Osho Quotes on Lao Tzu

Osho Quotes on Lao Tzu

1. Life is the way. Life has no goal. That’s why I love the word Tao. Tao means the way, with no goal. Simply the way. It was courageous of Lao Tzu, twenty-five centuries ago, to tell people that there is no goal and we are not going anywhere. We are just going to be here, so make the time as beautiful, as loving, as joyous as possible. He called his philosophy Tao, and Tao means simply `the way.’
2. You don’t push the river, you simply float with it; that is what Tao is. The whole teaching of Lao Tzu is that there is not a single need to do anything on your part, everything has already been done for you, you simply accept it and float. Let things be as they are. Don’t make any effort for any change whatsoever, because the very effort to change brings tension into the mind; the very effort to change brings the future into the mind; the very effort to change is a denial of God because then you say: We are wiser than you, we are trying to improve upon you. There is no need — just be in a deep let-go and float.
3. Lao Tzu begins his book, TAO TE CHING: ‘Truth is that which cannot be expressed. Remember this,’ he says ‘and then you can read my book. Don’t forget it — because truth you will not find in the words. Perhaps one can find it in the gaps between the words or between the lines but not in the words, not in the lines themselves.’ That is our search — the unknowable. And the only way to seek it is to dissolve into the whole just like a dewdrop dissolves into the ocean and becomes it.
4. Lao Tzu says, “If you can become just like a dry leaf which has fallen from the tree you will attain to the ultimate, you will know tao.” “Tao” is his word for god.
5. Lao Tzu loves the word ‘tao’ — the harmony of existence, the inner order.
6. Confucius says, ‘Listen to the scripture, listen to the ancient masters, listen to tradition.’ Lao Tzu says, ‘Listen only to your own inner voice and follow it, wherever it leads. It is God’s voice. It is Tao.’
7. Life is a paradox, the mind requires consistency, hence the mind can never meet life. The mind is death. Life’s very existence depends on contradictions, it exists through the contradiction. The contradiction creates the challenge: day and night, man and woman, love and hate. Love cannot exist without hate; there is no possibility. The day hate dies will be the death of love too. Compassion cannot live without anger, god cannot live without the world and the soul cannot live without the body. That’s how things are. Lao Tzu has called it ‘the way of things’. Tao simply means the way of things, how things are. There is no choice in it; we cannot change it. We can either accept it or we can start denying a few things in it which don’t go with the mind and the mind’s requirements. The mind is incapable of accepting the paradox; it says ‘either/or’. Life says ‘both/and’. Hence the mind becomes a barrier. That’s why poets are closer to existence and truth than philosophers. Somebody said to Walt Whitman, ‘You contradict yourself too much.’ He said, ‘I contradict? So I contradict! I am big, I am huge, I contain multitudes.’ That can be said only by a poet, but it is so true.
8. Lao Tzu wants to destroy the criterion. He wants to tell you that there is no criterion to judge. Each individual is unique — that is the Tao vision. Each individual is so unique, so incomparably unique, that there is no way to judge who is normal and who is abnormal Look at the freedom Tao gives — you can only say that people are different: nobody is normal, nobody is abnormal. People are simply different. Once you understand that people are different you drop the idea of inferiority and superiority for the first time. I or the first time comparison disappears that somebody is this way, somebody else is that way.
9. All great religious people are rebels; they have to be. They have to destroy your illusion of order so that you can come to seek and search for the real order. It is what Lao Tzu calls the Tao.’Tao’ means the real order which is not man-made, which is just part of reality, intrinsic to it. It is not the laws that man has managed to make, but the Law out of which man is born. Remember, there are many man-made laws, but there is only one Law, the Tao; what Buddha calls the DHAMMA.
10. One of the basic laws of Tao, of Lao Tzu, of Chuang Tzu, is that if you are spontaneous it is the highest prayer; you cannot miss God, whatsoever you do you will reach him. So Chuang Tzu never talks about God; talk is irrelevant, it isn’t needed. He talks only of how to bring out the wholeness in you. The holy is irrelevant. When you become whole, you become holy. When your fragments dissolve into one, your life has become a prayer. They never talk about prayer, it is not needed.
