A tiny school in a tiny village. Early morning, and the school inspector has come for inspection. He goes into the senior class, writes three questions on the board and says to the students: the first, second and third rankers of your class should come, one after the other, and solve these questions. The first student gets up, comes to the board, solves his question, and sits down. The second student rises and solves his as well. The third gets up, but very hesitant, very afraid. Even as he stands at the board, his head is bowed. The inspector grows suspicious. He looks at the child closely and thinks, but this is the same one who came first and solved the question. He catches the boy by the ear and says: You are trying to cheat a second time! You already came and solved a question.
The boy says, I did come before, but in a different capacity. The student who is actually third in our class has gone to watch a cricket match and asked me that, if needed, I should do it in his place. I’ve come to solve the question on his behalf.
The inspector becomes very angry and says, No one can take an exam in another’s place. This is the beginning of a journey into dishonesty. You have already learned deceit! There is no justification for one person taking an exam for another. He scolds the student severely and says, Don’t ever repeat such a mistake.
A person can only be in his own place, not in another’s. And whenever someone tries to be in another’s place, that is when the cause of unrighteousness enters life.
Then he turns toward the teacher who was standing quietly near the board. The inspector says: The boy was deceiving me and you stood by silently watching! I might not have noticed, but surely you recognized that the student came twice?
The teacher says: Forgive me, I am not the teacher of this class. I teach the class next door. The teacher of this class has gone to watch the cricket match and asked me to stand in for him. I only came to stand here in his place, because you were coming for inspection.
Now the inspector goes mad. He says: Not only is the student cheating, you are cheating too! And if you deceive, how will students not learn deceit? Such a teacher cannot be kept in a school job. He opens his register and says, I am making a report against you. The poor teacher grows terrified. Kneeling down, folding his hands, he begins to beg, I will not make such a mistake again. Please forgive me this time, I have small children. At last the inspector feels pity and says, You are forgiven this time, but don’t repeat this error. You are spared today because I am not the real inspector. The real inspector has gone to watch the cricket match. I am his friend. He told me, please go and do today’s inspection. So I came to inspect the school.
When I heard this story, I understood: this is the symbolic story of our whole nation. From bottom to top—peon to president—everyone is entangled in dishonesty. Everyone deceives everyone else. And every deceiver keeps preaching that deceit is bad, that one must not cheat.
Now everyone has learned that cheating is the very rule of life. And it is also understood that one should go on explaining that one must not cheat—while continuing to cheat.
The character of the entire country, the conduct of the country, the very soul of the country is sinking day by day. A thousand sermons are given, a thousand explanations offered; nothing changes. Because the preachers stand in the very same place where the listeners stand. A web has arisen from which no way out appears. The greatest wonder is that this is happening in a land that has spoken, for thousands of years, of truth, of integrity, of ethics, of Dharma, and of Paramatma. No country on earth has spoken more—good things. And yet it has become difficult to find people worse than us on the earth. We who talk the best—and whose lives, if any are worse than ours, it would be surprising indeed.
What could be the cause? Is it not possible that too much talking of good things itself becomes a cause? Is it not that we have turned religion into a matter of conversation and severed it from life?
Those countries where there is no talk of religion at all appear more religious than us. The character of those lands where religion is not discussed seems higher than ours. And we, who for thousands of years talk of character, who speak of Dharma from morning till night—we rise taking the name of Ram, we sleep taking the name of Ram—but in between those two names, our whole day’s life is utterly contrary to Ram. How did this happen? To understand this, the first thing to understand is: whenever a society, a nation, a people reduce the highest directions of life to mere talk, the decline of that society, that nation, that people begins. Some things are not for talking; they are for living. When we begin to talk about them, their link with our living is broken.
This country will have to stop its religious talk. This country will have to stop its chatter about character—and begin to live character, begin to live Dharma.
A man runs to the temple in the morning, folds his hands, returns, and we say he has become religious—because he went to a temple. What connection can there be between going to a temple and becoming religious? How can anyone become religious merely by going to a temple? What change occurs in life by going to the temple? The same kind of person who went returns the same from the temple. No one’s soul is transformed by climbing temple steps. Yet we say, he has become religious. This is the definition of deception. We have removed religion from life and attached it to dead temples. Then anyone can drop by a temple and become religious.
And when the facility of becoming religious is made this cheap, who will trouble to transform life to become religious? A man applies a tilak, wears the yajnopavita, grows a choti, and becomes religious. In a country that has found such cheap ways to be religious, life is bound to become irreligious. These cheap routes have proven dangerous. No one ever becomes religious in this way.
