|
Main Index
|
| |
| |
|
| |
Lao Tzu died or how he died! All that is known is that one fine day he disappeared. This same advice he gives to others: when your labour is crowned with success, step silently into oblivion.
But this is very difficult because this is the moment we toiled for. We step back into obscurity at times but that is in our moments of defeat and failure. Then we wish to hide, to run away. In our sorrow and despair, we even go to the extent of committing suicide. This goes to show how deeply we wish to withdraw into obscurity; to fade away, so that we leave no trace behind. When, however, a person withdraws into oblivion in the hour of his success, a great transformation takes place in his life.
To run away from life, to drown oneself in oblivion in one's hour of despair and failure, is a very natural reaction. The mind always prompts us to run away, to hide when beset with failure, so that others may not know. Failure torments the ego, whereas success nourishes it. When a man is successful, he walks with his chest out. He goes out of his way to meet even those whom he does not know because now he is very eager that all the world should know of his success. This was the very moment he longed for. But here is this man Lao Tzu who says, "Fade back into obscurity when your work is successful."
If the ego becomes established in the moment of success, it paves the way to hell. If you withdraw yourself from the public gaze in your moment of achievement, you find yourself on the doorstep of heaven. When the doer's fame spreads at the successful completion of his mission, his stepping into obscurity opens the gate of heaven.
Here, hell means the ego and heaven means the annihilation of the ego. There is no other heaven or hell. The stronger the 'I', the greater the hell; the rarer the 'I' the more I am in heaven. My being in heaven depends on how much of the 'I' is in me. The knowledge that "I am" is the cause of all my woes and the feeling that 'I am not', is my bliss, my joy.
Understand this a little. Whenever you experience pain or suffer anguish, have you tried to find out where and what this pain is? What is the fundamental cause of the pain?
|
|
|
|
| |