There was a scoundrel whom the villagers caught and tied to a tree. They told him, “By evening we’ll throw you into the sea.”
Saying this, they went off to their work. In the meantime a shepherd came by and asked the scoundrel, “Why are you tied up here?” The crafty fellow said, “Some people tied me up because I refused to take their money.” Astonished, the shepherd asked, “Why would they want to give you money? And why did you refuse to take it?” The scoundrel replied, “I’m a religious man and they are irreligious; they want to corrupt me.” The shepherd said, “Let me sit here in your place; you are free.” They switched places. In the evening the villagers returned, tied the shepherd in a sack and drowned him in the sea.
Next morning, the villagers were amazed to see the same scoundrel walking into the village laughing, driving a flock of sheep. When they asked, the scoundrel said, “In the sea live most compassionate beings; they reward those who jump in and drown.” What else? The villagers ran and drowned in the sea. And the scoundrel became the master of the village.
I want you to understand this story. In just this way scoundrels have become masters of the whole world. If the world’s wealth is water, then simplicity is a hindrance. If you want to conquer the world, honesty is not the path; dishonesty is the calculus.
This story is the story of humanity. This is exactly what is happening in the world. People use intelligence not to uncover the truth of life, they use intelligence to exploit others; not to gain their own living experience; not creatively, but destructively. That is why, as intelligence increases, dishonesty increases.
Thinkers have always been troubled: why does the world become worse as it becomes more educated? The uneducated man may still retain some goodness; in the educated man all the roots of goodness wither. And as we make education more accessible, people do not become saintly, they become anti-saintly.
A great Western thinker, D. H. Lawrence, once suggested that if we want to eradicate dishonesty and villainy from the world, we should close all schools and universities for at least a hundred years.
As a man’s intellect grows, his capacity for evil grows. It ought to be the reverse—that intelligence become wisdom; that understanding lead towards self-knowing—but it doesn’t. Understanding is used to destroy others. Perhaps what we call understanding is not understanding at all, but the deception of understanding. The whole history of humankind bears witness: as soon as man lost primitive simplicity, suffering and misery multiplied.
And that village had only one scoundrel—he created so much chaos he ruined the whole village. In your village everyone is a scoundrel. The whole earth is full of scoundrels. Why is the innocence of the primal human lost so easily? Why does a little education ruin you?
A few things need to be understood. First: the innocence of the primitive man is not true innocence, it is only a lack. The primitive man cannot be dishonest because dishonesty requires a certain skill which he doesn’t have. So the simple villager is not truly simple. Give him the opportunity and he will prove just as devilish as city folk. And often he turns out to be worse. If the villager becomes educated, a little skillful, he becomes more of a troublemaker than the city man. It is like a field left fallow for many years: when it is finally sown it yields a huge crop. The other soils are depleted; his soil is fresh. When the “simple” villager gets educated and skillful, a bumper crop of villainy grows in him. He beats the city dwellers. His innocence was false.
So there are two kinds of innocence: one is the innocence of the saint. The saint’s innocence comes through experience. He has lived, seen, and found that although dishonesty may seem to pay in the short term, in the end it robs you of everything. He has discovered that harming another may first look like you’re harming the other, but in the end it is your own hands and feet that are cut off. He has learned from living experience that the pit you dig for another finally becomes your own grave. Because of this experience he drops dishonesty. It’s not that he lacks skill or that he cannot be dishonest; he could. But experience has shown him that dishonesty is not beneficial. Not even in his own interest. It harms the other now, and it harms himself ultimately; that is why he has become innocent, he has become simple.
This simplicity is precious, grave, deep. It is rich because it rests on experience. A villager, or a small child—small children are like villagers. A small child seems innocent but he isn’t; he is preparing. The seeds of mischief haven’t sprouted yet; they will soon. The primitive man is preparing, waiting. When he becomes skillful, then a great crop of evil will grow in his field.
Every child is born like a god and dies like a devil. Look at the faces of children; all children appear lovable. No child seems ugly; all are beautiful. Where do all those beautiful children go? Look at people and they seem ugly. When they themselves were children, they were so beautiful. The earth should be overflowing with beauty—so many beautiful children are born! But as understanding grows, as skill comes, distortion begins.
So there are two ways for you to become innocent. One: do not let understanding arise. Do not be educated. Do not become civilized. Stay away from circumstance.
Thinkers like Gandhi advise this way. They say: abolish big industries. Close the schools. Don’t run trains and planes. Remove machinery. Lead man back to the forest. The jungle man was very innocent.
Their logic is not very deep, because if the jungle man were truly innocent, then where did all this dishonesty come from? Who created it? One kind of man is too weak to steal, so he looks like a saint. Another is so uneducated that lying is too troublesome. To lie you need some intelligence. And to lie you need a good memory. If memory is weak, you cannot lie—ten minutes later you won’t remember what you said to whom!
So one tells the truth only because he lacks the skill to lie. He lacks the technique required for dishonesty. But he too wants to be dishonest. He is waiting: when the opportunity comes, he too will be dishonest. The seed lies in the soil waiting for rain. When clouds gather and rain, the seed will sprout.
So thinkers like Gandhi advise: don’t let the clouds rain. If the clouds don’t rain, the seed won’t sprout. No bamboo, no flute. But this is not a very deep understanding. For even if the flute is not played, its music still reverberates within. Dishonesty may not come out due to incapacity, but the seed will go on poisoning you deep within. I cannot agree with such thinkers. I say: only simplicity that comes through experience is real. The gold that survives the fire is real gold. If, for fear of burning, we keep the gold away from fire, it isn’t real gold. And fear itself reveals the suspicion that there is dross.
Educated we must be. The child must grow up. How can you keep a child a child? Primitive man will become civilized; villages will disappear; metropolises will arise. There is no way to avoid it. You cannot go backward. Just as a grown man cannot become a child again, so you cannot take the city man back to the village.
So no matter how much Gandhi says it, it makes no difference. People listen and nod their heads, but their lives continue in the same mould. And no matter how much Gandhi speaks, his own life depends on modern instruments. He has to travel by train, sit in a motorcar. To spread Gandhi’s message you need big presses, loudspeakers. Even to speak against civilization you must use civilization. And what we use—how will we destroy it? Our use strengthens it, expands it.
Nor is Gandhi the first. Rousseau, Tolstoy, Ruskin—many have preached return. Gandhi was deeply influenced by Ruskin, Thoreau, and Emerson. But no one can go back. There is no path leading backward. All roads go forward. Therefore my suggestion is the exact opposite of Gandhi’s.
My suggestion is: pass through experience as quickly as possible—but pass through it with awareness, so that experience reveals itself to you in its totality. From seed to fruit, from first to last, see the whole arc of experience. Whoever sees it whole, dishonesty will drop from their life.
Now let us try to understand the story. The story is quite clear. There is nothing esoteric. It is the story of a scoundrel—read: the so-called intelligent man. And the so-called intelligent are all scoundrels. To be a scoundrel you need a little intelligence. Not total intelligence, but a little. And remember, sometimes half-knowledge is more dangerous than total ignorance. A little knowledge is always dangerous because it sees only a little way; it cannot see the whole.
The villagers must have been troubled by this scoundrel. One day they decided to finish him. They tied him to a tree.
To be a scoundrel you need a little cleverness, argument, understanding. Deceiving another is not easy, because the other is also ready to deceive you. Whenever you deceive another, it means you have shown more cleverness than the other.
A shepherd passed by—the primitive villager—the kind to which Rousseau, Tolstoy, Gandhi want to take people back. But then any scoundrel will torment those primitive people with tricks. Go back as far as you like in history—Genghis and Tamerlane are always there, exploiting the shepherds. They exploit with finesse, with great intelligence. That is why for thousands of years there were no rebellions in the world. People took looters, bandits, murderers to be incarnations of God.
The emperor was considered God’s representative on earth; he ruled by God’s mandate. So to rebel against the throne was to rebel against God. Kings had identified themselves with God—made people believe, “I am his representative,” and people accepted it.
In the world to which thinkers like Gandhi want to take people back, Genghis and Tamerlane will exploit people again. It was no golden world; in it rebellion was impossible. And where there can be no rebellion, you will not find a deader world.