A person becomes religious through life. Through character. Through conduct. Through behavior. We have cleverly tied religion to empty words. In this trick one gets the enjoyment of being religious without being religious. Will someone become religious by tying some string around his neck? Then let him tie even a thick rope, even an iron chain—he will not become religious. But we look at someone wearing the sacred thread and call him religious. Will someone become religious by smearing sandalwood on his forehead? Will donning ochre robes make one religious? What does clothing have to do with religion? Will someone become religious by visiting Kashi, or by going on pilgrimage to Badri and Kedar? By travel, how can one become religious? Even if one bathes in the Ganga countless times, even if one sits in countless temples and does aarti—none of these things has any real connection with becoming religious. Even if someone fingers the rosary beads endlessly…it is astonishing—how will one become religious by turning beads? But we have devised these devices. And because of them, we have saved ourselves from becoming religious.
If we truly wish to be religious—and without religion no society attains bliss or peace. Without religion no society grows strong or capable. Without attaining religion no society becomes prosperous. Without religion no society becomes truly a human society.
Yet we think religiousness means: how many temples in our village, how many mosques, how many priests, how many pundits, how many festivals we celebrate, how many Satyanarayan kathas we recite, how much Ramayana we read, how much Gita we read—by all these we judge ourselves religious.
A friend of mine from Patna University went to America to speak on religion. He delivered grand lectures on Indian religion. An old woman in New York came to him—she must have been seventy-five. She clasped his feet and said: I will now go to India with you. Where there are such religious people, where such a world of Dharma exists, I want to take my last breath there. My friend was very troubled. Lecturing on religion is one thing. But where is religion in India? Where will one find it? He tried to put her off: I will go and make arrangements, then I’ll call you. But the old woman said: in your lecture you yourself said, there is no trust even of a single breath. You might leave and I might be gone. I am seventy-five. No, I will go with you. I’ll make my own arrangements, don’t worry about them. I want to spend my last days where such pure people are.
Where are those pure people here? Yet the whole world imagines that India must be full of saints—because they read our books and are deluded that where the books are so exalted, the people will be equally exalted. They don’t know that there is a gulf between our books and us as vast as earth and sky.
She would not agree and by sheer insistence came to India. My friend was frightened: where would he show her the land of rishis and munis? There is no lack of “rishis and munis.” But see them from afar and they appear rishis; go close and the illusion breaks.
There are fifty-five lakh sannyasis in India even today—no shortage of sannyasis. But these fifty-five lakhs are of no use. Can a country be in this condition when it has fifty-five lakh God-loving sannyasis?
My friend took the woman to Bodh Gaya. They got down at Gaya station. He thought he would show her the temple of Gautam Buddha. There is peace there; the old woman would feel good. They arrived at Gaya station and ten or fifteen beggars surrounded them, asking for alms. The old woman said: In your country people still beg? In your lectures you said compassion was born in our land. Where compassion has been born, are there still beggars? What kind of compassion is this that in thousands of years you have not removed beggary?
My friend said: I had said there—don’t come yet, let me make arrangements. But this is an ordinary town. I will take you a little further to Bodh Gaya. There you will find great peace and a religious atmosphere.
They reached the temple at Bodh Gaya. He said to her, First let us go to the hotel and keep the luggage. The old woman said: No, first I will have darshan of the Bodhi tree of Lord Buddha. They placed the luggage at the front of the temple and went to see the back. When they returned, all the luggage was gone—stolen. The old woman said: Does theft happen at a temple too? At the temple of Gautam Buddha? What kind of country is this?
My friend told me, I slapped my own head and said to the old woman: I had already said don’t come here. Now that you insisted and have come, let me tell you the truth. The good things are written in our books. We locked the good things inside books so that we need not live them. We live as we wish; we wrote the good things into books and finished with them.
Does this situation of ours not seem in need of change? Will we go on living like this while the country becomes more hellish by the day? But how to change it? The first key I want to give you is this: free religion from useless and irrelevant things, so that religion may be joined with what is relevant and belongs to life.
