The tenth saying:

Jesus said:
It is impossible for a man to mount two horses and to stretch two bows; and it is impossible for a servant to serve two masters, otherwise he will honor the one and offend the other.

Everybody is already mounted on two horses, everybody is stretching two bows; not only two but many. That’s how anguish is created, that’s why you are constantly in anxiety. Anxiety shows that somehow you are mounted on two horses. How can you be at ease? Impossible, because the two horses are moving in two directions, and you cannot move anywhere.

With one horse movement is possible, you can reach somewhere. With two horses movement is impossible, they will negate each other and you will not reach anywhere. And this is the anxiety, that you are not reaching anywhere. Deep down this is the anguish: that life is slipping out of your hands, time is becoming less and less, death is coming near and you are not reaching anywhere. It is as if you have become a stagnant pool, just getting dryer and dryer and dying. There is no goal, no fulfillment. But why is it happening? – because you have been trying to do the impossible.

Try to understand the mind as it functions in you, then you will be able to understand what Jesus means. You want to be as free as a poor man because only a poor man can be free: he has no burden, he has nothing to protect, you cannot rob him. He is unafraid. You cannot snatch anything from him because he has nothing; with nothing, he is at ease; with nothing as his possession, nothing can be stolen from him. Nobody is his enemy because he is not a competitor at all, he is not competing with anybody.

You want to be as free as a poor man, as a beggar, but you also want to be as secure as a rich man, as safe as an emperor. The rich man is safe, the rich man is secure, he feels more rooted. Outwardly, he has made all the arrangements, he is not vulnerable: he has protections against death, you cannot murder him so easily, he has an armor. And you would like to be free like the beggar and to be secure like an emperor, then you are mounted on two horses and it is impossible to reach anywhere.

You love a person, but you want the person to behave like a thing, completely in your hands. But you cannot love a thing, because a thing is dead and cannot respond to you. So if the other is really a person he cannot be possessed, he is like mercury: the more you try to keep him in your fist, the more he goes out, because to be a person means to be free. If he is a person, you cannot possess him; if you can possess him, he is no longer a person and you will not be able to love him. Then he is just a dead thing. Who can love a dead thing?