Our joy, our laughter, our love, our silence, our meditation, are a far bigger force than nuclear weapons. They can try, they can kill our bodies; they cannot kill our spirit. And the moment they kill our bodies they are really getting into greater danger, because then our spirits are free to go around the world, with no visa, no passport, no green card. Taoism is preparing you for that.
Taoists have nothing to do with politics.
Taoists are the only group of people in the whole world which is apolitical.
You are living in the dark valley of your unconscious. You are fast asleep.
If you want to be friends, then awake.
You have to be responsible for yourself. You have to become your own savior.
Be independent.
Be free of mind.
Be centered.
Experience the ecstasy, the vast experience of ultimate blissfulness.
Then only can you be friends.
We are tortured by these popes, shankaracharyas, imams, rabbis. It is time that man is freed from all these fetters. You have to be yourself.
Imitators are phony. Imitators are bound to be unnatural, because they are going against their potential.
Nature produces each individual as unique. In twenty-five centuries, how many Buddhist monks have been trying to become Gautam Buddha? Not a single one has succeeded. For two thousand years, how many Christian monks have been trying to become Jesus Christ? None of them has succeeded. And the same is the story around the earth in all the religions.
Still we are blind; we can't see a simple fact, that Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Mohammed -- or anybody, known or unknown -- is unique, unrepeatable.
Nature does not like carbon copies. Nature loves original faces.
Taoistic effort is to take away all the barriers so that you can discover your original face; to remove all the masks so that you can discover who, in reality, you are. And the moment you realize yourself, that will be the moment of your gratitude towards taoism.