October 20, 1974
"Pisces are born in water, man is born in the Tao. If a fish born in water seeks the deep shadow of a pond or pool, all his needs are satisfied. If a man born in the Tao plunges into the deep shadow of non-action to forget aggression and involvement, everything is enough for him, his life is safe."
Needs can be satisfied, but desires cannot. Desire is need gone crazy. Needs are simple, they come from nature. Desires are very complex, they do not come from nature, they are created by the mind. Needs are moment to moment, they are created by life itself. Desires are not moment to moment, they are always about the future, they are not created by life itself, they are projected by the mind. Desires are projections; they are not really needs.
This is the first thing to understand, and the more deeply you understand it, the better. What is desire? This is the movement of the mind into the future. Need belongs to this point: if you are hungry, it is a need and it has to be satisfied, and it can be satisfied, there is no problem with that. If you are thirsty, you are thirsty here and now, and you must look for water. This must be satisfied - this is necessary for life.
But desires are not like that. You want to be the president of the country: this is not a need, this is an ambition, this is a projection of the ego into the future. Or you desire heaven: that too is in the future. Or you desire God - that is also in the future.
Remember: needs are always here and now, they are existential, but desires are never here and now, they are not existential, they are only mental - in the mind. And they cannot be fulfilled, since their very nature is to move into the future. They are like the horizon you see: it seems very close, somewhere where the earth meets the sky. It is so visible! You can go there! But you can go there forever, and the distance will remain the same: always somewhere ahead the earth will meet the sky. But you will never reach that place, that point where the earth meets the sky, because they never meet, it is only an appearance, it is that. what Hindus call maya: it appears, but it is not. It appears if you stand at a distance, but the closer you get, the more you realize that it is not so. The horizon moves forward, but the distance between you and it always remains the same.
The distance between you and your desire always remains the same. How can you fulfill it? If you desire 10 thousand rupees, you may get it someday, but by the time you get it, the desire has gone 10 thousand rupees in advance. You have one thousand rupees, desire will ask for 10 thousand. When you have 10 thousand, desire will ask for a hundred thousand. The distance remains the same. You can have a hundred thousand and it won't make any difference! Ten times more, but the desire remains the same.
The needs are simple, they can be satisfied. You feel hungry and you eat, you feel thirsty and you drink, you feel drowsy and you go to bed.
Desires are very cunning and complex. You are empty, but not because of your needs. - you are empty because of desires. And if desires take up too much energy from you, you will be unable to satisfy your needs, because who will satisfy them? You are moving into the future, you are thinking about the future, your mind is daydreaming. Who will supply the ordinary needs of the day? You are not here and you would rather stay hungry but reach the horizon. You would like to abolish needs so that all the energy can be directed to desires, but in the end you find that the desire is not satisfied, and because you neglected the needs, in the end you are just a wreck. And lost time cannot be returned - you cannot go back.
There is a story about a merchant - a sage of antiquity, whose name was Mencius. He was a follower of Confucius and died very, very old. Someone asked him: “If you were given life again, how would you start it?” Mencius said, “I would pay more attention to my needs and less attention to my desires.” And this understanding will come to you too, but it always comes too late, when life is no longer in your hands. If you were given life again...
Needs are beautiful, desires are ugly. Needs are physical, desires are psychological. But look at the so-called saints and sages: they always condemn your needs and always help to project your desires. They say, "What are you doing? Just eating? Sleeping? Wasting your life? Try to reach heaven! Heaven is the ultimate desire. Heaven is waiting for you, and you are wasting your life on ordinary things, you are just leading a vegetable life. Get up and run, because there is not much time left! Reach! Knock on the gates of heaven! Reach God! But don't stand here!"
They always condemn your needs and they always help your desires, that's why the world has become so ugly. - everyone is full of desires and no one's needs are satisfied. What can be satisfied is denied, and what cannot be satisfied is nourished. This is the misfortune of man.
