You must be carrying a dead mouse... Drop it...

If you want to be loved -- love! Because whatsoever you give is returned back. If you want to be loved forget about wanting to be loved, and in a thousand ways love will come to you. Life reflects, life resounds, life echoes whatsoever you throw at life. So if you want to be loved forget about wanting and being loved -- that is not the point at all then. Then simple is the rule -- love.

And if you want to be accepted like the greatest man on earth, then start accepting everybody as the greatest man on earth. Otherwise how are they going to accept you as the greatest? They are also on the same trip. They are not going to accept you as the greatest because then what will happen to them? If you are the greatest, then who are they? Nobody wants to be anything else.

Once it happened, a friend of Mulla Nasruddin was talking to Mulla Nasruddin. They had met after many -- years. Both were bitter rivals; both were poets. Both started to boast about the progress they had made in their careers.
'You have no idea, Nasruddin, how many people read my poetry now,' bragged the friend. 'My readers have doubled.'
'My God, my God!' cried Nasruddin. 'I had no idea you got married!'

Everybody is on the same trip. If you want people to accept you as the greatest man on earth, let this be the rule: whatsoever you want others to do for you, do for them. But that is the trouble. The ego wants you to be the greatest man on earth -- nobody else. Then you will feel hurt. Because all are on the same trip -- can't you understand the simple point? They are also waiting for you to accept them as the greatest man.

I heard Mulla Nasruddin once. He was delivering a political speech.
He Said, 'It is with some trepidation that I address an audience of people all of whom are smarter than I am... all of them put together, that is.'

Everybody is trying to be at the top of the world -- then you are in competition with the whole world. Remember, you are going to be defeated. One man fighting against the whole world -- that is the situation.

If you see the point, there are two ways. One, forget about this trip, be ordinary, simple, whatsoever you are. There is no need to be great, the only need is to be real. Great is the wrong goal. To be real.... I have come across a hip slogan: Be realistic -- plan for a miracle. Yes. that s how it is. If you ale really realistic, you start living the miracle. And the miracle is: if you are real, you don't want to be bothered with competition, comparison. Who bothers? You enjoy your food, you enjoy your breathing, you enjoy the sunlight, you enjoy the stars, you enjoy life, you enjoy being alive -- you are perfectly in tune. in harmony with the Whole. What is the point of being a great man? The great men, the so-called great men, are almost always phony -- they have to be. They cannot be real persons. They are plastic. Because they have chosen a wrong goal: to be great is an ego goal; to be real is existential.
If you want to be great you will be in continuous conflict. And of course you will be hurt by everybody. Not that everybody is trying to hurt you, they are doing their own trip. You are unnecessarily coming in their way.

Get out of this rat race. Sit under the tree by the side of the road; it is tremendously beautiful and silent. Otherwise be ready to be hurt.

Ramakrishna used to tell a beautiful story.
A bird was flying with a dead mouse and twenty or thirty birds were chasing him. The bird was very much worried.
'I am not doing anything to them, I am just carrying my dead mouse. They are all after me.'
And they hit him hard and in the conflict, in the struggle, the bird opened his mouth and the mouse dropped. Immediately they all flew towards the mouse; they all forgot about him.
Then he sat upon a tree and brooded.
They were not against him, they were also on the same trip -- they wanted the mouse.

If people are hurting you, open your mouth. You must be carrying a dead mouse! Drop it! And then sit -- if you can, sit on the tree or under the tree and brood. And suddenly you will see that they have forgotten about you. They are not concerned. They never were concerned. The ego is a dead mouse.

Jones' oldest daughter had just given birth to a beautiful baby and Jones was being congratulated.
He looked downcast, however, and a friend said, 'What's the matter, Jones? Don't you like the idea of being a grandfather?'
Jones heaved an enormous sigh. 'No,' he said, 'I don't, but that doesn't bother me so much. It is just that it is so humiliating to have to go to bed with a grandmother.'

Just watch your mind -- how it creates problems. The woman remains the same but now she has become a grandmother -- and one feels humiliated.

