Grow Real Roses

The first question:

Question 1:

SARJAN,

It is impossible! It has never happened - it cannot happen in the very nature of things. Marriage is something against nature. Marriage is an imposition, an invention of man - certainly out of necessity, but now even that necessity is out of date. It was a necessary evil in the past, but now it can be dropped. And it should be dropped: man has suffered enough for it, more than enough. It is an ugly institution for the simple reason that love cannot be legalized. Love and law are contradictory phenomena.

Marriage is an effort to legalize love. It is out of fear. It is thinking about the future, about the tomorrows. Man always thinks of the past and the future, and because of this constant thinking about past and future, he destroys the present. And the present is the only reality there is. One has to live in the present. The past has to die and has to be allowed to die.

The really intelligent person never looks back; he never bothers about the past - that which is finished is finished forever. And he never thinks of the future either because that which has not come yet has not come yet. And he knows that whenever it comes, he will be capable of responding to it, so why ponder over it? Why make ready-made answers to questions which have not even arisen? And all your ready-made answers are going to be irrelevant because life goes on changing.

Life remains always a surprise; it is unpredictable.

But man thinks that he is being very clever by preparing for the future. You love a woman, you love a man, but what about the future? Tomorrow the woman may fall in love with somebody else. If she can fall in love even with you, Sarjan, why can she not fall in love with somebody else? You know it, you are aware of it: "She has fallen in love even with me so there is every possibility she can fall in love with somebody else." So something has to be done to prevent her from falling in love with somebody else so that your tomorrow is safe and secure, so that you can use her tomorrow, too.

Whether love remains or not, at least you will have the physiology of the woman. You are not much concerned with her soul - because law cannot restrain the soul, but law can create barriers for the body; the body is not beyond its reach. Law can control her; law can condemn her, can punish her in many ways.

And another thing: not only are you afraid of the woman, you are afraid of yourself too. If you can fall in love with this woman, you can fall in love with somebody else. You know that your mind is constantly thinking of other women. You know there is every possibility that tomorrow you may lose interest in this woman; in fact it is almost a certainty, not just a possibility, not just a probability. And then you are afraid of yourself. You may escape, you may run.

And you want to cling because this woman is taking care of you. She has been a comfort to you, she has been a consolation in your life, she has been in many ways a mother to you, a nourishment.

You are afraid to betray her. You are afraid of your own mind, of your own unconscious; it can take you anywhere.

And you have promised her that you will never leave her, that you will always love her, that you will love her forever, life after life. You are afraid of breaking your promises. Your ego feels that to break those promises will mean only one thing: that you will never be able to forgive yourself. It will remain a heavy weight on you, it will create guilt for you.

And the same is the situation from the side of the woman. Hence it has been a necessary evil, and men and women have agreed to plan for the future. Afraid of themselves they have taken support from the law, from the society, from conventions, from respectability. They have created a thousand and one barriers around themselves so that they remain together.

But if - and that "if" is not a small "if", it is a big "if" - something happens tomorrow, then your life will become miserable. And something is going to happen tomorrow; tomorrow is not going to remain the same. Life never remains the same, not even for two consecutive moments. Nothing can be said about the future; it remains unknown, unknowable, unpredictable. No astrology can help, no palmistry can help, no tarot-card reading can help, no I-CHING can help - nothing can help. Man has tried every possible way to make something certain out of the uncertain future, but nothing can be done. The nature of the future is unknown, and it remains unknown and open.

So you close yourself to all possibilities. You close all the doors, all the windows. But then you will feel suffocated and you will feel angry and you will feel constantly in conflict. With the woman you had loved once you will feel angry for the simple reason that now it is difficult to get out of this prison.

You have imprisoned yourself; now the only way to go on living in it is to make yourself as insensitive as possible, to become as unloving as possible, to become as false as possible, to be as dead as possible.

Hence people die very soon. They may be buried after forty years, fifty years, but they die nearabout thirty. By the time their love starts dying they die, because life is love. But love is not law, life is not law Life is not logic, love is not logic. Life is basically insecure, and that is the beauty of it.

Hence I don't see that with the coming age, with the new maturity that man is attaining, marriage can exist anymore in the same old way. It has to become more fluid; that means it can no longer be an institution. People will live together - they need each other... Men and women are halves of one whole; their need is intrinsic. Together they become one whole, together they are complementary to each other. But they will live together only because of love, not because of any law. And they will live together out of freedom, not out of bondage.

