Nature of Nature

Hare Krishna!

Acharya Rajneesh has spoken quite a good lot on Tao – it’s most simple definition being – the absolute principle underlying the universe. His lectures on Tao Te Ching (by Lao Tzu) are called Tao Upanishad and go up to six volumes of thick books. He has also given short lectures on various Tao parables of Lieh Tzu (one of the followers of Tao) in his lectures collected in “Tao – The Pathless Path”. Tao has a very different, yet easy to understand take on life and its matters. 

Some excerpts from the book:

1. This is human mind: today is being wasted. but it hopes tomorrow is something going to happen…Life will become intolerable, impossible is if there is nothing to wait for. (8)
2. One has to invent; out of misery one has to invent the tomorrow and something to cling to. Your gods, your heavens, your paradises, your mokshas, are all inventions. (9)
3. A person who needs to be superior to feel good is a person who is carrying a volcano within him. A person who has to be superior to feel happy is suffering deep down from inferiority complex. (45)
4. For the seeker, the first thing to decide is what he knows and what he does not know – the first thing to decide. (71)
5. Only a non-ambitious person can be happy. An ambitious person is bound to be frustrated. (77)
6. Truth is naked, truth is all over, truth is within and without; and the only barriers are the words, the theories, the theologies that you have learned. (91)
7. Mind is at rest only when there is a conclusion, otherwise never. (98)
8. The attitude of Tao is cooperation, not conflict. The attitude of Tao not against nature but to be with it, to allow nature, to let it have its way, to cooperate with it, to go with it. (99)
9. Emptiness means: Drop all that you have done. Forget the past – it is because of the past that you feel that you are somebody. (145)

The book has just 5 parables in 6 chapters in just 177 pages. You can see for the first time I have put up as many as 9 quotes from a book. The book has many many other awesome quotes, that will bounce you over, and will compel to challenge your own thinking. Tao, as I mentioned has a very different take on life. Actually, it does not refute anything, it has an attitude of accepting everything an that too with grace. 

I have earlier written about Acharya Rajneesh – Death of a Yogi.

Hare Krishna!