Look at what the Hindus did: for thousands of years they kept millions as shudras and made them believe they were shudras because of their past deeds. And they accepted it. This is villainous cleverness. A highly skilled technique of exploitation. So deeply was it implanted that not a single voice of rebellion arose in India for millennia. “It is in your own interest: if you peacefully accept your shudra-hood, in your next birth you will be born in a higher caste. A brahmin is born into a brahmin home because of good deeds. You are born in a shudra home because of bad deeds. If you rebel, you will commit worse deeds and become a super-shudra; you will fall into hell. Accept.”
Manu’s code is worth reading. It is hard to find a scripture more unjust than Manu’s law, because there is nothing like justice in it. Manusmriti is the Hindu foundation—the basis of all their laws and social order. If a brahmin elopes with a shudra’s daughter, there is no sin—rather, it is the shudra girl’s good fortune. But if a shudra elopes with a brahmin girl, it is a great sin. And the punishment is nothing less than death—less than killing the shudra won’t do. Is this justice? And for thousands of years people accepted it.
It must have taken great skill to make them accept it. A cunning so deep as never again appeared on earth. The brahmins created in India a system unmatched anywhere on earth, because it is hard to find people more intelligent than brahmins. Intelligence was their hereditary legacy. Therefore brahmins did not let shudras study—education leads to rebellion. Women were forbidden to study—when women are educated, rebellion arises.
Brahmins made women believe: the husband is God. But the wife is not God! What kind of love is this? What a structure! Therefore when the husband dies, the wife should burn on the pyre—only then she was virtuous. But no scripture says that if the wife dies the husband should also die with her—only then he would be “wife-devoted.” No, no question of that.
For men the scripture says: as soon as the wife dies, promptly arrange another marriage; don’t delay. But for women, remarriage is not arranged. So millions of women either burned or suffered as widows their entire lives. And it is a strange thing: a widow was not respected, she was disgraced. She should have been respected, because after the husband’s death she ended all her desires and lived like a renunciate. But she was not respected. If there was a festival at home, the widow had no right to sit there. At a wedding, the widow could not come forward. As if the widow herself had killed her husband! The sin was on her head. When a wife dies, the sin is not on the husband; when the husband dies, the sin is on the wife! This was impressed upon hundreds of millions of women—and they believed it. But to make such exploitation stick one trick is necessary: whoever you want to exploit must not be allowed experience or education. Therefore shudras and women had no right to education.
A thoughtful poet like Tulsidas said, “Shudra, animal, woman—all deserve chastisement.” They should be duly beaten. The more you beat them, the better they behave. “Shudra, drum, animal, woman…”—putting them with the drum: as the drum plays better the more you beat it, so the more you beat and oppress them, the better they are. That was the current. Do not educate them; let no intelligence arise in their minds, no thought. Otherwise thought arises, and rebellion arises. Education comes, and revolt comes.
What is revolt? Revolt means that those whom you exploit now have as much intelligence as you. Therefore keep them deprived.
The scoundrel in our story said something very clever. “People want to give me money, and I do not want to take it; that is why they tied me up.”
The shepherd was certainly primitive, empty of experience. Not intelligent—simple, but his simplicity was like stupidity. For innocence not born of experience is akin to foolishness. You cannot call it simple—you must call it simpleton. Not the simplicity of a saint, but the simplicity of a fool. For who in this world does not want money? And who in this world would be so eager to give you money that they tie you to a tree to force you to take it? The shepherd must have been utterly primitive—Gandhian primitivism. Uneducated, with no sense of money, no sense of how people live—he believed it.
Even then a slight doubt arose in him. “People want to give you money and you don’t want to take it—why don’t you want to take it?” He at least understood that if someone gives me money, I’d want to take it. Why doesn’t this man want to take it? The scoundrel was certainly clever. He said, “I am a religious man.” Now it seems clear: a religious man doesn’t want to take money. But it didn’t occur to the shepherd that whenever a truly religious man doesn’t want to take money people don’t tie him up; they touch his feet and worship him.
That is what happens. If you want worship, just don’t take money—people will worship you. People are full of craving for wealth, and when they see someone opposite to themselves, they worship him. Whoever wants worship must strike the bargain—either money, or worship. The clever ones see more money in worship.
It didn’t occur to the shepherd to wonder: why don’t the villagers worship him? Why have they tied him to a tree to kill him? He had no such intelligence, no such questions. Otherwise the only conclusion would be that the villagers are even more religious—they want to give him money, and if he refuses they are willing to punish him, but they will make him take it! The shepherd’s desire possessed him.
Understand this a little.
You may lack intelligence, but you are full of desire. That is the danger. Desire comes with birth; intelligence perhaps comes with education, with society. Desire is inborn. So the dullest man has as much desire as the brightest. In desire there is no difference. In desire we are all equal. The intelligent use argument to fulfill desire; the dull cannot, so they get exploited.
Marx is right to say: until all are educated, exploitation will continue, because the educated will exploit the uneducated. But there is something Marx did not see: if all become educated, exploitation will not cease—rather all will want to exploit, and society will fall into anarchy, until all become saints. And “saint” does not mean becoming brainless; it means intelligence fulfilled.
The shepherd was filled with greed and said, “If that’s how it is, then tie me up. I want the money, and you don’t; I’ll let you go.”
If you want to exploit someone, you must offer temptation. Therefore wherever temptation appears, be a little alert. Without temptation you cannot be exploited. And temptations are of many kinds. The priest says, “If you give charity, you will get heaven.” If he simply said “Give,” you wouldn’t give. “You will get heaven”—for that you can bargain; then you can give. But have you ever thought what charity means? That there is no demand behind it.
Whoever gives for heaven’s sake is not giving at all; he is bartering. That is not charity. Charity means to give and not to ask. To give without desire for fruit. But the priest is playing a trick. “Give, and heaven will be yours!” On the banks of the Ganges clever men tell simple villagers, “Give a penny here, and there you will receive a million-fold return. A million-fold!” The greedy mind trembles—“A million-fold!”—and it is over there; no one returns from there to report whether it is so or whether even your penny is gone. Because no one returns, exploitation is easy.
Whenever you want to exploit someone, you must offer temptation. And wherever temptation is, be alert. Religion too offers temptation; therefore it cannot be religion. Temples, churches, priests, popes—they offer temptations.
One day I was passing down a street. An educated woman handed me a little booklet. I glanced at it and never imagined it was a Christian tract, because nothing on the cover suggested Christianity. No picture of Jesus, no cross, no church. On the cover was a beautiful bungalow in a garden, with the caption, “Would you like a house like this?” I was intrigued. I opened it, and first came a description of the bungalow, the garden, the lovely sky; and at the end: “Such a house is available in heaven—but only to followers of Jesus!”
Temptations are being offered by every means. And wherever there is temptation, know this: it cannot be religion. The scoundrel in our story worked with great skill. He didn’t even say, “Untie me.” The shepherd must have untied him on his own and gone to stand by the tree, “Tie me up.” When you are full of temptation, you become blind. You don’t know what you are doing.
At dusk the villagers reassembled—the ones who had tied up the scoundrel. In the dark they tied the sack. The poor shepherd had no idea what was happening! He was thrown into the sea.
At dawn the scoundrel entered the village driving the shepherd’s flock, singing. The villagers were astonished. “What happened? How are you back?”
He said, “Don’t ask about coming back! It was your great kindness to throw me into the sea. There are most loving and compassionate beings there. They welcomed me royally. They gave me these sheep and said, ‘Go, enjoy yourself.’”
The trick he played on the shepherd he now extended to the whole village. It wouldn’t have taken long. The people must have run and jumped into the sea.
Greed becomes death.
And for all of us, greed is becoming death. Because of greed we too are jumping into oceans, perishing, being erased. And our entire educational system teaches nothing but greed. It teaches ambition. It teaches the art of how to acquire more and more.
Without any concern that greed may lead to death, the villagers jumped into the sea and died. The scoundrel became owner of the whole village. The story ends here, because to take it further would be dangerous. But the real part of the story has been left out—so that you read and discover it yourself.
