Mahaveer Meri Drishti Mein #19

There are two points to understand here.

First, the battle with karma, the battle with ignorance, has to be fought by oneself. Mahavira was not at all prepared to accept anyone as an ally in his struggle. To refuse help altogether is a value of the highest order. Even if a god himself offers assistance, Mahavira will not agree—because in his vision, in this search there can be no fellow traveler. Whoever waits for a companion will be deprived of the search. It is an utterly solitary quest. And only one who has the courage to be utterly alone can set out on it.

The mind longs for someone to be with us—a guru, a friend, a guide, a helper. But until a person can be alone, not even an inch of progress is possible in the direction of inner discovery. The capacity to be alone—the courage to be alone—is the most precious thing.

We, on the contrary, want to take others along. Even if someone invites Mahavira—“Take me with you, I will help”—he returns the invitation with thanks. The tale is that Indra himself came and said, “Let me accompany you, let me help.” Mahavira replied, “Forgive me. This is not a search in which anyone can be a companion. It must be undertaken utterly alone.”

Why this insistence on aloneness? Because very deep truths are hidden in it. First: the very asking for company is weakness. Only a weak mind asks for support. And what can a weak mind accomplish? If one begins by asking for company, what can he do? So the first necessity is to drop this weakness that seeks company.

And something wondrous happens: the one who becomes totally alone—whose mind has let go of any wish for company, society, or support—such a person finds the whole existence eager to be with him. The other meaning of the story is precisely this: even the gods are eager to support the one who stands alone. The one who asks for company never truly receives it; at best people become companions in name. In truth, no one gains real support by asking.

But the one who does not ask, who even refuses the support that comes unasked—toward him all the auspicious forces of existence become impatient to lend their strength. The story is a myth, a purana, a legend, an instructive parable. Its message is that when a person stands utterly alone, the whole cosmos longs to be with him.

Yet if such a person were to accept even that support, he would go astray—because his willingness to accept reveals that somewhere in a dark corner of the mind, the desire for company still remains. Hence, though the invitation came to Mahavira—“We will accompany you”—he said, “I do not take anyone’s support.”

So even when all the benevolent forces of existence are ready to help, such a person persists in remaining alone, sustaining the courage to be alone. It is a great temptation, a powerful provocation: if anywhere within there lurks even a faint hankering for companion, for society, it will surface. Mahavira refuses that too. Thus he stands alone. And this is an immense event in the world of the mind—someone standing absolutely alone, with no trace of longing for company on any layer of his being. In one sense, such a person becomes astonishingly free. For it is our craving for company that binds us; at depth, that is the bondage.

To leave society outwardly is easy; to be free of the desire for society is very difficult. A person does not want to be alone. He will find some reason to be with someone. In aloneness he feels afraid: “No one is there; I am utterly alone.” And yet the truth is, even when all are there, we are alone. Who is with whom? How can anyone truly be with another? We can be near, adjacent—but how can we be together?

Our journeys are solitary. But we manufacture the illusion of togetherness. Husband and wife create an illusion of being together; friends do; master and disciple do—an illusion that there is someone with me, that I am not alone. The irony is that the other is under the same illusion. Both nurture this illusion and feel comforted: “Someone is there; now there is no fear.” But who is with whom? When I die, only I will die. When I live, only I live. And even now, in the depths of my mind, I am alone. Who is with me there?

As long as I keep asking for company, I cannot descend into the depths of my own mind. Company can exist on the periphery; at the center there can be no company—there I will be alone. Company can exist on the periphery, where our bodies touch—only that far can we be together. The person who is eager for company will live on the periphery; he can never slip to the center, because the deeper he goes within, the more he loses company.

We are many sitting here; if we all close our eyes, become silent, and go within, only one remains—each one alone. No one else remains with you there. Two people cannot enter meditation together. They can sit together to begin; to go in, they must go alone. The moment you move within, there is no one—only you.

Therefore, one who is too eager for company cannot enter within. Only if one totally denies, negates, rejects company can one go inward. Then the periphery loses all charm. Understand this a little.

We live on the periphery because there we have the convenience of others. We avoid the center precisely because there we must be alone; there no other can accompany us.

Renouncing society does not mean fleeing to the forest. In the forest he may befriend trees, birds, animals, mountains. The question is not about running away, for there too he will seek company. The real question, at depth, is this: as one finds a way to move from periphery to center, one will see that the very longing for peripheral relationships has to be dropped.

This does not mean he will break relationships. They may continue, but the craving for them within is gone. Now they are games of the periphery. To people living on the periphery he may appear to be standing there with them, but for himself he has become alone, utterly alone, and has begun to go within.

In Mahavira’s inner journey, since no companion is possible, he rejects all company. But the moment someone rejects all company, the whole of life wants to be his companion. The one who is alone, helpless, insecure—life itself becomes his security, his support, his assistance.

Such are the inner laws of life: when someone is completely helpless, the whole of existence becomes his helper. These laws are like the magnet that draws iron; we do not ask why it draws—we say, “It is the law: a magnet has such power.” I want to tell you that there is also a law that when a person stands inwardly utterly helpless, all the forces of existence begin to be drawn to him like iron to a magnet. Why they are drawn is not the question; it is a law. The meaning of law is: the moment one becomes helpless, one is no longer without support; all supports become his. And as long as a person keeps arranging his own supports, in the deeper sense he remains helpless.