Do not call the man who goes to a temple religious. Call religious the one who lives on earth as if God were. Call religious the one who sees Paramatma in living people, not in stone idols. Call religious the one whose conduct is prayerful. Do not call religious the one who folds his hands for three hours in prayer, but in the rest of his life has nothing to do with prayer. Do not call religious the one who reads the Gita in the morning and spends the day in dishonesty. Call religious the one who may never have read the Gita, who may never have stepped into a temple or a mosque, who may never have opened the Quran or the Bible—but whose rising and sitting, whose walking and speaking, whose behavior gives evidence that he is experiencing Paramatma all around. From whose every breath, from whose every word, from whose dealings, there comes the proof of religiousness—that is the one we will call religious. Whether or not he wears ochre robes, whether or not he belongs to any creed, whether or not he even accepts God. But if his very being announces, gives the fragrance of purity, we will call him religious. We must change the criterion of religiousness. Only then can religious people be born in this land—otherwise not.
The Shankaracharya of Puri was staying in Delhi. A man went to meet him and said: We have a small community; we would like you to come and give us a discourse on Brahman. Shankaracharya looked at him with contempt, laughed and said: You—you don’t even know how to dress; you are wearing pants, tie and coat. Has anyone ever heard of full pants, tie and coat leading to Brahma-knowledge?
The man must have been shaken. Those around began to laugh. And Shankaracharya said: Did any of the rishis and munis ever wear full pants and coats? Were they fools? Dressed like this, do you think you can attain God? Do you have a choti or not?
The man said: I don’t have a choti. Shankaracharya said: There, your Brahman-knowledge is finished! How can one without a choti attain Brahman!
This was all published in Kalyan magazine, word for word. And finally he asked the most amusing question: Do you urinate standing or sitting?
These are our jagatgurus, our knowers, our religious leaders—who are tying Brahma-knowledge to such foolish matters that have no relation to it at all.
How a man dresses has nothing to do with whether he is religious. A man may wear any clothes. The question is, how is he within? It is not a question of clothes—what you wear. Who are you? Whether you keep a choti or not is a question of stupidity. What is the person within? What is his character? Those who measure clothes and hair tufts may be tailors or barbers, not Brahma-jnanis. Yet we have taken them to be Brahma-jnanis. We have tied the human personality to false things. That false foundation must be uprooted. Religion must be placed in the right place. And what is the right place for Dharma? The right place is the human personality, not its external accessories. What a man wears, what he eats, what he abstains from, when he wakes, when he sleeps—these are all utterly secondary matters.
Someone asked Vivekananda in America: There is so much talk of religion in your land, yet religion is nowhere to be seen. Why? Vivekananda said: A misfortune has befallen my country—our entire religion has shriveled up into the hearth and kitchen. We brood over what a man eats, whose touch he eats, whose touch he wears. In these petty, two-bit matters, our entire religion has shriveled and died.
It is necessary to liberate religion so that it spreads across the vast territories of life—so that we may find it where it is needed. But why were these tricks invented? The inventors were very cunning. There is deep cunningness at work behind them. Those who do not wish to be religious, who wish to remain irreligious, also desire to give their minds the comfort that they are religious. They too want heaven after death. They too want to sit near the throne of Paramatma after death. For all of them, tricks had to be contrived. And only such useless tricks could be devised for them.
In Tibet they have made a Dharma-chakra—a prayer-wheel. As you turn beads, they have made a small wheel. It has one hundred and eight spokes. On each spoke a mantra is written. The shopkeeper sits in his shop with the wheel. He keeps doing his work, business goes on. Now and then he gives the wheel a push with his hand; however many rotations it turns, he receives the fruit of that many mantras. The mantras are written on the wheel; with each push, the wheel turns and he gets the benefit of those mantras. He sits all day, giving it a push now and then; by evening he has earned the benefit of millions of mantras. Now electricity has come. One should connect the wheel to electricity; it will run all day and you will receive the fruit of mantras endlessly. There is no difference between this and buying a Brahmin, bringing him home and telling him: you recite the Bhagavata. You do your shop, he does the recitation, and the benefit accrues to you.
Prayers are being outsourced to servants. Can servants pray for you? What use is a prayer performed by hired hands? But no—we want the taste of being religious. It is so convenient to grow a choti; what’s the harm, what’s the loss? Grow a choti and become religious. Bow for two minutes before a stone idol and become religious. Pluck two flowers from someone else’s garden, offer them in a temple, and become religious. We have found such cheap paths. Now we no longer need to truly become religious.
To change conduct is difficult. To change life is troublesome—because changing life means one will have to endure pains. By speaking untruth, one may gain benefits; by speaking truth, one may have to suffer loss. To change life is tapascharya. But we have invented other tapascharyas, which are sheer deceptions. A man stands in the sun and we say, he is doing austerity. What has standing in the sun to do with austerity?
