You Can Run but You Can't Hide
The moment you are no more conditioned, you will not ask what is the goal of life.
Your whole question will go through a revolution.
You will ask,
How I can live more totally
How I can drown myself utterly into life
because life is the goal of everything;
hence there can be no goal for life.
And,
because you are starved,
and except death there seems to be nothing;
life is slipping out of your hands
and death is coming closer every moment.
You cannot dodge death.
I am reminded of a story,
a very famous Sufi story.
A king dreamed
that a black shadow appeared –
even in his dream
he freaked out!
He said, “Who are you?
and what is the purpose of your being in my dream?”
The shadow said, “I am your death,
and tomorrow by the sunset
we have to meet.
I just came to inform you, because you are a busy man.
Ordinarily I don't go to inform people,
but you are a king,
you are very special,
a V.V.I.P.
I have been afraid perhaps you may not meet me at the right place,
you may be engaged somewhere else; then what am I to do?
You have to meet me at the right place, right time, remember!”
And before he could ask, “Where is the right place?”,
out of fear
his sleep was broken;
the shadow disappeared.
The time was known, the right time – sunset tomorrow
but where is the place?
He tried many times to close his eyes and
find the shadow to ask, “Where is the place where I am supposed to meet you?”
Not that he wanted to meet death;
he wanted to know the place so he could avoid that place.
But in this whole world -
where that place is ?
But you cannot continue a dream – this is the difficulty.
Once it is broken,
however hard you close your eyes,
you cannot continue the same dream again.
He became so afraid that in the middle of the night he called all his wise men,
his astrologers,
his priests,
palmists, prophets,
and he said, “You decide where the right place is so I can avoid it.”
And they all started looking into their ancient scriptures.
Morning came
and the sun started rising; and once the sun started rising,
the king became more and more afraid,
because sunset is
the end of sunrise.
Sunrise is the beginning of sunset.
When there is sunrise, sunset is not far away.
The sun had started moving toward sunset already
and those people had not reached any conclusion;
on the contrary, they were so much quarreling, arguing
on each word about the scriptures.
He said, “I am not interested in your scriptures; you simply tell me
where is that exact place, so I can avoid it.”
They said, “Wait.
This is not a simple question
and we have to consult ancient scriptures.
We have to find some precedent,
and we have to come to
an agreement.
The astrologer is saying something else,
the priest is saying something else.
If we give you fifteen answers,
what help are they going to be?
So, let us come to one conclusion.”
The king's old servant was standing by his side. He whispered in his ear,
“I am an old man, and I am not supposed to interfere
in this great conference of big shots;
I am just a poor servant.
But I am old, I am just
the same age as your father, and I have brought you up from your very childhood.
Just listen to me:
these people will never come to any conclusion.
“These people have been arguing for centuries
and they have never come to any conclusion. Two philosophers never agree,
two prophets never agree,
two astrologers never agree.
Disagreement is their business,
they live on disagreement.
So you don't wait. Time is very short.
If you listen to me,
just take your
best horse – and you have
such beautiful horses – take the best
and run away from this place.
At least one thing is certain: you should not be here in this palace, in this city,
in this kingdom of yours.
You escape anywhere.”
The idea was striking.
The king said, “You are right, because these people are not going to settle it before sunset.”
He escaped.
He took his best horse,
and by the evening, when the sun was just going to set,
he had crossed the borders of his kingdom
and entered another kingdom.
He was just so happy
that he had escaped.
Now it was not going to be possible for death to find him.
To rest for the night,
he went into a garden.
He was thanking his horse,
because the horse had done really a miraculous job.
The whole day he had been running so fast –
even the king had never seen him run so fast.
He didn't wait to drink water,
he didn't wait even for a single moment's rest…
as if he understood the urgency.
He was thanking him that,
“You saved me.
I thank you and I love you
and I will reward you.
Just tomorrow when we go back to the kingdom
you will be received with just the same honor as me.”
At that very moment the sun set,
and a hand…
the king felt it on his shoulder.
He looked back: it was the old dark shadow
he had seen in the night.
The shadow laughed
and said,
“You should not thank the horse;
I should thank the horse. Because this is the place where I was waiting,
and I was afraid whether your horse was going to make it or not.
But he did make it.
You have really a rare horse in the world!
You have come to the right point in the right time.”
Whatever you are doing
you will reach in the right time in the right place to meet death.