Love your neighbor as yourself
Zarathustra has many original insights. Just a single, original insight could have made him one of the greatest men that has ever lived, but he has so many, about each and everything. His vision is not of the ordinary. Perhaps that is the reason why people have forgotten him. He has been giving tremendous insights and truths, but they have passed over people's heads. It seems very easy to understand when Jesus says: "Love your neighbor as yourself." There is nothing original in it. Buddha has said it, Mahavira has said it. There is not anything that you cannot understand. With Zarathustra, you have to be very silent, remembering that you are encountering an utterly unique person who speaks to the depths of your very being, of which you are not aware. He is not a moral teacher in the usual sense; he is a perfect master. He is not interested in the trivia; his interest is in transforming you into a new man. The world is too burdened with the small man. He wants the whole of humanity to have wings for the heights, to have courage to go deep down in the earth to find water for its roots. Zarathustra expects too much, but whatever he expects is possible. He exposes man too much, but whatever he says is absolutely true. It may hurt you, it may destroy your old conceptions, it may destroy you -- because only upon your destruction can this new man arrive. His each word is a seed. If you allow it to settle in your heart, you will never be the same man again. Zarathustra is the most potential man the world has ever known. It has known great men, and many of them, but they were in a certain way still understandable. They used your language, they used your prejudices. Rather than giving you a new light they have supported you as you are. You call them great because they have supported you, they have made you comfortable with yourself. Zarathustra creates discomfort, discontent, because without a great discontent the man of tao is not possible. Your other great men have been teaching you to be contented, to be desireless. Zarathustra teaches you a divine discontent, and a longing for the stars. And taoism agrees with him absolutely, that unless you have a longing for the stars, you cannot grow, and you cannot become your true self; you cannot achieve your potential to its fullness. Hence, listen to his words, not just as words, but as seeds. Zarathustra says, YOU FLEE TO YOUR NEIGHBOR AWAY FROM YOURSELVES. Nobody has said that before him, and nobody has said it with exactly the same emphasis even after him. And it is such a great truth, that once you have understood it, you will see how blind we are. We are not even aware of what we are doing or why we are doing it. YOU FLEE TO YOUR NEIGHBOR AWAY FROM YOURSELVES. It is not for the love of the neighbor; it is just the emptiness of yourself. You want somehow to remain engaged, because to be alone, unengaged... a great fear of one's aloneness, a great fear of one's emptiness, a great fear of one's darkness, and finally the ultimate fear of death, grips everybody. To avoid all these, one has to avoid coming home. Keep yourself engaged. It does not matter in what.