Speaking truth can be tapascharya. Loving can be tapascharya. Rising above hatred and anger can be tapascharya. To hold no one as enemy and to see all existence as friend can be tapascharya. To refrain from violence can be tapascharya. But standing in the sun is circus, not tapascharya. A man is fasting, not eating, and we think austerity has happened. What relation has starving to do with religion? Otherwise, in famine, all would become religious. Starving has no relation to becoming religious. Nor does standing naked. All these are externals—by these, the soul does not change. And if a man stands daily in the sun, in a few days he becomes accustomed.
Just now I passed through a village. There, a sannyasi has been standing for eight years. He does not sit, does not sleep. Millions worship him. I asked him: What difference does it make if someone stands? What has changed in his life by standing? And why do you people worship in such madness? Lakhs of rupees are being offered. People say a great act has been done—because someone is standing.
What difference does it make if a person stands for life? Will he become more intelligent by standing? The fool he was when he began—he will be an even greater fool after eight years of standing. Whatever little capacity the mind had must have withered away. Will a man become virtuous by standing? Then what an easy trick! Will a man attain God by standing? What is to happen merely by standing? Yes, worship can be gained—because the whole country is sunk in foolishness. Millions will worship if someone stands. If someone stands on his head, the whole village will gather in reverence. What has head-stand to do with God? If God liked those who stand on their heads, he would have made everyone head-down from birth and spared the need to stand on the feet. But no—we take all these things to be tapas and sadhana. These are not tapas and sadhana.
The sadhana and tapas of life are where a person must be ready to leave the inferior for the superior. Where in life one gathers the courage to drop untruth. Where one dares to speak truth. Where all around there are provocations to anger, and one strives to remain free of anger.
Gautam Buddha was passing near a village. Some people surrounded him and hurled many abuses. When they had finished, he said: May I go now, if you are done? I need to reach the next village quickly—the people there will be waiting on the road. And you had not informed me beforehand that you wished to say something; otherwise I would have made time. I must go. Are you finished?
The villagers said: Say something? We were abusing you—plain abuses. Don’t you understand?
Buddha said: If you wanted to abuse me, you needed to come ten years earlier. For ten years now I have stopped accepting abuses. You may give—thank you—but I do not take. For ten years I have not taken abuses at all.
They said: Do abuses have to be accepted?
Buddha said: If I will not take, how will you give? In the last village some people brought sweets. I said, my stomach is full. They took their platters back. You have brought abuses in your platters, full. I am saying, I will not take them. Now what will you do? You cannot force-feed them. You will have to take your abuses back, friends—because I do not accept them, I have stopped taking abuses.
This we can call sadhana—that someone has stopped taking abuses. This is not the joke of standing in the sun. To prepare the personality in such a way that abuses no longer enter—this can be tapascharya. This can be sadhana. Such a person can come near Paramatma. Such a person can be religious. Not taking abuses, not taking anger, not taking hatred—this requires immense courage. Because we do not even notice; the giver has not even fully given before we have already taken. We do not even notice when we took it. Love does not enter so easily. If someone loves us, we think twenty-five times: is it true or false? But if someone abuses us, we never ask whether it is true or false—we accept it immediately.
The austerity of life lies in awakening from what is futile and growing what is meaningful. Not in growing hair tufts, but in growing the soul; not in changing clothes, but in transforming the inner being—there lies the sadhana of life. There lies Dharma.
And the day a person becomes free of hatred in the temple of his life and is filled with love; becomes free of untruth and is filled with truth—on that day he need not go to search for Paramatma; Paramatma comes searching to his door. And this I want to tell you: where will you search for Paramatma? How will you search for that whose address is unknown? The day you become worthy, Paramatma finds you. You do not have to search for Paramatma.
I do not call religious the one who searches for God; I call religious the one for whom God is compelled to search. The religious person does not worry about God—God himself begins to worry about the religious person. I do not call religious the one who goes to the temple; I call religious the one who, wherever he sits, a temple happens there; wherever he lives, the fragrance of the temple begins to arise; wherever he stands, the earth becomes sacred; wherever he looks, the air of prayer descends. To be such a person is to be religious. And if we do not make even a small effort in this direction—if we do not make the art of changing life itself our religion—then our land is lost, and there is no future for it.
These few things I have spoken. On the foundation of a true religion, it is necessary to transform life and the individual. If we can do this, the birth of a new country and a new society is possible. Toward this birth, I pray you all will also make your effort.
You have listened to my words with such peace and love; I am deeply obliged. And finally, I bow to the Paramatma dwelling within all. Please accept my pranam.
