Nature Of The Fence

Don’t Fall Back

Just think, you are thirty years, thirty-five years of age – you can attain to innocence in two ways. One is somehow to become a child again, but then you will be foolish also. Innocent you will be, but foolish also because a child is a fool. Then there is another possibility: grow and become wise, old, through experience; mature, learn, and at the very end when you have become almost ancient, attain to your childhood – but not through regression.

Go ahead, let the circle be complete. Don’t fall back, go on and on and one day you will see the circle is complete: you are old and yet you are a child. Then you will not be foolish.

A wise man is like a child, but also is not like a child. A wise man is both: a grown-up, really grown up – mature, lived the life, experienced it, is enriched by it – and yet has come to understand that innocence is the only way to be, is the only way to be blissful, is the only way to be divine. An old man is again in childhood but the childhood is a second childhood: he is reborn.

What is “flow with the river,” it doesn’t mean become driftwood. It doesn’t mean become a corpse and flow with the river. All corpses flow, there is nothing much to say about it. If you are dead, you will float with the river because you cannot fight. First you were engaged in activity, now you are engaged in passivity.

Never move to the opposite, always remain in both and yet beyond. Always remember never to go to the extreme because just in the middle is the way. Buddha has called his way the middle path, majjhim nikai – and he is right.

One day in the afternoon it happened…

A parrot, a beautiful parrot, was allowed to air himself every day. So he was allowed – it was hot and the whole house was fast asleep. The servant came and allowed the parrot to move around the room. The dog living in the house was also fast asleep. The parrot came near the dog, near his ear, and said, “Rats!”

Of course the dog became alert: “Rats!” He went round and round, looked around every corner. Finding nothing, he again went to sleep.

The parrot waited. The trick had succeeded, he had befooled the dog. So again he came near, again he said, “Rats!” Again the dog opened his eyes, looked around, went around the house, was very much frustrated. Then he suspected a trick, that there was nobody – everybody was fast asleep, no rat, nothing – only this parrot, maybe he was doing something. He then pretended that he was asleep, with one cocked eye.

The parrot came again, tried the trick a third time. The dog jumped on him. Later on the parrot was heard saying, “The difficulty with me is that I don’t know where to stop.”

That is the difficulty with all you parrots – where to stop?

From active you will go to passive, from passive you will go to active, and you don’t know where to stop. If you know where to stop, if you know the middle, because the middle transcends both…