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is becoming. Heraclitus himself, when he says about the river -- and the symbol of the river is very, very deep with him -- that you cannot step in the same river twice, he also says that even if you do, you are the same and you are not the same. Just on the surface you look the same. Not only has the river changed, you have also changed.
It happened: A man came to Buddha to insult him -- he spat on his face. Buddha wiped his face and asked the man, "Have you anything more to say?" -- as if he had said something. The man was puzzled, because he never expected this type of response. He went away. The next day he came again -- because the whole night he couldn't sleep; he felt more and more that he had done something absolutely wrong, he felt guilty. The next morning he came, fell at Buddha's feet and said, "Forgive me!"
And Buddha said, "Who will forgive you now? The man you spat upon is no more, and the man you were who spat is no more either -- so who will forgive whom? Forget about it, now nothing can be done about it. It cannot be undone -- finished!... because nobody is there, both parties are dead. What can be done? You are a new man and I am a new man."
This is the deepest message of Heraclitus: everything flows and changes; everything moves, nothing is static. And the moment you cling, you miss reality. Your clinging becomes the problem, because reality changes and you cling.
You loved me yesterday; now you are angry. I cling to the yesterday and I say, "You have to love me, because yesterday you were loving and yesterday you said you would love me always -- now what has happened?" But what can you do? And yesterday when you said that you would love me always, it was not false, but it was not a promise either -- it was simply the mood, and I believed in the mood too much. At that moment you felt it, that you would love me always and always and always, forever; and it was not untrue, remember. It was true to the moment, that was the mood, but now that mood has gone. The one who said it is no more. And if it is gone, it is gone; nothing can be done. You cannot force love. That's what we are doing -- and making much misery out of
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