
Nobody is doing anything, neither I nor you
excerpt
series:
Tao - The Three Treasures
Volume 1 / Chapter 10
June 20, 1975 Chuang Tzu Auditorium

500



The last question:
You said that you are merely a presence and cannot do anything. But I and everybody else feel all the time that in your compassion for us you are influencing us and events to bring us closer to your temple.
Is this just our imagination playing tricks?
I cannot do anything but my presence can do. When I say I cannot do anything, I only mean that no I exists within me; the doer is dissolved. So without the doer how can you do anything?
But things happen. And when the doer is dissolved then tremendous things happen. I cannot claim the authorship of them or the doership of them -- I am not the doer. In fact I am not. I am just a presence with no label attached to it, just an opening. Much is possible if you are in my presence. If you allow my presence to move into you, melt into you, become part of you, much is possible. Even the impossible is possible -- but I am not the doer, it happens.
I am not specifically doing it. I am also a watcher as you are a watcher. It is happening. If you go to the sun and tell the sun that you are very grateful because it has been destroying darkness for you on the earth for so long, the sun will be surprised. The sun will say, "I don't know what darkness is. I have never come across it. I have never destroyed it, because how can you destroy a thing that you have never come across?" But it is happening all the same: light comes, darkness disappears.
If you allow this presence that is here, much is possible. The darkness can disappear, but I am not the doer. I am not forcing anything on you because that would be a violence, and even if it were not a violence I cannot do it because the doer is no longer there. If you come into me you will not meet anybody there. The temple is absolutely vacant. A real temple is always empty. If you find a God sitting inside, then it is a man-made temple. Nothingness is the only temple.
Yes, I'm not doing anything to you, but much is happening. So don't think that this may be imagination, because this may be a trick of the mind to think that this is imagination. Because then the mind can close. Thinking that this is imagination, a projection, this or that, the mind can close and then everything will stop. You don't listen to the mind. While you are with me don't be with your mind. I am a no-mind; the only way to be with me is to be a no-mind and then things happen. Nobody is doing them, they simply happen on their own accord.
Sitting silently, quietly with me, you grow. Nobody is doing anything, neither I nor you. Just sitting silently, the existence within you grows on its own.
Enough for today.
Tao - The Three Treasures
Volume 1 / Chapter 10