It is your idea that is giving you humiliation. If you are really concerned with your own well-being then nobody is hurting you -- just your own ideas. Drop them.

Or, two, it you feel good with them, don't be worried about the hurts. Carry them. But you have a decision inside. If you want the ego trip, if you want to be the greatest man in the world, then everybody is going to prove that you are the worst man in the world. Then have courage and heart to suffer all that. It is futile, but if you choose that way, it is your choice. If you really want your well-being and your inner calm and silence and bliss, then these hurts are indicative: you are carrying some wrong ideas within you.

Drop those ideas.

If they say everybody is right you will be more confused...

All masters are always in a secret conspiracy. If they are masters at all, they are always together -- even if they contradict each other, they belong to the same conspiracy; even if they say sometimes that the other is wrong, they are in a conspiracy.

Buddha and Mahavira were contemporaries and they moved in the same province, Bihar. It is known as Bihar because of them: BIHAR means their field of movement, they walked all over that part. Sometimes they were in the same village.

Once it happened that they were staying in the same roadside inn -- half the inn was engaged by Buddha and half by Mahavira -- but they never met each other and continuously they refuted each other. Disciples used to move from one master to the other. It has remained a problem -- why? Buddha would even laugh, he would joke about Mahavira. He would say, 'That fellow! So he claims that he is enlightened? He claims that he is all-knowing? But I have heard that he says it once happened that he knocked at a door to beg food and there was no one inside, and I have heard that he claims that he is all-knowing! And even this much he didn't know -- that the house was vacant?'

He goes on joking. He says, 'Once Mahavira was walking and he stepped on the tail of a dog. Only when the dog jumped and barked did he know that the dog was there, because it was morning and dark. And that fellow says that he is all-knowing?' And he goes on joking. He cuts many jokes against Mahavira; they are beautiful.

They are in a conspiracy, Buddha and Mahavira, and this has not been understood, neither by Jainas nor by Buddhists -- they have missed the whole point. They think they are against each other, and Jainas and Buddhists have remained against each other for these two thousand years.

They are not against each other! They are playing roles, and they are trying to help people. They are two different types. Somebody can be helped by Mahavira, and somebody else can be helped by Buddha. The person who can be helped by Buddha cannot be helped by Mahavira -- that person has to be taken away from Mahavira. And the person who can be helped by Mahavira cannot be helped by Buddha -- that person has to be taken away from Buddha. That's why they talk against each other; it is a conspiracy. But everybody should be helped, and they are two different types, absolutely different types.

How can they be against each other? Nobody who ever became enlightened is against any other enlightened person, cannot be. He may talk as if it is so because he knows the other will understand. Mahavira is never reported to have said anything about the jokes that Buddha was telling here and there. He kept completely silent. That was his way. By being completely silent, not even refuting, he was saying, 'Leave that fool to himself!' -- by being completely silent, not saying anything.

Every day reports would come, people would come and they would say, 'He has said this,' and Mahavira would not even talk about it. And that was fitting, because he was very old, thirty years older than Buddha; it was not good for him to come down and fight with a young man -- this is how young fools are! But he was the same as Buddha against other teachers who were older than him. He would talk about them, talk against them, argue against them.

They are in a conspiracy. They have to be -- because you cannot understand. They have to divide paths, because you cannot understand that life exists through opposites. They have to choose opposites. They have to stick to one thing, and then they have to say, FOR YOU, 'Remember that all others are wrong' -- because if they say everybody is right you will be more confused. You are already confused enough. If they say, 'Yes, I am right. Mahavira is also right, Buddha is also right -- everybody is right,' you will immediately leave them; you will think: 'This man can't help, because we are already confused. We don't know what is right and what is wrong, and we have come to this man to know exactly what is right and what is wrong.'

So masters stick to something and they say, 'This is right and everything else is wrong,' knowing all along that there are millions of ways to reach the Way; knowing all along that there are millions of paths which reach the final path. But if they say that millions of paths reach, you will be simply confused.