The difference is tremendous. When you say that the lotus is nothing but the mud, the dirty mud, you have destroyed all beauty. Then only dirty mud is left in your hands and in your soul. Then you are left with a filthy life. Taoists say that if a lotus can come out of the mud then the mud cannot be just mud, it must be carrying the lotus, the possibility of the lotus. The fragrance, the color, the beauty of the lotus must be hidden somewhere in the mud. So don’t call it just mud – it carries the lotus, it is the womb for the lotus. So even mud becomes beautiful. And you start looking for the meaning in the mud. It is there somewhere – you may be able to see, you may not be able to see, that depends on your clarity, your eyes. But condemnation disappears.

Freud says that all love is nothing but sex; even the love of God, even the love of Meera for Krishna, the love of Ananda for Buddha, the love of Mary Magdalene for Jesus, is nothing but sexuality. Can’t you see how much beauty is destroyed immediately with a stroke? If you ask the Taoist he will say that even when a man goes to make love to a prostitute there is something of prayer in it, there is something of the divine in it.

Just few days ago I saw an article written by the Dattabal. He has put me with Freud, has said that we both say the same thing. There can’t be any greater misunderstanding. I say sex is love, Freud says love is sex – and the difference is tremendous. I say that in sex also there is a glimpse of samadhi; I make sex also sacred. Freud says that in samadhi, in Ramakrishna’s samadhi, there is nothing but repressed sexuality. He makes samadhi also profane.

Those who have no understanding can put me in one bracket with Freud. It is very easy, simple. They will say, “What is the difference whether you call love sex or you call sex love? There is no difference.” Not much if you only think of the words. Then there is only the difference that I put sex in one place and love in another and Freud puts them just in the opposite places. So there is not much difference.

But can’t you see the difference? The difference is tremendous, vital, and of great value. And much will depend on that difference.

The Taoist vision is to look at the part through the whole so that the whole can give a meaning to the part, can make it meaningful. Not otherwise. Your eyes are beautiful but taken out of your body they won’t be.

It happened in the life of Vincent Van Gogh…. He was an ugly man, very ugly – a great painter and a beautiful soul, but a very ugly body. No woman ever fell in love with him. He was repulsive, he was horrible. And he suffered very much. At the age of thirty-three he committed suicide. If there is nobody to love you what is there to live for?

Once visiting a prostitute he said, “Nobody has ever said anything to me lovingly. Nobody has said that I am beautiful or I am nice or I am this or that. I hanker for it.” The woman took pity on him, she must have had a very compassionate heart. She looked to find something that she could appreciate but she could not find anything. The face was ugly, the nose was ugly, the eyes were ugly, and everything was topsy-turvy – except the ears. So she said, “But you have beautiful ears.” And she played with his ear.