Can children understand the truth?

Osho, can children understand the truth?

RAJ, CHILDREN CAN UNDERSTAND THE TRUTH but cannot understand that they understand it. They understand more clearly than you can understand because they are more clean, more innocent; but they are so innocent that they cannot understand that they understand. Hence you need another childhood, a second childhood. First you have to lose your first childhood. That is the whole meaning of the biblical story of Adam and Eve losing paradise: that is losing the first childhood. It is a tremendously significant story. It has so many meanings, it is such a multi-dimensional parable, that I don't think there exists any other parable comparable to it. You can look at it from many aspects. It is losing the first childhood -- which is inevitable. Adam and Eve are not committing a sin. In fact, the word "sin" comes from a root which means forgetting, and that is a beautiful meaning:…

Osho, is the innocence of small children just ignorance, or has it got any value too?

The innocence of the children is ignorance, it is not true innocence. The true innocence happens only after the second birth. The true innocence happens only after you have reached your very core through awareness; that is the second birth, that is resurrection -- you are born anew. The first innocence of a child when it is born is only ignorance, but that ignorance is far more valuable than the knowledge that your so-called learned people are burdened with. So these things have to be remembered. Real innocence belongs to the Buddhas. They have lost their first childhood in knowledge and then they become aware of what they have lost. They have lost the precious, the essential for the non-essential, so they drop their knowledge. Dropping their knowledge they become innocent again. This is second innocence, second birth. In India we call such a person dwija, twice-born. He is a…

Why do you give sannyas to babies and children?

I have no creed, no dogma, no catechism. I am simply a presence. In this presence you can share something, you can partake of me. Everybody is welcome -- a child of three months and an old man of ninety years. Everybody is welcome. Who-soever wants to go on the journey of the unknown is welcome. And all that we teach here -- if you can call it teaching -- is love and meditation. Both are unconditioning, both are de-hypnotising. We don't teach a philosophy about love, we simply create the milieu where love can grow. And we don't give a ritualistic, formalistic form of meditation -- just the quality of meditativeness. Once you start drinking a little of meditativeness, a little of love. you start growing wings. Sannyas is not the end of the journey, it is just the beginning. It is the first step. When you become a…

Question: OSHO, ARE CHILDREN REALLY SO INTELLIGENT AS YOU ALWAYS SAY THEY ARE? Hindus have not listened to Buddha for the simple reason -- the same reason -- that Hindus are also carrying the idea they are the holiest people in the world and their land is the holiest land. Even gods long to I e born in India! No other country is so holy. And Buddha said, "This is all nonsense!" They had to reject him. Buddhism was thrown out of this country. No society can tolerate such people, who are telling the truth, because they seem to sabotage the very structure. But now the time has come when we have suffered enough. All over the world, in different ways, people have suffered much, and it is time to have a look at history and its stupidity and its ridiculousness and drop the whole idea of these egoistic patterns.

Osho, if an enlightened person cannot lose his buddhahood, how does a baby born as a buddha lose his?

Innocence plus consciousness is equal to Buddhahood. Innocence minus consciousness is equal to childhoodness. And how one can be conscious? The only way -- and let me emphasize -- the ONLY way is to lose it and gain it again. You ask me, Hajo: IF AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON CANNOT LOSE HIS BUDDHAHOOD, HOW DOES A BABY BORN AS A BUDDHA LOSE HIS? The enlightened person has lost it and found it. The baby has not lost it, and has not yet found it; he is born with it, oblivious of it. Hence you will see in the eyes of small children something of the saints, something of the same beauty; but also a deep ignorance. The innocence is there but full of ignorance. The saint is innocent but full of awareness, knowing. His innocence is not mixed with ignorance; it is wisdom. And the children are bound to lose their…