All important stories are left half-told, because if everything is said, nothing remains for you to find. The second half is crucial: if no one remains and you become the owner, what is the value of that ownership? When all have died and you become the owner of a cremation ground, what is it worth?
That part is left out. The Sufi mystics are right to leave it untouched. There is no need to say it. Reading the story, you must understand it. What is essential is not said. If you have a little intelligence, you will see it. If not, even if it were said, you would not hear. These stories are to awaken thought in you. They are to stir a sensitivity within you; to raise an echo of truth.
What does it mean if the whole village dies and you become the owner? What is its worth? The man was a scoundrel, yes, clever too—but not very intelligent.
Arjuna asks Krishna the same thing in the Gita: “All these people will die, and even if I become the master, what is the value? These are my dear ones, kin and friends. I grew up with them, played with them. If there is any joy in success, it can be only in their presence. They will lie dead on Kurukshetra and I will be the victor—what is the worth of that victory? For whom is that victory? Who will rejoice to see it? Who will pat my back and say, ‘Well done, you succeeded’?”
There are several things to understand here. In aloneness, being an emperor is meaningless. In aloneness you cannot be an emperor. In aloneness you can only be a sannyasin. The emperor requires society. The sannyasin can leave society. Therefore to be an emperor depends on others; to be a sannyasin is self-reliance. That is why the sages say even emperors are slaves of slaves. It is true, because without slaves he cannot be an emperor.
I have heard: Junayd, a Sufi, was passing through a village with his disciples. In the middle of the road he stopped. A man was leading a cow on a rope. Junayd said, “Children, a question. Is this man binding the cow, or is the cow binding the man?” The disciples said, “What a silly question! It’s obvious—the man is binding the cow, not the cow the man.”
Junayd said, “A second question. If the rope breaks and the cow runs off, will the man run after the cow, or if the man lets go and runs, will the cow run after the man?”
Now the disciples were startled. “That’s a bit difficult. If the rope breaks, the man will run after the cow. The cow will not run after the man.”
Junayd said, “Think again: who is the slave of whom? The slave runs after the master. The cow won’t care a bit where the man goes. But if the cow runs, the man will chase her. The cow can live without the man; the man cannot live without the cow. Who is bound to whom? On the surface it appears the man is pulling the cow. Those who look within will see the cow is pulling the man.”
On the surface, the emperor is the master, and the slave the slave. From within, the emperor is a slave of slaves. Look at leaders! They seem to be walking in front. You are mistaken. They always have to follow their followers. They only appear to be ahead. The leader is always turning back to see which way the followers are going. Whichever way they turn, he must quickly turn. He should stay in front, but always watch the direction of the crowd.
So the skillful leader is the one who recognizes the drift of the crowd. The unskillful gets into trouble. If the leader is deluded into thinking people are walking behind him, he will soon cease to be a leader. If he walks by his own whim and starts choosing his own path, the crowd will go elsewhere. The secret of leadership is to sniff what is growing in the crowd’s unconscious. Whatever the crowd wants, the leader must turn that way before the crowd itself knows where it wants to go.
The leader’s art is to recognize the crowd’s unconscious.
There is a famous story about Mulla Nasruddin. He was riding his donkey through the bazaar. The donkey was racing along. People asked, “Nasruddin, where are you going in such a hurry?”
He said, “Don’t ask me—ask the donkey. To remain its master I must remain its follower. If I try to turn it even a little, it stiffens and stands still! Right there in the bazaar it becomes clear I’m not the master—humiliation! So I’ve learned: in the marketplace, wherever it goes, just sit tight. Outside the market I try to steer, but never inside; there it disgraces me, stiffens, sits down, rolls around. There it is proven who has the power. From much experience I’ve learned: wherever it goes, that is our destination. At least then I look like the owner.”
The leader looks like the master only because of a certain skill—of sensing where the crowd is going. If the crowd’s unconscious whispers “socialism,” before the word leaves the crowd’s mouth the leader must proclaim “socialism.” The leader must become the voice of the crowd’s unconscious. If the slogan does not resonate with the unconscious, he will soon be lost in the crowd. He can no longer remain leader. The leader is the follower of the followers.
In aloneness you cannot be a leader. In aloneness you cannot be an emperor. In aloneness you cannot be rich. And whatever you cannot be in aloneness is worthless. This insight is called sannyas. Whatever you can be in aloneness is truly yours. Whatever you cannot be in aloneness belongs to others. You only imagine it is yours.
You sit alone in a forest, perched on a heap of Kohinoors. What is their value in the forest where you are alone? No more than stones. Sit on a stone or on a Kohinoor—what difference does it make? The Kohinoor’s value is in social agreement. A bed of currency notes—what meaning has it alone? Money’s value lies in social recognition.
Mahavira goes to the forest. Buddha, Muhammad, Jesus—go to the forest to discover this: that what becomes futile in the forest was futile anyway—only the crowd hid it. What remains meaningful even in the forest, that alone is worth saving. They return to the crowd, but now they preserve only what was meaningful in the forest. That is your soul.
The scoundrel was clever, but only half clever. If he were truly intelligent, he wouldn’t have acted so foolishly. It is suicide. When the whole village has drowned in the sea, how are you an emperor? All the houses are yours—what will you do with them?
He must have fallen into great trouble. Think a little about the scoundrel—if we extend the story, he must have been in a pickle. So many houses to clean, and no meaning; no one to see. Guarding treasures with no purpose; you can neither buy nor sell. The people whose presence gave value are gone. What would he have done? As far as I can see, he too must have jumped into the sea by evening—there was no other way left. Now the whole village is dead—what will he do? That is why villainy becomes, ultimately, self-destruction.
You think you are harming another. In the end it harms only you. You think you are mixing poison for another; in the end the poison spreads through your own life. Because here there is no “other”; the other is your extension. Whatever you do to others, you do to yourself. The distance is apparent. “You” seem separate and “I” seem separate. But if I slap your cheek, those who can see will say he slapped his own cheek with his own hand—because you are my spread. If you all die, I cannot live. If you all are lost, I am lost—because we are interwoven.
Immanuel Kant framed a precious formula—the basis of ethics, he said. A rule that cannot be universalized is not ethical. Only that rule is ethical which can be universal. What does this mean? It means: if I lie to you, can I wish that everyone lie to everyone? Even the liar does not want you to lie to him. He does not endorse lying. If he catches you lying he gets angry—“Why did you lie?” He too believes truthfulness is right and lies are wrong.
Thieves do not steal from each other. They do not make theft into a rule. And if everyone lies, lying becomes impossible. If everyone believes in lying, speech itself becomes impossible—whatever you say, the other knows you are lying. Lies function only because some people tell the truth. Lies stand on the legs of truth. They cannot survive without truth.
Thus a rule like “kill everyone” cannot be ethical; it cannot be universalized. Kant says something remarkable which Hindus don’t like, though it is right: celibacy cannot be a moral rule, because if everyone is celibate there will not even remain a celibate—the celibate would not be born. For you to be a celibate, someone must be non-celibate. At least your parents had to be non-celibate for you to be born.
So celibacy cannot be a moral rule—says Kant. He is right, and very deep. Just as theft cannot be a rule, lying cannot be a rule, so celibacy cannot be a rule, because theft requires some non-thieves, lying requires some truth-tellers, and celibacy requires some non-celibates. How can that be a rule whose very foundation requires its opposite? It cannot be universal. And truth is only that which can be accepted by all, and even with universal acceptance life’s plant continues to grow.
The scoundrel must have thought, “I’ve done something tremendous—the whole village has drowned.” But he wouldn’t have taken long to realize he had committed suicide.
Why? If he had been a saint, he could have lived alone. He was not. For him to live, those others had to be there. That is why the scoundrel, whether his villainy succeeds or fails, always fails. If his scheme fails, he fails. If his scheme succeeds, he still fails. The scoundrel never succeeds. He always fails.
Understand: if the villagers had caught on and beaten him, saying, “You liar!” he would have failed. The villagers believed him and jumped into the sea—he still failed.
From this I want to tell you something very deep: the saint always succeeds—whether he appears to fail or to succeed. The villain always fails—whether he appears to succeed or to fail. The saint has no failure; it is impossible. The non-saint has no success; it is impossible.
