself completely, you are lost in it, it takes possession of you, you move in another world.


Then next time you hear the same symphony it is not so beautiful. And the third time it is already getting a boring phenomenon. And the fourth time... and the fifth time, and you are completely bored...


Now, is boring a quality of the symphony? Is boredom part of the symphony, or is it something you bring to it? Because if the symphony itself is boring, then the first time also it must have been boring. The quality cannot belong to the symphony. It belongs to you. The first time you were excited. The first time you were wondering where you were going, what was going to happen. The first time you had a child's heart -- excited!


Have you seen children going for a journey? How excited they are! And you are simply bored. They jump up at the windows and want to look out and you are simply bored because the same scenery is being repeated again and again -- the trees, the hills, and nothing new.


But why are children so excited? They don't know yet how to get bored -- they have not learnt it. It takes time to learn the art of being bored. It takes experiences, a long life, and much effort -- only then can you become bored. A child is fresh!


When you come to a symphony for the first time you are fresh like a child, you enjoy it. Next time you already know it. That knowledge creates boredom. There is nothing like knowledge for that -- if you want to create boredom, become more knowledgeable, and you will be completely bored, dead bored. Know more, and you will be more bored. Know less, and you will be always filled with wonder. Don't know at all -- that is the innocence. Not knowing anything, how can you be bored?


Have you watched children? Have you told them stories? You tell them a story and the next day they are again asking: Tell us the same one again. You feel bored, but they are asking for the same story again. If you tell it to them, and if they are not feeling sleepy, they say: Once more! Tell us the story again! Because the number of times you tell it does not make much difference. They don't become knowledgeable. They don't gather dust. They remain clean, their mirror remains fresh.


Again, some day it can happen that you are sitting with a man who is very boring. You are perfectly bored; then you.turn on the music and that same symphony starts filling the room. You have heard it many times but suddenly now again it is enchanting. It has a magic. What has happened?


That boring man was creating so much boredom, you were so fed up with him that even a symphony that you have heard many times again looks new -- relatively.


Do one experiment. You pass along the same road every day, you look at the same trees every day -- just look more intensely, as if you have become the eyes; look at a tree very intensely, as if your whole life depends on it -- suddenly you will see a transfiguration. The tree is not the same, its colour is changing. The more you become intense inside, the greener becomes the colour, fresher, more alive. The flower is the same, but the fragrance is not the same. The tree is the same, but the beauty is not the same. The more intense you become, the more the tree becomes beautiful -- and there is no problem to be solved. The tree is so beautiful, only foolish people will try to solve it. Only fools are in search of solutions. Wise people have always lived and enjoyed and delighted. That's why drugs have become so important in the West.


Man lives just like the horses you have seen moving on the street yoked to carts, tongas; they have blinkers, they are not allowed to see, because if they see too much they will get confused. And if they can see too much they will not move in the direction you want them to go. So they are blinkered.


The whole society has fixed blinkers on your eyes, on your senses, because the society is afraid that if you remain a child you will remain dangerous. The society tries to make the child mature as soon as possible, and the 'maturity' is nothing but deadness.


We force knowledge on the child so he loses his wondering heart, otherwise there is danger. A child is dangerous. You cannot predict a child, he is unpredictable. What will he do? Nobody knows. You cannot force laws and regulations on him because he lives moment to moment. He has to be made knowledgeable, so -- schools, colleges, universities exist. These create blinkers.


The whole effort of the whole of education is to fix blinkers on your senses so you become dull. Then there is no danger.


When you are bored you become a perfectly good citizen. A bored man is perfectly good, he always follows the rules, the law. He is DEAD. He cannot rebel. But an alive man is always rebellious; life is rebellion -- rebellion against death rebellion against matter rebellion against fixed frozenness. Life is a flow.


The society fixes blinkers on your senses. You see, but you don't see really. Hence in the West, and in the East in the old days, drugs take on great importance -- society says drugs should not be used but it is societies which force people to use drugs. First you make people insensitive, then when they become insensitive on]y drugs can give them a little sensitivity. So when under LSD your eyes open, blinkers are removed -- it is a chemical change, the chemical removes the blinkers -- you look at trees, and they have a tremendous beauty they never had before. Ordinary objects of life -- an ordinary chair, or a pair of old shoes, suddenly have a quality of divineness in them.


