474

(part 2)

If Tao or God were not empty then their use could not be inexhaustible, then some day they would be exhausted. And what God can be called God who is exhaustible? One day that God will be dead, it will be exhausted. But in your minds the concept of God has been created as a person sitting somewhere in the skies and controlling. He is not controlling. He is not a person. In fact he is not a he, and he is not a she also. All our words are irrelevant because Tao is a vast hollowness, a vast space, emptiness.

Your logic will immediately arise in the mind: then how are things there? Ask the physicists; now they have come to the same understanding as Lao Tzu. Now they say that as we enter deeper and deeper into matter, matter disappears. Finally it disappears completely. Now we don’t know. Inside, it is a hollowness. They were searching for the substance of matter; they searched hard but now it has escaped completely, out of vision– they cannot see where it has gone. They searched for it first in the molecules, then they went deeper into the atoms, then they divided the atom and went deeper into electrons. Now matter has completely disappeared– nothingness. Matter is hollow. Even these walls of stone are hollow.

That’s why Hindus call the world of matter illusion: it looks very solid and substantial and inside everything is hollow. Whenever you are silent, sitting with closed eyes watching inside, you will feel a hollowness. Don’t get scared. Physicists were chasing matter and they came to hollowness, and the people who have been really seekers of a spiritual dimension have also come to the hollowness. Then you become scared. If matter is hollow it doesn’t matter, but if you are also hollow, a hollow bamboo, inside nothing but emptiness, you become afraid. If you become afraid you will cling to the wall, and in the final analysis the wall is also hollow. This existence is a vast emptiness, and that’s the beauty of it.

In the night you go to sleep– dreams arise out of nothing: beautiful dreams, ugly dreams, nightmares which scare you to death. Dreams arise out of nothing and they look so real. They look so authentically real, but when your eyes open in the morning you cannot find them anywhere. From where did they come? From where did they arise? And now where have they gone? You never think about the phenomenon of the dream. If it can happen in the night, why not in the day?

One of the disciples of Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, one night dreamed that he had become a butterfly, fluttering, flying amidst flowers. And the next morning when he awoke he was very sad. His disciples asked, ”What is the matter, Master? We have never seen you so sad. What has happened?” He said, ”I am in such a quandary. I am in such a dilemma that it seems now it cannot be solved.” The disciples said, ”We have never seen any problem that you cannot solve. Just say, what is the problem?” Chuang Tzu said, ”Last night I dreamed that I had become a butterfly, flying in the garden, moving from one flower to another flower.”

The disciples laughed. They said, ”This is a dream, Master!” Chuang Tzu said, ”Wait,let me tell you the whole story. Now I am awake and I am puzzled. A doubt has arisen. If Chuang Tzu can dream that he can become a butterfly, why not the otherwise? A butterfly could dream that she had become a Chuang Tzu. Now who is who? Am I a butterfly dreaming that I have become a Chuang Tzu?” Because if it can happen that you can become a butterfly in a dream, then what is the problem? A butterfly sleeping there this morning, resting, may be dreaming that she is you. And how do you know who you are? If Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly, why can’t a butterfly become a Chuang Tzu? There seems to be no impossibility about it.

Night dreams come out of nothingness and they look real; in the day, dreams come out of nothingness and they look real. The only difference between the night and the day is: the night dream is private and the day dream is public. That is the only difference. In the night dream you cannot invite your friends to be there– it is private. In the day dream you can invite friends– it is public. The house in which you live in the day is public. If there is a possibility of private dreaming there is a possibility of public dreaming. We are here. If we all go to sleep there will be as many dreams as there are people here: private. Nobody’s dream will enter into anybody else’s dream. They will not clash with anybody, and everybody will forget about everybody else; he will live in his dream and in his own dream-reality. Then you are awake. You look at me and I am talking to you. This is a public dream, you are all dreaming together. That is the only difference.

There is a possibility of a greater awakening– when you awake out of the public dream also. That is what enlightenment is. Then suddenly the whole world is maya. This is what Lao Tzu is saying.