11. When there is no discipline, when there is no enforced order, a totally different kind of order arises in you. What Lao Tzu calls Tao, what Buddha calls DHARMA — that arises in you. That is not anything done by you; it happens to you.
12. Whosoever comes to know that Tao is balance, religion is balance, God is balance, GUARDS AGAINST BEING OVER-FULL. Don’t move too much to one side, otherwise the balance will be lost, and imbalance is the only sin for Lao Tzu. To be balanced is to be virtuous, to be imbalanced is to be in sin.
13. A total acceptance — this is what Lao Tzu calls Tao, the river flowing toward the sea. It is not making any effort; it is not in any hurry to reach the sea. Even if it doesn’t reach, it will not get frustrated. Even if it reaches in millions of years, everything is okay. The river is simply flowing because flowing is its nature. No effort is there. It will go on flowing.
14. One has to learn how to wait, one has to learn how to be effortless, one has to learn how to be in a state of surrender. One has to learn how to be in a let-go. The greatest secret in life is the secret of let-go, of surrender, of trusting existence. That is the meaning of prasado: god comes as a gift and all that is great always comes as a gift. Don’t strive for it, otherwise you will miss. Lao Tzu says: Seek and you will never find, do not seek and find it immediately. Lao Tzu’s statement is of great import, the very foundation of tao: relax, be in a let-go, go with the river, don’t push the river. Allow the river to take you, and you will arrive.
15.  Tao is basically for low energy people. The whole philosophy of Lao Tzu, the whole standpoint of Tao, is a feminine standpoint. Persuade, don’t force. Lao Tzu says, ‘When the king is best, nobody knows who the king is.’ People tend to forget. When people don’t even remember the name of the king, then the king is the best. When people know who the king is, he is number two, not the best, because he must be doing something which makes him famous. Then he belongs to the second category, not the first. When the people are afraid, and not only know and respect the person but are afraid of him, then he is of the third category, the worst. Lao Tzu says that when the king is of the first category, he goes on doing things and people think they are doing those things, because he is so silent and soft that even if he is doing something, others think it is they who are doing because he never comes to the front. He is just like the roots of a tree hidden underground. Nobody knows about it. He is not like the flowers on top.
16. The soft always overcomes the hard. The soft is alive, the hard is dead. The soft is flower-like, the hard is rock-like. The hard looks powerful but is impotent. The soft looks fragile but it is alive. Whatsoever is alive is always fragile, and the higher the quality of life, the more fragile it is. So the deeper you go, the softer you become, or the softer you become, the deeper you go. The innermost core is absolutely soft. That is the whole teaching of Lao Tzu, the teaching of Tao: be soft, be like water; don’t be like a rock. The water falls on the rock. Nobody can imagine that finally the water is going to win. It is impossible to believe that the water is going to win. The rock seems to be so strong, so aggressive, and the water seems to be so passive. How is the water going to win over the rock? But in due course the rock simply disappears. By and by the soft goes on penetrating the hard.
17. Nobody can be a Taoist. Tao is neither a religion nor a philosophy. It is simply the purest understanding of meditation where everything disappears, including you. Then what remains is Tao. Buddha will call it dhamma; you can call it truth, consciousness, beauty. But all these words denote one oceanic feeling of awareness in which you are not separate from the cosmos. But the difficulty with man is, he makes everything into an ism. So when Lao Tzu died, people started making an ism. And his whole life he had been teaching that there is no ism, no philosophy, no theory. You have to drop all these mind activities. You have to attain to a silent and empty space. That is Tao.
18. THE COSMOS IS A MUSICAL HARMONY, but we are not in tune with it. Tuning is needed. This tuning becomes possible if you surrender yourself to the whole. Why is man not in tune with the infinite? Because you go on living according to your own mind, not according to the mind of the whole. Lao Tzu calls the mind of the whole tao: the law, the cosmic law.
