The head is compulsory, but not the cap

Question 1:

The first thing to be understood very clearly is what I mean by "disobedience." It is not the disobedience you will find in the dictionaries. My idea of disobedience is not to hate being told what to do or, in reaction, to do just the opposite.

Obedience needs no intelligence. All machines are obedient; nobody has ever heard of a disobedient machine. Obedience is simple, too. It takes from you the burden of any responsibility. There is no need to react, you have simply to do what is being said. The responsibility rests with the source from where the order comes. In a certain way you are very free: you cannot be condemned for your act.

After the second world war, in the Nuremberg trials, so many of Adolf Hitler's top men simply said that they were not responsible, and they don't feel guilty. They were simply being obedient -- whatever was told they did it, and they did it with as much efficiency as they were capable of.

In fact to make them responsible and condemn them, punish them, send them to the gallows, according to me was not fair. It was not justice, it was revenge. If Adolf Hitler had won the war, then Churchill's people, Roosevelt's people, Stalin's people or they themselves would have been in the same situation, and they would have said exactly the same -- that they are not responsible.

If Stalin had been on the stand in the court, he would have said that it was the order of the high command of the communist party. It was not his responsibility because it was not his decision; he had not done anything on his own. So if you want to punish, punish the source of the order. But you are punishing a person who simply fulfilled what all the religions teach, and all the leaders of the world teach -- obedience.

Obedience has a simplicity; disobedience needs a little higher order of intelligence. Any idiot can be obedient, in fact only idiots can be obedient. The person of intelligence is bound to ask why? -- "Why am I supposed to do it?" And, "Unless I know the reasons and the consequences of it, I am not going to be involved in it." Then he is becoming responsible.

Responsibility is not a game. It is one of the most authentic ways of living -- dangerous too -- but it does not mean disobedience for disobedience's sake. That will be again idiotic.

There is a story about a Sufi mystic, Mulla Nasruddin. From the very beginning it was thought that he was upside down. His parents were in trouble. If they would say, "Go to the right," he would go to the left. Finally his old father thought that rather than bothering with him, it is better, if they want him to go to the left, to order him to go to the right -- and he is bound to go to the left.

One day they were crossing the river. On their donkey they had a big bag of sugar, and the bag was leaning more towards right so there was a danger that it may slip into the river; it had to remain balanced on the donkey. But to tell to Nasruddin, "Move the bag towards the left," will mean losing the sugar -- he will move it towards the right.

So he said to Nasruddin, "My son, your bag is slipping; move it towards the right." And Nasruddin moved it towards the right.

The father said, "This is strange, for the first time you have been obedient!"

Nasruddin said, "For the first time you have been cunning. I knew you wanted this to be moved towards the left; I could see with my eyes where it needs to be moved. Even in such a subtle way you cannot make me obedient."

But just to go against obedience is not moving your intelligence higher. You remain on the same plane. Obedient or disobedient, but there is no change of intelligence.

To me disobedience is a great revolution.

It does not mean saying an absolute no in every situation. It simply means deciding whether to do it or not, whether it is beneficial to do it or not. It is taking the responsibility on yourself. It is not a question of hating the person or hating to be told, because in that hating you cannot act obediently, disobediently; you act very unconsciously. You cannot act intelligently.

When you are told to do something, you are given an opportunity to respond. Perhaps what is being told is right; then do it, and be grateful to the person who told you at the right moment to do it. Perhaps it is not right -- then make it clear. Bring your reasons, why it is not right; then help the person -- what he is thinking is going in a wrong way.

But hate has no place.

If it is right, do it lovingly.

If it is not right, then even more love is needed, because you will have to tell to the person, explain to the person that it is not right.

The way of disobedience is not stagnant, just going against every order and feeling anger and hate and revenge towards the person. The way of disobedience is a way of great intelligence.

So it is not ultimately obedience or disobedience. Reduced to the basic fact, it is simply a question of intelligence -- behave intelligently. Sometimes you will have to obey, and sometimes you will have to say, "I am sorry, I cannot do it." But there is no question of hate, there is no question of revenge, anger. If hate, anger or revenge arises, that simply means you know that what is being told is right, but it goes against your ego to obey it; it hurts your ego. That hurt feeling comes up as hate, as anger.

But the question is not your ego; the question is the act that you have to do -- and you have to bring your total intelligence to figure it out. If it is right, then be obedient; if it is wrong, be disobedient. But there is no conflict, there is no hurt feeling.

