Machiavelli knew about all these princes whom he had been teaching.... No prince, when he became king, accepted Machiavelli as his prime minister. He applied again and again. Those were his own students; now they had become kings, and he wanted to become their prime minister. It seems so logical that the prince would like his own wise teacher to become his wise adviser. But none of his disciples accepted him, they all refused. They said, "You are too cunning, too clever; we cannot trust you. And this is according to your teaching. We are simply following the dictums that you have given to us. We don't want to lose our kingdom" -- because if Machiavelli is prime minister today, tomorrow he will be the king. Machiavelli died a pauper, poor -- and he was the teacher of almost all the kings of Europe! You teach people to distrust that means you are teaching them to distrust you too.
A man of tao trusts you, with no conditions attached to it. A man of tao never distrusts anybody. He cannot, because he knows the beauty of trust, the enormous blissfulness of trust. A man of tao cannot lose that blessedness by mistrusting, distrusting anybody. A man of tao cannot lose his Kingdom of God just because you are unworthy of trust. That is your trouble. A man of tao will still trust the person if he tries to assassinate him. That is his problem. That is his act, and each act is followed by its consequences. The act of the man of tao is to trust, and it is followed by its own consequences. Just try to trust a little bit, so you can have a little taste. It is groovy! A man of tao is all that you can conceive: the madman, the awakened one, the crazy or the most sane. A man of tao is vast enough to contain all these contradictions in himself. And these contradictions in him are no longer contradictions as far as he is concerned; they become complementaries. If the same man appears in all these contradictions, then these contradictions must not be contradictions, and we are carrying a wrong attitude about contradictions. Life consists of contradictions, and the man who has arrived simply reflects life: the day and the night, the life and the death. Do you conceive of life and death as contradictions? Yes, logically they look like contradictions, but they are not. They are almost like two wheels of a bullock cart going on together. You have been dying since the day you have been born -- both the wheels going on together. It is not that death comes at a certain point when you are eighty or ninety, no. Death comes the same moment as life comes to you. They are two sides of the same coin. As you are growing, you are dying too. Every moment both things are happening together: something is dying, something is becoming alive. Hence if you can die each moment totally to the past, you will be born each moment totally new for the future. And that is the only life that can give you the freedom, the freedom of wildness you are asking for. You would like the same freedom? It is easy, the easiest thing in the world. Just please don't seek it, don't want it, don't chase it, don't go after it. Sit silently, doing nothing, and let the grass grow by itself.
A man of tao trusts you, with no conditions attached to it. A man of tao never distrusts anybody. He cannot, because he knows the beauty of trust, the enormous blissfulness of trust. A man of tao cannot lose that blessedness by mistrusting, distrusting anybody. A man of tao cannot lose his Kingdom of God just because you are unworthy of trust. That is your trouble. A man of tao will still trust the person if he tries to assassinate him. That is his problem. That is his act, and each act is followed by its consequences. The act of the man of tao is to trust, and it is followed by its own consequences. Just try to trust a little bit, so you can have a little taste. It is groovy! A man of tao is all that you can conceive: the madman, the awakened one, the crazy or the most sane. A man of tao is vast enough to contain all these contradictions in himself. And these contradictions in him are no longer contradictions as far as he is concerned; they become complementaries. If the same man appears in all these contradictions, then these contradictions must not be contradictions, and we are carrying a wrong attitude about contradictions. Life consists of contradictions, and the man who has arrived simply reflects life: the day and the night, the life and the death. Do you conceive of life and death as contradictions? Yes, logically they look like contradictions, but they are not. They are almost like two wheels of a bullock cart going on together. You have been dying since the day you have been born -- both the wheels going on together. It is not that death comes at a certain point when you are eighty or ninety, no. Death comes the same moment as life comes to you. They are two sides of the same coin. As you are growing, you are dying too. Every moment both things are happening together: something is dying, something is becoming alive. Hence if you can die each moment totally to the past, you will be born each moment totally new for the future. And that is the only life that can give you the freedom, the freedom of wildness you are asking for. You would like the same freedom? It is easy, the easiest thing in the world. Just please don't seek it, don't want it, don't chase it, don't go after it. Sit silently, doing nothing, and let the grass grow by itself.
hans-wolfgang - am Montag, 8. August 2005, 22:32
TheSource meinte am 8. Aug, 22:53:
Easiest.
Just breathe.
hans-wolfgang antwortete am 29. Sep, 23:35:
Easiest. Just breathe.
The easiest thing in the world is Tao -- HAS to be! because we live in Tao, we breathe in Tao. Tao surrounds us just like a fish is surrounded by the ocean. Tao is everywhere! and ONLY Tao is. Each breath that you take in, you take Tao in. Tao circulates in your blood, Tao beats in your heart, Tao walks when you walk, Tao sits when you sit. Tao is ONE with you!
