One who can say yes will find him everywhere; and one who can only say no will not find him anywhere. It depends on you, it doesn’t depend on him.

One understanding which brings transformation is: don’t fight with the whole. The whole effort is absurd. And the whole will not suffer because of it, because the whole is not fighting with you. Even if it seems to you that the whole is fighting you and trying to crush you and be victorious, you are wrong. If you fight against it, your own fight is reflected. The whole is not fighting with you, he has not even thought about you to fight with. It is your own mind reflected, and the whole resounds. Whatsoever you do is reflected, it is a mirror.

If you go in a fighting mood, you will see that the whole around you is trying to crush you. Try to swim upstream: the whole river seems to be forcing you downward, as if the whole river exists there just to defeat you. But is the river there just to defeat you? The river may not know anything about you. And when you were not there, then too it was flowing the same way. And when you will not be there, it will continue flowing the same way. It is not flowing that way because of you. And if you feel it is against you, it is because of you – you are trying to go upstream.

Once it happened…

Mulla Nasruddin’s wife fell into a flooded river. The neighbors came running to him and they said, “Your wife has fallen in the river, and the river is in flood and flowing fast. Come soon!”

Nasruddin ran to the river, jumped into the river – started swimming upstream. The people who were surrounding and standing there and watching, they said, “What are you doing, Nasruddin?”

Nasruddin said, “I know my wife very well – she always tries to go upstream. She cannot go downward, that’s impossible. You may know the river, I know my wife. So don’t try to…”

There are people who always go upstream, everywhere they are. And because of their own effort they feel the river is crushing them, fighting, trying to defeat and be victorious.

The whole is not against you, cannot be – the whole is your mother. You come from the whole, you will dissolve in the whole. How can the whole be against you? It simply loves you. Whether you go upstream or downstream, it makes no difference to the whole – but the whole cannot flow upstream, just because of love.

And remember, if it flows upstream you will start going against it because that is not the point. Your no-saying mind – because the ego gathers strength through no. The more you say no, the more ego feels powerful; the more you say yes, the more ego drops. That’s why it is very difficult to say yes to anything, even ordinary things.