This is what I wanted to say yesterday as well. The discussion arose: “We want security; we should do something in which security remains; we should not become insecure.” But the truth is, only the totally insecure mind gains the security of the Divine. The one who provides his own security never attains the Divine’s protection—because he leaves no occasion for the Divine; he has made his own arrangements.

I often tell a story. Krishna is sitting down to eat. He has taken two or three morsels when he suddenly leaves his plate and rushes out. Rukmini asks, “What happened to you? Where are you going?” He doesn’t even hear; he runs to the door as if there is a fire somewhere. Rukmini rises and follows a few steps behind. Then he stops at the door, turns back, and quietly sits down again to eat. Rukmini says, “You have puzzled me. First you ran in such a way that you didn’t even answer my question; then you came back from the door as if there was nowhere to go. What happened?” Krishna says, “One who loves me, a dear one of mine, was passing along a road. People were throwing stones at him, and he was walking on playing his cymbals, singing my song. They were throwing stones, and he did not reply—not even in his mind. He simply saw: people are throwing stones; blood is flowing down his forehead. So I needed to go. If I do not go for one so utterly without support, then what is the meaning of me?” Rukmini asked, “Then why did you return?” He said, “By the time I reached the door, he was no longer without support. He had thrown down his cymbals and picked up stones in his hands. He had made his own arrangements; now I am not needed. He has left no space for me, no gap where my need could arise.”

When a person makes his own arrangements, there remains no way for the forces of life to work. We all make our own arrangements; that is why we are deprived.

The very meaning of sannyas is simply this: one who makes no arrangements for himself, who drops all arrangements. To stand in insecurity—that is sannyas: to be in insecurity. In every kind of insecurity, where one resolves, “I will not make any arrangements for myself.” It is very difficult, because to persuade the mind to stand in insecurity—“Do not make arrangements! Do not arrange anything! Drop all arrangements!”—is hard.

Maluk has said it, and he has been little understood. Little understood—but had he said it to Mahavira, Mahavira would have understood. Maluk says: Birds do not work; the python does not take a job. Maluk says: The Giver is Ram. Birds do no work; the python goes for no employment; and the Giver is Ram. This has not been understood. People thought a teaching of laziness was being given—that no one should do anything; that one should lie around like birds and pythons; then all would be finished. But Maluk is saying something else; he is not teaching idleness. He is saying: work or do not work—but inwardly be as insecure as the bird, who knows nothing of tomorrow, has no assurance of evening; be like the python, who has no bank balance, no arrangements, no security. Such a mind is possible. And when such a mind happens, then Ram becomes everything—support itself. Then one no longer has to seek any other support. This is not a teaching of laziness; it is a very deep teaching of accepting insecurity.

And Mahavira stood in such insecurity, unattached and alone—no companion, no associate—because that too becomes a means of our security.

A woman fears being alone; she wants a husband. The world feels insecure, frightening. A husband will become her security. The husband too is perhaps insecure; he does not find safety in this, for women will attract him, pull him—and then great insecurity can arise. So he wants a wife who will protect him from the pull of other women, guard him from other attractions, so that there be no danger, no disturbance in life—life becomes orderly, systematic, all arrangements made, and we make our arrangements.

When the ego makes the arrangements, the Divine’s arrangement has to be left aside. And when the ego drops all managing, the whole arrangement passes into the hands of the Divine.

Therefore Mahavira is not ready to accept any kind of help, company, companionship, or security. He says, “I will seek utterly alone. If I wander, there is no harm—because wandering, too, is an essential part of the search. Only through wandering does that vitality, that consciousness awaken which can arrive.” So there is no fear of wandering. That is why he refuses all kinds of supports.

But remember: for such a person all kinds of supports begin to become available of their own accord. Those who chase things do not obtain them; those who stop, or who walk in the opposite direction, find that things begin to follow them.

In the depths of life there is an order of very eternal laws. One of them is this: whatever you chase will run away from you; whatever you drop attachment to and walk your path, you will suddenly find it walking behind you. Those who renounce wealth find wealth gathering around them. Those who renounce prestige find showers of honor around them. Those who let go of the demand for security attain security. Those who let go of everything—perhaps everything becomes available to them. The one house you leave—perhaps all houses become yours. The worry for one person’s love you drop—perhaps everyone’s love becomes yours.

Mahavira sees this very clearly; therefore he does not want to set up any halting place in between. In rejecting Indra’s invitation, this very feeling has been expressed. Yes—if you have any questions in this connection, we will take them up.

Yes, it is absolutely a parable. Absolutely a parable.

The real difficulty is this: we can understand only stories. And even stories we understand only when they are stamped as historical. Let us talk about that.

We grasp only stories—and even then, only if we are told they are historical. If a story is not historical, we dismiss it: “It’s just a story.” Then we fail to understand it at all. But the question is not whether the story happened or did not happen; that is not the question. The question is: what does the story say? What is its meaning? What is its purpose?

The purpose gets lost, and our ordinary mind clings to rigidity.

Once, at a camp in the mountains, we went to a sunset point. The sun was going down, yet it was blazing hot—we had arrived perhaps half an hour early. They seated me on a bench. Two sisters were with me. They became concerned that they had brought me out in such heat. So they stood in front of me and said, “We will become your shade. We will be your umbrella—if you don’t mind?” I said, “Not at all.” I also told them, “Write this down. One day it will become a historical fact that I was in the sun and two sisters became an umbrella for me. Write it down.”

And what they said was perfectly correct—there was not the slightest error in it: they became an umbrella. But did they actually become an umbrella? Still, it can be written—and without a trace of untruth. They did what an umbrella does: they became shade for me. They bore the sun; I sat in the shadow. It is easy to write: two sisters became shade—became an umbrella—for me.