Have you seen Vincent van Gogh's painting THE SHOES? He must have seen something, otherwise who wants to paint an old pair of shoes? And they are really beautiful. He worked hard on them. Just a pair of old shoes, but you can see that they are old, you can see that they are very very experienced, you can see that they have lived much, struggled far, walked much on many roads, known and unknown, suffered. Their whole life is there.


It is suspected that painters must have some sort of inbuilt LSD in them, that's why they see things so beautifully in ways ordinary people don't see. Van Gogh has painted a chair. Nobody can see any beauty in that chair, but he must have seen it.


When Aldous Huxley for the first time tried LSD 25 he was sitting before a chair. That day he realized what van Gogh must have seen in a chair. Suddenly, his blinkers removed, forced off by the chemicals, his eyes clean and innocent, he saw the chair radiating thousands of colours -- the chair became a rainbow, so beautiful no KOHINOOR could compete with it.


After a few hours, when the effect of LSD had gone, the chair was again the same. What happened? Did the chair change? He took the LSD, the chair had not taken LSD. His blinkers were removed.


And I say to you that drugs cannot be avoided unless a society is created which drops blinkers. Otherwise they will persist. Names differ -- and this is really beautiful people who drink alcohol, they are against LSD. Alcohol is a drug! It may be old, ancient, traditional, but it is a drug. The magistrate will be an alcoholic and he will send a person to jail because he has taken LSD! Nothing is wrong with LSD if something is not wrong with alcohol. LSD is just a newcomer -- better, more developed, more scientific.


I am not saying: Take LSD. I am not saying: Move into drugs. I am saying: Drop blinkers. If you drop blinkers there will be no need for any drugs. Then you live each twenty-four hours in such deep wonder that no drug can add to it. On the contrary, if a person who is living a life, a real life like Lao Tzu, is given LSD, or alcohol, or anything, he will feel that he has been pulled down from his high state. He will not be ready to accept it.


If Buddha and Mahavir and Krishna and Lao Tzu are against drugs they are against drugs because they live on such a high peak of consciousness that if you drug that consciousness it falls low, it comes down.


Unless man comes to a higher state of understanding and innocence, which no drug can give, drugs will continue. Laws will continue, drugs will continue. Nothing changes because blinkers are there. You don't hear! You are just like -- you are like an aeroplane which was made to fly, but a few primitive people got hold of it. They could not even imagine that this mechanism could fly so they used it like a bullock-cart, with horses or bullocks yoked to it. By and by some people became interested in the fact that there seemed to be some sort of mechanism inside. These curious people starting working on it, discovering -- just groping in the dark, and one day one person started the engine. So they removed the bullocks and they used the aeroplane as a car.


Then some dangerous people tried to give it as much speed as possible. Suddenly one day accidentally it took off. Then they came to know that it was meant to fly, it was not a bullock-cart.


This is the situation with you. You were meant to fly and you have become a bullock-cart, burdened, and you cannot be happy unless you attain to the total functioning of your being. This is what we mean by 'God': a man who has attained to the total functioning of his being. If he is meant to be an aeroplane, he has become an aeroplane. That man is divine.


You live below, that is why you are always low. When you are low you have to force yourself to pull up somehow. But you cannot be up long enough. You can jump, but then again you fall.


Discover your sensitivity. Your ears can hear the music that is the innermost core of existence. Your eyes can see the invisible which is hidden behind all visibles. Your hands can touch that which cannot be touched. You can fall in love with that which is the whole. Then life is simple.


If you are functioning perfectly, if your inner being hums with perfect functioning, everything is simple and easy. Otherwise everything is difficult, very difficult, and you go on trying. And the more you try, the more it becomes difficult. That is the plight of modern man.


In ancient days people were better off because they never tried so much. The modern man is really in trouble because he is trying too hard to live that which can be be lived easily. You are unnecessarily trying hard and making it impossible.

Now the sutras of Lao Tzu:
<p class="sutra">MY TEACHINGS ARE VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND...</p>


But if you have understanding, only then. The thing that you now call understanding is not understanding. It may be intelligence but it is not understanding.


What is the difference between intelligence and understanding? Intellect understands words, concepts, logic, proof, argument. Understanding goes deeper. Intelligence is just on the surface, wide but not deep. Intelligence can be very wide -- a man can know thousands and thousands of things, a man can become a living encyclopedia, but that doesn't mean that he has become understanding. Wider is his knowledge, and the wider it is, the less is the possibility of depth. If you force him to move into depth he will start suffocating.


