The Empty Boat: Encounters with Nothingness
About This Book
Osho's commentary on stories from Chuang Tzu — the great Taoist sage of ancient China. The "empty boat" is the central metaphor: if an empty boat drifts into yours on a river you feel no anger; if a person is in it you feel irritation or rage. The difference is your perception of intention. Osho uses this and other Chuang Tzu stories to explore the Taoist vision of non-doing (wu-wei), the ego as the source of all conflict, and the natural state of consciousness when the self-sense is dissolved.
What You'll Learn
The ego is the source of all suffering — not because it is evil but because it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the self. The "empty boat" state — acting without the sense of a doer, living without the sense of a liver — is what Taoists call wu-wei; it is also what Hindus call Brahman-consciousness and Buddhists call no-self. The greatest gift a person can give the world is their own emptiness — their willingness to act as an instrument of the Tao rather than a self-promoting ego.
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