he made a sign, pointing at the sky.
The philosopher meant: There is only one truth,
which covers all.
Nasruddin’s companion, an ordinary man, thought:
The philosopher is mad.
I wonder what precautions Nasruddin will take.
Nasruddin looked in his knapsack and took out a coil of rope.
This he handed to his companion.
Excellent, thought the companion.
We will bind him up if he becomes violent.
The philosopher saw that Nasruddin meant:
Ordinary humanity tries to find truth by methods
as unsuitable as attempting to climb
into the sky with a rope.
Now can you remain content with the fact
of Mulla Nasruddin giving the rope to his companion
without any interpretation whatsoever?
Remain with the fact, and you will be in meditation.
167. Love.
The ego is necessary
for both the sensation of pain and the feeling of pleasure
and vice versa also –
the sensation of pain and the feeling of pleasure,
are necessary for the existence of the ego.
In fact these are two sides of the same coin.
The name of the coin is ignorance.
Understand this
and do not fight with the ego
or with pain and pleasure,
because unless ignorance is gone
they will not go, they cannot go.
And you cannot fight with ignorance
because ignorance is just absence of something –
absence of yourself.
So be present to your ignorance,
be aware of it,
and then you will be and there will be no ignorance
because you and ignorance cannot exist simultaneously,
as with light and darkness.
168. Love.
A small boy with a penny
clutched tightly in his hot little hand
entered the toy shop
and drove the proprietor to distraction
asking him to show this and that
and everything
without ever making up his mind.
Look here, my boy, said the storekeeper finally.
What do you want to buy for a penny –
the whole world with a fence around it?