Naye Samaj Ki Khoj #12

Not at all necessary. This too is one of this country’s naivetés! This too is one of this country’s naivetés!
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
Yes, yes—ordinarily it will be so. The more stupid a person is, the more they will fit into what society calls character—the more stupid they are! An intelligent person will not fit neatly. He will see twenty-five differences; he will want to live life in his own way. It is not that he is characterless—that is not the point! But what you call character he may consider a very trivial thing. He will have character, but his definition of character will be entirely different. What we call character, he may not even call character—because what we call character is an idea belonging to a mind from four or five thousand years ago. Therefore I hold that these expectations of ours are mistaken. We should not nurse such expectations.
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
Yes, this can certainly be said. For example, in the most fundamental sense, the more unclouded, awake, aware a person’s behavior is—of awareness—the more I call that person a man of character. Because I hold that the more consciously a person lives, the fewer and fewer become the occasions in his life to hurt others, to cause them suffering, to harass them. If I live very consciously, even getting angry becomes very difficult—because to be angry, becoming unconscious is absolutely necessary. It is an indispensable symptom; otherwise I cannot be angry. I will get angry only when I become unconscious, fall into a stupor. So I take unstupefied, conscious behavior as a basic hallmark of character. Wherever in the world there is character, of whatever kind or form, this much must be there.
Second, as a rule all notions of character are bound by time, era, tradition, circumstance. From among all of them something essential can be distilled. For instance, there is a saying of Jesus: Whatever you do not wish anyone to do to you, do not do that to another. This may be taken as an essential quality of character—that at the very least I try to do with you what I would like you to do with me. There is no need to bind this to any period or era. Whatever the era, time, or doctrine, this will remain meaningful. We would call that person characterless who wants respect from you yet gives you insult; who seeks love from you yet gives you hatred; who wants you to give him happiness yet does not care a bit for your happiness—whoever he may be.
This means that a man of character will always put himself in the other’s place—always! He will look: if I were standing where the other stands, what would I want? That is what I must do. And if I act otherwise, I fall—fall straight down.
Third, let us separate this from time and era altogether: whatever forms human characterlessness may take, it is necessary to attend to the root cause from which they arise. Anger, greed, attachment—where are these within me? How do they arise? Why do they arise? I do not call repression character—because the repressed prove dangerous. Such a person may appear virtuous, but an explosion can occur in him at any time. That will be merely an apparent, showy character. So I would take as the third mark of a man of character that he does not erect a character for display—that is, he is not a hypocrite. Let us count this as the third quality.
A man of character will not be a hypocrite. He will be as he is, and he will prefer to reveal himself as he is—whatever he is! If I am a greedy man, I will say: I am greedy. If greed frightens you, you should be cautious with me—I am greedy. If I am a thief, then staying at your house I will say: I am a thief; I might take something—there is no hassle or worry hidden behind this. I regard hypocrisy as the greatest characterlessness: that I try to appear as what I am not, that I stage a pretense of being what I am not—and I carry a twofold, fabricated personality.
A man of character will be a one-piece person. His personality will be single. And for this he will be ready to endure all sufferings, all troubles; he will muster the courage to adopt a single, seamless personality. Whatever the era, whatever the system, whatever the accepted norms of character, such a person will like to state himself as he is: This is the kind of man I am.
If we keep these points in mind, then yes—these should be present in leadership. Not only in leadership; they should be present in every person. But what we ordinarily call character is extremely time-bound. And as time passes it becomes dangerous; it makes one a hypocrite. It begins to make one utterly hypocritical—because time passes, its place is gone, yet it sits on our chest, and then we feel the need to keep up the show.
For example, what led India’s leadership astray was this: Gandhi imposed a certain kind of simplicity upon people. If someone is simple, that is an entirely different matter. But to have simplicity imposed is very dangerous. In those who practiced simplicity alongside Gandhi, many suppressed desires accumulated—desires for being special, for comfort, luxury, wealth, status, prestige. Outwardly, simplicity, plainness, huts—this all went on. Inwardly, all that accumulated. The moment power came into their hands, it exploded at once. What is repressed within us only explodes when power arrives—not otherwise. Otherwise there is fear of exploding, because if it explodes, you will die!
So in India, the people Gandhi raised up were raised on the basis of a false personality. As soon as power came into their hands, that whole personality was swept away, and the real man inside came out—and that real man turned out to be its exact opposite! He was like that all along.
