World Beyond

Quotations Regarding the Tao - V

The following are excerpts from the book, “Tao: The Pathless Path” by Osho.

“Loneliness is negative, the absence of the other.  Aloneness is positive, the presence of your won being.  Loneliness is solitariness, aloneness is solitude.  Loneliness is ugly, aloneness is beautiful.  Aloneness has a luminosity in it.”

“A real seeker is agnostic.  He never claims, “I know,” and he never says, “This is the truth.” He is very open, he is not closed.  He has no dogma, he has no creed, he is simply conscious and aware, and is ready to face any reality whatsoever.  Whatsoever reality comes to be revealed he is ready to go into it.  He trusts life.  People who don’t trust life create beliefs, dogmas, theories, to protect themselves.  The real wise man is vulnerable; he does not protect himself.  He is open to rains, to winds, to the sun, to the moon, to life, to death, to darkness, to light—he is open to all.  He has no protection; his vulnerability is total.”

Quotations Regarding the Tao - IV

The following are excerpts from the book, “Tao: The Pathless Path” by Osho.

“Whenever anything is of discipline, Tao is against it.  Whenever anything is of spontaneity, Tao is for it.  Tao is spontaneity, Tao is suchness, Tao is a tremendous acceptance of whatsoever is.  And in that acceptance one flowers.”

“Once you start intellectualizing about life, you start going astray.  Life has to be lived.  Life has to be lived existentially and not intellectually.  Intellect is not a bridge but a barrier.”

“The scholar has decided that first he has to understand intellectually, then he will move.  Now, this is no way to move.  First you have to move, and then comes understanding.”

“The Taoist is always happy because he does not wait for any cause; he does not wait for any special situation in which he is going to be happy.  Happiness is like breathing, happiness is like the beat of the heart—happiness is his being, it is not something that happens to him.  Happiness is not something that happens and does not happen, happiness is something that is always there.  He is full of happiness. Happiness is the stuff that existence is made of, and a Taoist has fallen in harmony with existence—naturally he is happy.”

“The Taoist maturity is so tremendous, is of such splendor, is of such depth and height, that no religion can be compared to it; they all look like kindergarten schools—made especially for children.”

Quotations Regarding the Tao - III

The following are excerpts from the book, “Tao: The Pathless Path” by Osho.

“Let this be the definition of happiness: To be with the whole is to be happy; to be with the whole is to be healthy; to be with the whole is to be holy.  To be separate is to be unhealthy; to be separate is to be neurotic; to be separate is to fall from grace. 

The fall of man is not because he has disobeyed God.  The fall is because he thinks he is.  The fall is because man thinks that he is a separate entity.”

“Contentment comes only when you are not comparing, when you are simply within yourself, totally in yourself—centered, rooted…true music comes only when you are deeply rooted in yourself.  Then you become the instrument and the whole plays on it.”

“Life comes only through being, not through having.”

“Comparison is the root cause of misery.  To be noncomparative—to be neither higher nor lower, just to be yourself, no to think in relation to others, just to think in terms of your tremendous aloneness—then you are happy.”

Quotations Regarding the Tao - II

The following are excerpts from the book, “Tao: The Pathless Path” by Osho.

“The poet is in search.  His search is for the beautiful, but beauty is nothing but truth glimpsed.  Truth, when you just glimpse it for a moment, appears as beauty.  When truth is realized totally, then you come to know that beauty was only a function of truth.  Wherever truth exists, there exists beauty—it is a shadow of truth.  When truth is seen through screens, it is beauty; when beauty is naked, it is truth.

So the difference between the poet and the mystic is not much.  The poet is coming closer, the mystic has arrived.  For the poet, there are only glimpses of truth; for the mystic, truth has become his very life.  The poet is only sometimes transported to the world of truth and then falls back again.  For the mystic, truth has become his abode: he lives there; he lives as truth.”

"Poets come closest to religiousness.  Thinkers, philosophers, logicians, theologians, scientists, are very far away.”

“Tao means to exist on the way, and to exist in such a way that the way and you are not two.  This existence is one—we are not separate from it.  The separation, the idea of separation, is very illusory.  We are joined together, we are one whole.  We are not islands, we are one continent.  You are in me, I am in you.  The trees are in you, you are in the trees.  It is an interconnected whole.”

Quotations Regarding the Tao - I

The following are excerpts from the book, “Tao: The Pathless Path” by Osho.

“Tao means the way—they don’t talk about the goal at all.  They say: The goal will take care of itself; you need not worry about the goal.  If you know the way you know the goal, because the goal is not at the very end of the way, the goal is all over the way—each moment and each step it is there.  It is not that when the way ends you arrive at the goal; each moment, wherever you are, you are at the goal if you are on the way.  To be on the way is to be at the goal.”

“That’s why Taoism is not an organized religion—cannot be.  It is an organic religion but not an organized religion.  You can be a Taoist if you simply live your life authentically, spontaneously, if you have the courage to go in to the unknown on your own, individual, not leaning on anybody.  Not following anybody, simply going into the dark night not knowing whether you will arrive anywhere or you will be lost.  If you have the courage, that risk is there—it is risky, it is adventurous.

Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, are superhighways; you need not risk anything, you simply follow the crowd, you go with the mob.  With Tao you have to go alone, you have to be alone.  Tao respects the individual and not the society.  Tao respects the unique and not the crowd.  Tao respects freedom and not conformity.  Tao has no tradition.  Tao is a rebellion, and the greatest rebellion possible.

That’s why I call Tao “the pathless path.”  It is a path but not like other paths.  It has a very different quality to it: the quality of freedom, the quality of anarchy, the quality of chaos.”

Victory

I remember my youth and the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth and all men.  --Joseph Conrad

One day, there will be no borders, no boundaries, no flags and no countries, and the only passport will be the heart.  --Tamara Robinson

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance and does not object to sharing.  --Alexander Solzhenitsyn

There are victories of the soul and spirit.  Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.  --Elie Wiesel

Helping Others

Each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity.  --Marie Curie

The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns ahose inner qualities that make all men human, and therefore, brothers.  --Martin Luther King Jr.

Down in their hearts, wise men know this truth: the only way to help yourself is to help others.  --Elbert Hubbard

Help thy brother's boat across and lo! Thine own has reached the shore.  --Hindu Proverb

Optimism

Man is what he believes.  --Anton Chekov

The mind in its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.  --John Milton

No pessismist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.  --Helen Keller

Right Living

Oh, the glory of growth, silent, mighty, persistent, inevitable!  To awaken, to open up like a flower to the light of a fuller consciousness.  --Emily Carr

If your capacity to acquire has outstripped your capacity to enjoy, you are on the way to the scrap heap.  --Glen Buck

Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.  --Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Learning

The wisest mind has something yet to learn.  --George Santayana

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.  --Henry David Thoreau

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.  --John Kenneth Galbraith