Life is a rhythm ...

[Guest guest]

It is just a centrifugal and centripetal rhythm. Everything falls apart and

comes together, falls apart and comes together.

 

It happened in a Mohammedan country: The king was in love with a woman. The

woman was in love with somebody else; a slave she was in love with, a slave of

the king himself. And this was very difficult for the king to understand, that

the woman doesn't pay any attention to him and he is the king -- and she is

after a slave who is nothing! The king can kill that man immediately, he is just

like dirt! But this is how it happened. Life is mysterious. You cannot be

mathematical about it. Nobody knows. You may be a king, but you cannot force

love. He may be a slave, but love will make a king out of him. Nobody knows!

Life is mysterious. It is not arithmetical, it is not economics.

 

The king tried and tried, but the more he tried the more he was a failure. Then

he was very, very angry. But he was really in love with the woman so he was

afraid to kill that slave. He could have killed him; just a word was enough. But

then he was afraid the woman might be hurt. And he really loved the woman, so

this became more problematic -- what to do? She may be hurt, she may commit

suicide, she was so mad. So he asked a wise man. The wise man must have been

like a Heraclitus. All wise men are like Heraclitus; Heraclitus is the superb

wise man. The wise man said: "What you have been doing is wrong" -- because the

king had been trying in every way to keep them separate. He said: "This is

wrong. The more you keep them separate, the more they would like to be together.

Keep them together, and soon it will be finished. And keep them together in such

a way that they cannot go apart."

 

The king said: "How to do that?"

 

He said: "Bring them both, force them to make love, and chain them, bind them

together. And don't allow them to separate." So this was done. They were chained

to a pillar, making love to each other naked. But if you are chained to a woman

or with a man, how long can you love that woman or that man? That's why in

marriage love disappears. You are chained, in a bondage; you cannot escape. But

that was the experiment.

 

After a few minutes they started hating each other. After a few hours they

dirtied each other's bodies -- because you cannot wait, the bowels have to move,

the urine has to be thrown out of the bladder. What to do? For a few hours they

contained themselves, they felt that that would not be good. But then there is a

point beyond which you cannot do anything. The bowels moved, the bladder emptied

itself; they dirtied each other and they hated even more. They closed their

eyes, they did not want to see each other. And this for twenty-four hours -- a

marathon! And after twenty-four hours they were released. It is said they never

saw each other's faces again. They escaped the moment they were released from

the palace. They escaped in different directions; they never saw each other's

faces again. The whole thing became so ugly. Marriages become ugly because they

follow this principle of that wise man.

 

There should be a rhythm of coming together and going apart, being together and

being alone. If you can come together freely and move away again, that's how

hunger and satiety are created. If you go on eating twenty-four hours a day

there will be no hunger and no satiety. Eat and then you fast! The English word

for the morning food, breakfast, is good. It means breaking the fast; the whole

night you fasted. You have to fast if you want to enjoy food. This is the hidden

harmony of opposites:

 

Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool.

The moist dries, the parched becomes moist.

It is by disease that health is pleasant.

 

Osho: The Hidden Harmony