But the messenger said, “God is very angry. You have been hurting, harassing a poor woman – darkness.”

He said, “My God! I have never heard of her. I have never met her. I am not interested in women at all – I am a born celibate. I am coming, I want to see who this woman is.”

And as the sun came to the house of God, darkness disappeared.

God said, “Where has that woman gone?” They searched everywhere; darkness was not found.

Millions of years passed again, and one day the woman appeared and she said, “You have not done anything; it is still continuing, the same torture.”

God said, “You are strange. When the sun was here, where did you go?”

She said, “You are behaving like a simpleton. If the sun is here, I cannot be here; if I am here, the sun cannot be here. We cannot stand each other. You will have to hear our story separately and then decide.”

God said, “That is not my way. You both have to be present here so I can be certain that nobody is lying.”

The woman said, “Then it is better I take my complaint back.”

Since then, the woman has not appeared again. Once in a while the sun comes to inquire, “What happened to the woman – because I want to clear it up, it has become a worry on my head that somebody is being hurt by me, perhaps unknowingly.”

God said, “You need not be worried. The problem is such that it cannot be solved. I cannot give any decision unless you are both present in my court together and I have listened to both sides in the presence of each other. But by the very nature of things, you cannot both be present. That woman is your absence. So of course you cannot be present and absent simultaneously. Drop your worry. You are doing perfectly fine, and that woman is not going to report against you again. The file in your case is closed.”

Exactly the same is the case with zorba and buddha. The moment buddha arrives with all his light and beauty, with all his awareness, with all his joy, zorba disappears, dissolves. Conflict is impossible. Conflict is possible only in your mind.

You have been listening to me so you have made a concept of zorba and a concept of buddha; you have neither lived zorba nor have you lived buddha. These are only words in your mind. Then conflict is very easy; then you can go on arguing within your mind: “How can zorba and buddha become one? They are antagonistic, they are enemies; harmony is not possible.” Yes, in the mind it is not possible.