The Empty Boat

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In this highly accessible introduction to Zen and its spiritual origins, Osho talks about the stories of the Chinese mystic Chuang Tzu, revitalizing the 3000 year-old Taoist message of self-realization. He speaks about the state of egolessness – "the empty boat."
The Empty Boat
Click on Chapter Titles below for Details of Each Talk
In this highly accessible introduction to Zen and its spiritual origins, Osho talks about the stories of the Chinese mystic Chuang Tzu, revitalizing the 3000 year-old Taoist message of self-realization. He speaks about the state of egolessness – "the empty boat."

Excerpt from: The Empty Boat, Chapter 1
" If you meet a Chuang Tzu, or a Lao Tzu, or me, the boat is there, but it is empty, nobody is in it. If you simply look at the surface, then somebody is there, because the boat is there. But if you penetrate deeper, if you really become intimate with me, if you forget the body, the boat, then you come to encounter a nothingness.

"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 – then who 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?

"Once a man asked a miser, a great miser, ‘How did you succeed in accumulating so much wealth?’ The miser said, ‘This is my motto: whatsoever is to be done tomorrow should be done today, and whatsoever is to be enjoyed today should be enjoyed tomorrow. This has been my motto.’ He succeeded in accumulating wealth – and this is how people succeed in accumulating nonsense also!

"That miser was also miserable. On one hand he had succeeded in accumulating wealth, on the other hand he had succeeded in accumulating misery. And the motto is the same for accumulating money as it is for accumulating misery: whatsoever is to be done tomorrow do it today, right now, don’t postpone it. And whatsoever can be enjoyed right now, never enjoy it right now, postpone it for tomorrow.

"This is the way to enter hell. It always succeeds, it has never been a failure. Try it and you will succeed – or, you may have already succeeded. You may have been trying it without knowing. Postpone all that which can be enjoyed, just think of the tomorrow." Osho
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Publisher Osho Media International
Type Series of Talks