According to Osho, a child and a Buddha share the same freshness and wonder, acting from not-knowing; but the child's innocence is natural, unearned and destined to be lost, while the Buddha's is the second innocence, regained through suffering, experience and awareness. The Buddha is a twice-born child: innocence transformed into wisdom, conscious, mature, and irreversible.
A child is pure because they don’t know yet; a Buddha is pure again after fully living and understanding, so the purity is wise and never lost.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is the difference between waiting for godot and waiting for god?
It is as if the sun has risen in the morning and you are sitting in your room with closed doors and windows, in darkness. Open the doors, you become available to the sun. The sun was already available -- just the meeting happens. You cannot wait for God. All waiting is for Godot. Godot means the one who never comes, who CANNOT come, whose arrival is impossible. And the only impossible thing is that which has already happened -- how can it happen again? You are alive, and you are waiting for life, Now, this is ridiculous. The real man of religion does not think in terms of God. He thinks in terms of life or, even better, of living -- because life can again become an abstract idea. Living, moment-to-moment living. In that very living, one knows what God is, because one knows who one is. Your idea…
Beloved Osho, what is the difference between the emptiness of the child before the formation of the ego and the awakened childlikeness of a buddha?
Whether you are for it or against it doesn't matter -- your concern shows where your ego is hanging. And I will include the capitalist in it also: his whole concern is how to gather money, hoard money -- because money has power over matter. You can purchase any material thing through money. You cannot purchase anything spiritual, you cannot purchase anything that has any intrinsic value; you can purchase only things. If you want to purchase love, you cannot purchase; but you can purchase sex. Sex is the material part of love. Through money, matter can be purchased, possessed. Now you will be surprised: I include the communist and the capitalist both in the same category, and they are enemies, just as I include Charvaka and Mahatma Gandhi in the same category, and they are enemies. They are enemies, but their concern is the same. The capitalist is trying…
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…
Beloved Osho, sitting close to you these last few mornings and looking into your eyes, I felt so much like a small child, full of innocence and excitement. Many times I wanted to wave my hand in the air wildly and shout: hello, hello, hello, my most beloved. Beloved master, can you talk about this blissful innocence that I am feeling and how it relates to meditation?
It is good to start with innocence, but remember there are two kinds of innocence: one is of the child and another is of the meditator. The meditator also becomes a child, but that is on such a different level, at such a great height -- as if the child is in the valley and the enlightened man who has again become a child is on the sunlit peak. The distance is tremendous. But there is a certain similarity, a thread running from the child to the heart of the sage. The child cannot understand the sage, but the sage can understand the child. Always remember it as a fundamental rule: the lower cannot understand the higher, but the higher can always understand the lower. And in your life, if anything can be compared with that high peak, it is your childhood. Try to rediscover it. Don't cover it with…
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…