Chuang Tzu - for needs. Satisfy them and don't ask for desires. Just drop the idea itself, since there is no future, only the present exists. And how wonderful it is! When you feel hungry, you eat - there is no future, and when you are so much into food, it becomes heaven in itself. This is what Jesus is saying: don't think about tomorrow. Look at the lilies in the field: they do not collect, they do not think, they do not care about the future, they bloom here and now. Look at the lilies blooming: tomorrow will take care of itself. Just be here and now, this moment is enough, don't ask for more.
This is the real sage, the one who lives in this moment, for whom this moment is enough. He is satisfied. There is no heaven for him, he is a paradise for himself. For him there is no God; he himself has become divine.
Eat when you feel hungry and make food a holiday in that moment. Celebrate! After all, who knows, in the next moment you may not be here, there may be neither hunger nor this wonderful bread; there may be neither thirst nor this river. Drink it! Allow yourself to be so concentrated that time stops, because time does not move - your mind moves. If you are in this moment, if you are completely concentrated and enjoying your whole being, time stops. There is no movement of time, there is no horizon and no running towards it, but everyone is in a hurry to reach the horizon.
It so happened that Mullah Nasreddin ended up in the hospital. The surgeon who was to operate on him told him: “We believe in speed here and don’t waste time. After the operation, on the very first day, you have to walk around the ward for 5 minutes; the next day, a half-hour walk in front of the hospital; on the third day, a long hour-long walk. We don’t waste time here. Life is short, and time is money, you need to save it.” Mulla Nasreddin said: “Only one question - do you think that I will undergo surgery?”
Everyone is in a hurry. Where are you going in such a hurry? Have you seen anyone achieve anything through haste, impatience, speed? We have heard of a few people who achieved by stopping, but we have never heard of anyone who achieved by running.
Buddha stopped and reached, Jesus stopped and reached. Chuang Tzu stopped and reached. You carry a goal within yourself, there is nowhere else to go, but desire leads you to distant countries, to distant times, to distant points in space. And the more desires you have, the more you rush, the more you lose yourself, and empty, exhausted, you are just ruins before you die, but in these ruins desire still lives.
You have accumulated a lifetime of experience of desires, and your mind says, "You failed because you didn't try hard enough. Look, others have succeeded. Look at your neighbors: they have succeeded, but you lost because you didn't run fast enough. Next time, be prepared."
You collect all these aspirations into grain, then you are born again, and this whole vicious circle begins all over again. Where are you going? Is there anywhere to go? And even if you achieve something, you remain yourself. Even if at this very moment you are made the president of this country or another, do you think that anything will change? You will remain the same, the same devastated being, the same ambitious being, with the same stress, with the same anguish, with the same nightmares.
One day Mullah Nasreddin knocked on the psychiatrist's door. The psychiatrist asked: “Well, what else happened now?”
Nasreddin said: “I have nightmares, they happen every night. Help me! I can’t sleep, it’s constantly burdening my head. I need to do something right now!”
He was really in trouble, his eyes were really sore, and his whole body looked like he hadn't slept in many, many months.
The psychiatrist was affected. He said, "Tell me about your nightmare. What is it?"
Nasrudin said: “Every night I have a dream, a terrible dream. It is that I am alone with 12 beautiful women.”
The psychiatrist said: “I don’t understand what’s the matter, what’s terrible about this? Twelve beautiful women, and you’re alone with them - what’s terrible about this?”
Nasreddin said: "Have you ever tried to love 12 women? Alone? On an island?"
But you love 12 thousand women - every desire is a woman. And your whole life becomes a nightmare: so many desires, so many horizons, so many things to achieve before life is lost. That's why you're in such a hurry and you can't be anywhere, you keep running and running and running until you just fall into the hands of death. Death is the end of all your efforts.
Remember the first thing: needs are wonderful. And this is the difference between other sages, so-called sages, and Chuang Tzu - needs are beautiful, desires are ugly. The difference is this: need comes from the body, and desire is created by the mind. Animals, birds, trees are happier because they have no mind to desire: they are happy as they are. They live and die, but they are never in pain, they have no tension. This is the first thing to remember: the difference, the clear difference, between want and need.