[Tao is a hollow vessel,
and its use is inexhaustible,
fathomless.]

It is a vast emptiness and everything arises out of it and goes back to it, falls back into it. And it is inexhaustible because it has no limits.

You may not be aware that the concept of zero was invented, discovered in India, because India became aware that everything comes out of nothingness, zero, and everything falls back into nothingness, to zero. The whole journey is from zero to zero. So India coined the concept of zero, shunyam. And that is the basis of all mathematics– zero is the basis of all mathematics. If zero is taken away the whole structure of mathematics falls down. With zero the whole game starts– you add one zero to the figure one, then the value of the zero is nine because immediately one becomes ten, nine is born out of zero immediately. You add two zeroes to one, the value is ninetynine, immediately one has become a hundred– out of zero the whole structure builds up. Without zero, mathematics disappears, and without mathematics the whole science disappears.

So if you ask me, zero is the root of all mathematics and of all science; you cannot conceive of an Einstein without the concept of a zero. No, it is not possible. All computers would stop immediately if you drop the concept of zero, because without the zero they cannot work. Zero seems to be the most substantial thing in the world. And what is a zero? A zero is simply zero, nothing– it is inexhaustible. You can take as many things out of it as you want. Nine it can become, ninety-nine it can become, nine hundred and ninety-nine it can become. Go on and on and it can become anything you like; it is bottomless, fathomless. You cannot fathom it.

One is limited. It has a limitation, it has a fixed value to it. Two is limited– all the nine digits are limited, only the zero is an unlimited phenomenon. In fact the nine digits cannot work without it. They come out of it, they grow out of it. This whole existence comes out of zero, a hollowness.

Why this emphasis on hollowness? It is not a philosophical doctrine, remember, it is simply an analogy– Lao Tzu is trying to show you something. He is trying to show you that unless you become hollow you will suffer, because hollowness is your reality. With unreality you will suffer. And that is the meaning of meditation: to become hollow, to be empty inside. Not even a thought flutters– no content, just space. Suddenly all misery has disappeared, because misery exists in thoughts; death has disappeared because death exists in thoughts; the past has disappeared because the whole burden is carried through thoughts; ambition disappears because how can you be ambitious without thoughts?

How can you be mad without thoughts? Have you ever seen a madman who has no thoughts? In fact, a madman is a madman because he has too many thoughts and he cannot hold them together: a whole crowd... too much to bear. A madman is a great thinker. That is his trouble: he thinks too much, and he thinks in many dimensions together. In his cart, in all directions, horses are harnessed and he goes on in all directions, and he cannot stop because he is not. He is so divided, so fragmentary, that he is not.

Only a hollowness can be undivided. Can you divide a hollowness? Everything can be divided, anything that is substantial can be divided. Self can be divided, only no-self cannot be divided. That’s why when Buddha reached to his ultimate enlightenment he coined a word that was his invention: the word anatta. It never existed before him. Anatta means no-self. Anatta means anatma. Anatta means you are not. Anatta means not is, you are not. Anatta means nothingness, hollowness.

The analogy is to indicate certain things: become hollow, be hollow.

But the whole teaching, the conditioning of society is against it. In the West they say that if you are empty you will become a devil’s workshop. An empty mind is a devil’s workshop. This is foolishness, extreme foolishness, because an empty mind can never be a devil’s workshop. If it is really empty, suddenly only God is there and nothing else, because God is hollow. The devil is full of thoughts, he is never empty. The devil has a mind; God has no mind. You can become a devil’s workshop– the more you think the more you can become one! If you don’t think at all how can you become a devil’s workshop? The devil cannot enter a hollowness, he will be afraid of death– because to enter into emptiness is to die. He can enter you only if there are many thoughts– then he can hide in the crowd, then he can also become a thought in you.

An empty mind is God’s mind– it is no-mind. Become hollow, sit as a hollow bamboo. Move as a hollowness, live as a hollowness, do whatsoever you have to do but do it as if you are hollow inside. Then karmas will not touch you at all; then your actions will not become a burden to you; then you will not be entangled because a hollowness cannot be entangled.

