Nature Of The Fence

Move With People

Flowing with the river is the greatest art. That is being both active and passive, but in deep cooperation with existence. You have to do something: you will have to live, you will have to earn; at least you will have to breathe. You will have to do something. Movement, activity has to be used, and you will have to relax also. Otherwise activity will become impossible.

So sometimes be active, sometimes be passive but don’t get identified with either. Remain aloof. Use activity, use passivity but remain the third. Just as you put on clothes, sometimes white and sometimes black; just as in the day you work and in the night you rest; just the same, use both dualities. They are means; don’t get identified with them. Then you will be flowing with the river. This is the message of Hasidism.

The greatest people in the world are those who have lived in the world and have not allowed the world to corrupt them. It is very easy to go to the Himalayas and become uncorrupted, very easy because who is there to corrupt you? To live with the mountains you will become innocent, but that innocence may be just an appearance. Come back to the world, the test is in the marketplace. There you will come to know whether you have really become innocent because when the opportunity to become corrupted arises, only then will you be able to know: are you still corruptible or not? The Himalayas, their silence, can deceive you. It has deceived millions of people.

Hasids say, “Live in the marketplace. Move with people because people are your environment.”

A man asked Socrates, “Why don’t you go to the mountains to study mountains, rivers, trees, birds, animals?” The man said, “We have heard of old, ancient wise men who used to go deep in the mountains, live there and study nature.”

Socrates said, “My nature is people. What can trees teach me? Good to look at, but what can they teach me? What can mountains teach me? They are good to relax in. What can rivers teach me? My rivers, my mountains, my trees are people. People are my environment.”

He lived his whole life in Athens, lived and died there, among people.

He’s right: the true sage will not be an escapist; he will live among people and learn how to remain uncorrupted where everything tempts, tempts to corrupt you. Then you attain the highest peak. That highest peak uses both the dualities of life. That highest peak is going to be very rich.

We have also come across a few people who have lived their whole lives in the forest. They are very saintly but a little silly also because with the trees you will become silly. That is natural. You cannot have that intelligence which a Socrates has because you will become a tree. You will vegetate, you will look very pure, but that purity is not of a higher revelation. That purity is of a regression: you have fallen back. You have been trees in your past lives, you have transcended that; now you are falling back.