There is a beautiful story in the Indian scriptures about Shiva. His wife, Parvati, died, and he carried the corpse of his wife for twelve years all around the country, hoping that somewhere some physician may be of some help. Slowly slowly, limbs of the dead body started falling off, but he continued his journey in search of a physician; some alchemist, some magician, some miracle-maker may do it. Crying, weeping, he went around the country.
In India there are twelve sacred places. It is said that these are the places where the parts of the body of Parvati fell. Wherever a part fell, it became a sacred place.
You can carry the dead body – but you cannot find the physician.
This is far truer than the story of Jesus reviving a dead man, although it looks impossible that a man like Shiva will carry a dead woman. But my own observation is that I have seen millions of people carrying dead love affairs which have gone dead long before, but carrying out of fear, clinging – just clinging with the known, with the familiar, although it is just misery and nothing else but clinging.
When love dies, it dies. In time one has to accept death and one has to say goodbye, with no complaint, no grudge, because when something ends what can you do? In time that is the nature of things: they begin and they end. Buddha says: Everything that happens in time is bound to die, so accept – it is the suchness of things.
But if your heart is really yearning for something eternal, then I can show you the way. Then drop the idea of love. Before you can give you must have. You are trying to give something which you don’t have; you are trying to get something from somebody who has not got it in the first place. Then how can it be eternal? Sooner or later the disillusionment is bound to happen. How long can you carry it, how long can you remain in a deception? That’s why I say the more intelligent you are, the quicker it slips out of your hands.
Only stupid people can live a married life, thinking that it is something permanent. Intelligent people cannot live the so-called married life, or if they live it then they will have to change their partners many times in their life. But each time the same thing will happen.
The mind goes on finding other causes, but never looks at the real cause. It cannot, because to look at the real cause means suicide of the mind. It will find a thousand and one faults in the woman, in the man you have been living with – that’s why the love has failed. Not that the love in time is bound to fail, but there are faults in this woman. You have chosen a wrong woman, you don’t fit with her, you are not made for each other, and so on, so forth. But one day you were thinking you are made for each other, and you have completely forgotten it. Remember those days, the beginning days of the love affair…and you were thinking, “This is going to last forever!” You had even promised to each other that it is going to last forever.