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so many arrangements for your safety.
To be insecure is to be alive.
Life's MANTRA is to live in insecurity. And, of course, living like this there is no safety. A stone is safe and a flower lives in danger -- but a stone is dead and a flower is full of life! If a storm comes, the flower will fall but the stone will remain where it was. Mischievous children may come and pick the flower, but the stone will remain where it was. When the sun sets in the evening the flower will wither, but the stone will remain unaffected, will remain in its place. Would you prefer to be a stone simply because it is safe from such dangers? That is the condition you have chosen! You have become like stones. The flower is always in jeopardy. Love is a flower. And there is no greater flower, no more important flower in this world than love. There is also nothing that is in greater danger.
Love is life. Love means that your doors are open, that you are standing beneath the open sky. There may be great danger being in such a position, but this is the essence of life. Exposed like this, two things can happen -- one, an enemy can attack you; two, a friend can come and embrace you. But if you protect yourself from the enemy you are also protecting yourself from the friend. If you build a wall around yourself it means you are building your own tomb. You will always be uneasy in it; you will always feel you have lost something. You have not lost anything. It is just that the flower of your heart has not opened; it is just that you have not been able to love.
We prepare children to live so-called "safe" lives, and the result is that love starts to wither. Then we teach them to be dishonest, and love withers even more. Then we show them how to be egoists, and love dies. There is only one way to be full of love, to be loving, and that is to love oneself. And we teach our children to save themselves; we never teach them to lose themselves, to let themselves go. We tell them it is a question of one's name, of one's family, of one's community, of one's nation.
Once Mulla Nasruddin's eldest son ran away from home. The Mulla was very unhappy, but after a while he heard
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