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back and you shall attain great heights of success. Thousands will come to ask about me. "You have to answer them." This appealed to the reasoning of the disciple. How man indulges in rationalisation!
"It is only to do your work that I am going back," he told Lao Tzu. "People will come and you shall not be there to answer their questions. I cannot explain as you do, but I shall try my best."
His mind clung to the desire of fame and respect, It was now clear to him that there was no point in following Lao Tzu. No one knew him in the villages beyond and besides, he was about to die in the wilderness. But the sum total of his life's effort lay behind him. For his whole life he spread his fragrance and not when people were drawn by the fragrance, he was running away! Barely a night the disciple spent with him. The next morning he returned to the village.
The last person to see Lao Tzu was the guard at the check-post. Thereafter, no one knows what happened to him. Chinese tradition believes that he is still alive. For how can such a man die? Death occurs only to the ego. How can such a man, who never accumulated any ego, die? When the king came to fall at his feet, he left his hut and ran away. Such a man can never die!
Two unusual stories exist about Lao Tzu: One is that he was sixty-two years old when he was born... an old man! Those who loved him asserted that such people are always born old.
Most of us remain juvenile till the hour of death. We find eighty year old men playing with toys. The toys are different, but the play is the same.
We see a child sucking his bottle and we see an old man sucking his pipe. Psychologists say that both are doing the same, If an old man were to suck milk from a bottle he would look odd; so he finds other means of satisfying himself. He sucks at a pipe or a cigarette. When the warm smoke goes within, he gets the same satisfaction as when the mother's warm milk travelled down his throat. This delights and satisfies him. There is no difference between a child and an old man. And if there is, it is only the difference in stupidity. The child at least, drinks milk to sustain himself. The old man
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