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its aspects. A sunset, and the clouds are all gold and the sun is just to drop into the ocean, and the whole ocean has become red, and even your breathing stops for a moment. The awe of it is such! You call it awe because you don't know what it is; that is another aspect of Tao. You see a beautiful woman or a beautiful man, and for a moment you forget everything else. Your eyes remain focused, unblinking; you forget even blinking. You may call it physical beauty, form, proportion -- all are aspects of Tao. This night full of stars, you Lying down on the grass looking at the sky, struck by the splendor of it -- you call it splendor -- that is another aspect of Tao.
Listening to music, something stirs very deep in your being; a synchronicity happens. You have become attuned with the music, a subtle dance arises in you. You call it music? You call it poetry? It is Tao, another aspect of Tao.
Tao has multidimensional reality. Tao is the richest experience in the world. The person who knows Tao is the richest man in the world; he has the greatest inexhaustible treasure. Even Alexanders are beggars compared to him. Knowing all the aspects of Tao one becomes Tao himself, because when you become acquainted with these aspects of Tao, slowly slowly you become acquainted with yourself -- because that too is the inner dimension of Tao. The sunset is part of the outer dimension, the music is the part of outer dimension. And the witnessing, the watchfulness, the experience of awe, beauty, wonder, joy, love, they are aspects of the inner dimension. Then there is only isness.
Buddha used to call it suchness -- tathata; tathata exactly means Tao. You can call it isness; isness will make it more clear to you because "Tao" seems to be an alien word. But don't translate it as God; it can be translated as God, but then immediately you become a victim of many many associations that have become part of the word "God." God also means Tao, but in the hands of the priests and the missionaries and the theologians the word has become corrupted; they have poisoned it.
Friedrich Nietzsche says, "God is dead." He is not dead, he has been murdered -- murdered by the
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