[The spirit of the valley never dies.]

The spirit of the valley is the spirit of hollow-ness. What is a valley?– it is a hollow thing. Go to the hills, you will find two things: peaks– full of rocks, filled, and valleys– empty. The spirit of the valley is the spirit of emptiness. Peaks come and go; valleys remain– you cannot destroy nothingness. Something can always be destroyed. If you are something you will have to be born and die again and again. If you are nothing then how can you be destroyed? How can you be created? You simply disappear out of the world of forms to the formless; a valley means the world of the formless.

[The spirit of the valley never dies.
It is called the mystic female.]

These are all analogies. A woman is a valley, a man is a peak. A man enters the woman, the woman simply allows. A woman is a receptivity, a man is an aggression. A man tries to do, a woman simply waits for things to happen.

[It is called the mystic female.]

This word has to be understood– the mystic female– because for Lao Tzu that is the ultimate. Lao Tzu feels that the nature of existence is more like a woman than like a man, because man comes out of woman, woman comes out of woman. Man can even be discarded but woman cannot be discarded.

Woman seems to be a basic element. Man is a growth out of it. Woman seems to be more elemental, more natural; man has something unnatural about him. If you ask the biologists they say that man has a deep imbalance in his biology; woman is symmetrical, balanced. That’s why she looks more beautiful and round. Man has corners, woman has no corners. A woman is a more balanced phenomenon, that’s why she never tries to invent something, to create something, to do something, to be on the go– no, she is never on the go.

Man is always on the go. He has to do something to prove that he is; he cannot simply accept himself. He cannot simply be and enjoy. He has to go to the moon, and he has to go to the top of Everest, and he has to do something. A deep imbalance is there, he cannot simply sit and be. He becomes an adventurer, a scientist. A woman simply enjoys being, she is happy with small things, she does not hanker for the moon. And every woman thinks what foolishness it is: Why are you going to the moon? You ask the wives of the astronauts, they simply cannot believe it. Why? Why move in danger and death unnecessarily? What is wrong in being here?

Man is a vagabond, a gypsy. If the world were left to man there would be no houses, only tents at the most. And he would be moving and moving from one place to another. He cannot stay in one place, something deep inside him forces him to move. He is not balanced; this imbalance is his madness.

Look at a woman. She is balanced. Her needs are small: somebody to love, somebody to be loved by, food, shelter, a little warmth around, a home– finished. Then she is not worried about anything. No woman has created any science, no woman has founded any religion. People come to me and ask why all religions were created by man. Because man is tense, he has to do something or other. If he becomes frustrated with this world he starts doing something with the other world, but he has to do. He is never here and now, he cannot be here and now.

Lao Tzu has this analogy that the nature of existence is more feminine, it is more balanced. Look at the trees, look at the birds singing, look at the rivers flowing, look all around and watch– you will find more feminineness everywhere. Everything seems to be perfect at this moment. The trees are not worried about the future, the birds are not worried about the future, the rivers are simply moving so lazily, so silently– as if they are not moving at all. Nothing seems to be in a hurry.

That’s why it happens every day: the man is honking the horn on the street and the woman goes on saying from the window, ”I’m coming. Just wait a minute.” Women have no time sense. They have watches, but they are ornamental– they are not watches really. They don’t have any time sense because they are not in a hurry. Time sense arises out of hurry and haste– everything is trembling and everything is at stake, as if one minute late and everything will be lost. And if you ask the man, ”Where are you going?” he will shrug his shoulders– just to the pictures, but honking the horn as if something great, a life experience was going to be missed. And the woman goes on saying.... I have even heard one woman once. I was sitting with the husband in the car, and really we were getting late and the husband was very worried. In fact he need not have worried, he should not have worried, because it was my appointment not his. I was getting late. But he was honking, and he was very worried and perspiring and swearing at his wife. And the wife– two or three times she said, ”I am coming”– but her makeup was not complete. It is never complete. She always comes somehow but it is incomplete, much could have been done. She is so at ease with the mirror, with herself she is so at ease. That is her world. Then the wife got angry, and she looked down from the window and said, ”I have told you one thousand times that I am coming in a minute!” One thousand times! You cannot even say ”I am coming” one thousand times in one minute.

