Reflections on the Stories of Chuang Tzu

Encounters with Nothingness

“Whenever one starts meditating, the mind becomes rebellious. It starts up all types of arguments: What are you doing, why are you wasting time? Use this time! You can achieve so much in the time. That desire has been waiting for so long unfulfilled, and now you are wasting time meditating. Forget it. Those who say that meditation is possible are deceiving you. These Buddhas, these Chuang Tzus, don’t believe them. Believe in the mind, mind says. It creates all kinds of doubts about everybody, but it never creates any doubt about itself…” OSHO

The Empty Boat

Talks on the stories of Chuang Tzu

The Empty Boat vormt een uitermate toegankelijke introductie tot Tao en de spirituele oorsprong ervan spreekt Osho over de verhalen van de Chinese mysticus Chuang Tzu, terwijl hij de 3000 jaar oude Taoïstische boodschap van zelfrealisatie nieuw leven inblaast. Hij spreekt over de staat van egoloosheid als ’the empty boat’.
Zo is de perfecte mens – zijn boot is leeg; er zit niemand in. Als je Chuang Tzu ontmoet, Lao Tzu of mij, is de boot er maar hij is leeg; er zit niemand in.

Als je gewoon naar de oppervlakte kijkt, dan is er iemand aanwezig, omdat de boot er is. Maar als je dieper doordringt, als je intiem met me wordt – als je het lichaam, de boot vergeet – dan kom je een niets tegen.” Osho

Het boek The Empty Boat is verkrijgbaar bij de Boekhandel, eventueel tweedehands en als e book.

Impressie van The Empty Boat

“Chuang Tzu is a rare flowering because to become nobody is the most difficult, almost impossible, most extraordinary thing in the world. The ordinary mind hankers to be extraordinary: that is part of ordinariness; the ordinary mind desires to be somebody in particular – that is part of ordinariness. You may become an Alexander, but you remain ordinary – who then is the extraordinary one? The extraordinariness starts only when you don’t hanker after extraordinariness. Then the journey has started, then a new seed has sprouted.
“This is what Chuang Tzu means when he says: ‘A perfect man is like an empty boat.’ Many things are implied in it. First, an empty boat is not going anywhere because there is nobody to direct it, nobody to manipulate it, nobody to drive it somewhere. An empty boat is just there, it is not going anywhere; even if it is moving it is not going anywhere. When the mind is not there life will remain a movement, but it will not be directed. You will move, you will change, you will be a riverlike flow, but not going anywhere; with no goal in view.
“A perfect man lives without any purpose; a perfect man moves, but without any motive. If you ask a perfect man, ‘What are you doing?’ he will say, ‘I don’t know, but this is what is happening ‘ If you ask me why I am talking to you, I will say, ‘Ask the flower why the flower is flowering.’ This is happening, this is not manipulated; there is no one to manipulate it, the boat is empty. When there is purpose you will always be in misery – why?” Osho