Accept needs, they are okay, but drop desires, they are not okay, because they do not allow you to be here and now, and this is the only possible existence, there is no other existence.
Bloom like the lilies in the field, sing like the birds in the trees, be wild like the wild animals! And don’t listen to the poisoners, enjoy simple bodily needs. How many needs do you have? One need for food, one need for water, one need for shade, one need for a loving heart - that's all. And if there were not so many desires, the whole world would become a Garden of Eden at this very moment. Because of desires, we cannot pay attention to simple needs. And look... even animals can satisfy their needs, but man cannot satisfy his.
Why is a person poor? Not because the earth is poor, but because man is a madman, he puts energy into desires. Reaching the moon seems more important than feeding the poor.
What is the use of reaching the moon? What will you do there? But this is the whole direction of the mind. For the money that the United States spent on getting to the moon, the whole of Asia could be fed, and all other countries could be developed. And what did you achieve by going to the moon? The American flag is now on the moon - that's the whole achievement. And no one even sees him. Now the goal is other planets: the Moon has been conquered. now other planets must be conquered.
Why this lunar madness? Why this sleepwalking madness? The word "sleepwalker" is very good. It comes from the word "moon". A madman is always maddened by the moon, enchanted by the moon, the moon has always been the goal for all madmen.
For the first time they reached their goal, they got to the moon, but what did they get from it? When you reach the goal, the goal moves forward, the horizon moves forward. Now you must reach another planet, and then another. Why such a waste of energy and life?
So-called religions continue to condemn your needs. This became their slogan: not to enjoy is to be religious. Eat, drink and be happy - this is what they condemn. When they want to condemn someone, they say: he believes in eat, drink and be happy. But Zhuang Tzu says: eat, drink and be happy, and if you can be completely in this, you will achieve Tao, and nothing else is needed. Be simple, follow nature and do not violate nature in anything. Don't become a soldier, a fighter, don't fight with life. Surrender to life and let life happen through you. This is the first thing. Second: everyone is looking for security, but then you are in search of the impossible, and when you are looking for the impossible, you will meet with emptiness. It is impossible to be safe; it is not in the nature of things.
Insecurity is the very soul of life, insecurity is the very taste: just as the sea tastes salty, so life, wherever you taste it, has the taste of insecurity. Only death is safe. Life must be dangerous by its very nature. Why? When something is alive, it changes. Only the dead never changes. When there is change, there is insecurity. What does change mean? Change means moving from the known to the unknown, and the basis of all security is that you are willing to cling to the known.
Look at it this way: the child is in the womb of the mother. If it wants to be safe, it better cling to the womb and not come out. Can you have a safer position, a safer position than in the womb, and forever? The child has no responsibility there - no work, no institution, no problems to solve, everything is solved automatically. The child does not even have to breathe on his own - the mother breathes for him. The child’s heart beats thanks to the mother’s heartbeat, the mother’s blood nourishes the child.
He is truly in heaven. Can you think of a better paradise than the womb - comfortable sleep, even dreamless, in silent sleep? And then the birth happens! And psychologists say that birth is very traumatic because the child is thrown out, torn away from his safety. A comfortable house, the most comfortable house... We were not able to create anything like this: not a single noise reaches us, that's how it is. as if the world did not exist at all. The child does not have to make any choice, does not have to be divided, does not need any training, no conditioning. He simply enjoys himself, as if he were the very center of the world.
And then suddenly birth comes! It is traumatic. For the first time, insecurity enters the child's existence. Now he must breathe, now he must cry when he feels hungry, when he feels thirsty, when he feels uncomfortable. He must organize everything himself, and he must walk, worry. If his mother is not around, he gets worried. He is wet, he cries and cries, and no one hears. Now comes tension, insecurity, he is always afraid that his mother will leave him. And the mother always continues to insist: listen to me, otherwise I will leave you. Mothers even threaten their children: obey, follow me, otherwise I will die. Is this a threat? And the child trembles to the last veins. He must follow, he must organize everything, he must become false and wear masks. He must play roles: even if he is not having fun and his mother comes, he must smile. He must become a politician and care about what others think of him, otherwise he will feel insecure.
