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own, so why bother? Let life flow on its own then you will be in a let go. Don't struggle and don't try to move upstream, don't even try to swim, just float with the current and let the current lead you wherever it leads. Be a white cloud moving in the sky -- no goal, going nowhere, just floating. That floating is the ultimate flowering.
So the first thing to understand about Chuang Tzu before we enter his sutras, is -- be natural. Everything unnatural has to be avoided. Don't do anything that is unnatural. Nature is enough -- you cannot improve upon it, but the ego says, no, you can improve upon nature -- that is how all culture exists.
Any effort to improve upon nature is culture, and all culture is like a disease -- the more a man is cultured the more dangerous he is.
I have heard that a hunter, a European hunter, was lost in a forest in Africa. Suddenly he came upon a few huts. He had never heard that a village existed in that thick forest. It was not on any map. So he approached the chief of the village, and he said: This is a pity that you are lost to civilisation. The chief said: No, it is not a pity, we are always afraid of being discovered -- once civilisation comes in we are lost. Nature is lost once you make an effort to improve upon it -- that means you are trying to improve upon God. All religions are trying to do that -- to improve upon God. Chuang Tzu is not in favour of that. He says nature is ultimate, and that ultimate nature he calls Tao. Tao means that nature is ultimate and cannot be improved. If you try to improve upon it, you will cripple it -- that is how we cripple every child.
Every child is born in Tao, then we cripple him with society, civilisation, culture, morality, religion... we cripple him from every side. Then he lives, but he is not alive.
I have heard that a small girl was going to a party, a friend's birthday party. She was very small, just four years old. She asked her mother: Were there such parties and dances when you were alive?
The more cultured and civilised, the more dead. If you want to see perfectly dead men and yet still alive go to the monk in the monasteries, go to the priests
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