Osho's Commentary
I would like to begin with a small incident.
A tiny school in a tiny village. Early morning, and the school inspector has come for inspection. He goes into the senior class, writes three questions on the board and says to the students: the first, second and third rankers of your class should come, one after the other, and solve these questions. The first student gets up, comes to the board, solves his question, and sits down. The second student rises and solves his as well. The third gets up, but very hesitant, very afraid. Even as he stands at the board, his head is bowed. The inspector grows suspicious. He looks at the child closely and thinks, but this is the same one who came first and solved the question. He catches the boy by the ear and says: You are trying to cheat a second time! You already came and solved a question.
The boy says, I did come before, but in a different capacity. The student who is actually third in our class has gone to watch a cricket match and asked me that, if needed, I should do it in his place. I’ve come to solve the question on his behalf.
The inspector becomes very angry and says, No one can take an exam in another’s place. This is the beginning of a journey into dishonesty. You have already learned deceit! There is no justification for one person taking an exam for another. He scolds the student severely and says, Don’t ever repeat such a mistake.
A person can only be in his own place, not in another’s. And whenever someone tries to be in another’s place, that is when the cause of unrighteousness enters life.
Then he turns toward the teacher who was standing quietly near the board. The inspector says: The boy was deceiving me and you stood by silently watching! I might not have noticed, but surely you recognized that the student came twice?
The teacher says: Forgive me, I am not the teacher of this class. I teach the class next door. The teacher of this class has gone to watch the cricket match and asked me to stand in for him. I only came to stand here in his place, because you were coming for inspection.
Now the inspector goes mad. He says: Not only is the student cheating, you are cheating too! And if you deceive, how will students not learn deceit? Such a teacher cannot be kept in a school job. He opens his register and says, I am making a report against you. The poor teacher grows terrified. Kneeling down, folding his hands, he begins to beg, I will not make such a mistake again. Please forgive me this time, I have small children. At last the inspector feels pity and says, You are forgiven this time, but don’t repeat this error. You are spared today because I am not the real inspector. The real inspector has gone to watch the cricket match. I am his friend. He told me, please go and do today’s inspection. So I came to inspect the school.
When I heard this story, I understood: this is the symbolic story of our whole nation. From bottom to top—peon to president—everyone is entangled in dishonesty. Everyone deceives everyone else. And every deceiver keeps preaching that deceit is bad, that one must not cheat.
Now everyone has learned that cheating is the very rule of life. And it is also understood that one should go on explaining that one must not cheat—while continuing to cheat.
The character of the entire country, the conduct of the country, the very soul of the country is sinking day by day. A thousand sermons are given, a thousand explanations offered; nothing changes. Because the preachers stand in the very same place where the listeners stand. A web has arisen from which no way out appears. The greatest wonder is that this is happening in a land that has spoken, for thousands of years, of truth, of integrity, of ethics, of Dharma, and of Paramatma. No country on earth has spoken more—good things. And yet it has become difficult to find people worse than us on the earth. We who talk the best—and whose lives, if any are worse than ours, it would be surprising indeed.
What could be the cause? Is it not possible that too much talking of good things itself becomes a cause? Is it not that we have turned religion into a matter of conversation and severed it from life?
Those countries where there is no talk of religion at all appear more religious than us. The character of those lands where religion is not discussed seems higher than ours. And we, who for thousands of years talk of character, who speak of Dharma from morning till night—we rise taking the name of Ram, we sleep taking the name of Ram—but in between those two names, our whole day’s life is utterly contrary to Ram. How did this happen? To understand this, the first thing to understand is: whenever a society, a nation, a people reduce the highest directions of life to mere talk, the decline of that society, that nation, that people begins. Some things are not for talking; they are for living. When we begin to talk about them, their link with our living is broken.
This country will have to stop its religious talk. This country will have to stop its chatter about character—and begin to live character, begin to live Dharma.
A man runs to the temple in the morning, folds his hands, returns, and we say he has become religious—because he went to a temple. What connection can there be between going to a temple and becoming religious? How can anyone become religious merely by going to a temple? What change occurs in life by going to the temple? The same kind of person who went returns the same from the temple. No one’s soul is transformed by climbing temple steps. Yet we say, he has become religious. This is the definition of deception. We have removed religion from life and attached it to dead temples. Then anyone can drop by a temple and become religious.
And when the facility of becoming religious is made this cheap, who will trouble to transform life to become religious? A man applies a tilak, wears the yajnopavita, grows a choti, and becomes religious. In a country that has found such cheap ways to be religious, life is bound to become irreligious. These cheap routes have proven dangerous. No one ever becomes religious in this way.