Understanding is intelligence moving in depth. Knowledge is intelligence moving wider and wider. Intelligence is quantitative, that's why intelligence can be measured -- it is quantitative. Psychologists have a measure for it: IQ, intelligence quotient. How much intelligence you have can be measured. But nobody can measure how much understanding you have. It is not a quantity at all so how can you measure it? It is a quality, in depth. And understanding is not in any way dependent on knowledgeability, it is dependent on awareness -- this is the difference.


You can go on reading many things -- no need to be aware, just go on cramming, the memory goes on absorbing things. If you want understanding you have to be alert, watchful. It is not a question of memory, it is a question of seeing the truth of it.


You can hear me in two ways. You can hear me with intelligence, and your intelligence, can say: Yes, this man looks logical or, he looks illogical. Your intelligence can say: Yes, I agree with this man, or, I disagree. But this is all on the surface. If you listen to what I am saying with alertness, without a mind continuously judging, but just penetrating it, looking into the truth of it, of what this man is saying, penetrating it deeply, looking at it through and through, you will come to understanding. And understanding is neither for nor against it is simply understanding -- intelligence is for and against.


If you understand me you will not be for me, you will not be against me, you will simply delight in me and go your way. Understanding is a totally different dimension. Intelligence moves horizontally, understanding moves vertically.


If you want to accumulate knowledge, then intelligence is needed. If you want to BECOME KNOWLEDGE, then understanding is needed.


It may be that if you come across Lao Tzu somewhere on the earth you may not find him very intelligent. If you ask him questions he may not be able to answer. But if you watch him you will be able to see his understanding. He may not be a man of knowledge, but he has to be a man of knowing.


If you just listen to his words he may look uneducated, uncultured, but if you look into his being then you will see what he is hiding within: the purest heart possible. And that is the thing that ultimately counts, finally counts, because nobody lives through knowledge, you have to live through being.


Gurdjieff used to ask his disciples, whenever somebody wanted to be initiated he would ask: In what are you interested, in knowledge or in being? It was difficult for a person who had not been searching deeply; what was the difference? Knowledge or being? Gurdjieff used to say: Do you want to know more or do you want to BE more? That TO BE MORE IS the way of understanding. One gathers BEING, not words and concepts and philosophies.
<p class="sutra">MY TEACHINGS ARE VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND AND VERY EASY TO PRACTISE.</p>


In fact no practice is needed. that is the meaning of VERY EASY TO PRACTISE. If you understand, the very understanding becomes the practice. That's the meaning of Socrates' famous dictum: Knowledge is virtue. He used a wrong word -- he was a Greek, we can forgive him -- he should have used KNOWING or UNDERSTANDING. He said KNOWLEDGE IS virtue, he meant really UNDERSTANDING is virtue.


If you understand a thing how can you do anything against it? If I know well that this is the door, how can I try to pass through the wall? If I know it, is there any need to practise it? Practice comes only as a substitute for knowing.


If you really know a thing it simply happens to be practised, there is no need to do anything for it. That is the meaning of: understanding them is very easy and their practice is very easy. In fact understanding IS practice.


Have you watched it in your own life? If you understand a thing do you ask how to practise it? If you don't understand it, if you only accumulate it as knowledge, then of course the question arises: How to practise it? Knowledge needs practice. Understanding is practice itself. Once you understand a thing, it transforms you immediately. The understanding is not gradual, it is sudden. In a split second you are totally a different man.


I have heard an old story. A great jeweller died. He had left many valuable stones to his wife, and she was in troubles so she called another jeweller, a friend of her late husband, to sell these stones.


He looked into the stones and he said: Keep them. Right now the market is not running well, and they will not fetch much. Keep them, whenever I see that the right time has come we will sell them. But, send your son to my shop every day so that I can teach him the art.


Years passed. And then the woman again said: Those stones are lying there, and we are poor and we are in difficulty, now sell them. The jeweller said: I will come today.


The jeweller came. He brought the woman's son who had been learning the art of jewellery with him and he told the boy: Now bring those stones. The boy opened the box, looked at the stones. They were useless. The boy laughed, went out, threw the whole box into the road.


The mother started crying: What are you doing? The boy said: They are all useless. They are not valuable at all, not even semi-precious.


But for years the woman had been keeping them as a great treasure, protecting them, so she asked the friend of her dead husband: Why didn't you say this before? He said: Then you may not have believed me. They were useless, but you may not have believed me because that would have been just a knowledge to you. It would have been difficult to trust me. Hence I asked your son to be trained. Now he knows. Now I am not in between.