If you are obeying it, it is easier; you need not explain to anybody. But if you are not obeying it, then you owe an explanation. And perhaps your explanation is not right. Then you have to move back, you have to do it.

A man should live intelligently -- that's all.

Then whatever he does is his responsibility.

It happens that even great intellectuals are not living intelligently. Martin Heidegger, one of the greatest intellectuals of this age, was a follower of Adolf Hitler. And after Adolf Hitler's defeat and the exposure of his basic animality, brutality, murderousness, violence, even Martin Heidegger shrank back and said, "I was simply following the leader of the nation."

But a philosopher has no business to follow the leader of the nation. In fact a philosopher's basic duty is to guide the leaders of the nation, not to be guided by them, because he is out of active politics, his vision is more clear. He is standing aloof, he can see things which people who are involved in action cannot see.

But it is easy to throw responsibility...

If Adolf Hitler had been victorious, I am certain Martin Heidegger would have said, "He is victorious because he followed my philosophy." And certainly he was a great intellectual compared to Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler was just a retarded person. But power...

We have been brought up to follow the powerful -- the father, the mother, the teacher, the priest, the God. Essentially we have been told that whoever has the power is right: "Might is right." And you have to follow it. It is simple because it needs no intelligence. It is simple because you can never be told that it was your responsibility, that whatever happened was your responsibility.

In all the armies around the world only one thing is taught through years of training, and that is obedience. In Germany, in the second world war, there were good people, but they were heads of concentration camps. They were good fathers, good husbands, good friends. Nobody could have conceived -- watching them in their families, with their friends, in the club -- that these people are burning thousands of Jews every day.

And they were not feeling guilty at all, because it is only an order from above. And that is their whole training, that you have to follow the order. It has become part of their blood and their bones and their marrow. When the order comes, obedience is the only way.

This is how man has lived up to now, and that's why I say obedience is one of the greatest crimes, because all other crimes are born out of it. It deprives you of intelligence, it deprives you of decisiveness, it deprives you of responsibility. It destroys you as an individual. It converts you into a robot.

Hence I am all for disobedience. But disobedience is not just against obedience.

Disobedience is above obedience and the so-called disobedience described in the dictionaries. Disobedience is simply the assertion of your intelligence: "I take the responsibility, and I will do everything that feels right to my heart, to my being. And I will not do anything that goes against my intelligence."

My whole life, from my childhood to the university, I was condemned continuously for being disobedient. And I insisted, "I am not disobedient. I am simply trying to figure out, with my own intelligence, what is right, what should be done, and I take the whole responsibility for it. If something goes wrong, it was my fault. I don't want to condemn somebody else because he has told me to do it."

But it was difficult for my parents, for my teachers, professors. In my school it was compulsory to wear caps, and I entered the high school without a cap. Immediately the teacher said, "Are you aware or not that the cap is compulsory?"

I said, "A thing like a cap cannot be compulsory. How can it be compulsory to put something on your head or not? The head is compulsory, but not the cap. And I have come with the head; perhaps you have come only with the cap."

He said, "You look a strange type. It is just written in the school code that without a cap, no student can enter the school."

I said, "Then that code has to be changed. It is written by human beings, not by God; and human beings commit mistakes."

The teacher could not believe it. He said, "What is the matter with you? Why can't you just wear a cap?"

I said, "The trouble is not with the cap; I want to find out why it is compulsory, its reason, its results. If you are unable... you can take me to the principal and we can discuss it." And he had to take me to the principal.

In India, Bengalis are the most intelligent people; they don't use caps. And Punjabis are the most unintelligent, simple people, and they use turbans. So I said to the principal, "Looking at the situation -- Bengalis don't use any caps and they are the most intelligent people in the country, and Punjabis use not only a cap but a very tight turban, and they are the most unintelligent people. "It has something to do with your intelligence. I would rather not take the risk."

The principal listened to me and he said, "The boy is stubborn, but what he is saying makes sense. I had never thought about it -- this is true. And we can make this code non- compulsory. Anybody who wants to wear a cap can wear one; anybody who does not want to use, there is no need -- because it has nothing to do with learning, teaching."

The teacher could not believe it. On the way back he told me, "What did you do?"

I said, "I have done nothing, I simply explained the situation. I am not angry, I am perfectly willing to use a cap. If you feel it helps intelligence, why only one? I can use two caps, three caps, caps upon caps, if it helps intelligence...! I am not angry. But you have to prove it."