Later it can become a troublesome issue: “Did two women truly become an umbrella?” Then we have failed to understand poetry; we are clutching things with a dead literalism.

Poetry has not yet been understood. Any truly wondrous person—so extraordinary is he—that poetry will inevitably arise around him; stories will be born around him. Not that the stories are “true” in a factual sense, but the person is such that stories are bound to arise in his presence. His very being generates heaps of poetry. But soon, in our grasp, poetry ceases to be poetry—we clutch it too hard. And when we clutch it, the poem dies and the hunt for “facts” begins. That is exactly where life is falsified.

The lives of Mahavira, Buddha, Muhammad, Jesus—have been made false. The sole reason is that what was poetry, spoken in great love, has been forced into fact. Often life’s events are so unique they cannot be said in bare facts at all; we must join them to poetry. And once we add poetry, the difficulty begins.

For example, there is a story about Muhammad: wherever he went, a little cloud always hovered above him. Those who lived with him must have felt, “It is not right that the sun should scorch such a man. It is right that even a cloud keep watch over him.” This is a deep feeling, which the seer, the lover, the poet spread over the cloud—he projected onto the cloud what was in his heart: “Even a cloud should cast its shade over such a man; it must be so. That even a cloud neglect such a man would be unbearable.” As poetry this was right; but when we seize it as fact, we get into trouble.

I hold that around all great ones, all those incomparable beings, a thousand kinds of poetry are born. Later people take that poetry to be history, and then the person’s life appears false. And if we write only facts, the facts seem so dry that around a person like Mahavira how are we to write mere facts? They feel barren, lifeless; one has to drape them in poetry—otherwise they become arid and dull.

Consider: a man in love says to a woman, “Your face is like the moon.” This is not a fact; yet it is still true. It is not necessary that if something is not factual it cannot be true—otherwise poetry would be finished; poetry would have no truth left at all.

Some, like Plato, say poets are utterly false, and until poetry is erased from the world, falsehood will not be erased. There are such people. But there are others, deeper in their grasp, who say: if poetry is false, then what truth is left in life? Then life itself is futile.

A young man tells his beloved, “Your face is like the moon.” This is factually fictitious—can anything be more un-factual? How can a woman’s face be like the moon? If you told Einstein, “We believe a woman’s face is like the moon,” he would say, “You have gone mad. The moon’s mass is so great that not one woman, not all the women on Earth together, could bear it. How could her face be the moon? And the moon is full of craters and pits. What nonsense is this—calling a woman ‘moon-like’!”

Yet the lover will still insist, “Her face is the moon.” In truth he is saying something else: what happens within when one looks at the moon—the moon itself is not the point—the lingering afterglow in the heart, the silver stream that remains when you close your eyes after seeing the moon, the coolness that surrounds the mind, the luminosity that bathes you—can that also happen upon seeing a certain face? The moon as an object is irrelevant. If someone truly felt that inside, he is entitled to say, “Her face is moon-like.” But if you try to test that poetry on the touchstone of mathematics and science, you will go astray.

That is why I call all these accounts metaphorical tales—through which certain things are said that perhaps cannot be said otherwise. Someone asked Jesus, “Why do you speak in stories? Why don’t you say it straight?” Jesus replied, “People who can understand straight talk have not yet been born. So I have to speak in stories.” He added, “There is another advantage to stories: those who do not understand suffer no harm—they have merely heard a story. But those who can understand extract what needs to be extracted.”

Sometimes plain truths can even be harmful—if not understood, they can create trouble—because you cannot set them aside by saying, “It’s only a story”; they can weigh heavily on your life. But if it is a story, you can postpone it. Yet one who has eyes will find what is there.

Stories are a way of telling truths—so that truth does not remain dry or dead but becomes alive. However, if such stories fall into the hands of the uncomprehending, they turn them into “facts,” and by making them facts they make the whole person appear false. So I call them metaphorical stories, teaching parables. They contain great understanding, but they are not historical facts.

This too must be understood. It is a very important question. It is a very important question. And ordinarily it will appear exactly as you say: if a person is not taking support, then of course it seems right that he should not give support either. It looks perfectly reasonable; it seems entirely logical. But the logic is mistaken; it is fallacious. Where is the fallacy? Let us see it clearly.

When we say, “Do not take support,” its total meaning is only this: in going within, whenever I go in, I cannot take anyone along. There is no way to take anyone with you on the inner journey. Within, I will have to go alone. Going alone is the only way to reach there. Therefore I deny all supports. But if I go to tell someone this very thing—“Do not take anyone’s support; if you lean on supports you will go astray; if you take support you will not be able to go within”—then in one sense I am giving support. In one sense I am giving support, and in another sense I am saving him from all supports. Both statements are true.

The support Mahavira gives is of this kind. It is that sort of support where he tells people: “I went within alone. So long as I held on to supports, I did not enter within. Are you holding on to any supports? If you are, you will not be able to go within—be supportless.” If we choose to call that “support,” we may—yet it is a support that says, “Do not hold any support—not even mine!”

The difficulty is this. Yesterday, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was saying: “If I refute method, then I have no right to be a teacher.” He was saying that if I criticize technique, I have no right to teach. He was right. And yet I still say I do have the right—because when I refute method, what I want to tell people is that you will not be able to reach by any method. This is precisely the difficulty I want to point out: by any method, by any technique, you will not be able to go.

