Let this polarity sink deep in your being – there is no way to avoid it. The only way is to become more and more dead. Only the dead person can be in a static middle. The alive person will be constantly moving – from anger to compassion, from compassion to anger. And he accepts both. And he is not identified with either. He remains aloof and yet involved. He remains distant yet committed. He enjoys and yet he remains like a lotus flower in water – in water, and yet the water cannot touch it.
Your very effort to be in the middle, and to be in the middle forever and always, is creating an unnecessary anxiety for you. In fact, to desire to be in the middle forever is another extreme, the worst kind of extreme, because it is the impossible kind. It cannot be fulfilled.
Just think of an old clock: if you hold the pendulum exactly in the middle, the clock will stop. The clock continues only because the pendulum goes on moving from the left to the right, from the right to the left. Yes, each time it passes through the middle, and there is a moment of that middleness, but only a moment. And it is beautiful. When you pass from happiness to sadness, and from sadness to happiness, there is a moment of utter silence exactly in the middle – enjoy that too.
Life has to be lived in all its dimensions, only then is life rich. The leftist is poor, the rightist is poor, and the middlist is dead. The alive person is neither rightist nor leftist nor middlist – he is a constant movement, he is a flow.
Why do we want to be in the middle in the first place? We are afraid of the dark side of life; we don’t want to be sad, we don’t want to be in a state of agony. But that is possible only if you are also ready to drop the possibility of being in ecstasy. There are a few who have chosen it – that is the way of the monk. For centuries that has been the way of the monk. He is ready to sacrifice all possibilities of ecstasy just to avoid agony. He is ready to destroy all rose flowers just to avoid the thorns. But then his life is just flat; a long long boredom, stale, stagnant. He does not really live. He is afraid to live.
Life contains both: it brings great pain, it also brings great pleasure. Pain and pleasure are two sides of the same coin. If you leave one, you have to leave the other too. This has been one of the most fundamental misunderstandings down the ages, that you can leave pain and save pleasure, that you can avoid hell and have heaven, that you can avoid the negative and can have only the positive. This is a great fallacy. It is not possible in the very nature of things. The positive and negative are together, inevitably together, indivisibly together. They are two aspects of the same energy.
My sannyasins, or those who understand me, have to accept both. I am giving you a totally new insight: Be all. And when you are on the left, don’t miss anything – enjoy. Being on the left has its own beauty; you will not find it when you are on the right. It will be a different scene. And, yes, to be in the middle has its own silence, peace, and you will not find it on any extreme. So enjoy all. Go on enriching your life.