The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX
have been caught. The police must have looked in places where he was not, and their paths must
have crossed many times. But he was a beggar, a nonambitious man. He was not plotting. He had
no mind for plots, he was like the breeze. The police searched and searched for many days and
couldn’t find him.
You can find only that which you are. You always find yourself in others, because others are just
mirrors. To catch Chuang Tzu, a Lao Tzu was needed. Nobody else could catch him, for who
could understand him? A Buddha was needed; Buddha would have guessed where he was. But
a policeman? – impossible! Only if he were a thief would it be possible. Look at the policeman,
the way he is, the way he talks, the dirty language he uses; it is even more vulgar than thieves’
language. The policeman has to be more vulgar than the thief, otherwise thieves would win.
Once a man was caught by the police and the magistrate asked, ”Tell me, when you were caught,
what did the policeman say to you?”
The man said, ”Can I repeat the same vulgar language that he used here in court? Will you not feel
offended? It might shock you.”
The magistrate said, ”Leave out the vulgar language but tell us what he said.”
The man thought and said, ”Then...the policeman said nothing.”
The police came back to Hui Tzu and reported that they couldn’t find Chuang Tzu. There was no
such man.
They must have had a picture, some way of identifying him, some idea of how to find him, catch
him, his type. But Chuang Tzu has no identity, he has no face. Moment to moment he is a flow,
a liquidity. Moment to moment he reflects, responds to existence. He has no fixed abode, he is
homeless, faceless. He has no name. He is not a past, he is always a present, and all photographs
belong to the past.
It is beautiful and meaningful. Although it looks absurd, it is said that you cannot photograph a
man like Buddha. Not that you cannot photograph him – but the moment the photograph is there,
Buddha has moved. So a photograph is always of the past and never of the present. You cannot
catch Buddha’s present face. The moment you catch it, it has passed. The moment you understand,
it is already gone.
One of the names of Buddha is Tathagata. This word is really wonderful; it means, just like the wind
he came and he is gone. Thus came like the wind and thus gone. You cannot photograph a wind, a
breeze. Before you have caught it, it has already gone, it is there no longer.
Chuang Tzu could not be found because the police were searching for his past and he lived in the
present. He was a being, not a mind. Mind can be caught but being cannot be caught. There are
no nets. Mind can be caught very easily, and you are all caught in some way or other. Because you
have a mind, a wife, a husband will catch you; a shop, a treasure, a post, anything will catch you.
There are nets, millions of nets. And you cannot be free unless you are free of the mind. You will
be caught again and again. If you leave this wife, another woman will catch you immediately. You
The Empty Boat 54 Osho