The teacher said to me -- I still remember his words -- "You will be in trouble your whole life. You will not fit in anywhere."

I said, "That's perfectly okay, but I don't want to be an idiot and fit in everywhere. It is good to be an "unfit" but intelligent. And I have come to the school to learn intelligence, so I can be an unfit intelligently! Please never try again to change me from an individual into a cog in the wheel."

And from the next day the caps disappeared; only he had come with a cap. And looking at the class and the school... because the new rule has come into force that caps are not compulsory, all other teachers, even the principal, had come without caps. He looked so idiotic. I said to him, "There is still time. You can take it off and put it in your pocket."

And he did it!

He said, "That's right. If everybody is against the cap... I was simply being obedient to the law."

I said, "The law is made by us. We can change it, without any anger. Can we not discuss each and everything intelligently?"

So remember, when I say "disobedience" I don't mean replace obedience by disobedience. That will not make you better. I use the word `disobedience' only to make it clear to you that it is up to you, that you have to be the decisive factor of all your actions in life. And that gives tremendous strength, because whatever you do, you do with a certain rational support to it.

I entered the university, and the first question the vice-chancellor asked me was, "Why have you been growing your beard and mustache?" And it was in a way natural because no other student was doing that.

I said to him, "I have come here to see you for a scholarship, but I can risk the scholarship. I cannot risk a chance for an argument."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "I mean I should ask you why you have shaved your beard, your mustache. I have done nothing; they are growing by themselves. You have done something; you have not allowed them to grow -- you are shaving twice a day. You owe me an explanation. What is the reason why you are doing it?"

He said, "I have never thought about it... because everybody else was doing it I started doing it."

I said, "That is not a very intelligent answer. You can think over it. I will come every day and knock on the door, so whenever you have found the answer you can give me the answer, and from that day I will start shaving."

Three days only I had to go to his office to knock. On the fourth day he said to me, "Excuse me, you have taken away my sleep. The whole day I am thinking about my beard and mustache, and the whole day I am looking at the door, thinking that you must be coming to knock. And sometimes I hear that there has been a knock, and I open the door and there is nobody, so I am hallucinating! You have made me so afraid! You simply take your scholarship and do whatever you want; it is your beard and your mustache. And just please forgive me that I asked you."

I said, "It is not so easy. You have to stop shaving; otherwise I will continue coming every day, knocking on the door, waiting for the answer."

He said, "My God! I am giving you the scholarship, which really should not be given to you because you don't belong to this university -- you are coming from another university, and according to our rules, the first preference will be for a graduate of this university. I am not bothering about the rule; I am giving you the scholarship because I simply want you to stop knocking on my door."

I said, "You can keep your scholarship and you can give it to anybody you want, but you will have to stop shaving."

He said, "Don't be so hard on an old man -- because what will people say? Don't make me a laughingstock!"

I said, "You will become a laughingstock if you don't listen to me, because then I am going to tell everybody the whole story of what has been happening in these four days."

And you will not believe it: he gave me the scholarship, and he started growing the beard! The whole university was surprised, because he was very fussy about his clothes, and about shaving -- he had been in Oxford, a professor of history, head of the department of history there. Everybody started asking him, "What has happened?"

He said, "Nothing has happened. I just came to realize that I was doing something wrong, because I cannot give any reason. This young man has made me aware that you should live your life rationally. I have been an imitator, I have been very obedient to the surroundings. Nobody has told me -- I have been obedient on my own. But because I don't have any reason, I will let my beard grow. And this young man seems to be right, that if women start growing beards, mustaches..."

And it is not very difficult. There are hormones which can be injected and they will start growing beards. Do you think it will be a beautiful world, where men are shaving beards, and women are growing beards? A woman with a beard will freak out anybody! And the same happens with the man; just the women are very patient, very tolerant. They even tolerate people without beards. No man can tolerate his wife with a beard, I tell you; it is absolutely certain. Either he will throw her out, or he will hang himself! But millions of women are tolerating beardless men.

Nature never does anything without any reason. I have tried to look at men without beards. It seems something is missing in the man. Just look at Milarepa! When I first saw him here I was so shocked. He was looking so beautiful with a beard and now he is looking simply idiotic! He has lost all his grandeur.

Just live intelligently.