And what I am giving is not a method. What I am giving is not a method at all. I am merely giving you the news: do not get caught in the tangle of methods, otherwise you will go astray—I have gone astray that way. I am giving you that news. And I am not giving you a method; therefore in one sense I am not a teacher, and in another sense I have the right to be one. The right means only this: I am entitled to say at least this much to someone—that no one has ever reached by a method, so do not cling to a method. And do not cling to my words either; investigate even this for yourself. Because if you cling to this too, it will become your method. That is why I say life is very complex. There, straight…

In Greece there was a line of argument. Below Greece lies a small island, Sicily. There were Sophist thinkers who were astonishing in one sense, and utterly futile in another. Astonishing because no one in the world has argued as much as they did; futile because they only argued, and did nothing beyond that. They could refute anything and they could support anything—because they said that nothing is such that it cannot be refuted from one angle and supported from another.

Therefore they said, the question is not “What is truth?” The question is “What is your heart’s desire? What do you wish?” They would even prove a point for money. If someone hired them, whatever he said, they would make it right; they would prove it true! And tomorrow if his opponent hired them, they would prove the opposite!

Their claim was that nothing is established; life is so complex that all aspects are present in it. The arguer merely lifts up the aspect he wants to prove, pushing all other aspects into the background—nothing more.

But if we want to see the whole of life, we must keep in mind this: it is true that one should never take any support, for support will mislead. And then immediately this is linked to the fact that I am giving you support by saying this—so what will you do now? What will you do?

They would say… Sicily is a small island to the south. The Sophists offered an example: a man came from Sicily and, on arriving in Athens, said, “In Sicily, everyone is a liar.” Someone stood up and asked him, “Where are you from?” He said, “I am from Sicily.” The man said, “Now we are in trouble! You say everyone in Sicily is a liar, and you are from Sicily; so you are a liar—what shall we do with your statement? And if we accept that everyone in Sicily is a liar, then at least one person in Sicily must be telling the truth, and your statement becomes false. If we do not accept that everyone in Sicily is a liar—if we take you to be lying—again we land in a difficulty.” Someone stood up and said, “What shall we do?” Perhaps the man himself had no idea what to say or do!

Life is so complex that both things can be true. It may be that everyone in Sicily is a liar, and yet this man’s statement is also true—because it may be that not everyone lies all the time; everyone lies, but at different times; not on every occasion! It may be that everyone lies, but not on all occasions—and on this occasion this man is not lying! Life is so complex that the moment we grasp it from a single corner and begin to insist, our insistence turns false.

Day before yesterday someone asked about anekant, so keep that in mind here. Mahavira calls this insistence “ekant”—to seize one aspect of life and claim that it is the whole. He says: this is ekant, one-sidedness. Such a person has seen only one corner and, from that single corner, drawn conclusions about life as a whole. He has not yet seen all the corners. And Mahavira says, if he were to see all the corners, he would drop the claim—for he would find corners exactly opposite to his own, and just as true as his own. Then he would cease to insist.

Mahavira is truly wondrous. He says even satyagraha—insistence on truth—is wrong, because that too is ekant. Truth has many facets. And truth is so vast that the truth exactly opposite to a given truth can also be right—and both can be right simultaneously!

Therefore Mahavira says, “I am anekantavadi.” Anekantavadi means one who accepts all one-sided views and, as one-sided, rejects them all. When someone asks Mahavira, “Is the soul eternal or non-eternal?” Mahavira will say, “Eternal, and non-eternal.” The man will ask, “How can both be true?” Mahavira will say, “It depends on the corner from which you look. If you take the body to be the soul, as the materialist does, then it is non-eternal. If you see the soul as distinct from the body and from change, as the spiritualist does, then the soul is eternal. And I will not give a single statement, for a single statement would be one-sided.”

Anekant means the simultaneous acceptance of all facets of life.

We all know the story: five blind men standing by an elephant. The one who touched a leg said, “The elephant is like a pillar, like a banana tree!” The one who felt the ear said, “You are crazy! I have seen, touched, known the elephant—it is like a winnowing fan!” Each made his claim. None of their claims is entirely wrong—and all of their claims are wrong. For the elephant is neither just like a pillar nor just like a fan; yet there is something in the elephant that is like a fan, and something that is like a pillar.

Mahavira asks: if someone arrives there with a lamp and sees the five blind men arguing, what should the one with the lamp do? Whom should he side with—the fan-advocate or the pillar-advocate? Which “ism” should he join, having lit the lamp?

He will tell each blind man, “You are right—but not wholly right.” And he will tell each one, “The man you take to be your opponent is not your opponent; he too is speaking about one limb of the elephant, and you are speaking about another.” And the whole elephant is the sum of all that you say—and more than the sum. Not merely the sum. Because one blind man’s experience is of the pillar, another’s of the fan; even if we add all five blind men’s experiences, the real elephant will still not be formed. The real elephant is more than all their experiences. There is something that only the elephant can experience of itself—something neither the blind men nor even the man with the lamp can experience.

That is, even if you see the elephant completely, you still cannot experience what the elephant experiences of being an elephant. That too is an experience. And it may be that if the elephant could express it, it would match neither the five blind men nor the lamp-bearer—it would be the elephant’s own experience.

So Mahavira says: there are infinite angles of experience. From each angle a person is right. The mistake is that he tries to make his angle all-comprehensive. He says, “What I have known here—that alone is right.” And we hurry to do that. The mind is in a hurry—because if we have known a single corner thoroughly, we feel, “Finished! Now we know it all.”