A person becomes religious through life. Through character. Through conduct. Through behavior. We have cleverly tied religion to empty words. In this trick one gets the enjoyment of being religious without being religious. Will someone become religious by tying some string around his neck? Then let him tie even a thick rope, even an iron chain—he will not become religious. But we look at someone wearing the sacred thread and call him religious. Will someone become religious by smearing sandalwood on his forehead? Will donning ochre robes make one religious? What does clothing have to do with religion? Will someone become religious by visiting Kashi, or by going on pilgrimage to Badri and Kedar? By travel, how can one become religious? Even if one bathes in the Ganga countless times, even if one sits in countless temples and does aarti—none of these things has any real connection with becoming religious. Even if someone fingers the rosary beads endlessly…it is astonishing—how will one become religious by turning beads? But we have devised these devices. And because of them, we have saved ourselves from becoming religious.
If we truly wish to be religious—and without religion no society attains bliss or peace. Without religion no society grows strong or capable. Without attaining religion no society becomes prosperous. Without religion no society becomes truly a human society.
Yet we think religiousness means: how many temples in our village, how many mosques, how many priests, how many pundits, how many festivals we celebrate, how many Satyanarayan kathas we recite, how much Ramayana we read, how much Gita we read—by all these we judge ourselves religious.
A friend of mine from Patna University went to America to speak on religion. He delivered grand lectures on Indian religion. An old woman in New York came to him—she must have been seventy-five. She clasped his feet and said: I will now go to India with you. Where there are such religious people, where such a world of Dharma exists, I want to take my last breath there. My friend was very troubled. Lecturing on religion is one thing. But where is religion in India? Where will one find it? He tried to put her off: I will go and make arrangements, then I’ll call you. But the old woman said: in your lecture you yourself said, there is no trust even of a single breath. You might leave and I might be gone. I am seventy-five. No, I will go with you. I’ll make my own arrangements, don’t worry about them. I want to spend my last days where such pure people are.
Where are those pure people here? Yet the whole world imagines that India must be full of saints—because they read our books and are deluded that where the books are so exalted, the people will be equally exalted. They don’t know that there is a gulf between our books and us as vast as earth and sky.
She would not agree and by sheer insistence came to India. My friend was frightened: where would he show her the land of rishis and munis? There is no lack of “rishis and munis.” But see them from afar and they appear rishis; go close and the illusion breaks.
There are fifty-five lakh sannyasis in India even today—no shortage of sannyasis. But these fifty-five lakhs are of no use. Can a country be in this condition when it has fifty-five lakh God-loving sannyasis?
My friend took the woman to Bodh Gaya. They got down at Gaya station. He thought he would show her the temple of Gautam Buddha. There is peace there; the old woman would feel good. They arrived at Gaya station and ten or fifteen beggars surrounded them, asking for alms. The old woman said: In your country people still beg? In your lectures you said compassion was born in our land. Where compassion has been born, are there still beggars? What kind of compassion is this that in thousands of years you have not removed beggary?
My friend said: I had said there—don’t come yet, let me make arrangements. But this is an ordinary town. I will take you a little further to Bodh Gaya. There you will find great peace and a religious atmosphere.
They reached the temple at Bodh Gaya. He said to her, First let us go to the hotel and keep the luggage. The old woman said: No, first I will have darshan of the Bodhi tree of Lord Buddha. They placed the luggage at the front of the temple and went to see the back. When they returned, all the luggage was gone—stolen. The old woman said: Does theft happen at a temple too? At the temple of Gautam Buddha? What kind of country is this?
My friend told me, I slapped my own head and said to the old woman: I had already said don’t come here. Now that you insisted and have come, let me tell you the truth. The good things are written in our books. We locked the good things inside books so that we need not live them. We live as we wish; we wrote the good things into books and finished with them.
Does this situation of ours not seem in need of change? Will we go on living like this while the country becomes more hellish by the day? But how to change it? The first key I want to give you is this: free religion from useless and irrelevant things, so that religion may be joined with what is relevant and belongs to life.
