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was embarrassing. So he simply said, when the sun was rising: "What a beautiful sun. Look...! What a beautiful sun is born, is rising! What a beautiful morning!"
That's all he said. But nobody responded because the neighbor, the host, knew that Lao Tzu wouldn't like it. And of course Lao Tzu wouldn't say anything, wouldn't respond.
When they came back, Lao Tzu told the neighbor, "From tomorrow, don't bring this man. He is a chatterbox." And he had only said this much: "What a beautiful sun," or "What a beautiful morning." That much in a two-or three-hour-long walk. But Lao Tzu said "Don't bring this chatterbox again with you. He talks too much, and talks uselessly -- because I also have eyes, I can see that the sun is being born and it is beautiful. What is the need to say it?"
Lao Tzu lived in silence. He always avoided talking about the truth that he had attained and he always rejected the idea that he should write it down for the generations to come.
At the age of ninety he took leave of his disciples. He said goodbye to them, and he said, "Now I am moving towards the hills, towards the Himalayas. I am going there to get ready to die. It is good to live with people, it is good to be in the world while you are living, but when one is getting nearer to death it is good to move into total aloneness, so that you move towards the original source in your absolute purity and loneliness, uncontaminated by the world."
The disciples felt very, very sad, but what could they do? They followed him for a few hundred miles, but by and by Lao Tzu persuaded them to go back. Then alone he was crossing the border, and the guard on the border imprisoned him. The guard was also a disciple. And the guard said: "Unless you write a book, I am not going to allow you to move beyond the border. This much you must do for humanity. Write a book. That is the debt you have to pay, otherwise I won't allow you to cross." So for three days Lao Tzu was imprisoned by his own disciple.
It is beautiful. It is very loving. He was forced -- and that's how this small book, the book of Lao Tzu, TAO TE CHING, was born. He had to write it, because the disciple
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