Did the son wait for a single moment? Once he knew that they were ordinary stones he simply went out and threw them into the street. Not a single moment was lost. It was not a treasure -- finished!


The same happens in life. If you understand a thing, you understand. You never ask, How to do it? The HOW comes only to a knowledgeable person, not to a man of understanding. That's why J. Krishnamurti goes on teaching his disciples: Don't ask the how! Just listen to what I am saying and try to understand. Be aware! And there is no HOW to it. And they listen to him -- of course with blinkers. And when he has finished and he asks: Now are there any questions? somebody is bound to come and say: Whatsoever you say is right, but HOW TO DO IT? The whole point is missed. Even a man of Krishnamurti's compassion feels irritated because for forty years he has been saying only one thing: that understanding is enough unto itself. No effort is needed to practise it. If effort is needed it is not an understanding. And through effort no one reaches the truth, only through understanding.
<p class="sutra">MY TEACHINGS ARE VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND AND VERY EASY TO PRACTISE. BUT NO ONE CAN UNDERSTAND THEM AND NO ONE CAN PRACTISE THEM.</p>


Why? Why can no one understand them and no one practise them? Because you are in such a mess that the easy looks difficult, the simple looks complex. And you are in such a mess that whatsoever you see becomes distorted. And then you start creating problems and solving them.


Unless you raise your awareness to a different plane problems will not change. It has been my observation, working with thousands of seekers, that no problem can be solved if your plane of consciousness remains the same.


A man came to me a few years before, he had been suffering from constipation for a long time. A very rich man, he had tried every medicine, tried every cure, from allopathy to naturopathy -- he did everything. He had enough money to waste, enough time, so there was no problem there. He had moved all over the world to get rid of the constipation, but the more he had tried the worse the constipation had become: deeprooted. He had come to me and he said: What to do?


I told him: Constipation can only be a symptom, it cannot be the cause. The cause must be somewhere else in your consciousness. So I told him to do a very simple thing. He could not believe it; he said: How can it be possible? Doing this simple thing you think will help me? Are you fooling me? Because I have done everything, and can such a simple thing help? I cannot believe it. But I said: You simply try.


I told him just to do one thing: to remember continuously that 'I am not the body'. Nothing else. Of course he could not believe it because how was this going to help?


Man is identified with his body. Too much identification with the body will give you constipation. You cling! You shrink! You don't allow the body to have its way. You don't allow it to flow. That is the meaning of constipation. Constipation is a spiritual disease. Get disidentified with the body. Continuously remember that 'I am not the body, I am a witness'.


For three weeks he tried and said: It is working. Something is loosening within me.


It is bound to happen. If you are not the body, the body starts functioning, you don't interfere, you don't come in the way, the body goes on working.


Have you seen any animal constipated? No animal in nature is constipated. In zoos you can find animals constipated. Or pet animals, dogs and cats, which live with man and are infected with humanity, which are corrupted by human beings, they may get constipation. Otherwise in nature there is no constipation. The body has its own way. It flows. It is not frozen, it doesn't have blocks. Blocks come with identification.


I told the man: Just do not be identified with the body. Keep an awareness that you are a witness. And never say 'I am constipated', just say 'The body is constipated, I am a witness to it'.


The body became loose. The stomach started functioning, because nothing disturbs the stomach like the mind. If you are worried, the stomach cannot function well. If you are identified with the body, the body cannot flow well. That's why whenever you are very ill deep sleep is needed, because only in deep sleep do you forget the body, and things start flowing.


It changed. But he came and told me that a new thing was happening: I have always been a miser, and now I don't feel so miserly.


It has to be so. Because miserliness is deeply connected with constipation. It works both ways: if you are a miser you will be constipated, if you are constipated you will be a miser. Constipation is really a deep miserliness of the body -- not to leave go of anything, not to allow anything to go out of the body. Keep everything closed!


Change the plane of your consciousness, and problems start changing.


A woman came to me -- very fat, and she of course had become ugly. 'She also had tried every way: dieting, gymnastics, yoga, all sorts of nonsense she had tried. Nothing helped, she went on gathering more and more fat. I said to her: This does not seem to be the real cause. Somewhere deep down something else is hidden. This is just a symptom.


I talked to her -- many times she came, and by and by she revealed, unknowingly she revealed her heart. From her very childhood she has been enclosed. She feels nobody loves her.