If something is told to you, decide whether it is right or wrong, then you can avoid all guilt feelings. Otherwise, if you don't do it, then you feel guilty; if you do it, again you feel guilty. If you do it you feel that you are being obedient, subservient, that you are not being assertive, that you are not being yourself. And if you don't do it, then you start feeling guilty again -- because perhaps it was the right thing to do, and you are not doing it.

There is no need for all this clumsiness. Just be simple. If something is told to you, respond intelligently. And whatsoever your intelligence decides, do it this way or that -- but you are responsible. Then there is no question of guilt.

If you are not going to do it, explain to the person why you are not going to do it. And explain without any anger, because anger simply shows that you are weak, that you don't really have an intelligent answer. Anger is always a sign of weakness. Just plainly and simply explain the whole thing; perhaps the other person may find that you are right and may be thankful to you. Or perhaps the other person may have better reasons than you; then you will be thankful to the other person because he has raised your consciousness.

Use every opportunity in life for raising your intelligence, your consciousness.

Ordinarily what we are doing is using every opportunity to create a hell for ourselves.

Only you suffer, and because of your suffering, you make others suffer. And when so many people are living together, and if they all create suffering for each other, it goes on multiplying. That's how the whole world has become a hell.

It can be instantly changed.

Just the basic thing has to be understood, that without intelligence there is no heaven.

Question 2:

They are not absurd; they are functioning very logically. They can see the potential danger that I can bring to the younger generation, and which can destroy their centuries of vested interests.

They are not absurd. It may look absurd -- the whole world against one single man -- but it is very logical. They can see that what I am saying is true, and they have no way to defend their morality, their marriage, their family, their social structure. Naturally, they would not like me to come in contact with their youth, because their youth is going to be powerful tomorrow; and if their youth becomes aflame with my ideas, tomorrow the old world will have completely collapsed.

To save the old and to prevent the new, they are taking every measure -- and it is logical.

I am certainly absurd.

You have to understand the meaning of absurd. In life everything that is significant is absurd. When you fall in love with someone it is absurd, it is not logical. You cannot give us a logical answer why you have fallen in love with a particular person -- man or woman. It is something beyond you that has gripped you. It is not your doing. Even if you wanted to prevent it, you could not have succeeded; in fact you were absolutely helpless.

Your joy in a world full of misery is absurd. It has no relatedness to the miserable humanity. You are completely alone. Everything that is valuable -- you love music, you are enchanted with beauty, you are seeking truth, you want to know yourself -- all these are absurd activities.

Meditating is absurd; it would be better and more logical to earn money.

Just before I left Nepal, a group of sannyasins from Delhi had come to prevent me from going out of Nepal or out of India -- a kind of deputation. They were ready to purchase a big palace and make every arrangement for a commune. But I told them, "Right now you are being emotional. You will be in difficulty. The palace costs one million dollars.

Perhaps you can collect that much donation, saying that if the palace is not purchased, I am going to leave. But the palace is not the only thing; then there will be at least fifty people living there, and you will not be able to support them.

"It is not a question of one day, so be logical. Your asking me to remain in India is out of love, but it is absurd. You will create trouble for me and trouble for yourselves. So you go back, think over it. I will wait here ten days more. You can come after seven days with the decision."

They never came. They must have understood the implications -- they will not be able to manage it. But their insistence was out of love, not out of reason.

I am absurd because whatever I am teaching to you goes against everything that you have been taught. And you have been taught things for so long that you have forgotten completely that they are questionable.

For example, every culture in the world has believed, has conditioned its younger generations, with an idea that love is permanent, that if you love a person you love that person forever. This idea has prevailed for centuries all over the world. It looks logical that if you love a person, the very phenomenon of love will make it permanent. And why has everybody accepted it? -- because you also desire that it should be permanent.

Everybody wants his love to be permanent.

So the traditional idea and your desire synchronize, and it becomes a truth... so much so that if your love changes, then not only others but you yourself start thinking that it was not love -- that's why it changed. You don't change the basic idea of permanent love; you start thinking, "Perhaps what I thought was love was not love, because it has changed -- and love does not change."

I am bound to be absurd, because I want to say to you that in life everything changes -- in spite of your desire for no change. It does not matter that sitting by the side of the river you desire that the river should not go on flowing, that the seasons should not change, that the flowers should not die, that youth should never turn into old age, that life should never end up in a graveyard.