In my view, it would have been far better if we had simply known a person directly as he is. That is natural; there is nothing wrong in it. Then the hypocrisy that spread before leadership—showing one thing, doing another, something else actually happening—would not have spread in this country. In this matter the whole world is more honest than we are. Things are straightforward. In the last five or six thousand years we have erected so much hypocrisy—so astonishing! And it is not even that a person is very conscious of what he is doing. He is utterly unconscious. He has split into two halves; he behaves in two ways: when he comes onto the stage he becomes one kind of man, and among the public he becomes another kind.
So, first, behavior should be alert, very awake—moment to moment. Second, one should have the capacity to put oneself in the other’s place. And third, one should reveal oneself as one is. If these three qualities are present in someone, I call him a man of character. Even if he is a thief—I am not saying he cannot steal. I hold that, though in fact it cannot be, it is very difficult to maintain these qualities and steal. A very difficult affair.
As it happens, I was speaking of Nagarjuna just yesterday. He is passing through a capital city—a naked monk, holding a wooden alms bowl, the kind Buddhist mendicants carry. The queen of that city is very impressed by him. She has invited him for food. He goes to receive alms. She takes the alms bowl from his hand and says, I will keep this as a memento; I have had another alms bowl made for you, please take it. She has had a golden alms bowl made, studded with precious gems, worth hundreds of thousands. She places it in Nagarjuna’s hands.
She imagined he would refuse—“It is gold; I am a monk; I will not take it”—as we expect of sannyasins. But Nagarjuna regards all things as void, so he makes no distinction between wood, gold, or anything else. He takes the bowl and walks on. The queen is surprised: not once did he say, “But this is gold; I am a monk; I cannot accept it.”
On the road, everyone’s eyes fall upon him—the bowl glitters in the sunlight, and a naked man is walking along holding a golden bowl. A thief takes to following him. How long can a naked man protect this! Hearing footsteps behind him in the jungle, Nagarjuna understands: no one ever follows me; this fellow must be after the bowl.
He stops at a cremation ground, a ruin without any doors. He goes inside. It is midday, and he is about to sleep. He thinks: why should that poor fellow sit outside, hiding behind the wall? How long will he have to sit! Why should I trouble him by keeping him waiting so long? And then he will steal it anyway—for I am going to sleep now. I cannot sit guard over a bowl; I must sleep. So he will take it. And why should I take upon myself the responsibility of making him a thief! He picks up the bowl and throws it out through the window.
The bowl falls right where the thief is sitting. The thief is astonished. The man was wondrous enough as it is: naked, and holding such a precious bowl—and now he has thrown it away! The thief pokes his head in through the window to thank him and says, I thank you! I thank you—astonishing that you threw this bowl out! I already had my doubts: such a costly bowl in the hands of a naked man! And then you tossed it out as if it had no value at all. Sometimes, though I am a thief, even in my heart a longing arises: when will I have such courage! I am a thief, yes, but sometimes the heart does feel this—when will I have such courage! May I come inside and sit with you a while?
Nagarjuna says, I threw the bowl out for precisely this reason. You would have come in anyway, but then we would not have met. So I first threw the bowl out so that you would come in, and we could meet as well. Come inside! The thief comes in and sits, and says: I go to many sadhus and saints. I too want peace, bliss, truth. So what if I am a thief—these I too want. Being a thief does not mean I do not want all this. But all those holy men say, “First stop stealing.” And stealing does not stop—since I am a thief. Is there no way that I remain a thief and still obtain what I seek?
Nagarjuna says: then you must not have gone to sadhus and saints at all—you must have reached some thieves of an earlier era! That is why they emphasize stealing: “Stop stealing.” What does a sadhu have to do with your stealing? Do whatever you do. A sadhu is concerned with saintliness; what has he to do with theft? And you must be something—something you truly are—for that is your knowing. You have not gone to a real sadhu.
The thief says: With you my conversation can work. So, can I do something while remaining a thief?
Nagarjuna says: I ask you to do only this—do whatever you do with total awareness. Even if you steal, steal with awareness. Do it knowingly. Even when you raise a hand, when you take something out of someone’s safe—take it out with full wakefulness. Beyond this I say nothing. If you feel like it, I will be here for fifteen days; come again.
The thief returns on the third or fourth day and says: You have put me in trouble—great trouble. Yesterday I slipped into a palace, reached the safe, opened it. When I put my hand in with awareness, laughter arises and the hand does not go in: “What am I doing!” And when the hand does go in and I take things out, then I am unconscious. You have put me in great difficulty. In awareness, theft just cannot happen.
Nagarjuna says: We are no thieves—we do not talk of theft. What have we to do with theft? You decide. If you want to steal, then remain unconscious. Do not ask us about theft, because we have nothing to say for theft. We only know this: whatever you do, do it with awareness.
And there Nagarjuna said to him: Only that which can be done with awareness is dharma; that for which being unconscious is necessary is adharma.
Therefore there is no question of “renouncing adharma”; there is only the matter of living with awareness. That is why I take that as the fundamental element of character—whatever I do!