People come to me and say, “What kind of world is this? Here the dishonest succeed and the honest fail. I am honest and starving; the dishonest live in mansions.”
I tell them, “That cannot be. The dishonest may be surrounded by mansions, but they cannot live in them. They are enclosed by mansions, not living in them. I know the people who dwell in mansions. They can neither sleep nor eat nor love. The mansion is a prison—one they built with their own hands. No one else imprisoned them; they imprisoned themselves.”
Just as the shepherd, in the morning, went and stood by the tree to be tied with his own hands. Did he, through the day, feel that someone had bound him? No—he was bound of his own will. Did he feel imprisoned? No—he was in bliss, because by evening there would be a shower of wealth. When desire tells you that great pleasures are just ahead, you agree to live in a prison. You build it yourself.
There are two kinds of prisons: those others build for you, and those you build for yourself. That rich man in the mansion—he cannot sleep, cannot eat, cannot love. He is completely closed, rotting, dead. A corpse somehow going through motions. As wealth increases, sleep is lost. As wealth increases, hunger is lost.
Strange, isn’t it? When you have hunger you have no food; when you have food you have no hunger. When you have no bed, deep sleep comes; by the time you can afford a fine bed, sleep is gone. Without hunger, food is useless. Without sleep, what good is the best mattress? The poor do not commit suicide; the rich do.
People come and say, “Then our India is better. Look at America—so many suicides.” I tell them, it only means you are still poor; you haven’t come near suicide yet. America is rich; suicides increase. The day a nation becomes wholly rich, people will start jumping into the sea on their own. Not everyone is dying in America—meaning many there are still poor.
The poor have hope: tomorrow something will happen and happiness will come. The rich man’s hope breaks: he has everything but happiness hasn’t come—now what? People think those who live in mansions are happy, because they themselves are not in those mansions. The day you arrive there, you see the capacity for joy has been lost. If someone says, “I am moral but unhappy,” it proves only this: he is not moral. The moral can never be unhappy.
If someone says, “I am religious and yet I am a failure,” one thing is certain: he is not religious. The religious can never fail. If he gets, he wins; if he loses, he wins. The religious man’s victory is unique—there is no way to defeat him. Failure cannot happen. For religious means: whatever happens, he is content. How will you make him fail?
Lao Tzu keeps saying: you cannot defeat me because I do not want to win. How will you defeat me? Only he who wants to win can be defeated. Lao Tzu says, “You cannot put me down, for I have no ambition to be above. When I go to an assembly, I sit at the very back—where people leave their shoes—because from there there is no place lower to be pushed. You cannot push me from there. And even if you push me away, what will I lose? I was not sitting on a royal throne. I was sitting where the shoes are.” Lao Tzu says, “I stand at the last so no one can shove me.”
A religious man cannot be discontent, because the very essence of religion is contentment with whatever is. You cannot defeat him. Even if you defeat him, he celebrates. Every moment is victory for a religious man, because he has dropped the craving to win. These paradoxes are worth pondering deeply.
The bad man always loses. If he succeeds, he loses; if he fails, he loses.
This scoundrel would have lost had he failed. He lost even more when he completely succeeded. By nightfall he too would have jumped into the sea. When there are no people, on whom will you play your tricks? All his cleverness became useless.
Saintliness can be alone. It is a lamp that burns without wick and without oil. Non-saintliness cannot be alone. It needs others’ oil, others’ wick, others’ support. Non-saintliness is a social relationship. Saintliness is non-relationship. It is the joy of being alone.
Therefore the saint seeks solitude; the non-saint seeks crowds. Even if the non-saint goes into solitude, in imagination he is in the crowd. Even if the saint stands in a crowd, he is alone. Because he has seen a truth: whatever remains with him in his aloneness—that is his treasure. Whatever arises in him due to others’ presence is false; it is maya. It is not real; he cannot carry it with him.
You come near me and I feel love—this love is false. Because you leave and the love leaves. You brought it and you took it away. It was like your face reflected in my mirror. You moved away, the face disappeared. This love is not mine. If it were mine, whether you came or not would make no difference. Even if you did not come, it would go on burning—like a lamp burning in solitude, its light shines.
A flower blooms on a lonely path—whether anyone passes or not, its fragrance spreads. But if you come near and the flower becomes fragrant, and when you leave the fragrance disappears, that fragrance is false. You must have sprayed perfume. The flower is deceived.
If you come near and my love arises, you brought that love and you will take it away. That is why we become dependent on lovers. If your beloved is not around, your life’s juice is gone. That juice is not yours. And the irony is that if you are not around your beloved also loses her juice—she too has none within. And when neither has any within, how do you produce it together?
I keep saying: it is like two beggars standing before each other with their bowls held out, each hoping the other will give. Mere hope. Because the other too holds out a bowl. He too is not a giver—he too has come to beg. Both are deceived. And when the deception breaks you get angry: “Why did you waste my time? Why didn’t you tell me earlier that you too carry a bowl?”
Lovers fall into sorrow. The day the bowls are seen, the lover thinks the beloved deceived him; the beloved thinks the lover deceived her. Then they go in search of new partners. But the fundamental fact remains. The new beggar deceives a little while by hiding his bowl—but for how long? He too has come for the same reason; and you too conceal your bowl. When you are assured your partner won’t run away, you take out your bowl—and at that moment melancholy descends.
Your love and your joy all depend on others. No friend comes and you are sad. Friends arrive and you are festive. That festivity is false, superficial, painted on. It is not the dance of your heart. It does not arise from your heartbeat; it is not the music of your life-breath.
A saint means: to discover this truth—as soon as possible. Then you no longer depend on society. Whether you live in it or leave it makes no difference. Then you seek only that treasure which is yours; which no one’s absence can take away. If all go and leap into the sea, still your flute will go on playing.
The scoundrel cannot play the flute, because the scoundrel depends on others. The bigger the scoundrel, the greater his dependence. He will have to commit suicide. Had he been a saint, solitude would have become a festival. The story is straightforward.
Keep three sutras in mind.
First, if you set out to deceive another—if you fail, you fail; if you fully succeed, you still fail.
Second, do not use intelligence to push another into a pit. Do not dig a pit for another. In the end you will find it has become your grave.
And third, any wealth that comes from another’s destruction, another’s death, another’s life—anything dependent on others—do not call it wealth. Otherwise the day you “succeed,” no way will remain except suicide. Seek that which is yours, always yours; independent; dependent on no one—so that you can truly be master.
You will become soulful the day your lamp burns without wick and without oil. You will not go begging for oil, nor for wick. If everything is lost—think for a moment—if everything is lost, not a hair’s-breadth will be lost from your being—then you are a jinn, a Buddha. The one who sat beneath the Bodhi tree—we have called him God for this single reason: in that moment he recognized that which does not perish even if all else perishes. He recognized the society-free. He recognized the independent of the other—that which lies beyond the other, which is not obtained from the other. He caught the first glimpse of the lamp that burns without wick and without oil.
That lamp is burning within you, but as long as your eyes are fixed on others, you cannot become acquainted with it. Your eyes must turn within; you must be free of others. Freedom from others is sannyas—not abandoning others, but being free of them. The one who abandons may not be free; he runs to the forest and still thinks of others. He remembers what he left—often more intensely.
Send your wife to her mother’s house and you will remember her more. Her faults vanish and her virtues appear. Therefore sending the wife to her mother’s for a while is essential if you want to save the marriage. Two or three months a year—she will come back fresh and see your virtues; you will be fresh and see hers. Then, after three months, there can be another honeymoon. It will last a day or two; then the faults will reappear.
Run to the forest and you will remember even more. Renunciates who flee to the forest come to me and say, “It’s very difficult. Nothing comes to mind but women. The mind is full of sex.” Of course—because the issue is not running away from society, but being free of society.
Freedom is another matter. It comes only from this experience: slowly seeking within yourself that treasure which is yours; which you brought with you at birth and will take with you when you die; which existed before birth and will exist after death. That which you have not taken from anyone, which is not borrowed. Your own being—your own wealth—is the soul.