Now if a woman feels that nobody loves her she will have to find somebody responsible, something responsible -- nobody can think:I am unloveable. So she has found an excuse in the body -- nobody loves me because my body is ugly. I am not ugly, my body is ugly, that's why nobody loves me. So the whole responsibility goes to the body.


She goes on trying to reduce the weight of the body but nothing can help, it can't happen, she goes on feeding herself more and more because a deeprooted cause is functioning there. That is her only protection.


If the body remains ugly she is at ease. Nobody loves her because of the body. Once the body becomes okay and if nobody loves her then, then the responsibility will have come unto herself. Then she will feel that she is unloveable -- and that is too much to encounter, to face.


Once this thing surfaced in her being things started changing. She ate the same, but the weight went down: no dieting, just surfacing of a cause. Understanding it had become a transformation. She became lean and thin. And of course, beautiful! And of course people started feeling her charm.


Everybody has a charm. There is not a single human being who has not a magic of his own. You may not allow it to spread around you -- otherwise everybody has a beautiful aura around him.


And once people started loving her, feeling for her, she started loving her own body. Now the body was at ease. And whenever a body it at ease it is beautiful. All bodies are beautiful. But something had to be brought to her understanding.


That is the whole effort of psychoanalysis in the West: to help facts surface so that you understand them; the very understanding changes you.
<p class="sutra">BUT NO ONE CAN UNDERSTAND THEM AND NO ONE CAN PRACTISE THEM.</p>


Right nor as you are it will be very difficult to understand Lao Tzu. If he had said: Do something, you could have understood. If he had made a very high target -- to reach the moon, you could have tried.


But he says there is no goal, no purpose, no effort is needed to be, you are already there. All that you need is to participate in the celebration that is going on -- and it is an ongoing affair, continuous, whether you participate or not makes no difference; birds go on singing, trees go on blossoming, clouds go on moving, seas go on rolling and singing, the celebration is an ongoing phenomenon. You can cut yourself off and stand aside and suffer, otherwise you can move in, lose yourself and celebrate.
<p class="sutra">IN MY WORDS THERE IS A PRINCIPLE. IN THE AFFAIRS OF MAN THERE IS A SYSTEM.</p>


These two things have to be understooD -- IN MY WORDS THERE IS A PRINCIPLE. Lao Tzu is saying there is only one principle. Tao is the principle. TAO means to be natural and flowing, to be in a deep let-go, not fighting with life but allowing it, accepting I Not pushing the river but floating with the river wherever it leads. This is the only principle of Lao Tzu. Don't fight with life otherwise you will be defeated. Surrender, and your victory is certain. In surrender is victory, in fight is defeat. If you are frustrated, that simply shows you have been fighting hard.


If you find someone who is happy and victorious, know well that he has understood the principle. He is not fighting. He is floating with life, he is riding on the waves.
<p class="sutra">IN MY WORDS THERE IS A PRINCIPLE IN THE AFFAIRS OF MEN THERE IS A SYSTEM.</p>


But in the affairs of men there is not a principle but a system. Lao Tzu says: If you ask me I have got only one principle, and that principle can be called A DEEP LET-GO, surrender. But in the affairs of men there is not one principle, there is a system, a very complicated thing.


People are not simple but very complicated, puzzles. They don't even know themselves, how much complexity they go on carrying within them. And that complexity will not allow them to understand a simple phenomenon, a simple principle -- that you are a part of life, a wave in the ocean.


Don't fight with the ocean, that is foolish. Just enjoy the ocean -- while it lasts. Rise with the ocean, fall with the ocean. Don't create any separation between you and the ocean. This is a simple principle.


Zen Masters have said that a single word solves everything. In fact only a single word can solve everything. The more complicated a philosophy you have, the more you will be in trouble, because-all philosophies are a type of armouring, defence.


People come to me, they are so much burdened with thoughts and they come to me to gather more thoughts.. I am their enemy if I burden them more. They need unburdening. They come and they say: We have come to learn something. And I say lo them: You have already learned too much. You please forget it, unlearn it! drop it! Your head is too heavy, you are top-heavy. You are being killed by your own burden.


Forget all that you know! Knowledge is complicated. And knowledge becomes a barrier between you and life.