19. Meditation is the ultimate agreeability of the inner life, the uttermost harmony, the most profound of all. Meditation means that, from within, one is now in complete harmony with the ultimate law of life. The word Lao Tzu has used for it is beautiful. He calls it Tao. Tao means the law. Or the name given by the Vedic seers is also appropriate. They call it rit. Rit means the law. Similarly, dharma also means the law. Dharma means your inner nature, the law. Dharma means: if you act according to the law, you will attain happiness. adharma, an unrighteous act, is that which would go against the law and cause you unhappiness. This is the principle of inner science.
20. There is only one way to annihilate the ego. The Vedas have referred to it as rit; Lao Tzu calls it tao; Buddha has called it dhamma; Mahavira’s word is dharma; Nanak refers to it as hukum — divine order. He who conducts himself according to His command without making a single movement on his own, with no desires or feelings of his own, or need to introduce his own self, is alone the religious man.
21. Relax, let go of the body and the mind. You are just a watcher. The mind may be creating some dust, the body may be feeling uncomfortable. You are simply a watcher. Don’t get identified, because this body will change, this mind will change. A thousand times they have already changed. Only this watcher is your treasure, which always remains… eternity to eternity. Lao Tzu calls it Tao. Buddha calls it Dhamma. Whatever the name, this is your pure existence.
22. Remain balanced and you are in heaven; become unbalanced and a hell is created — nobody else is creating it for you. Lao Tzu has no God, no personal God, to punish anybody. It is simply Tao. Tao is just a law, a universal law. If you move according to it you are happy, if you move against it you become unhappy. In fact, unhappiness is a symptom, just as happiness is a symptom — a symptom of how you are moving: according to Tao or against Tao. When you are moving according to Tao you are happy, blissful, celebrating. Every moment is a joy, a delight. Life seems like poetry. Every moment you see something flowering, growing; every moment you see a thousand things to be grateful for. You are blessed.
23. Religion — dharma — means nature, the natural order of things. What Lao Tzu means by Tao, so Nanak means by religion. To be removed from one’s nature is to be lost. To return to one’s own nature is to return homewards. To be established in one’s own nature is to be established in God.
24. Misery has only one meaning, that things are not fitting with your desires — and things never fit with your desires, they cannot. Things simply go on following their nature. Lao Tzu calls this nature Tao. Buddha calls this nature Dhamma. Mahavir has defined religion as the nature of things. Nothing can be done. Fire is hot and water is cool. Don’t try to impose your will on the nature of things. That is what the stupid man goes on doing — and creates misery for himself, creates hell. The wise man is one who relaxes with the nature of things, who follows the nature of things.
25. Lao Tzu says: This is the way to be really religious. Float with Tao, move with Tao, don’t create any private goals and ends, the whole knows better, you be simply with it. The whole has created you, the whole breathes within you, the whole lives in you, why do YOU bother? Let the responsibility be with the whole. You simply go wherever it leads.
26. The man of Tao is neither man nor woman. He has come back to his oneness. He is alone… all one. You cannot call Lao Tzu a man or a woman, or Buddha a man or a woman, or Jesus a man or a woman. Biologically they are, spiritually they are not. Spiritually they have gone beyond. Buddha has no unconscious in him, no division. He’s undivided. And when you are undivided all conflict within you ceases. Otherwise you are in a INSTANT civil war: you are not only fighting with the outer woman, you are fighting continuously with the inner woman too. And you know those moments.
27. If you transform the energy, then you become divine. And remember, when I say divine, both things are implied in it. The wild animal with its total beauty of being is there. That wild animal is not rejected and denied. He is there — richer, because he is more alert. So all the wildness is there and the beauty of it. And all that civilization has been trying to force is there, but spontaneous, not forced. Once the energy is transformed, nature and god meet in you — nature with its beauty, god with total grace. This is what a sage means. A sage means a meeting of nature and the divine, a meeting of the created and the creator, a meeting of body and soul, a meeting of that which is below and of that which is above, a meeting of the earth and the sky. Says Lao Tzu: Tao happens when earth and heaven meet. This is the meeting. Witnessing is the basic source. But it will be difficult to become a witness in the sex act if you are not trying to become a witness in other acts of your life. So try it the whole day, otherwise you will be in self-deception. If you cannot become a witness while walking on the road, don’t try to deceive yourself, you cannot become a witness while making love. If just walking on the road, such a simple process, and you cannot become a witness — you become unconscious in it — how can you become a witness while making love? The process is so deep…you will fall unconscious.
