Go to a rosebush. See the flower and the thorns. Those thorns are not against the flower, they protect it. They are guards around the flower: security, safety measures. In a really beautiful person, in a really harmonious person, nothing is rejected. Rejection is against existence. Everything should be absorbed. That’s the art. If you reject, that shows you are no artist. Everything should be absorbed, used. If there is a rock in the way don’t try to reject it, use it as a stepping stone.

Therefore the sage:
Manages affairs without action…

He does not escape to the Himalayas. He remains in the world. He manages affairs, but without any action. He is not active inside, the action remains on the outside. At the center he remains inactive. That is what Lao Tzu calls wu wei – finding the center of the cyclone. The cyclone is on the outside but in the center nothing moves, nothing stirs.

…Preaches the doctrine without words.

Here I am preaching to you a doctrine without words. You will say I am using words. Yes, I am preaching…without words, because deep inside me no word arises. It is for you, not for me; the word is for you, it is not for me. I use it; I am not used by it, it does not fill me. The moment I am not talking to you I am not talking at all. I never talk to myself, there is no inner talk. When I am not talking I am silent, and when I am talking the silence is not disturbed, the silence remains untouched.

…Preaches the doctrine without words.
All things take their rise,
But he does not turn away from them;

He never escapes. He never rejects. He never renounces. And that is the meaning of my sannyas. The word sannyas means renunciation, but I don’t preach renunciation. Then why do I call you sannyasins? I call you sannyasins in the Lao Tzuan sense: renounce and yet don’t renounce, remain in the world but yet out of it – this is the meeting of the opposites.

So I don’t tell you to move, to drop, to leave your families. There is no need. You be there, you be totally there, but deep down something remains above, transcendental – don’t forget that. When you are with your wife, be with your wife, and also be with you. That’s the point. If you forget yourself and you are just with your wife, you are a worldly man. Then sooner or later you will escape, because it will create so much misery in life that you will want to leave and renounce and go to the hills. Both are extremes. And the truth is never in the extreme, the truth comprehends the extremes. It is in both and in neither.

All things take their rise,
But he does not turn away from them;
He gives them life, but does not take possession of them.