Osho's Commentary
They told him, “By evening we’ll throw you into the sea.”
Saying this, they went off to their work. In the meantime a shepherd came by
and asked the scoundrel, “Why are you tied up here?”
The crafty fellow said, “Some people tied me up because
I refused to take their money.”
Astonished, the shepherd asked, “Why would they want to give you money?
And why did you refuse to take it?”
The scoundrel replied, “I’m a religious man and they are irreligious;
they want to corrupt me.”
The shepherd said, “Let me sit here in your place; you are free.”
They switched places. In the evening the villagers returned,
tied the shepherd in a sack and drowned him in the sea.
Next morning, the villagers were amazed to see
the same scoundrel walking into the village laughing, driving a flock of sheep.
When they asked, the scoundrel said, “In the sea live most compassionate beings;
they reward those who jump in and drown.”
What else? The villagers ran and drowned in the sea.
And the scoundrel became the master of the village.
I want you to understand this story.
In just this way scoundrels have become masters of the whole world. If the world’s wealth is water, then simplicity is a hindrance. If you want to conquer the world, honesty is not the path; dishonesty is the calculus.
This story is the story of humanity. This is exactly what is happening in the world. People use intelligence not to uncover the truth of life, they use intelligence to exploit others; not to gain their own living experience; not creatively, but destructively. That is why, as intelligence increases, dishonesty increases.
Thinkers have always been troubled: why does the world become worse as it becomes more educated? The uneducated man may still retain some goodness; in the educated man all the roots of goodness wither. And as we make education more accessible, people do not become saintly, they become anti-saintly.
A great Western thinker, D. H. Lawrence, once suggested that if we want to eradicate dishonesty and villainy from the world, we should close all schools and universities for at least a hundred years.
As a man’s intellect grows, his capacity for evil grows. It ought to be the reverse—that intelligence become wisdom; that understanding lead towards self-knowing—but it doesn’t. Understanding is used to destroy others. Perhaps what we call understanding is not understanding at all, but the deception of understanding. The whole history of humankind bears witness: as soon as man lost primitive simplicity, suffering and misery multiplied.
And that village had only one scoundrel—he created so much chaos he ruined the whole village. In your village everyone is a scoundrel. The whole earth is full of scoundrels. Why is the innocence of the primal human lost so easily? Why does a little education ruin you?
A few things need to be understood. First: the innocence of the primitive man is not true innocence, it is only a lack. The primitive man cannot be dishonest because dishonesty requires a certain skill which he doesn’t have. So the simple villager is not truly simple. Give him the opportunity and he will prove just as devilish as city folk. And often he turns out to be worse. If the villager becomes educated, a little skillful, he becomes more of a troublemaker than the city man. It is like a field left fallow for many years: when it is finally sown it yields a huge crop. The other soils are depleted; his soil is fresh. When the “simple” villager gets educated and skillful, a bumper crop of villainy grows in him. He beats the city dwellers. His innocence was false.
So there are two kinds of innocence: one is the innocence of the saint. The saint’s innocence comes through experience. He has lived, seen, and found that although dishonesty may seem to pay in the short term, in the end it robs you of everything. He has discovered that harming another may first look like you’re harming the other, but in the end it is your own hands and feet that are cut off. He has learned from living experience that the pit you dig for another finally becomes your own grave. Because of this experience he drops dishonesty. It’s not that he lacks skill or that he cannot be dishonest; he could. But experience has shown him that dishonesty is not beneficial. Not even in his own interest. It harms the other now, and it harms himself ultimately; that is why he has become innocent, he has become simple.
This simplicity is precious, grave, deep. It is rich because it rests on experience. A villager, or a small child—small children are like villagers. A small child seems innocent but he isn’t; he is preparing. The seeds of mischief haven’t sprouted yet; they will soon. The primitive man is preparing, waiting. When he becomes skillful, then a great crop of evil will grow in his field.
Every child is born like a god and dies like a devil. Look at the faces of children; all children appear lovable. No child seems ugly; all are beautiful. Where do all those beautiful children go? Look at people and they seem ugly. When they themselves were children, they were so beautiful. The earth should be overflowing with beauty—so many beautiful children are born! But as understanding grows, as skill comes, distortion begins.
So there are two ways for you to become innocent. One: do not let understanding arise. Do not be educated. Do not become civilized. Stay away from circumstance.
Thinkers like Gandhi advise this way. They say: abolish big industries. Close the schools. Don’t run trains and planes. Remove machinery. Lead man back to the forest. The jungle man was very innocent.
Their logic is not very deep, because if the jungle man were truly innocent, then where did all this dishonesty come from? Who created it? One kind of man is too weak to steal, so he looks like a saint. Another is so uneducated that lying is too troublesome. To lie you need some intelligence. And to lie you need a good memory. If memory is weak, you cannot lie—ten minutes later you won’t remember what you said to whom!
So one tells the truth only because he lacks the skill to lie. He lacks the technique required for dishonesty. But he too wants to be dishonest. He is waiting: when the opportunity comes, he too will be dishonest. The seed lies in the soil waiting for rain. When clouds gather and rain, the seed will sprout.
So thinkers like Gandhi advise: don’t let the clouds rain. If the clouds don’t rain, the seed won’t sprout. No bamboo, no flute. But this is not a very deep understanding. For even if the flute is not played, its music still reverberates within. Dishonesty may not come out due to incapacity, but the seed will go on poisoning you deep within. I cannot agree with such thinkers. I say: only simplicity that comes through experience is real. The gold that survives the fire is real gold. If, for fear of burning, we keep the gold away from fire, it isn’t real gold. And fear itself reveals the suspicion that there is dross.
Educated we must be. The child must grow up. How can you keep a child a child? Primitive man will become civilized; villages will disappear; metropolises will arise. There is no way to avoid it. You cannot go backward. Just as a grown man cannot become a child again, so you cannot take the city man back to the village.
So no matter how much Gandhi says it, it makes no difference. People listen and nod their heads, but their lives continue in the same mould. And no matter how much Gandhi speaks, his own life depends on modern instruments. He has to travel by train, sit in a motorcar. To spread Gandhi’s message you need big presses, loudspeakers. Even to speak against civilization you must use civilization. And what we use—how will we destroy it? Our use strengthens it, expands it.
Nor is Gandhi the first. Rousseau, Tolstoy, Ruskin—many have preached return. Gandhi was deeply influenced by Ruskin, Thoreau, and Emerson. But no one can go back. There is no path leading backward. All roads go forward. Therefore my suggestion is the exact opposite of Gandhi’s.
My suggestion is: pass through experience as quickly as possible—but pass through it with awareness, so that experience reveals itself to you in its totality. From seed to fruit, from first to last, see the whole arc of experience. Whoever sees it whole, dishonesty will drop from their life.
Now let us try to understand the story. The story is quite clear. There is nothing esoteric. It is the story of a scoundrel—read: the so-called intelligent man. And the so-called intelligent are all scoundrels. To be a scoundrel you need a little intelligence. Not total intelligence, but a little. And remember, sometimes half-knowledge is more dangerous than total ignorance. A little knowledge is always dangerous because it sees only a little way; it cannot see the whole.
The villagers must have been troubled by this scoundrel. One day they decided to finish him. They tied him to a tree.
To be a scoundrel you need a little cleverness, argument, understanding. Deceiving another is not easy, because the other is also ready to deceive you. Whenever you deceive another, it means you have shown more cleverness than the other.
A shepherd passed by—the primitive villager—the kind to which Rousseau, Tolstoy, Gandhi want to take people back. But then any scoundrel will torment those primitive people with tricks. Go back as far as you like in history—Genghis and Tamerlane are always there, exploiting the shepherds. They exploit with finesse, with great intelligence. That is why for thousands of years there were no rebellions in the world. People took looters, bandits, murderers to be incarnations of God.
The emperor was considered God’s representative on earth; he ruled by God’s mandate. So to rebel against the throne was to rebel against God. Kings had identified themselves with God—made people believe, “I am his representative,” and people accepted it.
In the world to which thinkers like Gandhi want to take people back, Genghis and Tamerlane will exploit people again. It was no golden world; in it rebellion was impossible. And where there can be no rebellion, you will not find a deader world.