28. Just watch. When you love a person what is the motive? You want to be loved? Then it is childish. Or you want to share your love, you have so much that you would like to share it, you have so much that you would like to shower it — then it is mature. Immature love is a beggar, mature love is a king. Out of fear you create a god which is immature, as immature as you are. Out of love you start seeing God — godliness, rather. Love gives you eyes to see that this whole existence is full of divinity. Then you don’t call God ‘The Father’ or ‘The Mother’; in fact then you don’t give it any name. Lao Tzu says ‘I don’t know His name, so I will call it Tao. But this is just to indicate. I don’t know His name.’ Godliness has no name, no limitation. Wherever you pour your love you will discover it. Pour your love on a tree and the tree becomes God. Pour your love on a woman and the woman is a goddess, pour your love on a man and the man is a god. Pour your love anywhere, and suddenly love makes it possible, love creates the miracle, and God is discovered. Pouring love is the way to discover God. But your gods are not discovered gods, they are invented gods, invented out of fear.
29. Lao Tzu is saying that if you really remain without any claim, without asking for any credit, fame, name, success, ambition, then as a consequence success is there, victory is there. The whole existence pours down into your emptiness; you are fulfilled. This is a consequence, not a result. Result is when you desire it; consequence is when you were not even thinking about it, there was no desire, no thinking about it. It happens as part of the inner law of existence. That law is called Tao.
30. 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.
31. Lao Tzu says: The way of the Tao is a watercourse way . It moves like water. What is the movement of water? or of a river? The movement has a few beautiful things about it. One, it always moves towards the depth, it always searches for the lowest ground. It is non-ambitious; it never hankers to be the first, it wants to be the last. Remember, Jesus says: Those who are the last here will be the first in my kingdom of God. He is talking about the watercourse way of Tao — not mentioning it, but talking about it. Be the last, be non-ambitious. Ambition means go uphill. Water goes down t searches for the lowest ground, it wants to be a nonentity. It does not want to declare itself unique, exceptional, extraordinary. It has no ego idea. That is what I mean when I say become water: drop the ego. Drop ambition. Don’t struggle for the top of the hill and don’t start moving upstream. Go with the stream, down the stream, seek and search the lowest — because only in the lowest will you find peace and tranquillity and silence. And only in the lowest will you find the inner emptiness I have been talking about all these days. When you start striving to be somebody, you will not be empty. You will become full of bullshit, you will become garbage. Go downward. Search the lowest depths and disappear there… one thing. Second thing: the water is soft, feminine. The water is non-aggressive, it never fights — it makes its way without fighting. It is from water that the Chinese and Japanese learnt the secret art of judo or jujitsu. Winning without fighting, conquering through surrendering — WEI-WU-WEI.
32. Lao Tzu says: Tao cannot be said; the moment you say it you have already falsified it. Truth cannot be communicated, no word is adequate enough, big enough to contain it. It is so vast, vaster than the sky, and words are so tiny. They are good for day-to-day things, utilitarian ends. As you start moving towards the non-utilitarian you start moving beyond words. That’s what religion exactly is: transcendence of words and transcendence of the world that belongs to words. The mind consists of words; the heart consists only of silence, profound silence, virgin silence, unbroken silence. Not even once anything has stirred there, in the very center of your being.
33. Language depends on duality, as the whole of life depends on duality. Language arises out of life experiences; it is utterly rooted in life experiences. That’s why truth is inexpressible. And Lao Tzu is right when he says, “The moment you utter the truth it becomes a lie. Say it, and you have falsified it. The Tao that can be said is not the true Tao. The truth that can be expressed is no longer truth, the God that can be formulated and defined is no longer God.” What he is saying is that language is rooted in duality, and truth is transcendental to duality — nothing can be said about it.