Philosophers miss life as nobody else misses. They pass by the side of life, they move parallel to it but they never meet it, because a great philosophy always surrounds them like a cloud. They cannot look beyond it. Their eyes are filled with smoke.
<p class="sutra">BECAUSE THEY KNOW NOT THESE, THEY ALSO KNOW ME NOT,</p>


And because people can't understand a simple principle, and they are always interested in complicated systems, that's why 'they know me not'
<p class="sutra">SINCE THERE ARE FEW THAT KNOW ME, THEREFORE I AM DISTINGUISHED.</p>


Lao Tzu is simply paradoxical, but his paradoxes are beautiful and indicate many things. He says: SINCE THERE ARE FEW THAT KNOW ME -- only a few can know him; not that he is difficult, but because he is so simple that only simple-hearted people can know him. Very few! All are corrupted. Only uncorrupted minds can know him. Very few people know me, THEREFORE I AM DISTINGUISHED. And he says THAT'S WHY he is distinguished.


Ordinarily, when many people know you, you think you are distinguished. When the whole world knows about you, you feel you are extraordinary, superb, something superior.


In fact Lao Tzu is true. When many people understand you that simply shows that you are very ordinary, otherwise so many people cannot understand -- people are so MAD, you must have some insanity in you, otherwise so many people could not understand you. You must be of the same level, of the same plane.


That's why political leaders are so distinguished. They come from the lowest strata of human mind. They belong to the most inferior quality of human consciousness. But of course, then the majority can understand them, because the majority belongs to the same level. They speak a language that can be understood by all.


A Lao Tzu is rarely understood. In a century, if you can find three persons to understand Lao Tzu, that's too much to expect. But he says THEREFORE I AM DISTINGUISHED.


Always remember this: if many people recognize you, that you are something superior, remember you must be inferior. Otherwise how can so many people recognize you? You must be worthless. If so many people appreciate you, know well you must be on wrong grounds, otherwise so many people cannot appreciate you.


I have heard about a madhouse. A new doctor had taken over. The old had gone into retirement and a new doctor came. The whole madhouse, the five hundred mad people, celebrated the day, they danced the whole night, and they were very happy. It had never happened so; the doctor had been to other madhouses attached to other hospitals, but nowhere had he been so welcomed.


He asked the madmen in the morning: Why are you celebrating so much? I am just an ordinary doctor, why are you going so mad with happiness? They said: You look so like us. The other doctor was not one of us. Whenever so many people appreciate you, remember this: you must be looking like them. There must be something inferior in you, something base. You cannot be very valuable. Otherwise only a very few jewellers will be able to understand who you are.


You can pass Lao Tzu, you may not be able to recognize him. You cannot pass Alexander without recognizing him. How can you recognize so easily an Alexander? Adolf Hitler? Mao Tse-tung? Why is it so easy?


Something in you responds. You also have a little Alexander in you. You would also like to become a conqueror of the whole world. You are of the same type, the same madness. That madness helps to give you a glimpse that here is a man who is the image of what you would like to be. You appreciate only those people who are your images, your goals, your ideals. Lao Tzu will pass, you may not even be aware that somebody has passed.


We have a beautiful word for Buddha; one of his names is TATHAGATA. The word means: who came like wind and passed like wind; thus came, thus gone. Nobody could recognize when he came, when he went away. When he has gone, then suddenly people recognize that somebody was there, a presence.


A Buddha is not felt, he comes like a breeze, not like a storm. Alexander comes like a storm, Buddha has such soft music, you will not be able to hear it; you have become attuned to the marketplace, to the loud music, to the mad music. Only when something goes completely mad, then it enters into your consciousness. Otherwise not.


That's why people are interested in politics. Politics is madness, the game of the very inferior consciousness in you. You can recognize it. But Lao Tzu says:
<p class="sutra">SINCE THERE ARE FEW THAT KNOW ME, THEREFORE I AM DISTINGUISHED. THEREFORE THE SAGE WEARS A COARSE CLOTH ON TOP AND CARRIES JADE WITHIN HIS BOSOM.</p>


A sage should not be understood by his appearance, because by appearance you understand fools. A sage should not be understood by his outer garments because those are the garments used by emperors, politicians generals, conquerors. A sage wears a coarse garment, and carries a diamond within.


If you have eyes, only then will you be able to see it. If you have ears, only then will you be able to hear it. If you are realty alive, functioning to your total capacity, only then will you be able to recognize that a sage exists. And in that very recognition, you have also become a sage. If you can recognize a sage in that very recognition you have taken a great step, because that very recognition shows that something has responded within you. An ego has been hurt.
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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