It is always known afterward, always afterward—after the event has passed. Suppose you became angry. While you are in anger you have no awareness at all. But when the anger is gone, you look back and say, “Ah, what have I done! I would never have done that if I had been aware.” It’s a matter of a second, isn’t it? It’s not as if months have passed. Just a second!

Yes, yes, he is sitting right there at the safe, experimenting. When he puts his hand in with perfect awareness, the hand stops.
He has become conscious!
Yes, conscious—totally.
Conscious of what?
Of whatever act he is doing—the whole situation, whatever is happening—he is conscious of the whole. Whatever is there at that moment—within, without, all around—he is totally conscious. The moment he loses awareness...

To be conscious means to be conscious of all that is. If one is totally conscious, one is conscious of everything that is happening all around. If you are conscious only of one thing, you are asleep to the rest. To be conscious means to be conscious of everything. But in a moment of consciousness, fear never catches hold of you.

And you will be surprised: in a moment of consciousness, neither fear can catch you, nor death can catch you, nor what we call “evil”—anger, hatred, violence, murder—none of it can catch you. In a moment of consciousness you stand so untouched and so far away; you become so innocent and virginal that there is no measure for it. Nothing can catch you there. And the moment something does catch you, know that you have stepped out of consciousness. In that moment the thread is snapped—you have sunk back again.

For example, fear catches you: someone is peeking in, and I get frightened. What got frightened? It means my mind stepped out of the present moment. I started thinking, “Now I will be caught; now I’ll be punished; now there will be disgrace.” My mind went out of this moment. I became unconscious.

Let me tell you another incident of this kind.

In Japan there was a master thief. It’s a Zen story. A thief—not an ordinary thief—he is called a master. He is a complete connoisseur of the art of stealing. He is so renowned that in the house he robs people tell others with pride, “Do you know? The master thief robbed our house!” Because he never commits an ordinary theft.

It is a matter of pride.

Yes, it is a mark of worth that that man entered their house. He would not set foot in ordinary houses. People would boast, “We are not ordinary people; that famous thief broke into our home.” And he was never caught.

He grew old. His son had come of age. One day the son said, “You are old now; who knows how long you will live. Teach me your art.”