34. Love, and then you will know the other is not the other. If you can love deeply, infinitely, you will by and by become aware that even the trees are not the other, even the stars are not the other. This is what I call becoming a sannyasin — to fall in love with the total. That’s what Lao Tzu calls Tao — to fall in love with the total, to make love to God. That is the ultimate tantra — to make love to God, to be in love with the whole. Naturally, when you make love to a woman or a man it is bound to be momentary because when two small tiny individuals make love you cannot expect more than that. Even that that much happens is a miracle. If you really want eternal orgasm, a continuous orgasm, then you have to love the whole and you have to fall in love with the whole. Make love to God, then God is not the other. Wherever love comes in, the other disappears. That is the sign of love — that the other is no longer there. And when the other is not there as the other, there is heaven — paradise regained. When the other is as the other, there is hell — paradise lost.
35. To understand Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu, to understand Tao, you will have to understand that they don’t believe in fighting of any sort. They say: Don’t fight, live Just be in a let-go, so nature can penetrate you and you can penetrate nature. They say: Just be ordinary, don’t try to be extraordinary, don’t try to be somebody, just be nobodies. You will enjoy more because you will have more energy left, you will be full of energy. There is tremendous energy, but it is dissipated in fighting; you divide yourself and you fight from both sides and the energy is dissipated. The same energy can become ecstatic if allowed to move in an inner harmony, not fighting.
36. Don’t seek God. Only seek a situation where you can be possessed. Don’t try to move directly — just wait. And suddenly from an unknown dimension he comes and fills you with an unknown light. You will never be able to utter a single word about it — the tongue is not made for that, lips are incapable of that. All that they can say is always about and about and about, it is never the thing. That’s why Lao Tzu says: Tao cannot be uttered, and that which can be uttered cannot be Tao. In silence it is heard and known; in silence it is felt and lived; in silence you become it, it becomes you. Not through action will you reach but through inaction and silence.
37. A Taoist life can be lived but cannot be practised. It is a sheer understanding. These trees are Taoists, the animals are Taoists, and they have never heard about Tao, they have not been reading Lao Tzu. They are not following any path, they are not trying to enter into any way: they are simply in it! We are also in it. Relax, rather than practising. Allow nature to take possession of you; don’t try to grab nature, don’t be active, be passive.
38. Nothing else exists. All sounds are his, all messages are his, everywhere is his signature. For the first-rate mind the path is not a path at all, he simply enters the temple without any path, there is no need for any bridge. Lao Tzu says that when the highest type of man hears the Tao there is immediate perception, immediate understanding. Just by looking at the master who has attained, just by hearing his word, or just by hearing his breathing, silent, peaceful, sitting by his side, he understands. Once they understand then they are not trying to attain truth; then they are simply trying to refine their mechanism. They have understood the truth, it exists, they have heard about it. Hindus call their scriptures SHRUTIS. The word SHRUTI means ‘that which has been heard’. All the scriptures are ‘that which has been heard’. Once a man of the first-rate intelligence hears truth, he understands it.
39. All certainty is false, and only a mediocre mind remains certain. When intelligence starts growing, you become mixed, because the old certainty is no more. In fact you become very hesitant. Hesitation is the quality of intelligence. Fools are very certain. You cannot confuse an idiot, can you? It is impossible to confuse an idiot, an imbecile. And a greatly intelligent person is always confused, because life is so vast — how to figure it out? Life is so complex and so tremendously huge — how can you figure it out? Hence the confusion, hence the mixedness. It is a good quality, a good indication. Lao tzu says in his tao te ching, ‘Everybody seems to be certain — only I am confused. Everybody seems to be confident — only I am hesitant.’ But that is the quality of intelligence.
40. Lao Tzu says, ‘That which can be said is no more true. The tao that can be talked about is not the real tao.’ The real tao cannot be talked about. You cannot make a problem of it, you cannot find a solution for it. You can only go into it and disappear into it. The question is never solved but the questioner disappears. And that’s my work on you here: I am here not to dissolve your questions but to dissolve you. And that is going to happen… that is already on the way.