Now he will never feel as safe as he did in the womb. What should he do? Should he cling to the uterus? And it looks like he's really clinging - he doesn't want to come out.
Often the help of a doctor is necessary to remove the child, since his entire being is clinging. He resists, he wants to be where he is, in what he knows. Can you think of something more unknown for a child, more alien to him than the outside world? He opens his eyes, and everything around is alien, and also sounds. He gets scared. It is growing, and as it grows, insecurity increases.
Sooner or later he will be sent to school, and then even the house will no longer be the basis. And every child resists. You won't find a child happy to go to school unless their home is hell. No child wants to go to school, he resists, he clings to his mother, to his home, because now he is being pushed into a new birth, he is being thrown out of the house. And then he starts clinging to school. If you go to a university and look and feel the pulse of the students, you will see that no one wants to leave the university.
There are many cases where people unconsciously prepare themselves to fail again and again, because university is again security: Father takes care, sends money, and you live simply like a prince. You may still not enter the world, but the whole world is pushing you into insecurity, and sooner or later you will be thrown out of university. It is no coincidence that all over the world people call the university Mother. It is full of meaning: he is the mother and you are still a child and society is taking care of you. But still you are moving further into insecurity every day. There is security in a mother's love. Mother will love you whether you love her or not. It's one way traffic, she will love you naturally. But now you must look for a woman who will not love you naturally. You will have to love her. If you need love, you will have to give love.
With your mother it was different: you got everything for sure, but with another woman it won’t be like that, you will have to earn the love of this woman. That is why there is a constant struggle: a man wants his wife to be just like his mother. But why should she be his mother? She is not a mother, she is a wife. And she is in exactly the same position - she wants a man, a husband, to be her father. What is the meaning of this?
A mother's love is not conditional. They give it to you, they share it. A father's love is unconditional - he loves you simply because you are his child, you don't have to earn it. But when you go into the world, you have to earn the love of a husband, the love of a wife. And you can lose it at any moment. Fear and insecurity... marriage comes into being because lovers feel so insecure that they want official sanction. And the government protects them, society protects them. Otherwise, what is the need for marriage?
If there is really love, there is no need for you to get married. For what? There is a fear that today there is love, but who knows about tomorrow? And if love leaves, what will you do then? Who will return it to you? The law, the court, the government - they became guardians. Then you can go to court and demand love.
Every society makes divorce as difficult as possible, and marriage as easy as possible. This seems absurd: after all, it should be just the opposite - marriage should be as difficult as possible. After all, two people are walking into an unknown world. Let them wait, watch, think, ponder, meditate. Give them time! It seems to me that at least three years must pass before the court allows someone to get married. And I think that then no one would get married! Three years! Impossible! After the honeymoon it's all over. Then people cling to each other because of law and security, and because of the problems that will arise if they get divorced. Children come and now marriage becomes a responsibility, not bliss, not ecstasy. And society is always happy if you are anxious and not ecstatic, because an ecstatic person cannot be exploited.
Only a preoccupied person can be exploited, only a preoccupied person can be made a slave. An ecstatic person can never be a slave, and he is too dangerous for society, he is a rebel, he does not need society - that is what it means to be an ecstatic being. Himself is enough for him, and if he does not need society, then society cannot impose anything on him. Society wants you to be worried, to be sick little by little, then you will depend on it, then you will go to court and look at the judge as if he is a god. Then the government, the state, the policeman become important because you are worried. But if you are ecstatic...
Lovers can forget about them, but not married people. Lovers can forget about the policeman, they don’t need him at all, their love is enough. But when love leaves, then a policeman is needed to keep them together. And if a policeman is needed, now he will cause trouble when you want to disperse. And in order to avoid troubles, people continue to live together.
