The Empty Boat

The Empty Boat: Encounters with Nothingness

How can words convey a message which is wordless? What can be said about an enlightened master? The essence of the message beyond words is paradox, and Osho and Chuang Tzu ask us to accept paradox, set aside mind and logic, and become empty. Only when empty of our conditionings, ideas and expectations - our egos - can their enlightenment become our own. Chuang Tzu millennia ago, and Osho today, conspire to make us nobodies, empty vessels who can receive the wordless, the eternal, which they embody. In these discourses Osho makes obvious that in our present state of being/doing, there is no room for the wordless to enter us and rest. It is there waiting for empty space in us; preoccupations, plans, close the door and we miss it But any effort to attain this emptiness reveals the paradox—effort and ambitions build ego and doom us to ultimate failure. So what can we do? Osho tells us there is nothing to be done, all doing is of the ego. But we can be in a state of receptivity, we can be open and accepting of existence. Bypass the critical mind and his words sink into us, deep into us, and we become like empty boats. To ponder over the words, their meanings, is the road to confusion. Osho uses contradiction as a technique and through it addresses all types of personality. He knows every quirk and twist of the ego, every trick of the mind; he is many jumps ahead. Osho is not trying to turn us into slaves of his rules, he is not our enemy. He has so much love for our monkeyish nature that his whole effort is to help us to become aware of our enslavements, not more adjusted to them. He shocks, jolts us from our comfortable cages, so that through understanding and awareness we can transcend them.