Look at what the Hindus did: for thousands of years they kept millions as shudras and made them believe they were shudras because of their past deeds. And they accepted it. This is villainous cleverness. A highly skilled technique of exploitation. So deeply was it implanted that not a single voice of rebellion arose in India for millennia. “It is in your own interest: if you peacefully accept your shudra-hood, in your next birth you will be born in a higher caste. A brahmin is born into a brahmin home because of good deeds. You are born in a shudra home because of bad deeds. If you rebel, you will commit worse deeds and become a super-shudra; you will fall into hell. Accept.”
Manu’s code is worth reading. It is hard to find a scripture more unjust than Manu’s law, because there is nothing like justice in it. Manusmriti is the Hindu foundation—the basis of all their laws and social order. If a brahmin elopes with a shudra’s daughter, there is no sin—rather, it is the shudra girl’s good fortune. But if a shudra elopes with a brahmin girl, it is a great sin. And the punishment is nothing less than death—less than killing the shudra won’t do. Is this justice? And for thousands of years people accepted it.
It must have taken great skill to make them accept it. A cunning so deep as never again appeared on earth. The brahmins created in India a system unmatched anywhere on earth, because it is hard to find people more intelligent than brahmins. Intelligence was their hereditary legacy. Therefore brahmins did not let shudras study—education leads to rebellion. Women were forbidden to study—when women are educated, rebellion arises.
Brahmins made women believe: the husband is God. But the wife is not God! What kind of love is this? What a structure! Therefore when the husband dies, the wife should burn on the pyre—only then she was virtuous. But no scripture says that if the wife dies the husband should also die with her—only then he would be “wife-devoted.” No, no question of that.
For men the scripture says: as soon as the wife dies, promptly arrange another marriage; don’t delay. But for women, remarriage is not arranged. So millions of women either burned or suffered as widows their entire lives. And it is a strange thing: a widow was not respected, she was disgraced. She should have been respected, because after the husband’s death she ended all her desires and lived like a renunciate. But she was not respected. If there was a festival at home, the widow had no right to sit there. At a wedding, the widow could not come forward. As if the widow herself had killed her husband! The sin was on her head. When a wife dies, the sin is not on the husband; when the husband dies, the sin is on the wife! This was impressed upon hundreds of millions of women—and they believed it. But to make such exploitation stick one trick is necessary: whoever you want to exploit must not be allowed experience or education. Therefore shudras and women had no right to education.
A thoughtful poet like Tulsidas said, “Shudra, animal, woman—all deserve chastisement.” They should be duly beaten. The more you beat them, the better they behave. “Shudra, drum, animal, woman…”—putting them with the drum: as the drum plays better the more you beat it, so the more you beat and oppress them, the better they are. That was the current. Do not educate them; let no intelligence arise in their minds, no thought. Otherwise thought arises, and rebellion arises. Education comes, and revolt comes.
What is revolt? Revolt means that those whom you exploit now have as much intelligence as you. Therefore keep them deprived.
The scoundrel in our story said something very clever. “People want to give me money, and I do not want to take it; that is why they tied me up.”
The shepherd was certainly primitive, empty of experience. Not intelligent—simple, but his simplicity was like stupidity. For innocence not born of experience is akin to foolishness. You cannot call it simple—you must call it simpleton. Not the simplicity of a saint, but the simplicity of a fool. For who in this world does not want money? And who in this world would be so eager to give you money that they tie you to a tree to force you to take it? The shepherd must have been utterly primitive—Gandhian primitivism. Uneducated, with no sense of money, no sense of how people live—he believed it.
Even then a slight doubt arose in him. “People want to give you money and you don’t want to take it—why don’t you want to take it?” He at least understood that if someone gives me money, I’d want to take it. Why doesn’t this man want to take it? The scoundrel was certainly clever. He said, “I am a religious man.” Now it seems clear: a religious man doesn’t want to take money. But it didn’t occur to the shepherd that whenever a truly religious man doesn’t want to take money people don’t tie him up; they touch his feet and worship him.
That is what happens. If you want worship, just don’t take money—people will worship you. People are full of craving for wealth, and when they see someone opposite to themselves, they worship him. Whoever wants worship must strike the bargain—either money, or worship. The clever ones see more money in worship.
It didn’t occur to the shepherd to wonder: why don’t the villagers worship him? Why have they tied him to a tree to kill him? He had no such intelligence, no such questions. Otherwise the only conclusion would be that the villagers are even more religious—they want to give him money, and if he refuses they are willing to punish him, but they will make him take it! The shepherd’s desire possessed him.
Understand this a little.
You may lack intelligence, but you are full of desire. That is the danger. Desire comes with birth; intelligence perhaps comes with education, with society. Desire is inborn. So the dullest man has as much desire as the brightest. In desire there is no difference. In desire we are all equal. The intelligent use argument to fulfill desire; the dull cannot, so they get exploited.
Marx is right to say: until all are educated, exploitation will continue, because the educated will exploit the uneducated. But there is something Marx did not see: if all become educated, exploitation will not cease—rather all will want to exploit, and society will fall into anarchy, until all become saints. And “saint” does not mean becoming brainless; it means intelligence fulfilled.
The shepherd was filled with greed and said, “If that’s how it is, then tie me up. I want the money, and you don’t; I’ll let you go.”
If you want to exploit someone, you must offer temptation. Therefore wherever temptation appears, be a little alert. Without temptation you cannot be exploited. And temptations are of many kinds. The priest says, “If you give charity, you will get heaven.” If he simply said “Give,” you wouldn’t give. “You will get heaven”—for that you can bargain; then you can give. But have you ever thought what charity means? That there is no demand behind it.
Whoever gives for heaven’s sake is not giving at all; he is bartering. That is not charity. Charity means to give and not to ask. To give without desire for fruit. But the priest is playing a trick. “Give, and heaven will be yours!” On the banks of the Ganges clever men tell simple villagers, “Give a penny here, and there you will receive a million-fold return. A million-fold!” The greedy mind trembles—“A million-fold!”—and it is over there; no one returns from there to report whether it is so or whether even your penny is gone. Because no one returns, exploitation is easy.
Whenever you want to exploit someone, you must offer temptation. And wherever temptation is, be alert. Religion too offers temptation; therefore it cannot be religion. Temples, churches, priests, popes—they offer temptations.
One day I was passing down a street. An educated woman handed me a little booklet. I glanced at it and never imagined it was a Christian tract, because nothing on the cover suggested Christianity. No picture of Jesus, no cross, no church. On the cover was a beautiful bungalow in a garden, with the caption, “Would you like a house like this?” I was intrigued. I opened it, and first came a description of the bungalow, the garden, the lovely sky; and at the end: “Such a house is available in heaven—but only to followers of Jesus!”
Temptations are being offered by every means. And wherever there is temptation, know this: it cannot be religion. The scoundrel in our story worked with great skill. He didn’t even say, “Untie me.” The shepherd must have untied him on his own and gone to stand by the tree, “Tie me up.” When you are full of temptation, you become blind. You don’t know what you are doing.
At dusk the villagers reassembled—the ones who had tied up the scoundrel. In the dark they tied the sack. The poor shepherd had no idea what was happening! He was thrown into the sea.
At dawn the scoundrel entered the village driving the shepherd’s flock, singing. The villagers were astonished. “What happened? How are you back?”
He said, “Don’t ask about coming back! It was your great kindness to throw me into the sea. There are most loving and compassionate beings there. They welcomed me royally. They gave me these sheep and said, ‘Go, enjoy yourself.’”
The trick he played on the shepherd he now extended to the whole village. It wouldn’t have taken long. The people must have run and jumped into the sea.
Greed becomes death.
And for all of us, greed is becoming death. Because of greed we too are jumping into oceans, perishing, being erased. And our entire educational system teaches nothing but greed. It teaches ambition. It teaches the art of how to acquire more and more.
Without any concern that greed may lead to death, the villagers jumped into the sea and died. The scoundrel became owner of the whole village. The story ends here, because to take it further would be dangerous. But the real part of the story has been left out—so that you read and discover it yourself.
