Talks on Fragments from Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

Excerpt from Absolute Tao

Chapter 1

I speak on Buddha – I love him. Down through the centuries, through many lives, I have loved him. He is tremendously beautiful, extraordinarily beautiful, superb. But he is not on the earth, he does not walk on the earth. He flies in the sky and leaves no footprints. You cannot follow him, you never know his whereabouts. He is like a cloud. Sometimes you meet him but that is accidental. And he is so refined that he cannot take roots on this earth. He is meant for some higher heaven. In that way he is one-sided. Earth and heaven don’t meet in him; he is heavenly but the earthly part is missing; he is like a flame, beautiful, but there is no oil, no container – you can see the flame but it is going higher and higher, nothing holds it on the earth. I love him, I speak on him from my heart, but still, a distance remains. It always remains in the phenomenon of love – you come closer and closer and closer, but even in closeness there is a distance. That is the misery of all lovers.

I speak on Lao Tzu totally differently. I am not related to him because even to be related a distance is needed. I don’t love him, because how can you love yourself? When I speak on Lao Tzu I speak as if I am speaking on my own self. With him my being is totally one. When I speak on Lao Tzu it is as if I am looking in a mirror – my own face is reflected. When I speak on Lao Tzu, I am absolutely with him. Even to say “absolutely with him” is not true – I am him, he is me.

Historians are doubtful about his existence. I cannot doubt his existence because how can I doubt my own existence? The moment I became possible, he became true to me. Even if history proves that he never existed it makes no difference to me; he must have existed because I exist – I am the proof. During the following days, when I speak on Lao Tzu, it is not that I speak on somebody else. I speak on myself – as if Lao Tzu is speaking through a different name, a different nama-rupa, a different incarnation.

Lao Tzu is not like Mahavira, not mathematical at all, yet he is very, very logical in his madness. He has a mad logic! When we penetrate into his sayings you will come to feel it; it is not so obvious and apparent. He has a logic of his own: the logic of absurdity, the logic of paradox, the logic of a madman. He hits hard. Mahavira’s logic can be understood even by blind men. To understand Lao Tzu’s logic you will have to create eyes. It is very subtle, it is not the ordinary logic of the logicians – it is the logic of a hidden life, a very subtle life. Whatsoever he says is on the surface absurd; deep down there lives a very great consistency. One has to penetrate it; one has to change his own mind to understand Lao Tzu. Mahavira you can understand without changing your mind at all; as you are, you can understand Mahavira. He is on the same line. Howsoever much ahead of you he may have reached the goal, he is on the same line, the same track.

When you try to understand Lao Tzu, he zigzags. Sometimes you see him going towards the east and sometimes towards the west, because he says east is west and west is east, they are together, they are one. He believes in the unity of the opposites. And that is how life is. So Lao Tzu is just a spokesman of life. If life is absurd, Lao Tzu is absurd; if life has an absurd logic to it, Lao Tzu has the same logic to it. Lao Tzu simply reflects life. He doesn’t add anything to it, he doesn’t choose out of it; he simply accepts whatsoever it is.