Consider this electric bulb glowing here. If you want to extinguish it, one person can strike the bulb with a stick; it will go dark. Another can bring scissors and cut the wire; the bulb will go dark. A third can press the switch; the bulb will go dark. And it may also happen that neither the switch is pressed nor the bulb broken, the wire remains intact—and still the electricity disappears. Someone has seen this too; so he says, “None of these is electricity, for all these remained in place, and one day I saw there was no power.” Each of these four people, from his own standpoint, speaks quite correctly. And each standpoint seems to be in opposition to the others.

But Mahavira says they are not opposing standpoints at all—that is the meaning of anekant. He says there is no such thing as a contradictory viewpoint; all are complementary views. This is a most astonishing point. What appears to us as contradiction is only due to our limited vision. If we could see the whole, it would cease to be a contradiction; it would reveal itself as a cooperating, complementary vision, enclosing the whole truth.

And still Mahavira says: even if we add up all viewpoints, the truth is not complete—for there may be other viewpoints beyond our imagination. Therefore he preserves the possibility of the many; he does not insist on the one. This is precisely why, in his era, his impact was limited.

Buddha has a single viewpoint, firm and precise. He stands by it with absolute rigidity. He does not budge an inch. And when someone speaks with such strictness from a single standpoint, people feel appealed to—because it appears that he knows; his mind is not loose; he does not say yes to everything or no to everything; his vision is very clear.

Now here is the irony: what we call “clear vision” is one-sidedness! Because he states one thing firmly: “The elephant is exactly like a fan; not a shred of doubt.” And whoever says otherwise is crazy, ignorant, foolish—he says it plainly. He is utterly certain. He has known the elephant as a fan, and the matter is closed.

But another man says, “Yes, the elephant is like a fan—and yes, the elephant is not like a fan. Yes, the elephant is like a pillar—and yes, the elephant is not like a pillar.” He says of every viewpoint: “Yes, it is so—and yes, it is not so.”

My father was like this; in my childhood it constantly puzzled me. I could not understand him. My home had all sorts of people—atheists, a communist, a socialist, a Congressman. It was a large family, a whole assembly of every kind of person! And they were all firm in their views—what they took to be right was right, what they took to be wrong was wrong. There was no room for compromise.

I was amazed that if someone told my father, “God does not exist,” he would say, “You are right.” And if someone said, “God exists,” he would say, “You are right.” I heard this from him many times; he would give assent to every kind of statement. I asked him, “What is this? You accept everything—this is very difficult! Either we are all fools whose statements are not worthy of your rejection—or how can all be right?”

He said, “Truth is vast—so vast that it accommodates all. It includes the theist and the atheist. And if truth is so small that only the theist can fit into it, then such a truth is not needed; it is very small, extremely narrow. How can truth be narrow? Truth must be vast; it will contain all. Therefore one can say yes to all.”

“And one can also say no to all—because no single truth can encompass the whole; and one can say yes to all—because every truth partakes of the whole.”

And thus the one who knows will be in great difficulty: What should he say? Yes, or no? Or both? Or remain silent?

So Mahavira’s position appeared to people of his time as if he were confused; Mahavira did not seem clear—he says yes to everything and no to everything! Which means either he does not know, or if he does know, he does not know clearly—or, knowing clearly, who knows what he intends for people with such statements! Hence Mahavira’s thought did not become universal; it could not be propagated all over the world.

Even today, when we recite the names of Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Buddha, or Confucius, often Mahavira’s name is not mentioned alongside. Mahavira is not yet an international name. You will find millions on earth who have never even heard of Mahavira.

It is astonishing that such a marvelous person’s message reached so few; there is a deep reason. The deep reason is that Mahavira is not a partisan. And when one is not partisan, it becomes very difficult for us to understand him. In the morning he will seem one thing, in the evening something else, at noon something else. Every statement will appear to contradict another; he will seem full of self-contradictions—sometimes saying this, sometimes that. We desire a consistent man. We want someone coherent—who, once he states something, keeps saying the same thing.

Tolstoy has written somewhere: when I was young, I thought that a consistent thinker is the real thinker—one who speaks in perfect coherence, who, having said one thing, never says another in opposition to it. But now that I am old, I know that the one who is consistent has not thought at all—for life is full of contradictions. Whoever thinks will necessarily have contradictions in his thought; it cannot be otherwise. He cannot utter a truth that is one-sided, complete, and claiming. Even in each of his declarations there will be hesitation. But people take that hesitation as a sign of ignorance, when it is actually the mark of knowledge.

The ignorant asserts with intensity; for the knower it is very difficult to assert. In fact, ignorance always asserts; it can assert—because it has understood so little, seen so little, known so little, recognized so little, that within that smallness it can organize everything neatly. But the one who has seen all and beheld life in its many forms finds it hard to impose any tidy order.

This is the meaning of Mahavira’s anekant: no viewpoint is complete; no viewpoint is an enemy to another; all viewpoints are cooperative, and all are subsumed in a vaster truth. And the one who knows the great truth—the vast truth—will be neither for anyone nor against anyone. Only such a person can be impartial.

It is a strange thing: only one whose vision is of anekant can be impartial. And therefore I say Jains are not people of anekant—because they are partisans; they have a side, a prejudice. They say, “We are on Mahavira’s side!”

But Mahavira cannot have a side. If one’s vision is anekant, where can his “side” be? All sides are his; none is “his.” The truth immanent in all sides is his—but he claims no side. How then can Mahavira have a party?