Do not call the man who goes to a temple religious. Call religious the one who lives on earth as if God were. Call religious the one who sees Paramatma in living people, not in stone idols. Call religious the one whose conduct is prayerful. Do not call religious the one who folds his hands for three hours in prayer, but in the rest of his life has nothing to do with prayer. Do not call religious the one who reads the Gita in the morning and spends the day in dishonesty. Call religious the one who may never have read the Gita, who may never have stepped into a temple or a mosque, who may never have opened the Quran or the Bible—but whose rising and sitting, whose walking and speaking, whose behavior gives evidence that he is experiencing Paramatma all around. From whose every breath, from whose every word, from whose dealings, there comes the proof of religiousness—that is the one we will call religious. Whether or not he wears ochre robes, whether or not he belongs to any creed, whether or not he even accepts God. But if his very being announces, gives the fragrance of purity, we will call him religious. We must change the criterion of religiousness. Only then can religious people be born in this land—otherwise not.
The Shankaracharya of Puri was staying in Delhi. A man went to meet him and said: We have a small community; we would like you to come and give us a discourse on Brahman. Shankaracharya looked at him with contempt, laughed and said: You—you don’t even know how to dress; you are wearing pants, tie and coat. Has anyone ever heard of full pants, tie and coat leading to Brahma-knowledge?
The man must have been shaken. Those around began to laugh. And Shankaracharya said: Did any of the rishis and munis ever wear full pants and coats? Were they fools? Dressed like this, do you think you can attain God? Do you have a choti or not?
The man said: I don’t have a choti. Shankaracharya said: There, your Brahman-knowledge is finished! How can one without a choti attain Brahman!
This was all published in Kalyan magazine, word for word. And finally he asked the most amusing question: Do you urinate standing or sitting?
These are our jagatgurus, our knowers, our religious leaders—who are tying Brahma-knowledge to such foolish matters that have no relation to it at all.
How a man dresses has nothing to do with whether he is religious. A man may wear any clothes. The question is, how is he within? It is not a question of clothes—what you wear. Who are you? Whether you keep a choti or not is a question of stupidity. What is the person within? What is his character? Those who measure clothes and hair tufts may be tailors or barbers, not Brahma-jnanis. Yet we have taken them to be Brahma-jnanis. We have tied the human personality to false things. That false foundation must be uprooted. Religion must be placed in the right place. And what is the right place for Dharma? The right place is the human personality, not its external accessories. What a man wears, what he eats, what he abstains from, when he wakes, when he sleeps—these are all utterly secondary matters.
Someone asked Vivekananda in America: There is so much talk of religion in your land, yet religion is nowhere to be seen. Why? Vivekananda said: A misfortune has befallen my country—our entire religion has shriveled up into the hearth and kitchen. We brood over what a man eats, whose touch he eats, whose touch he wears. In these petty, two-bit matters, our entire religion has shriveled and died.
It is necessary to liberate religion so that it spreads across the vast territories of life—so that we may find it where it is needed. But why were these tricks invented? The inventors were very cunning. There is deep cunningness at work behind them. Those who do not wish to be religious, who wish to remain irreligious, also desire to give their minds the comfort that they are religious. They too want heaven after death. They too want to sit near the throne of Paramatma after death. For all of them, tricks had to be contrived. And only such useless tricks could be devised for them.
In Tibet they have made a Dharma-chakra—a prayer-wheel. As you turn beads, they have made a small wheel. It has one hundred and eight spokes. On each spoke a mantra is written. The shopkeeper sits in his shop with the wheel. He keeps doing his work, business goes on. Now and then he gives the wheel a push with his hand; however many rotations it turns, he receives the fruit of that many mantras. The mantras are written on the wheel; with each push, the wheel turns and he gets the benefit of those mantras. He sits all day, giving it a push now and then; by evening he has earned the benefit of millions of mantras. Now electricity has come. One should connect the wheel to electricity; it will run all day and you will receive the fruit of mantras endlessly. There is no difference between this and buying a Brahmin, bringing him home and telling him: you recite the Bhagavata. You do your shop, he does the recitation, and the benefit accrues to you.
Prayers are being outsourced to servants. Can servants pray for you? What use is a prayer performed by hired hands? But no—we want the taste of being religious. It is so convenient to grow a choti; what’s the harm, what’s the loss? Grow a choti and become religious. Bow for two minutes before a stone idol and become religious. Pluck two flowers from someone else’s garden, offer them in a temple, and become religious. We have found such cheap paths. Now we no longer need to truly become religious.
To change conduct is difficult. To change life is troublesome—because changing life means one will have to endure pains. By speaking untruth, one may gain benefits; by speaking truth, one may have to suffer loss. To change life is tapascharya. But we have invented other tapascharyas, which are sheer deceptions. A man stands in the sun and we say, he is doing austerity. What has standing in the sun to do with austerity?
