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transformed through virtue or through any type of cultivation. It is only when you are not there that it disappears.
A WISE MAN HAS SAID:
"HE WHO IS CONTENT WITH HIMSELF
HAS DONE WORTHLESS WORK.
ACHIEVEMENT IS THE BEGINNING OF FAILURE,
FAME IS THE BEGINNING OF DISGRACE."
These are very paradoxical sayings, and you will have to be very alert to understand them; otherwise they can be misunderstood.
A WISE MAN HAS SAID:
"HE WHO IS CONTENT WITH HIMSELF
HAS DONE WORTHLESS WORK."
Religious people go on teaching: Be content with yourself. But yourself remains there to be content with. Chuang Tzu says: Don't be there, then there is no question of contentment or discontentment. This is real contentment, when you are not there. But if you feel that you are content, it is false -- because you are there, and it is just an ego fulfillment. You feel that you have achieved, you feel that you have reached.
Tao says that one who feels that he has achieved has missed already. One who feels that he has reached has lost, because success is the beginning of failure. Success and failure are two parts of one circle, of one wheel. Whenever success reaches its climax the failure has already started, the wheel is already turning downwards. Whenever the moon has become full there is no further progress. Now there is no further movement. Then next day the downward journey starts and now every day the moon will be less and less and less.
Life moves in circles. The moment you feel that you have achieved, the wheel has moved, you are already losing. It may take time for you to recognize this, because mind is dull. Much intelligence is needed, clarity is needed, to see things when they happen. Things happen to you and you take many days to recognize it, sometimes many months or years. Sometimes you even take many lives to recognize what has happened.
But just think about your past. Whenever you had a feeling that you had succeeded, immediately things changed, you started falling -- because the ego is part of the wheel. It succeeds because it can fail: if it cannot fail then there is no possibility of success.
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