The Story of Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Buddha

The Book of Understanding - Osho

In paradise one afternoon, in its most famous cafe, Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Buddha are sitting and chatting. The waiter comes with a tray that holds three glasses of the juice called "Life," and offers them. Buddha immediately closes his eyes and refuses; he says, "Life is misery."

Confucius closes his eyes halfway---he is a a middlist, he used to preach the golden mean---and asks the waiter to give him the glass. He would like to have a sip---but just a sip, because without tasting how can one say whether life is misery or not? Confucius had a scientific mind; he was not much of a mystic, he had a very pragmatic, earthbound mind. He was the first behaviorist the world has known, very logical. And it seems perfectly right---he says, "First I will have a sip, and then I will say what I think." He takes a sip and he says, "Buddha is right---life is misery."

Lao Tzu takes all the three glasses and he says, "Unless one drinks totally, how can one say anything?" He drinks all the three glasses and starts dancing!

Buddha and Confucius ask him, "Are you not going to say anything?" And Lao Tzu says, "This is what I am saying---my dance and my song are speaking for me." Unless you taste totally, you cannot say. And when you taste totally, you still cannot say because what you know is such that no words are adequate.

Buddha is on one extreme, Confucius is in the middle. Lao Tzu has drunk all the three glasses. He has drunk them all; he has lived life in its three-dimensionality.