No time sense... the world moves without any time sense. Clocks and watches don’t exist with trees and rivers and mountains– it is a timeless world. Man exists with time, with a worry. Deep down the worry seems to be sexual: the worry about achieving a sexual orgasm. Whenever a man is making love to a woman he is worried whether he will be able to make it or not, worried whether he will be able to satisfy the woman or not, worried whether he will be able to prove that he is a man or not. The worry: an inner trembling, in a hurry somehow to prove, and that’s why he misses. Ejaculation is there but orgasm– no. Orgasm is a different phenomenon: it happens only when you are not worried, it happens only when you are not an achiever, it happens only when you are not reaching for something, it happens in a deep relaxation, it happens only when you are not in control– but nature takes control. Then your whole body throbs with an unknown bliss. Then every cell of your body celebrates in a total ecstasy; then it is divine.

But man is worried, and that sexual worry is the root cause of all worries. Then everywhere he is trying to prove himself. There is no need to prove yourself. You are. You are perfect. No woman is worried about proving; she takes it for granted that she is perfect. She lives in a very relaxed way. Many husbands come to me and always their complaint is that their wives are lazy. They are not lazy; they are enjoying! Whatsoever is the case, they are not in a hurry. But comparatively they look lazy.

Lao Tzu says the nature of the existence is more like the female, more feminine. And the analogy is beautiful. He is not saying that existence is female– remember this. This is not logic, he is not trying to prove that existence is female. He is not for the lib movement– no. He is simply giving an analogy. A man can also be feminine. A Buddha is feminine, a Lao Tzu is feminine, a Jesus is feminine. Then he lives, he lives in the moment, unhurried; he enjoys the moment unhurried.

Jesus says to his disciples: Look at the lilies in the field. How beautiful they are! Even Solomon in all his glory was not so beautiful. But what is the secret of the lilies?– they are just flowering here and now. What will happen the next moment is not a worry; the next moment has not entered into their consciousness yet.

A man can live a feminine existence– then he becomes a mystic. That is the only way. So all mystics become in a certain way feminine. And they are the real religious men, not the founders of religion. Remember, this is a difference.... Buddha is not the founder of Buddhism– no. His disciples are the founders. Jesus is not the founder of Christianity– no. His apostles, they are the founders. Mahavir is not the founder of Jainism. Gautam, his disciple, who was a scholar and great pundit, was. These are the men.

Jesus himself is feminine. To show this, in India we have never painted avataras, teerthankaras, Buddhas, with beards and mustaches– no– just to show this that they are feminine. Have you ever seen Ram with a mustache? Krishna with a beard? It is not that they were somehow lacking in hormones. They were not the third sex. They were men; beards existed. But this is just an analogy. We have dropped the beards to show that they have become feminine: the feminine mystic has come into being. They existed without any hurry, they existed not as a tense man but as a non-tense woman, and you can feel around them the feminine warmth, the roundness of a Buddha.

[The spirit of the valley never dies.
It is called the mystic female.
The door of the mystic female
is the root of heaven and earth.]

"The door of the mystic female is the root of heaven and earth..." And if you can find the key to open the door of the mystic female you have opened the door of existence. Everybody has to enter that door non-tense, balanced, satisfied, content– that’s the secret of feminine being.

When I say this there are two possibilities of misunderstanding: women can misunderstand and think that they have nothing to do; men can misunderstand and think that this Lao Tzu is not for them. No, it is for you both. But remember... women are not pure women, they have lost the feminine mystique themselves. They have to gain it again. It will be easier for them of course to gain it than men, because man has gone farther away.

