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The Empty Boat

Encounters with Nothingness
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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."
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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."

"Such is the perfect man – his boat is empty; there is nobody inside. 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." Osho

Chapter Titles
    #1: The Toast Is Burned
    #2: The Man of Tao
    #3: The Owl and the Phoenix
    #4: Apologies
    #5: Three in the Morning
    #6: The Need to Win
    #7: Three Friends
    #8: The Useless
    #9: Means and Ends
    #10: Wholeness
    #11: Chuang Tzu's Funeral
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
"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

In this title, Osho talks on the following topics:
desire... life... mystery... somebody... answer... ego... society... confucius... diogenes... alexander...
More Information
Type Series of Talks
Publisher OSHO Media International
ISBN-13 978-0-88050-212-2
Number of Pages 224
File Size 439 KB
Format Nook Or Kindle
ASIN B004LLICD6