The thief said, “This is the trouble with art: it is difficult to teach.” He said again, “This is the trouble with art. I am not an ordinary thief that I can ‘teach’ you stealing! If stealing were my business, I could teach you. A trade can be taught; art cannot be taught. Stealing is my art; it is my joy. It is not merely a matter of lifting things. The finesse of it—it is very difficult to teach you. But we will try. If you have an inborn capacity to be a thief—every artist believes there must be an inborn capacity—if you are a born thief, something can come out of it; otherwise I cannot teach you anything. Anyway, come tonight.”

It was a dark night, the new moon. He took his son along. He was about seventy. The son was young. As the father began to break a hole in the wall of a mansion, the son was trembling. But in that old man’s hands there was no tremor, no fuss; he was digging the wall as if repairing a wall of his own house.

The son said, “What are you doing! Aren’t you even a little nervous? What if someone comes, someone catches us, some noise is made?” The old man said, “All these things can happen—if I get nervous. All these things can happen: there can be a noise, someone can come, I can be caught—if I get nervous. These things, my son, happen in fear. They do not make one fearful; because of fear, they come to pass. You stand quietly.” Then he asked the boy, “Why are you trembling?” The son said, “How can I not tremble? My hands and feet are going limp. I have no idea what is going to happen!”

The old man finished the hole, went inside, and said to his son, “Come in.” Taking the boy along, unlocking one lock after another, he reached the inner chambers of the mansion. There was a large wardrobe with priceless clothes and things. He opened it and said to his son, “Get in, and bring out whatever you like.” The boy went in—he couldn’t see anything at all; where was the question of choosing? He had no idea what was going to happen. As soon as he was inside the wardrobe, the father shut the doors, locked them, left the key hanging there, and shouted at the top of his voice, “Thief!” Creating a commotion throughout the house, the father slipped out and ran away. The son was locked inside the wardrobe. The whole household woke up; lanterns appeared, candles were lit, servants were searching, the owner was searching.

The son said to himself, “I’m finished! What is this? This is trouble! I’m done for on the very first day; learning to steal is out of the question!” He could not comprehend what would happen now. “And what has this father done? What kind of teaching is this?”

He was inside when a maid passed nearby carrying a candle. Then—what in America they call a “happening,” for which we have no exact word—the boy locked inside the wardrobe, as soon as the maid came near, made a sound like rats gnawing at cloth, scratching the wood with his hand. The maid thought perhaps a rat or cat had gotten inside; she put the key in, opened the door, and reached in with her hand and the candle—that too is a happening—he blew out the candle, shoved her aside, and ran. Fifteen or twenty men ran after him.

Now he ran with every ounce of strength, as he had never run before. He had not known he could run so fast. He reached a well—again, a happening—picked up a stone from near the well, threw it in with a splash, and hid behind a bush.

Those fifteen men surrounded the well. “The thief has jumped into the well; he’ll die by himself. Who will bother in the middle of the night? In the morning we’ll see—if he’s alive, fine; otherwise we’ll pull out the corpse.” They went back.

The boy, hidden behind the bush, returned home. The father was fast asleep under a blanket. The son snatched the blanket and grabbed him by the neck: “Do you want to kill me? What have you done?” The father said, “What happened, happened. You have the capacity to be a thief. Now go to sleep; we’ll talk in the morning.” The son said, “We must talk now. I went through so much trouble.” The father said, “That makes no difference. You came back; that’s enough. We’ll talk later. You came back—good; you can be a thief.” The son said, “Tell me everything now—what, how.” The father said, “There is no point in knowing all the details. There is no point in the details. You could act without thinking—that is the essential quality for a thief,” he told him. “Because in theft no plan can work. In another’s house your planning won’t run. There is no plan: where the door is, where the wall is—you don’t know for sure. Where the servant sleeps, where the guard is—you don’t know for sure. Is there a gun, a sword—who knows? At any moment anything can happen—the cat may jump, a utensil may fall—nothing is certain; everything is unplanned. So only awareness is enough. Only awareness—of what is happening—so that we can respond to it.”

