Living Tao
Talks on Fragments from `Tao Te Ching´ by Lao Tzu 

Lao Tzu (translated by Lin Yutang): The softest substance of the world goes through the hardest. 
Osho: Have you ever loved someone? Love is so soft that you cannot think that love can win, but it always wins. Love is not afraid, it can take any form. Hate is afraid, hate is a hard thing.
Lao Tzu: Through this I know the benefit of taking no action. The teaching without words and the benefit of taking no action are without compare in the universe. 
Osho: But that doesn’t mean that you go to a cave and sit and drop all actions. Even while you are doing things always remember you are not the doer, the whole is working through you.

CONTENTS
1. On Knowing the Eternal Law
2. Choice and Choicelessness
3. On the Futility of Contention
4. Buddhas and Fools
5. On the Qualities of the Taoist
6. Discipline and Control
7. On the Softest Substance
8. In Existence There Is No Question
9. On Calm and Quietude
10. Every Buddha Enriches the Universe

'People accumulate wealth at the cost of their own selves. Finally, eventually one day, they become aware that they have lost themselves and that they have purchased useless things. The cost was great, but now nothing can be done, the time is past. If you are time conscious you will be mad after accumulating things, you will transform your whole life energy into things.

A man who is conscious of the whole range will enjoy this moment as much as he can. He will float. He will not bother about tomorrow because he knows tomorrow never comes. He knows deeply that finally only one thing has to be attained – that is one’s own self.
Live, and live so totally that you come in contact with yourself. And there is no other way to come in contact with yourself. The deeper you live, the deeper you know yourself, in relationship, in aloneness. The deeper you move in relationship, in love, the deeper you know. Love becomes a mirror. And one who has never loved cannot be alone, he can at the most be lonely.

One who has loved and known a relationship can be alone. Now his aloneness has a totally different quality to it, it is not loneliness. He has lived in a relationship, fulfilled his love, known the other, and known himself through the other. Now he can know himself directly, now the mirror is not needed. Just think of someone who has never come across a mirror. Can he close his eyes and see his face? Impossible. He cannot even imagine his face, he cannot meditate on it. But a man who has come to a mirror, looked into it, known his face through it, can close his eyes and see the face inside. That’s what happens in relationship. When a person moves into a relationship, the relationship mirrors, reflects him, and he comes to know many things in himself that he never knew existed.

Through the other he comes to know his anger, his greed, his jealousy, his possessiveness, his compassion, his love, and thousands of moods of his being. Many climates he encounters through the other. By and by a moment comes when he can now be alone; he can close his eyes and know his own consciousness directly. That’s why I say that for people who have never loved meditation is very, very difficult.

Those who have loved deeply can become deep meditators; those who have loved in a relationship are now in a position to be by themselves. Now they have become mature, now the other is not needed. If the other is there they can share, but the need has disappeared; now there is no dependence.'