The Hasid loves life, tries to experience life...      
Hasidic Stories 

A Hassidic sage is not one who has renounced the world. He lives in the world, because to renounce it looks too serious. He does not go away from the marketplace - he goes above. He lives where you live, but he lives in a different way. He exists by your side, but simultaneously exists somewhere else. He has joined the SANSAR, the world - and sannyas, the renunciation.

When I give sannyas to you, I am doing a Hassidic work. I don't tell you to move to the Himalayas because that would be a choice, and a choice is always serious - because you would have to leave something, you would have to cut a part of your being, you would have to cripple yourself.

When you choose you move in a certain direction - then the whole is not accepted. If you live in the world, then you reject renunciation, sannyas, then you reject meditation. You say: 'They are not for us. We are worldly people.' Then one day you get fed up with the world, you leave the world. Now you are afraid to come into the world. Now you say: 'We are unworldly people. We live outside the world!' But in both the cases, you remain half-hearted, you are never total.

A Hassidic sage is total. He lives in the world, he lives as ordinarily as everybody else. He has no madness, no megalomania about his extraordinariness. A Hassidic rabbi is absolutely ordinary - and that is his extraordinariness. He has no need to show it. He is!

'What is the difference between a rabbi and zaddik?'

When Mulla Nasrudin was dying he called his son, told him to come close and said to him, 'My son, I have one thing to say to you - even though I know you will not listen, because I didn't listen to my own father when he was dying. He told me, "Nasrudin, don't chase women too much." But I could not resist; the temptation was too much. And I got involved with one woman, another woman....' He married nine women - the maximum that the Koran permits.
And he said, 'I have created a hell. I suffered much. I know you don't listen but still I am saying it, because now I am departing and there will be no chance to say it to you. I know you will fall in love with women but at least remember one thing from your old man: My son, one at a time, one at a time. At least do that much.'

I have heard about a very great Sufi mystic woman, Rabia al-Adabiya.
One evening, people found her sitting on the road searching for something. She was an old woman, her eyes were weak, and it was difficult for her to see. So the neighbors came to help her. They asked, 'What are you searching for?'
Rabia said: 'That question is irrelevant, I am searching. If you can help me, help.'
They laughed and said: 'Rabia, have you gone mad? You say our question is irrelevant, but if we don't know what you are searching for, how can we help?'
Rabia said: 'Okay. Just to satisfy you, I am searching for my needle, I have lost my needle.'
They started helping her - but immediately they became aware of the fact that the road was very big and a needle was a very tiny thing.
So they asked Rabia: 'Please tell us where you lost it - the exact, precise place. Otherwise it is difficult. The road is big and we can go on searching and searching forever. Where did you lose it?'
Rabia said: 'Again you ask an irrelevant question. How is it concerned with my search?'
They stopped. They said: 'You have certainly gone crazy!'
Rabia said: 'Okay. Just to satisfy you, I have lost it in my house.'
They asked: 'Then why are you searching here?'
And Rabia is reported to have said: 'Because here there is light and there is no light inside.'
The sun was setting and there was a little light still left on the road.

This parable is very significant. Have you ever asked yourself what you are searching for? Have you ever made it a point of deep meditation to know what you are searching for? No. Even if in some vague moments, dreaming moments, you have some inkling of what you are searching for, it is never precise, it is never exact. You have not yet defined it. If you try to define it, the more it becomes defined the more you will feel that there is no need to search for it.

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