Mahavira suffered a double loss. First, his message did not reach the multitudes. Second, those it did reach became partisans! So few friends could be made—and those who became friends turned out to be enemies of his spirit. It is a tragic irony: few friends were found, because the message made finding many friends difficult; and those who did become friends became partisan. And Mahavira is opposed to partisanship.

And here is the great irony: his followers even gave the name “anekantavada” to anekant! Anekant means the negation of vada—of doctrine. Anekant means no doctrine. For a doctrine is always a side, a standpoint, a nay, a claim. Vada means claim. To tack “vada” onto anekant means the claim has begun again—his followers created a new claim precisely where he was opposing all claims.

Keep in mind also that perhaps after a thousand or two thousand years Mahavira will again become influential; his vision may again become useful to many. Because as the world moves forward, a remarkable thing is happening: the doctrinaire mind is collapsing—day by day. Partisanship is becoming meaningless by the day. As intelligence and discrimination grow, man is becoming more and more impartial.

Sects will go, doctrines will go—if not today, tomorrow; they will not last long. The day doctrines disappear, it may happen that the names which seem so important today become less important, and the name which has till now seemed quite unimportant suddenly establishes fresh importance.

But if the Jains keep clinging to Mahavira, the revolution of Mahavira’s vision will never reach everyone. That is, around Mahavira the partisans who have gathered have strangled Mahavira’s neck.

I understand. In truth the question is not about outside and inside; the question is about knowing this truth that we are insecure. You don’t have to create a feeling of insecurity; it is a fact, simply a fact, that we are insecure. What is secure—outside or inside, anywhere?

Are relationships secure?
They are not. Is it certain that what was yours yesterday will still be yours today? That what is yours today will be yours tomorrow morning? Nothing is certain.

Is respect secure?
Not in the least. Yesterday a crowd stood behind someone—today you can’t even tell whether that man is alive or dead. What is secure? Is wealth secure?

Insecurity is not a feeling; insecurity is the awareness of the truth that life is insecure. As life is, it is insecure. No guarantee of birth, of youth, of the body—no guarantee of anything.

Awareness of this truth—and to live with this awareness—on both planes, inner and outer.

I’m not saying a man should not build a house. I am saying that even while building a house, know that insecurity does not end; insecurity stands where it is—whether the house stays or not. At most the difference is this: the one without a house feels insecurity, and the one with a house does not feel it—but it stands in its place; nothing has really changed.

The poor are insecure; the rich are too—but the rich develop the illusion of security. I am not saying don’t raise a family, don’t marry, don’t make friends. Know that everything is insecure—and then your clinging will drop. You won’t hold on for dear life, because you know that whether you cling or not, insecurity stands where it is. Then even if there is money, you won’t become “a rich man” within, because there is no reason to be. Even with wealth you will remain inwardly poor, because you know poverty—the lack—stands in its place; it is not erased by wealth. However good your health, death will not forget you, because you will know the issue isn’t good or bad health—there is death; it stands there for the sick and the healthy alike.

Awareness of insecurity—awareness, not emotion. That is, you don’t have to do anything; it’s not a matter of cultivating a feeling. The irony is, by cultivating feelings of security we blot out the awareness of insecurity—yet insecurity is the truth!

Recently, in Bhavnagar, a painter was brought to me. He had returned after years in America, a very talented young man. But his parents were worried; his wife was worried. They all came to me—wife, parents. Old people, with only one son; they had poured everything into him. Now there was great trouble.

They said, “We are in difficulty—our boy is tormented by utterly needless insecurities, by baseless fears of things that may never happen. He is dying over what hasn’t happened.”

“What happens?”

They said, “If he goes out and sees a blind person, he comes straight home, lies on the bed, starts trembling, and says, ‘What if I go blind?’ Tell us—what madness is this? If someone in the neighborhood dies, we are less worried about that than about whether he will find out. If he finds out, he goes completely numb for two or four days and says, ‘Won’t I die?’ We’ve tried to explain; in America he had psychoanalysis—no good. We’ve shown him to doctors in India—no use. Whoever sees him says, ‘These are foolish fears. You’re young—how will you die? Your eyes are perfectly fine. We’ll run tests—your eyes are fine.’”

He says, “All that is fine; but is it certain that if eyes are fine a man cannot go blind? Is it absolutely certain that if a man is young, he will not die?” He says, “We understand all that—but still fear grabs me. If someone becomes lame, I feel afraid—won’t I become lame?”

The young man sat before me, so frightened. I said to his father, mother, and wife, “You are teaching this young man sheer falsehoods. He is saying exactly the right thing.”

At that, the young man—who was sitting with his head down and his spine bent—straightened up. He lifted his head and looked at me intently. He said, “What are you saying—am I right?” I said, “You are right. There is no guarantee of the eyes, nor of life. And your parents are trying to instill an illusion in you by telling downright lies. You are speaking the truth; they are speaking lies. You are absolutely right.”

“But,” I said, “why do you want to run away from it? Where can you run? Can you avoid death? Is there any way?” He said, “How could I?” “Then,” I said, “accept the fact of death. What cannot be avoided is—so what is there to worry about?”

He said, “Then it doesn’t seem like something to worry about, but they keep telling me, ‘No, this isn’t true,’ so I get into a conflict. Inside it seems there will be death, and they say there won’t be—so I get torn, troubled. Are you saying there will be death?”

I said, “That is absolutely certain. It isn’t even certain you will rise alive tomorrow morning. Therefore, this night you have—sleep well; there is no guarantee of the morning.”