This is the situation of the whole of life too, if we look closely. Who knows what can happen where! We are sitting here now; what will happen in the next moment—who knows! Nothing is known. Anything can happen. This building may collapse, an earthquake may come—who knows what may happen! Right now Kalyanji has invited us with love; his mind may go wrong and he may throw everyone out—who knows! All this can happen!

So we cannot live in such a way that we prearrange everything. And the one who lives prearranged does not live. His living is a kind of borrowed, stale existence. If living is to be whole, then in the total situation of life we must live alertly. We must meet each challenge of each situation and move through it.

So I will call a man of true character one who lives alertly in every situation. Whatever time brings, whatever opportunities life presents, he lives awake. Whatever happens, he responds. There is no repentance afterward for such action. Only a sleeping person repents, because he thinks, “I could have done otherwise.” The awake person says, “I was awake; nothing else could have happened. What happened has happened; the matter is finished. What could happen, I did—because I was totally awake. There is no more ‘I’ than that. There is no other way.”

Therefore the awakened person neither looks back, nor repents, nor becomes sad. Nor does an awakened person make grand plans for the future, calculate everything, and move with everything fixed. Nothing of the sort. The awakened person lives. And then a density comes into his living—because he is neither in the past nor in the future. He is here, now. So the full intensity that life requires, its density, becomes available to him. And in that moment what he knows—that which you ask about as “all is relative”—what he knows in that moment is the absolute. On that absolute, all the relatives revolve, come and go.

A bullock cart is moving. The whole wheel is turning. There is a peg at the center that stands without turning. It is upon that unmoving peg that the wheel turns. If the peg also starts turning, the wheel will immediately fall. Seeing the wheel turning, don’t think there is nothing within it that does not turn. The wonder is that the turning wheel stands only upon a non-turning peg; otherwise it would not stand at all.

So this great revolving circle of the relative, this wheel of relativity—at its center there is an element absolutely unmoving. That is what we are. Call it the witness, the soul, Brahman—it makes no difference. But there is an element before whose eyes all these pictures pass on the screen; that is the absolute. But we can know it only in moments of intensity, not in ordinary, distracted experience.

It does not. It does not, because—what does “relative” mean?
That which is other than the absolute.
No, no! Here is the real difficulty: not “other than the absolute.” The relative does not mean separate from the absolute. Relative means that for its experience a second is needed. Understand this clearly: for its experience, the other is required. It cannot be experienced on its own; it can only ever be a relative experience.

For example, I say, “This water is hot.” The word “hot” can never be absolute, because without “cold” it has no existence. It could even happen that I warm up one hand and cool the other on ice; then I put both hands into the same water, and to one hand the water feels hot, to the other it feels cold. That is the relative. The same water, the same vessel, one hand warm and one cold—when I immerse both, the two hands have different sensations. One says “hot,” the other says “cold,” and yet it is the same water, and both are in that same water.

So, relative means: one, that whose experience is comparative; and two, that which cannot be in existence without reference to another. It is not “in itself,” it is always in reference to something else. And if there is an experience that can be in and of itself, for which no reference, no “other,” is needed, then it is absolute.

Now, as I say, that which sits within us is, in some intense moment, utterly alone. There is no experience, no other—only that. Imagine a lamp: a lamp is burning, the wall is illumined, its light is falling on all of us. So there is the lamp, and there are we. Now imagine—because for now it can only be imagined, until one passes through some intense inner moment—a lamp is burning whose light falls on nothing; only the lamp itself is illumined. There is nothing else: only the lamp, self-illumined in its own light. Then that state is the absolute.

Thus, the deep experience of meditation or samadhi is the experience of the absolute. There, there is no talk of the relative. And if even a single particle of that experience is tasted, then amidst all the relative we remain absolute.