Life is dangerous, but that is the beauty of it: it is unsafe, because insecurity is the very nature of movement, vitality, aliveness. The more dead you are, the safer you are. When you are in the grave, then there is no more danger: what else can happen to you? Nothing! Nobody can hurt you when you're dead. But when you are alive, you are vulnerable, and you can be offended. But I tell you: this is the beauty of life.
In the morning, the flower cannot believe that by the evening it will no longer be there, but this is the beauty: in the morning it is in all its glory, magnificent, it is the emperor, and in the evening it leaves.
Just think of a flower made of stone or plastic: it remains, it never disappears, but if something never disappears, then it never bloomed. Marriage is a plastic flower, love is a real flower: it blooms in the morning and withers in the evening.
Marriage continues, there is permanence in it. But how can anything be permanent in this changing world? Everything that is real must exist from moment to moment, and there is insecurity so that at any moment it can disappear. The blooming flower will disappear, the rising sun will set. Everything will change. But if you are too afraid of insecurity, then you will make preparations, and with those preparations you will kill everything: the wife is the dead lover, the husband is the murdered beloved. Then everything is arranged, and there are no more problems, but then the whole life just drags on boringly.
I'm not saying that love can't last forever, it can, but insecurity is its nature: you can make it permanent. Remember: you must move from moment to moment. If it disappears, you must accept it; if it continues to bloom, enjoy it. She is independent, but you cannot be safe about her.
How can you be secure about the future? Who knows whether you will be there or not? If you cannot be safe even with yourself, then even more so with love. But you keep promising and you don't know what you are doing. When you love someone you feel that you will love them forever, but that is the feeling of that moment, don't make it a promise. Just say: at this moment I feel that I will love you forever, but I don’t know what I will feel in the next moment.
No one can say anything about the next moment, no one can promise. If you promise, you live in a plastic world. You can't make promises, and it is true that the honesty of love will not promise, but everyone wants promises to be safe. And the more you fear, the more promises you demand. This is why women want more promises than men: they are more afraid, they naturally feel more insecure.
They would like to make everything permanent, only then will they take a step. And then you go on making false promises that cannot be fulfilled. Every promise will be broken, and with every promise that disappears, life becomes empty and meaningless: poetry is lost, it has become flat prose, a common occurrence. You come and make love to your wife and it becomes a common thing - you have to do it. It is not spontaneous, you have to do it, it is your duty, and duty is the ugliest thing. I say: love is the most beautiful thing, duty is the ugliest thing. Love is an unknown phenomenon, you cannot manipulate it. Debt is a side project of society.
Now the wife can say: you must love me, it is your duty, and you promised! And you know what you promised. What can you do? If love has disappeared or you don’t feel it at this moment, or this night you are not inclined to engage in it, what to do? Only by holding on to the promises of the past and acting on them will you be false.
And so you say: okay, I promised, yes. What will you do? Can you love on demand? Is this possible? Has this ever happened? Can you create love? You can't, but you can pretend. This pretense will become more and more entrenched as spontaneity is not allowed. And then everyone feels deceived, because feigned love cannot satisfy.
Everyone knows that she is pretending - you can see right through her. You do all loving actions, but there is no love. It's like yoga exercises: there are movements, there are gestures, but there is no heart. You are somewhere else, out of duty or out of demand, but you also feel: yes, I promised.
And I tell you that a promise may be absolutely correct, but any promise is for this moment. You can't promise that you'll be here tomorrow. How can you promise that there will be love? All you can say is that it is the feeling of this moment: I feel that I will love you forever, but this is a momentary feeling, and if everything disappears in the next moment, what can I do?
But security creates a problem, you need security in everything, that's why everything has become false.
Life is not safe! Let this truth sink deeper into you, let it become a seed in your heart: life is not safe. This is her nature, and nothing can be done about it. Everything you do will become poisonous. You can only kill. And the more secure you feel, the more dead you will be.