I asked him, “What is your fear about the eyes?” He said, “Then how will I paint? If I lose my eyes, how will I paint?” I said, “As long as you have eyes, paint—because there is no guarantee they will be there tomorrow. When your eyes are gone, you won’t be able to paint. Right now you have eyes, and you are not painting—you are wasting them in the worry that they might not be. That much is certain: eyes can be lost. If that is certain, then paint quickly—because the eyes may go. And no one in the world can give you assurance. I will not give you assurance.”

His parents had brought him to me for assurance. They were alarmed by what I said: “What are you saying? We’ll be in even greater difficulty.” I said, “You will not be in difficulty.”

The next morning the young man came to me and said, “After four years I slept for the first time! Because when you said, ‘It is so, and it can happen,’ then what is the question? All right—finished.”

Where is the struggle? If death is, and there is acceptance, where is the struggle? No—death is, and there is no acceptance. Then we keep creating feelings as if there is no death, and we set things up so that we don’t find out that there is death. We build the cremation ground outside the village precisely so that it won’t be noticed that death is a part of life—make it outside of life. In the village, people don’t even come to know that someone dies.

The cremation ground should be right in the middle of the village, where a man has to pass by ten times a day, and ten times be told that death stands there. But we build it outside, so no one finds out that death is. If a bier passes on the road, a mother calls her child inside and shuts the door: “Son, come in—the bier is passing!” If the mother had a little understanding, she would bring all the children out: “Look carefully—a bier is passing. Tomorrow I will die; the day after, you will. This is the truth of life; there is no way to run or hide.”

Awareness of insecurity means this: we should be fully conscious of it; it should not remain suppressed in the unconscious; it should be in our consciousness. Then our life will be altogether different. On the surface, some things will go on as they are, but you will be completely transformed.

You will be completely transformed. Your grip will change, attachment will change, likes and dislikes will change. You will become a different person—because what is there to cling to, to hate or to love so fiercely? If life is so insecure, what is the point of all this madness? Why be jealous? What to desire? What ambition? That awareness will wipe all these things away. My whole emphasis is that if we see the facts of life, we will naturally move toward truth.

What have we done? We have falsified even the facts! We have whitewashed everything so that the fact no longer appears. And from untruth there can be no journey to truth. From fact one can go to truth—but hiding, altering, twisting, perverting the fact, we can never reach truth.

Mahavira also calls this sannyas. But the person we call a sannyasin today is exactly the opposite. Today the sannyasin is more secure than the householder. The householder can go bankrupt; the sannyasin has no question of bankruptcy. The householder has a thousand worries and entanglements; the sannyasin does not even have those. The sannyasin is utterly secured.

If we look at the sannyasin today, the opposite picture appears: he is more secure—no anxiety about market prices, no worries, no difficulties. There is food arranged, devotees, society, temple, sthānak—everything arranged; an ashram—everything arranged. The sannyasin today is in the most secure condition!

Whereas sannyas means one who has dropped the infatuation with security, who has awakened to the awareness that all is insecure; who no longer even thinks of security. He has begun to live in insecurity itself—does not speak of tomorrow, does not think of the future, makes no plans; he simply lives moment to moment. Whatever comes, he is ready. Death—ready. Life—ready. Sorrow—ready. Joy—ready.

The name of such a state of mind is renunciation, or sannyas. Such a person is agr̥hī—homeless. If we search very deeply, security is “griha,” house; insecurity is “agriha,” homelessness. The one who lives in security, who arranges security, is a householder. The one who does not live in security, who lives in the acceptance of insecurity, is a sannyasin, a homeless one.

It is a mistake to make this into a matter of monk versus householder. In truth, if we look closely: on one side is the one without securities, who lives as the wind and the water live; on the other is the one lost in the illusion of security, in dreams, in sleep. It is like telling a wakeful person: do not bow to someone who is asleep. It is pointless—the man is asleep. Do not honor the sleeping, lest your honor only deepen his sleep. It seems that is what Mahavira meant…

But the monks who came after Mahavira took exactly the opposite meaning. They turned it into a pedestal for their ego: that they are higher, established in pride, honored, worshipful—others must worship them.

Here is the amusing thing: nowhere did Mahavira say that a monk should accept worship from a householder. Nowhere did he say a renunciate should demand deference from a householder. He only said this much: a monk should not offer deference to a householder. For “householder” simply means one standing shrouded in ignorance. If that ignorance is to be broken, it is necessary to puncture the gratifications of his ego at many points; it is not right to nourish his ego.

So, lest the householder’s ego be fed, Mahavira says: the monk should not defer to him. But perhaps he did not foresee that his own monks would convert this into nourishment for their ego, and start living in the conceit that they must be worshiped—and then become discourteous, devoid of humility. Mahavira could not even imagine that a monk could be discourteous; that is why he said it. The difficulty is precisely this: it did not occur to him that a monk could be without humility.

For sainthood means living in total humility, twenty-four hours a day. Even if no one is around, you live in humility—that is what sainthood means. Because sainthood means simplicity; and how can simplicity be without humility?

So it never occurred to Mahavira that a monk might be discourteous. Yes, a householder can be discourteous, because he lives in ego—ego is his home; therefore, do not offer him deference. But it seems a mistake crept in. The mistake was not to see that a monk too can be a kind of householder. It did not occur to him that a monk could merely be a transformed householder—only the clothes and the guise changed, while all the demands of the mind remain what they were in a householder, even more so. This possibility was not envisaged.