It is only a question of awareness! Only a question of awareness!
In the confusion of our daily life, can we have this impartial experience?
Yes, yes, absolutely. Only in this very life can you have it. Nowhere else can you.
This society as it exists—should it remain as it is, or does it also need to be changed?
It needs to be changed every day.
So will it change through this very experience?
No, no, no. Not necessarily. If this experience happens, then this society will indeed change—change every day. It won’t even need to be what it was yesterday.
Then you are talking of anarchism. That would mean that what is to be done could be different in each duty, in each situation.
It certainly can be.
And in this experience we also think: this is nothing; not this, not this, not this. And then further, further—there is no end to it!
Right. There is no end to anything. Nor should there be an end.
So anarchism and this are the same thing?
Actually, the difficulty is this: the people whose names are known in the world under the label “anarchism,” like Kropotkin or Bakunin—if they are understood properly, I do not consider them anarchists in the precise sense. Their anarchy is very limited. And it is only this much: statelessness—no state, no order, no system—and every individual free. The emphasis of this anarchy is on breaking the entire outer arrangement.
The anarchy I am emphasizing is about developing an inner order. There is a difference between the two. You understand my difference, don’t you! The difference is this—we can understand it like this: a man says, “Tear down all the houses, live under the open sky.” His emphasis is: break the houses, pull down the houses, bring down the walls; the open sky is fine. But it may happen that a person who has been living inside a house might simply die under the open sky—just die! Living would become difficult; dying would be the only possibility. A man conditioned to living in a small house simply cannot live under the open sky.
My point is different. My point is that demolishing or not demolishing the house is not as important as developing within this man the capacity to live under the open sky. Whether there is a house or not is not the question. Whether he lives inside or outside is also not the question. But the capacity within this man to live under the open sky! And if this develops, then if he sleeps under a roof he is under the open sky, and if he sleeps under the open sky he is under a roof.
So what you find in Kropotkin and their anarchism is a kind of reaction—break the system. And the same reaction is going on among the Beatles, the beatniks, and the hippies.

No. Kropotkin and the others have nothing to do with communism; in fact, they are its enemies. Because, in their view, communism cannot come without state power. To bring communism you need the apparatus of the state, a dictatorship—only then can you impose it. And they do not accept that any apparatus is needed. Hence there was opposition between them and communism. Anarchists and communists have been enemies; there is no common ground between them. Communism says that one day the state, developing further and further, will wither away. But anarchists say: the more the state develops, the stronger it becomes—how is it going to wither away?

My position is very different. For me it is not very important whether there is a state or not, whether there is an external order or not. Man should become such that he can remain orderly even within disorder. Man should be like that! And if he is not, he will always remain in trouble, in pain, in anxiety—always. For essentially life is disorder, anarchy. Life, life as such, is insecurity. There is no security there at all. All security is illusory and assumed—purely assumed. And we assume it because we are afraid that in insecurity we will not be able to live even for a second. “The one who is our father today will be father tomorrow; the wife will be wife tomorrow; the son will be son tomorrow; the house will be the house tomorrow; the bank balance will remain”—it is by assuming all this that we manage to live. And I say: because of this assuming we do not live; in this very assuming we in fact die.

Let me tell you a story I love very much.

There was a king who became terribly afraid. He had seen many wars and watched his enemies die. Now a fear seized him: if my enemies can die in war, I too can die in war. If I can kill, then I can be killed. Haunted by the fear of being killed after having killed so much, he thought, “What should I do? By what device can I be saved from death?”

So he built a palace with only one door. No windows, no other door, no skylight—no way in at all for an enemy. Heavy walls, seven layers of walls; and on the one door, thousands of soldiers standing guard. And over each soldier, another soldier to keep watch.

The neighboring king, a friend, came to see this palace. He had heard that it was so secure no enemy could ever enter it. He looked it over and was delighted. Coming out, he said, “If I can manage, I will build a palace like this too. Truly, no enemy can enter it—no thief, no bandit, no murderer. You are absolutely safe.”

As the owner-king was seeing his neighbor off outside the palace, an old beggar sitting by the roadside burst into loud laughter. The king asked, “Why are you laughing? What is it? Is there some mistake?”

