If you listen to life instead of mind, things are very simple. You never say to life, “You are contradictory. Yesterday there was no rain and today it is raining. Yesterday it was hot and today it is cold.” You simply accept life as it comes – there is no other way. It is one of those inescapables Ta Hui has talked of before. It is unavoidable.

The child will become a young man, the young man will become old, and the old man will die. A man of understanding simply accepts this whole flux, change, without any resistance, because he knows this is how things are. By your expectations they don’t change. Your expectations only create frustrations for you.

My whole life I have been told, “You have said something a few years before; now you are saying something else. Your philosophy is contradictory, you are not consistent.”

And they have been shocked when I told them, “Yes, you are right. But it is not an objection against me, it is a compliment. It means my philosophy is in tune with life. It changes…the climate changes, the season changes. Sometimes it is fall and the trees are standing naked; against the sky they have their own beauty. And sometimes it is spring, and the trees are so green with foliage and ready to shower their flowers for anyone who happens to be nearby. No introduction is needed, no acquaintance is needed; the friend and the foe are both treated the same way.”

From my very childhood I watched the river of my village swelling in the rains, becoming so vast as if it is the ocean itself. In summer it shrinks to a small stream. I have told people, “You don’t ever say to the river, ‘Your behavior is very inconsistent.’ You never ask the flowers, you never ask the birds, ‘Why are you not singing today? What has happened?’ But you go on asking about philosophies, ideologies, whether they are consistent or not.”

Once and for all, in a single blow, you have to drop the idea of consistency. It is a by-product of the training of your mind. Mind cannot be with the inconsistent – but life is inconsistent. I am not responsible for it, and neither are you. Nobody is responsible for it; it simply happens to be so. And it is beautiful.

Ta Hui is making a great statement. No philosopher can make such a statement, only a mystic who has put his mind aside and looks directly into existence and becomes aware of its constantly changing flux. Except for change, everything changes. The only permanent thing in the world is change. And the moment you ask things not to change, you are creating misery for yourself.

Ta Hui says,

Don’t remember what I have said, and consider it right.

Mysticism is not academic, it is not an ordinary school. It belongs to the beyond, the ultimate and the mysterious. If you live with a living master, you have to learn that. There is no need to remember what he has said yesterday. Yesterday was yesterday; today is today.