The truth is, what we call “monk” is often no monk at all. Curiously, what we call “householder” is indeed a householder; but what we call “monk” is not a monk—he is only the householder in another form. The true monk has almost vanished from the earth. It is difficult to find a monk. In numbers they may be in the hundreds of thousands, but finding a monk is difficult.

A Japanese emperor once told his ministers, “Go and find out—if there is a monk anywhere, I want to meet him.” The ministers said, “That is a very difficult task.” The emperor said, “Difficult? Every day I see mendicants and monks passing on the road.” The ministers replied, “Yes, those are the visible monks. You want a monk. That is very hard; it may take years. Still, we will search.” They searched long. At last they brought news: “On a mountain there is an old man. Hurry, he may die any moment; he is extremely old. Come quickly. We have investigated—this man is a monk.”

The emperor went. The old man was sitting at ease, leaning against a tree, legs stretched out. The emperor stood before him. The old man did not get up to salute the emperor, as the emperor expected. He did not even draw in his legs—he kept them stretched out. He paid no mind to the emperor’s arrival. He sat just as he was.

The emperor said, “Are you awake? Not asleep, are you? I am the emperor. You do not observe the courtesy of standing and bowing? You sit with legs stretched out like a rude villager! And to think I came to see a monk!”

The old man burst into hearty laughter. He said, “What emperor and what monk! These are all parts of sleep. What emperor, what monk! All parts of sleep. Who should honor whom, and who should accept honor from whom? All parts of sleep. If you wish to come to a monk, drop being an emperor and then come—for how can ‘emperor’ and ‘monk’ meet? It will be very difficult. You are standing on a mountaintop, we are resting in a ditch. Where will there be a meeting? How will there be an encounter? If you want to meet a monk, drop being an emperor. And as for drawing in or stretching out the legs: if your eyes are fixed only on the body, why make this futile effort to come here at all? If that is where your gaze is stuck, you climbed the mountain in vain—hard work, sweat for nothing. Better go back.”

Hearing this, the emperor felt the man was extraordinary. He stayed with him for a few days, watched him, tested him, recognized him, understood his way of living, and rejoiced. At the time of departure, he brought out a precious velvet coat studded with jewels worth millions. He said, “I wish to present this coat to you.”

The monk replied, “If you offer it and I do not accept, you will be hurt. But you will offer it and go away; here in this forest the animals and birds are my only acquaintances. They will laugh at me: ‘In old age he has taken to childishness!’ These monkeys, these birds—they will laugh a lot. These monkeys, these birds, these crows, these parrots—they have no sense of the value of jewels. You think you are giving something worth millions, but where are the eyes that see it as worth millions? I am utterly alone here. These creatures are my companions; they will take the jewels for pebbles and me for a madman. Take this coat back. If someday you find something truly precious, bring that—something that can be recognized even here. On this lonely mountain, under these silent trees, by these birds, this sky, these moon and stars—bring something they too can recognize as precious.”

The emperor returned and said to his ministers, “I must offer something. But what precious thing can I take there?”

The ministers said, “Only you. But you will have to go changed—go as a monk—because the only precious thing that can be recognized on that mountain, in that solitude, is sainthood. Human values can be recognized on the avenues of the capital; the values of the divine can be recognized even in solitude. Where there is no appraiser at all, they can still be weighed.”

The very meaning of sainthood has been lost. Those who sit under the name of “monk” are, most often, altered householders who have changed their clothes. And they go on doing the same work.

A monk once met me. I asked him, “This mouth-cloth you tie—does it truly feel to you like something worth tying?” He said, “Not at all.” I said, “Then you should drop it.” He replied, “If I drop it, what will I eat tomorrow? Where will I stay? Who will honor me? It is because of this mouth-cloth that everything is arranged. If this goes, all arrangements will go.”

Even the mouth-cloth is an arrangement. It is a badge saying: you will give us security; we tie this mouth-cloth, we wear this ochre robe. We fail to see that these too are security measures. Just as we householders make arrangements, this ‘monk’ too is making arrangements. He is not ready to muster the courage to stand alone: if someone gives, fine; if no one gives, fine. If bread comes, fine; if it does not, fine. Unless he can gather such courage, why call him different from a householder?

There is only one difference: the householder exploits others, and this one exploits the householders. The householder, because he exploits, is becoming sinful; and this one, exploiting those sinners, thinks he is not becoming sinful—he is a holy man! He is bound to nothing! He has even made arrangements for being unbound. But the arrangement itself is the bondage—this does not occur to him.

The monk as Mahavira conceived him would be so humble that he would have no need “to be humble.” Only the egoistic have to be humble. He would be so simple that it would be hard to tell who is the monk and who the householder.

What Mahavira actually said is only this: the wakeful should not honor the stupefied. The trouble is, without first caring whether we ourselves are awake or not, if we simply withhold honor, everything goes wrong. Half the condition is remembered—that the wakeful should not honor the stupefied. That the other is stupefied—this we are certain of; but whether we are awake—if that is not certain, how is the condition fulfilled? And we can know the other is asleep only if we are awake. Otherwise we cannot know who is asleep. If ten people are sleeping in a room, only the one who is awake can tell that the others are asleep. The sleepers cannot tell who is asleep.

And for the wakeful one—what humility, what discourtesy? That is not even a question. Mahavira’s concern was this: that honor for the stupefied be reduced and honor be given to the unstupefied, so that society moves toward wakefulness and the individual advances in the direction of the unstupefied.

Mahavira took great care about honoring the monk only for this reason: a monk is one who does not ask for honor, who has no desire for honor. A society that honors such people takes a step, slowly, toward egolessness.