Look at the people who are truly safe - with wealth, prestige, castles - and you can see that they are dead. Just look at their faces: their eyes seem to be made of stone, their faces seem to be masks, personas, their gestures are automatic, they are not theirs, they are frozen and do not flow, frozen and motionless. They are not like rivers - dancing, running towards the sea. They are dead, overgrown ponds, not moving anywhere, not flowing anywhere.
At any moment you must face the unknown. This is not safe: the past no longer exists, and the future has yet to come into existence. The future is unpredictable, and at every moment you are at the gates of the unpredictable. This should be a welcome: at every moment the unknown is a guest.
In India we have a very beautiful word for guest; There is no such word in any other language. This is atithi. It means: one who comes without giving any preliminary information, who comes without notifying the date of his arrival. Atithi means "without data": he has no data for you - he just comes and knocks on the door. But we, mad and obsessed with a thirst for security, even kill guests. If a guest comes, he must first inform us and ask permission to come, as you must prepare a room for him and make preparations. No one will suddenly knock on your door.
In the West the guest has completely disappeared: even if he comes, he stays in a hotel. The guest is no more, as the West is more obsessed with security than the East. Of course, because of this obsession they have accumulated more wealth, more security, larger bank accounts. Everything is secured, but the man is dead. Now there is no atitha, no stranger will knock on your door, and the unknown will stop coming to you.
Everything has become known, so you are spinning in the vicious circle of the known. From one known thing you go to another known thing, from that to a third, and then you say: why is there no meaning in life? Meaning comes from the unknown, from the stranger, from the unpredictable that suddenly knocks at your door; from a flower that suddenly bloomed without you ever noticing it; from a friend who suddenly found himself on the street, and you never expected him: from love that suddenly blossomed, and you didn’t even imagine that this could happen - you didn’t even imagine, you didn’t even dream about it.
Then life has meaning, then life is a dance, then every step brings happiness, because it is not a step filled with duty, but a step of movement into the unknown.
The river flows to the sea. Insecurity is the nature of the Tao. Do not acquire security, otherwise you will cut yourself off from nature, from Tao. And the more secure you are, the further away you will be from them. Move into the unknown - and let the unknown have its ways. Don't force him, don't push the river, let it flow, and never promise anyone a rose garden. And when you love, be authentic and true and say only this: in this moment I feel it, and when the next moment comes, I will tell you... as if this moment were my whole life.
And I tell you: if you love so much in this moment, then in the next moment you will be more loving, because the next moment is born from this moment. But this is not smell, not insurance. If you have loved so totally in this moment, you will love even more totally in the next. This seems absurd - how can the totality be even greater? But it happens.
Life is absurd. If you have loved totally and authentically and truly and blossomed in this moment, why be afraid of the next moment? Even if this flower disappears, another flower will come. Don't be sad about this flower. Life continues to bloom in this flower and in that, sometimes in this tree, sometimes in that other. Life goes on, flowers disappear. This means that form disappears, but the formless continues to move.
Why be sad? But you are sad because you are missing this moment; that is why you are afraid of the next moment. This moment you are not loving, that is why you provide security for the next moment. You are not living in this moment, that is why you are so afraid of the unknown. You provide security for how to live the next moment, and it is a vicious circle because you will be there with all your habits, patterns, you will be there with all the dead rules. You kill this moment and also kill the next.
Forget about the future! Live in the present and be so total in it that whatever comes from this totality becomes bliss. Even if the flower withers, it will be beautiful. Have you really observed the wilting of a flower? It's wonderful. There is sadness in this, but who told you that sadness is not beautiful? Who says that only laughter is beautiful? I tell you that laughter is superficial if there is no sadness in it, and sadness is dead if there is no smile in it.
They are opposites, but they penetrate each other. When you laugh with deep sadness, the laughter has depth, and when your sadness smiles, then there is ecstasy. And life is not divided into compartments, life is hostile to all divisions. It is your mind that creates divisions.