All important stories are left half-told, because if everything is said, nothing remains for you to find. The second half is crucial: if no one remains and you become the owner, what is the value of that ownership? When all have died and you become the owner of a cremation ground, what is it worth?
That part is left out. The Sufi mystics are right to leave it untouched. There is no need to say it. Reading the story, you must understand it. What is essential is not said. If you have a little intelligence, you will see it. If not, even if it were said, you would not hear. These stories are to awaken thought in you. They are to stir a sensitivity within you; to raise an echo of truth.
What does it mean if the whole village dies and you become the owner? What is its worth? The man was a scoundrel, yes, clever too—but not very intelligent.
Arjuna asks Krishna the same thing in the Gita: “All these people will die, and even if I become the master, what is the value? These are my dear ones, kin and friends. I grew up with them, played with them. If there is any joy in success, it can be only in their presence. They will lie dead on Kurukshetra and I will be the victor—what is the worth of that victory? For whom is that victory? Who will rejoice to see it? Who will pat my back and say, ‘Well done, you succeeded’?”
There are several things to understand here. In aloneness, being an emperor is meaningless. In aloneness you cannot be an emperor. In aloneness you can only be a sannyasin. The emperor requires society. The sannyasin can leave society. Therefore to be an emperor depends on others; to be a sannyasin is self-reliance. That is why the sages say even emperors are slaves of slaves. It is true, because without slaves he cannot be an emperor.
I have heard: Junayd, a Sufi, was passing through a village with his disciples. In the middle of the road he stopped. A man was leading a cow on a rope. Junayd said, “Children, a question. Is this man binding the cow, or is the cow binding the man?” The disciples said, “What a silly question! It’s obvious—the man is binding the cow, not the cow the man.”
Junayd said, “A second question. If the rope breaks and the cow runs off, will the man run after the cow, or if the man lets go and runs, will the cow run after the man?”
Now the disciples were startled. “That’s a bit difficult. If the rope breaks, the man will run after the cow. The cow will not run after the man.”
Junayd said, “Think again: who is the slave of whom? The slave runs after the master. The cow won’t care a bit where the man goes. But if the cow runs, the man will chase her. The cow can live without the man; the man cannot live without the cow. Who is bound to whom? On the surface it appears the man is pulling the cow. Those who look within will see the cow is pulling the man.”
On the surface, the emperor is the master, and the slave the slave. From within, the emperor is a slave of slaves. Look at leaders! They seem to be walking in front. You are mistaken. They always have to follow their followers. They only appear to be ahead. The leader is always turning back to see which way the followers are going. Whichever way they turn, he must quickly turn. He should stay in front, but always watch the direction of the crowd.
So the skillful leader is the one who recognizes the drift of the crowd. The unskillful gets into trouble. If the leader is deluded into thinking people are walking behind him, he will soon cease to be a leader. If he walks by his own whim and starts choosing his own path, the crowd will go elsewhere. The secret of leadership is to sniff what is growing in the crowd’s unconscious. Whatever the crowd wants, the leader must turn that way before the crowd itself knows where it wants to go.
The leader’s art is to recognize the crowd’s unconscious.
There is a famous story about Mulla Nasruddin. He was riding his donkey through the bazaar. The donkey was racing along. People asked, “Nasruddin, where are you going in such a hurry?”
He said, “Don’t ask me—ask the donkey. To remain its master I must remain its follower. If I try to turn it even a little, it stiffens and stands still! Right there in the bazaar it becomes clear I’m not the master—humiliation! So I’ve learned: in the marketplace, wherever it goes, just sit tight. Outside the market I try to steer, but never inside; there it disgraces me, stiffens, sits down, rolls around. There it is proven who has the power. From much experience I’ve learned: wherever it goes, that is our destination. At least then I look like the owner.”
The leader looks like the master only because of a certain skill—of sensing where the crowd is going. If the crowd’s unconscious whispers “socialism,” before the word leaves the crowd’s mouth the leader must proclaim “socialism.” The leader must become the voice of the crowd’s unconscious. If the slogan does not resonate with the unconscious, he will soon be lost in the crowd. He can no longer remain leader. The leader is the follower of the followers.
In aloneness you cannot be a leader. In aloneness you cannot be an emperor. In aloneness you cannot be rich. And whatever you cannot be in aloneness is worthless. This insight is called sannyas. Whatever you can be in aloneness is truly yours. Whatever you cannot be in aloneness belongs to others. You only imagine it is yours.
You sit alone in a forest, perched on a heap of Kohinoors. What is their value in the forest where you are alone? No more than stones. Sit on a stone or on a Kohinoor—what difference does it make? The Kohinoor’s value is in social agreement. A bed of currency notes—what meaning has it alone? Money’s value lies in social recognition.
Mahavira goes to the forest. Buddha, Muhammad, Jesus—go to the forest to discover this: that what becomes futile in the forest was futile anyway—only the crowd hid it. What remains meaningful even in the forest, that alone is worth saving. They return to the crowd, but now they preserve only what was meaningful in the forest. That is your soul.
The scoundrel was clever, but only half clever. If he were truly intelligent, he wouldn’t have acted so foolishly. It is suicide. When the whole village has drowned in the sea, how are you an emperor? All the houses are yours—what will you do with them?
He must have fallen into great trouble. Think a little about the scoundrel—if we extend the story, he must have been in a pickle. So many houses to clean, and no meaning; no one to see. Guarding treasures with no purpose; you can neither buy nor sell. The people whose presence gave value are gone. What would he have done? As far as I can see, he too must have jumped into the sea by evening—there was no other way left. Now the whole village is dead—what will he do? That is why villainy becomes, ultimately, self-destruction.
You think you are harming another. In the end it harms only you. You think you are mixing poison for another; in the end the poison spreads through your own life. Because here there is no “other”; the other is your extension. Whatever you do to others, you do to yourself. The distance is apparent. “You” seem separate and “I” seem separate. But if I slap your cheek, those who can see will say he slapped his own cheek with his own hand—because you are my spread. If you all die, I cannot live. If you all are lost, I am lost—because we are interwoven.
Immanuel Kant framed a precious formula—the basis of ethics, he said. A rule that cannot be universalized is not ethical. Only that rule is ethical which can be universal. What does this mean? It means: if I lie to you, can I wish that everyone lie to everyone? Even the liar does not want you to lie to him. He does not endorse lying. If he catches you lying he gets angry—“Why did you lie?” He too believes truthfulness is right and lies are wrong.
Thieves do not steal from each other. They do not make theft into a rule. And if everyone lies, lying becomes impossible. If everyone believes in lying, speech itself becomes impossible—whatever you say, the other knows you are lying. Lies function only because some people tell the truth. Lies stand on the legs of truth. They cannot survive without truth.
Thus a rule like “kill everyone” cannot be ethical; it cannot be universalized. Kant says something remarkable which Hindus don’t like, though it is right: celibacy cannot be a moral rule, because if everyone is celibate there will not even remain a celibate—the celibate would not be born. For you to be a celibate, someone must be non-celibate. At least your parents had to be non-celibate for you to be born.
So celibacy cannot be a moral rule—says Kant. He is right, and very deep. Just as theft cannot be a rule, lying cannot be a rule, so celibacy cannot be a rule, because theft requires some non-thieves, lying requires some truth-tellers, and celibacy requires some non-celibates. How can that be a rule whose very foundation requires its opposite? It cannot be universal. And truth is only that which can be accepted by all, and even with universal acceptance life’s plant continues to grow.
The scoundrel must have thought, “I’ve done something tremendous—the whole village has drowned.” But he wouldn’t have taken long to realize he had committed suicide.
Why? If he had been a saint, he could have lived alone. He was not. For him to live, those others had to be there. That is why the scoundrel, whether his villainy succeeds or fails, always fails. If his scheme fails, he fails. If his scheme succeeds, he still fails. The scoundrel never succeeds. He always fails.
Understand: if the villagers had caught on and beaten him, saying, “You liar!” he would have failed. The villagers believed him and jumped into the sea—he still failed.
From this I want to tell you something very deep: the saint always succeeds—whether he appears to fail or to succeed. The villain always fails—whether he appears to succeed or to fail. The saint has no failure; it is impossible. The non-saint has no success; it is impossible.