And don’t think that if you are a man Lao Tzu is not for you– he is particularly for you, otherwise you will go farther and farther away from existence and life’s ecstasy. Everybody has to come back to the mother; that is the feminine mystique. You are born out of the mother’s womb, and you have to find the womb again in existence. If you can find the womb again in existence, the same warmth, the same life, the same love, the same care in existence– then existence becomes your home, your mother.

Hindus are better when they call their god ”mother”– mother Kali– than Christians and Mohammedans and Jews, who go on calling their god ”father.” Those three religions are manoriented, that’s why they have been so violent. Mohammedans and Christians have killed so many, they have been a catastrophe on the earth. They have been murderers. In the name of religion they have been only killing and doing nothing else. This is man-oriented religion.

Buddhism has not killed, Jainism has not killed, Hinduism has not killed, because they are more and more inclined towards the feminine mystique. And you cannot complain against Lao Tzu at all, with him there exists no organized religion. Once a religion becomes organized, violence enters into it. Organization is going to be violent, it has to fight its way, it is bound to become male. Organization is male; religion is female.

I have heard an anecdote that a few disciples of the Devil came very worried and sad and told him, ”Why are you sitting here? Our whole business is at stake. A man has again become a Buddha, enlightened. We have to do something, otherwise he will transform people– and our world will be deserted, and who will come to hell? Do something immediately! No time should be lost. A man has again become a Buddha!”

The Devil said, ”You don’t worry. I work through the disciples. I have sent some already, the disciples are on the way. They will surround him. They will create an organization. And no need to worry: the organization will do everything that we cannot do, and they always do it better. I have learned it through history. I will create a church... and I will not be involved in it at all. In fact, they do it on their own. I just simply encourage and help.”

Once the pope is there, Christ is forgotten; once the church is there, the Buddha is killed and murdered. It is always on the corpse of a Buddha that a religion stands.

These are analogies. Women can attain to their feminine mystique easily; that is the reason more women become attracted towards religion. They don’t create religion– but more women, almost four times more than men, become interested in religion. Among Mahavir’s disciples, forty thousand were women and ten thousand men; and the proportion was the same with Buddha’s disciples. Go to any church and any temple and just count– you will always find four women to one man, and that one may have come just because the wife has come; he may not be really there.

Women can become more easily attuned; they are mothers, they are nearer nature. Man will find it a little difficult to come back; he has involvements, commitments, investments in his anxiety and tension. Even if he comes he will create an anxiety around religion. This is my everyday observation: women come to me– if they surrender, they surrender totally. If they meditate at all, they meditate totally. Then simply they start growing. Men come to me–if they surrender they cannot surrender totally, a part they always save. And when you surrender half-heartedly it is not a surrender at all. Then they meditate, but then meditation becomes an anxiety. And they come and they say, ”Now this meditation is creating anxiety. I cannot sleep. I am constantly thinking about it– how it is going to happen, how I am to manage it.”

It is not a management. You cannot manage it. You have to be in a let-go, a great let-go.

It is difficult for man; he is so disciplined for anxiety, so trained to be tense. From the very childhood, the society forces men to become men– aggressive, violent, always reaching for something, trying to achieve something, ambitious. If they start playing with dolls the parents say, ”Why? What are you doing? Are you being a sissy? This is for girls, not for boys. Home is for girls; to play with dolls is for girls, not for boys. They have to go out, and fight their way into life. They have to struggle– that is for them.”

If home is for girls then at-homeness will also be for girls. Then you are never at home; and at homeness is meditation.

[Continuously, continuously,
it seems to remain.
Draw upon it
and it serves you with ease.]

- The feminine mystique, the valley spirit, the hollowness

[Continuously, continuously,
it seems to remain.]

- it is always there

[Draw upon it
and it serves you with ease.]

- And it makes you total, it fills you with ease, at-homeness. Relaxation comes to you.

Look at existence not as a struggle; but as an enjoyment; look at existence not as a war, conflict, but as a celebration– and infinite is the celebration, infinite is the possibility of bliss– bliss upon bliss.

[Continuously, continuously,
it seems to remain.
Draw upon it
and it serves you with ease.]

Enough for today.