Things are not impossible, but we have not tried the right medicine. I would like you to be reminded that the word medicine comes from the same root as meditation. Medicine cures your body; meditation cures your soul. Medicine heals the material part of you; meditation heals the spiritual part of you. People are living together and their spirits are full of wounds; hence, small things hurt them so much.
Mulla Nasruddin was asking me, “What to do? Whatever I say I am misunderstood, and immediately there is trouble.”
I said, “Try one thing: just sit silently, don’t say anything.”
The next day, I saw him in more despair than ever. I said, “What happened?”
He said, “I should not ask you for advice. Every day we used to fight and quarrel, but it was just verbal. Yesterday, because of your advice, I got beaten!”
I said, “What happened?”
He said, “I just sat there silent. She asked many questions, but I was determined to remain silent. She said, ‘So you are not going to speak?’ I remained silent. So she started hitting me with things! And she was very angry. She said, ‘Things have gone from bad to worse. At least we used to talk to each other; now even we are not on speaking terms!’”
I said, “This is really bad.”
He said, “You are saying bad? The whole neighborhood gathered, and they all started asking, ‘What happened? Why aren’t you speaking?’ And somebody suggested: ‘It seems he is possessed by some evil spirit.’
“I thought, my God, now they are going to take me to some idiot who will beat me and try to drive the evil spirit out. I said, ‘Wait! I’m not possessed by any evil spirit, I’m simply not speaking because to say anything triggers a fight: I say something, then she has to say something, and then I have to say something, and nobody knows where it is going to end.’ I was simply meditating silently, doing no harm to anybody – and suddenly the whole neighborhood was against me.”
People are living without any understanding. Hence, whatsoever they do is going to end in disaster.
If you love a man, meditation will be the best present that you can give to him. If you love a woman, then the Kohinoor is nothing; meditation will be a far more precious gift – and it will make your life sheer joy. We are potentially capable of sheer joy, but we don’t know how to manage it.
Alone, we are at the most, sad. Together, it becomes really hell. Even a man like Jean-Paul Sartre, a man of great intelligence, has to say that the other is hell, that to be alone is better; you cannot make it with the other. He became so pessimistic that he said, “It is impossible to make it with the other, the other is hell”. Ordinarily, he is right. With meditation the other becomes your heaven. But Jean-Paul Sartre had no idea of meditation.