Speaking truth can be tapascharya. Loving can be tapascharya. Rising above hatred and anger can be tapascharya. To hold no one as enemy and to see all existence as friend can be tapascharya. To refrain from violence can be tapascharya. But standing in the sun is circus, not tapascharya. A man is fasting, not eating, and we think austerity has happened. What relation has starving to do with religion? Otherwise, in famine, all would become religious. Starving has no relation to becoming religious. Nor does standing naked. All these are externals—by these, the soul does not change. And if a man stands daily in the sun, in a few days he becomes accustomed.
Just now I passed through a village. There, a sannyasi has been standing for eight years. He does not sit, does not sleep. Millions worship him. I asked him: What difference does it make if someone stands? What has changed in his life by standing? And why do you people worship in such madness? Lakhs of rupees are being offered. People say a great act has been done—because someone is standing.
What difference does it make if a person stands for life? Will he become more intelligent by standing? The fool he was when he began—he will be an even greater fool after eight years of standing. Whatever little capacity the mind had must have withered away. Will a man become virtuous by standing? Then what an easy trick! Will a man attain God by standing? What is to happen merely by standing? Yes, worship can be gained—because the whole country is sunk in foolishness. Millions will worship if someone stands. If someone stands on his head, the whole village will gather in reverence. What has head-stand to do with God? If God liked those who stand on their heads, he would have made everyone head-down from birth and spared the need to stand on the feet. But no—we take all these things to be tapas and sadhana. These are not tapas and sadhana.
The sadhana and tapas of life are where a person must be ready to leave the inferior for the superior. Where in life one gathers the courage to drop untruth. Where one dares to speak truth. Where all around there are provocations to anger, and one strives to remain free of anger.
Gautam Buddha was passing near a village. Some people surrounded him and hurled many abuses. When they had finished, he said: May I go now, if you are done? I need to reach the next village quickly—the people there will be waiting on the road. And you had not informed me beforehand that you wished to say something; otherwise I would have made time. I must go. Are you finished?
The villagers said: Say something? We were abusing you—plain abuses. Don’t you understand?
Buddha said: If you wanted to abuse me, you needed to come ten years earlier. For ten years now I have stopped accepting abuses. You may give—thank you—but I do not take. For ten years I have not taken abuses at all.
They said: Do abuses have to be accepted?
Buddha said: If I will not take, how will you give? In the last village some people brought sweets. I said, my stomach is full. They took their platters back. You have brought abuses in your platters, full. I am saying, I will not take them. Now what will you do? You cannot force-feed them. You will have to take your abuses back, friends—because I do not accept them, I have stopped taking abuses.
This we can call sadhana—that someone has stopped taking abuses. This is not the joke of standing in the sun. To prepare the personality in such a way that abuses no longer enter—this can be tapascharya. This can be sadhana. Such a person can come near Paramatma. Such a person can be religious. Not taking abuses, not taking anger, not taking hatred—this requires immense courage. Because we do not even notice; the giver has not even fully given before we have already taken. We do not even notice when we took it. Love does not enter so easily. If someone loves us, we think twenty-five times: is it true or false? But if someone abuses us, we never ask whether it is true or false—we accept it immediately.
The austerity of life lies in awakening from what is futile and growing what is meaningful. Not in growing hair tufts, but in growing the soul; not in changing clothes, but in transforming the inner being—there lies the sadhana of life. There lies Dharma.
And the day a person becomes free of hatred in the temple of his life and is filled with love; becomes free of untruth and is filled with truth—on that day he need not go to search for Paramatma; Paramatma comes searching to his door. And this I want to tell you: where will you search for Paramatma? How will you search for that whose address is unknown? The day you become worthy, Paramatma finds you. You do not have to search for Paramatma.
I do not call religious the one who searches for God; I call religious the one for whom God is compelled to search. The religious person does not worry about God—God himself begins to worry about the religious person. I do not call religious the one who goes to the temple; I call religious the one who, wherever he sits, a temple happens there; wherever he lives, the fragrance of the temple begins to arise; wherever he stands, the earth becomes sacred; wherever he looks, the air of prayer descends. To be such a person is to be religious. And if we do not make even a small effort in this direction—if we do not make the art of changing life itself our religion—then our land is lost, and there is no future for it.
These few things I have spoken. On the foundation of a true religion, it is necessary to transform life and the individual. If we can do this, the birth of a new country and a new society is possible. Toward this birth, I pray you all will also make your effort.
You have listened to my words with such peace and love; I am deeply obliged. And finally, I bow to the Paramatma dwelling within all. Please accept my pranam.