Your desires apart... existence does not listen to your desires, and does not follow your desires, however beautiful and however pious. Existence goes on in its own way.

Everything changes -- and love is not an exception.

Now, perhaps I am the first person who wants to make it understood by everyone that love changes: it begins, it comes of age, it becomes old, it dies. And I think it is good the way it is. It gives you many more chances of loving other people, to make life richer -- because each person has something special to contribute to you. The more you love, the more rich you are, the more loving you become.

And if the false idea of permanence is dropped, jealousy will drop automatically; then jealousy is meaningless. Just as you fall in love and you cannot do anything about it, one day you fall out of love and you cannot do anything about it. A breeze came into your life and passed. It was good and beautiful and fragrant and cool, and you would have liked it to remain always there. You tried hard to close all the windows and all the doors, to keep the breeze fragrant, fresh. But by closing the windows and the doors, you killed the breeze, its freshness, its fragrance; it became stale.

Every marriage is stale.

I am absurd, because I don't want to enforce logic -- which is man-made -- on existence.

In trying to impose logic on existence you simply create misery for yourself, because you are going to fail; your failure is absolute. Millions of people are simply pretending that they go on loving each other. Once they had loved, but now it is only a memory, and becoming fainter and fainter every day. But because of the idea of permanency they are afraid to say the truth.

And it is not anger, it is not hate; it is nothing against the other. It is simply the way of life -- love changes. It is seasonal, and it is good to have summer and to have winter, and to have rain... to have the fall and the spring.

Your whole life can be lived either as logic or as existence. Existence will be absurd. One moment it is one thing; another moment, it is something else. And you are left with the choice either to go on pretending that it is still the same, or to be honest and sincere and to say that it was a beautiful moment but it has passed. The oasis is passed and now we are in a desert, and we know that we are in a desert; we cannot enjoy, we cannot rejoice.

Still we are bound to each other with the idea of permanent love. That permanent love is a logical idea.

Real love is a real roseflower: it is going to change. From morning to evening it is going to take different shapes, different shades, and by the evening it will be gone. And I don't think that there is anything wrong.

Love is just one example. Your whole life is full of such things. For example, every child is taught respect for the parents, respect for the teachers, respect for the elders. Respect is a beautiful experience, but when you have to be respectful just as a mannerism, it is ugly.

I was told again and again in my childhood, "You have to be respectful."

I used to tell my father, "Before you tell me to be respectful towards somebody, you should at least be certain whether he is worthy of respect; otherwise you are making me phony. I know that a man is not worthy of respect; but he is elder, and I am supposed to be respectful. I am ready to be respectful, but there must be something corresponding to it. For what am I going to be respectful?"

But for centuries upon centuries, the same idea in different dimensions... be respectful towards your parents. But why? Just because they have given birth to you? Was it not a joy to them? If it was a joy to them, they have already got their reward. Now if they want respect from you, then they should be worthy of respect.

And my father would say, "You are always talking absurdities. We have to live in a society, and the society runs through a certain discipline. Certain manners have to be followed; otherwise you will be crushed by the society. So don't be absurd," he was continuously saying to me.

And I said, "I would not like to be crushed by the society, but I cannot behave logically, seeing that existence is moving in a different direction. What you are saying is logical.

You are saying, `This is the way things have always been done; and this is the way things should be done.'" And there is a logic in it -- that if you are respectful towards others, others will be respectful towards you; if you help the society, the society will help you. But if you go on criticizing the society, if you go on finding faults everywhere, you will fall alone, and you cannot win against the vast majority.

Logic is the way of winning in the society.

Be logical, and it will be easier for you to climb the ladders.

I said, "I would like to remain true to existence -- and existence is absurd. It has no logic, it has no meaning. It has immense beauty, it has tremendous possibilities for ecstasy, but you cannot make a logical system out of it."

So remember it: the European parliament, the American government -- and others will soon be following -- are all behaving very logically.

But I am not a logician.

I am an existentialist.

I believe in this meaningless, beautiful chaos of existence, and I am ready to go with it wherever it leads.

I don't have a goal, because existence has no goal. It simply is, flowering, blossoming, dancing -- but don't ask why. Just an overflow of energy, for no reason at all.

I am with existence.

And that's what I call being a sannyasin:

To be with existence.

The only thing you will have to renounce will be your logical mind.

So start living in an existential but illogical way.

The world may call you absurd, mad...

So what?