Life is an overflow, it does not know the difference between birth and death, it does not know the difference between flowering and withering, it does not know the difference between sunrise and sunset. It occurs within these two polarities, these are two banks, and the river continues to flow between them.
Don't worry about the future, live in this moment so totally that the next moment coming out of it will be golden. The future will take care of itself. This is what Jesus says: don't worry about tomorrow - tomorrow will take care of itself, you don't need to worry about it.
Life is not safe, and if you can live in insecurity, then that is the only security possible. The man who can live in insecurity is happy because he is the only one who is safe—safe in the hands of life itself. His security is not the work of man, his security is from the Tao, the ultimate nature itself.
Life takes care of you, so why should you worry so much about how to take care of yourself? Why cut yourself off from life? Why reproach yourself in life? Life feeds you, life breathes in you, life lives in you. Why take so much care of yourself? A person who cares too much about himself is a family man; a person who does not take care of himself is a sannyasin, one who says: life will take care of me.
This is what I mean by sannyas: it is not renunciation of life, it is renunciation of worries, of worries, of too much identification, of pushing the river too much - that is what renunciation is.
The river moves on its own; you don't need to push it. The river has washed you to this shore, to this moment, and it will wash you to many other shores. Why worry? Birds are not disturbed, trees are not disturbed, and man is the most conscious being. Why should he worry? If Tao takes care of the stone, if Tao takes care of the river. if the Tao takes care of the tree, why do you doubt that the Tao will take care of you? You are at this moment the highest flowering of life, and life must take care of you more than anyone else. Life cares more about you because you have more at stake, you are a challenge. Life has become conscious through you, it is becoming more and more conscious through you.
You reach the top - and life tries to reach the top with your help. So life will be taken care of. Let life do it and don't worry about the ego, renounce yourself. For me this is sannyas. My sannyas is completely different, it is not an old concept at all.
The old concept was to give up life, to give up life, and the old concept is just the opposite of mine: it was very interested in the individual - you have to take care of yourself, you have to take care of meditation, you have to take care of your yoga, you have to take care of your sadhana, and you have to take care of seeing how to reach God before anyone else.
My sannyas is just the opposite. I say you don't have to worry - you will achieve, but you will not achieve through worry. You don't even have to make an effort. Be effortless, let your life be permission - and you will achieve. Life will take care. When you are in your own hands, you are in dangerous hands. When you are in the hands of Tao, you are in the hands of the mother, the ultimate mother.
Now listen to these words:
"Fish are born in water, man is born in Tao."
Chuang Tzu says that just as fish are born in water, so man is born in Tao. Water takes care of the fish, Tao takes care of you. You are a fish in Tao, nature, or you can call it God. Chuang Tzu never uses this word - deliberately, consciously, because it is overloaded with a lot of nonsense. He simply uses "dao" - a neutral word.
The Vedas use the word "rig": rig means Tao, nature. Man is born in Tao, which is why we cannot feel him. Pisces cannot feel the water, they do not know it that deeply due to the fact that they were born in it. They have lived with her for so long that there is no separation. Pisces never know about the existence of water. They move in it, live in it, die in it. They come into it and disappear from it, but they do not know what water is. They say that one young fish became alarmed because it had heard a lot about the ocean and wanted to know what it was.
She swam from one wise fish to another and looked for a master, a guru. There were many of them - the fish had their own masters and gurus. They told her a lot, because if you come to a guru, he has to say something, even if he doesn’t know, just to save his “guruship”. They talked a lot about the ocean, but the fish was not satisfied because he wanted to try it.
One guru said, "It is very far away and difficult to reach. Very rarely does anyone reach the ocean. Don't be foolish. One has to prepare for millions of lives. This is not an ordinary thing - it is a great work. First purify yourself and do these asanas - one part of Patanjali's eightfold path."
Someone was a Buddhist and he said, “This will not help. Follow the path of the Buddha, the eight rules of the Buddha will help you. First become completely pure so that there is no
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru