On one hand he had succeeded in accumulating wealth, on the other hand he had succeeded in accumulating misery. This has been my motto.’ He succeeded in accumulating wealth – and this is how people succeed in accumulating nonsense also! 'Once a man asked a miser, a great miser, ‘How did you succeed in accumulating so much wealth?’ The miser said, ‘This is my motto: whatsoever is to be done tomorrow should be done today, and whatsoever is to be enjoyed today should be enjoyed tomorrow. When there is purpose you will always be in misery.

There is no one to manipulate it, the boat is empty. If you ask a perfect man, ‘What are you doing?’ he will say, ‘I don’t know, but this is what is happening.’ If you ask me why I am talking to you, I will say, ‘Ask the flower why the flower is flowering.’ This is happening, this is not manipulated. A perfect man lives without any purpose a perfect man moves but without any motive. You will move, you will change, you will be a riverlike flow, but not going anywhere, with no goal in view. 'When the mind is not there life will remain a movement, but it will not be directed. Even if it is moving it is not going anywhere. An empty boat is just there, it is not going anywhere. First, an empty boat is not going anywhere because there is nobody to direct it, nobody to manipulate it, nobody to drive it somewhere. 'This is what Chuang Tzu means when he says: A perfect man is like an empty boat.

Then the journey has started, then a new seed has sprouted. You may become an Alexander, but you remain ordinary – then who is the extraordinary one? The extraordinariness starts only when you don’t hanker after extraordinariness. 'The ordinary mind hankers to be extraordinary, that is part of ordinariness the ordinary mind desires to be somebody in particular, that is part of ordinariness. 'Chuang Tzu is a rare flowering, because to become nobody is the most difficult, almost impossible, most extraordinary thing in the world. But if you penetrate deeper, if you really become intimate with me, if you forget the body, the boat, then you come to encounter a nothingness. If you simply look at the surface, then somebody is there, because the boat is there.

' If you meet a Chuang Tzu, or a Lao Tzu, or me, the boat is there, but it is empty, nobody is in it.

Chuang tzu empty boat