The beggar said, “There is a mistake, Majesty! I have been begging here for years, watching this palace being built, and the mistake is certain. I wanted to tell you, but never got the chance. Now that you are here, let me say it. This one door—that is the danger. Through this one door someone can still get in. And even if no one else does, death will certainly enter. Do this: go inside, and shut this door as well. Then you will be absolutely safe. There will be no way for death to enter.”

The king said, “But madman, then I will die! Death won’t even need to come in.”

The beggar said, “You’re already dead—you are alive only by a single door! Wherever you have closed the doors, there you have died. You are already as good as dead. Only this little bit remains—take care of that too, and you will be perfectly safe.”

Only a dead man can be perfectly safe. Life is insecurity; life is exposed to danger. To acknowledge that, and to gather the courage to live it—that, to me, is the art of living. To avoid it and run away from it is not the art of life.

This insecurity—danger moment to moment—its acceptance, and the capacity to live it: that is an inner anarchy. Not an outer anarchy; I am not concerned with the state. If it functions, it functions; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. That has nothing to do with this.

And I call one a sannyasin who accepts this inner anarchy and starts walking with it—as it is. Such a person cannot be caught off guard. A sannyasin is one whom you cannot shock—because he moves with the understanding that life is profoundly shocking. You cannot shock him.

In Japan there was an ascetic—a young sannyasin—in a small village near Kyoto. He was very renowned; the whole village revered him. He was beautiful. And the truth is, only a sannyasin can be truly beautiful—because there is no tension, no pressure, nothing to take, nothing to give—only to live. Only in such a state does beauty fully blossom. The whole village was enchanted.

But one day a great commotion arose. A girl in the village had a baby, and she said the child was fathered by that sannyasin. Everything was overturned; the entire village descended upon him and set his hut on fire. It was morning, a cold day; he had been sitting outside in the sun, warming himself. When they set his hut ablaze, he simply turned from the sun and sat facing the hut, warming his hands at the flames. You could not shock him. He was feeling cold, and he said, “This is fine too,” and began to warm himself.

People shook him and said, “What are you doing? This fire is not for warming you—it is to throw you out of here!”

He said, “As long as there is warmth, let me warm myself. But what is the matter? What has happened?”

From behind, the girl’s father came carrying a baby and flung him onto the ascetic. “You ask what happened? This child is yours!” The sannyasin said, “Is it so? The child is mine?” The baby began to cry, and he started soothing him. The people hurled abuses and stones and went away, leaving the child with him.

At noon, the time for alms, he took the child and went into the village to beg. Who would give him alms that day! People threw stones and garbage at him. A few said, “Who will give you anything today? Where are you going?” He replied, “It may be that someone will give. Nothing is certain. Yesterday everyone gave; today perhaps no one will. It may also be that someone will. One should try.” But whichever door he approached for alms was slammed shut, with curses.

At last he came to the door of the house to which the girl belonged. He begged there too. He said, “Do not give to me, but at least do something for this child. Even if there is any fault, it would be mine; it cannot be his. Why should this boy suffer for my sake?”

The girl was in a fix. She embraced her father’s feet and said, “Forgive me; I made a mistake. I never thought things would go so far. This sannyasin has nothing to do with me. To protect the real father of the child I falsely took his name.” The father said, “Are you mad or not? But what kind of madness is this sannyasin’s! The fool could have said it was not his.” He ran down, snatched the child away, and said, “The child is not yours.” The sannyasin said, “Is it so? It is not mine?”

The whole village gathered and said, “Are you crazy? Why didn’t you say so?”

He said, “The child would belong to someone in any case. If there is a child, he must be someone’s. What difference does it make whether he is mine or someone else’s? And you had already burned one house. If I denied it, another house would have been burned. One man had already been abused. If I denied it, someone else would have been abused. Then what difference would it make?”

They all said, “We insulted you so much; you could have said it at least once!”

He said, “If I had ever desired your respect or counted on it, then it would have mattered. I have never recognized it, never desired it. However things turn out, I simply endure them.”

This inner anarchy is what liberates a human being—nothing else does.