People come to me and say, “What kind of world is this? Here the dishonest succeed and the honest fail. I am honest and starving; the dishonest live in mansions.”
I tell them, “That cannot be. The dishonest may be surrounded by mansions, but they cannot live in them. They are enclosed by mansions, not living in them. I know the people who dwell in mansions. They can neither sleep nor eat nor love. The mansion is a prison—one they built with their own hands. No one else imprisoned them; they imprisoned themselves.”
Just as the shepherd, in the morning, went and stood by the tree to be tied with his own hands. Did he, through the day, feel that someone had bound him? No—he was bound of his own will. Did he feel imprisoned? No—he was in bliss, because by evening there would be a shower of wealth. When desire tells you that great pleasures are just ahead, you agree to live in a prison. You build it yourself.
There are two kinds of prisons: those others build for you, and those you build for yourself. That rich man in the mansion—he cannot sleep, cannot eat, cannot love. He is completely closed, rotting, dead. A corpse somehow going through motions. As wealth increases, sleep is lost. As wealth increases, hunger is lost.
Strange, isn’t it? When you have hunger you have no food; when you have food you have no hunger. When you have no bed, deep sleep comes; by the time you can afford a fine bed, sleep is gone. Without hunger, food is useless. Without sleep, what good is the best mattress? The poor do not commit suicide; the rich do.
People come and say, “Then our India is better. Look at America—so many suicides.” I tell them, it only means you are still poor; you haven’t come near suicide yet. America is rich; suicides increase. The day a nation becomes wholly rich, people will start jumping into the sea on their own. Not everyone is dying in America—meaning many there are still poor.
The poor have hope: tomorrow something will happen and happiness will come. The rich man’s hope breaks: he has everything but happiness hasn’t come—now what? People think those who live in mansions are happy, because they themselves are not in those mansions. The day you arrive there, you see the capacity for joy has been lost. If someone says, “I am moral but unhappy,” it proves only this: he is not moral. The moral can never be unhappy.
If someone says, “I am religious and yet I am a failure,” one thing is certain: he is not religious. The religious can never fail. If he gets, he wins; if he loses, he wins. The religious man’s victory is unique—there is no way to defeat him. Failure cannot happen. For religious means: whatever happens, he is content. How will you make him fail?
Lao Tzu keeps saying: you cannot defeat me because I do not want to win. How will you defeat me? Only he who wants to win can be defeated. Lao Tzu says, “You cannot put me down, for I have no ambition to be above. When I go to an assembly, I sit at the very back—where people leave their shoes—because from there there is no place lower to be pushed. You cannot push me from there. And even if you push me away, what will I lose? I was not sitting on a royal throne. I was sitting where the shoes are.” Lao Tzu says, “I stand at the last so no one can shove me.”
A religious man cannot be discontent, because the very essence of religion is contentment with whatever is. You cannot defeat him. Even if you defeat him, he celebrates. Every moment is victory for a religious man, because he has dropped the craving to win. These paradoxes are worth pondering deeply.
The bad man always loses. If he succeeds, he loses; if he fails, he loses.
This scoundrel would have lost had he failed. He lost even more when he completely succeeded. By nightfall he too would have jumped into the sea. When there are no people, on whom will you play your tricks? All his cleverness became useless.
Saintliness can be alone. It is a lamp that burns without wick and without oil. Non-saintliness cannot be alone. It needs others’ oil, others’ wick, others’ support. Non-saintliness is a social relationship. Saintliness is non-relationship. It is the joy of being alone.
Therefore the saint seeks solitude; the non-saint seeks crowds. Even if the non-saint goes into solitude, in imagination he is in the crowd. Even if the saint stands in a crowd, he is alone. Because he has seen a truth: whatever remains with him in his aloneness—that is his treasure. Whatever arises in him due to others’ presence is false; it is maya. It is not real; he cannot carry it with him.
You come near me and I feel love—this love is false. Because you leave and the love leaves. You brought it and you took it away. It was like your face reflected in my mirror. You moved away, the face disappeared. This love is not mine. If it were mine, whether you came or not would make no difference. Even if you did not come, it would go on burning—like a lamp burning in solitude, its light shines.
A flower blooms on a lonely path—whether anyone passes or not, its fragrance spreads. But if you come near and the flower becomes fragrant, and when you leave the fragrance disappears, that fragrance is false. You must have sprayed perfume. The flower is deceived.
If you come near and my love arises, you brought that love and you will take it away. That is why we become dependent on lovers. If your beloved is not around, your life’s juice is gone. That juice is not yours. And the irony is that if you are not around your beloved also loses her juice—she too has none within. And when neither has any within, how do you produce it together?
I keep saying: it is like two beggars standing before each other with their bowls held out, each hoping the other will give. Mere hope. Because the other too holds out a bowl. He too is not a giver—he too has come to beg. Both are deceived. And when the deception breaks you get angry: “Why did you waste my time? Why didn’t you tell me earlier that you too carry a bowl?”
Lovers fall into sorrow. The day the bowls are seen, the lover thinks the beloved deceived him; the beloved thinks the lover deceived her. Then they go in search of new partners. But the fundamental fact remains. The new beggar deceives a little while by hiding his bowl—but for how long? He too has come for the same reason; and you too conceal your bowl. When you are assured your partner won’t run away, you take out your bowl—and at that moment melancholy descends.
Your love and your joy all depend on others. No friend comes and you are sad. Friends arrive and you are festive. That festivity is false, superficial, painted on. It is not the dance of your heart. It does not arise from your heartbeat; it is not the music of your life-breath.
A saint means: to discover this truth—as soon as possible. Then you no longer depend on society. Whether you live in it or leave it makes no difference. Then you seek only that treasure which is yours; which no one’s absence can take away. If all go and leap into the sea, still your flute will go on playing.
The scoundrel cannot play the flute, because the scoundrel depends on others. The bigger the scoundrel, the greater his dependence. He will have to commit suicide. Had he been a saint, solitude would have become a festival. The story is straightforward.
Keep three sutras in mind.
First, if you set out to deceive another—if you fail, you fail; if you fully succeed, you still fail.
Second, do not use intelligence to push another into a pit. Do not dig a pit for another. In the end you will find it has become your grave.
And third, any wealth that comes from another’s destruction, another’s death, another’s life—anything dependent on others—do not call it wealth. Otherwise the day you “succeed,” no way will remain except suicide. Seek that which is yours, always yours; independent; dependent on no one—so that you can truly be master.
You will become soulful the day your lamp burns without wick and without oil. You will not go begging for oil, nor for wick. If everything is lost—think for a moment—if everything is lost, not a hair’s-breadth will be lost from your being—then you are a jinn, a Buddha. The one who sat beneath the Bodhi tree—we have called him God for this single reason: in that moment he recognized that which does not perish even if all else perishes. He recognized the society-free. He recognized the independent of the other—that which lies beyond the other, which is not obtained from the other. He caught the first glimpse of the lamp that burns without wick and without oil.
That lamp is burning within you, but as long as your eyes are fixed on others, you cannot become acquainted with it. Your eyes must turn within; you must be free of others. Freedom from others is sannyas—not abandoning others, but being free of them. The one who abandons may not be free; he runs to the forest and still thinks of others. He remembers what he left—often more intensely.
Send your wife to her mother’s house and you will remember her more. Her faults vanish and her virtues appear. Therefore sending the wife to her mother’s for a while is essential if you want to save the marriage. Two or three months a year—she will come back fresh and see your virtues; you will be fresh and see hers. Then, after three months, there can be another honeymoon. It will last a day or two; then the faults will reappear.
Run to the forest and you will remember even more. Renunciates who flee to the forest come to me and say, “It’s very difficult. Nothing comes to mind but women. The mind is full of sex.” Of course—because the issue is not running away from society, but being free of society.
Freedom is another matter. It comes only from this experience: slowly seeking within yourself that treasure which is yours; which you brought with you at birth and will take with you when you die; which existed before birth and will exist after death. That which you have not taken from anyone, which is not borrowed. Your own being—your own wealth—is the soul.
Enough for today.