And with the disappearance of the institution of marriage the whole structure of society will change - it cannot change otherwise - because once marriage disappears many things will disappear automatically. The family will not be the same anymore; the family will be replaced by communes - that is inevitable. And children will not belong to persons but to the commune. Hence they will not be much of a problem - because children have been a big problem: what to do with the children when people separate? The children are left in a limbo; something has to be done about the children.

And marriage has persisted for the simple reason that children have to be protected, they have to be helped; they are helpless. And it is your responsibility.

Love becomes duty, responsibility. And the moment it is duty and responsibility it loses all poetry, it becomes pure calculation. Then it is a compromise, then you have somehow to pull it, then you start dragging your life.

A great revolution is on the way, and with the disappearance of marriage that revolution will become possible. Once children no longer belong to persons they will have more generosity, they will be more human. They will not be Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians because they will not belong to certain parents and they will not be conditioned by the parents; they will belong to the commune. And once children belong to the commune they will have a larger experience of people.

One child may come in contact with many women as mothers, aunts, with many men as fathers, as uncles, with many children as brothers, sisters.

Right now the experience of the child is very limited. Each child is brought up by a certain woman.

The impact of that woman remains hanging on the child's consciousness for his whole life; it becomes an imprint. And he is always searching for the same woman: in every woman he falls in love with he is really looking for his mother, whom he cannot find. Where can he find his mother?

There are no two persons alike. He will never find his mother anywhere, but he is looking for his mother in every wife, in every beloved. And the same is the case with the woman: she is looking for the father in every husband, in every lover. And they cannot find them, but that is their IDEA.

The woman's idea of a man is nothing but her idea of the father and the man's idea of a woman is nothing but his idea of the mother. They will never find them, hence there will be frustration, hence there will always be despair, misery, failure, anguish.

If a child is brought up by many women in the commune and comes in contact with many men and many women he will not have a certain idea, he will have a more vague vision. He will not have a certainty how a man should be or a woman should be, his idea of a woman will contain many pictures. And then there will be more possibility of finding a woman who can fulfill him or a man with whom life can be a contentment, because one of the greatest miseries is that you are looking for someone you cannot find, hence everybody will seem to be falling short; nothing will ever satisfy you.

And because you will not be confined to one family you will not carry the rotten heritage of the family.

Otherwise the Hindu parents will make the child Hindu, and a Hindu child is bound to be against the Mohammedans, against the Christians, against everybody else. And so is the case with the Jews and with the Christians and the Mohammedans. If the child moves with many people in a commune and feels attuned with the whole commune...

For example, in this commune, you can look at Siddhartha. He lives absolutely freely. Such a little child, with such freedom! He has no attachment to the mother or to the father. He makes friendships with grown-up people, then he starts living with them. He has so many friends - men and women, and all kinds of friends - children, grown-ups. He is really getting the idea of so many people that his vision of humanity is bound to be vast.

He had asked me - he was living in a kids' house where only kids live - he asked me, "Osho, I want to live with real men, not with kids. Enough is enough! I have lived with kids long enough." So I sent him to live with Govinddas and other sannyasins. And they complained: "Sometimes he comes at twelve o'clock in the night and sometimes at one o'clock, sometimes at two o'clock. This is too much! He goes to parties and to dramas and to the disco and he is disturbing us continuously! And he has possessed the whole room - as if the room belongs to him and we are just living in his room!

He has put all his things all around the room - all his toys are everywhere! So please," they asked me, "remove him!"

I told him to go to his mother, Neerja, to live with her. He said, "That is the last place I want to go! But if you say so I will go." He has been forced to go and live with the mother at least for a few days. And he has been living with many families, with many couples. Wherever he goes he makes friendships, and there are so many friends that he is never out of money - he asks everybody!

Sattva was once Neerja's lover. Now that love relationship is broken, but the love that has grown between Sattva and Siddhartha has continued. They are still friends - Sattva still has to give him money! He comes every day: "Today I need five rupees, ten rupees."

One day Sattva said, "I don't have any money." Then he said "You can ask me!" And he brought five rupees from somewhere and gave it to Sattva! "Why don't you ask me? I have so many friends, I can bring as much money as you want!"

Now, this child will be a totally different child! He has lived with Jews and with Christians and with Hindus. He will not be conditioned by anything, he will not have any conditioning. He will have a vast territory of being available to him.

That's my idea how all children should grow. then there will be no ugly religious conflicts, wars, bloodshed, no ugly fanaticism, no fascist ideologies in the world. These are all byproducts of the family, and the family depends on marriage. In fact, if the family disappears, nations will have to disappear, religions will disappear, states will disappear, churches will disappear. That's why nations, churches, everybody is in favor of marriage and they all go on praising marriage as if it is something holy, something divine. It is the ugliest thing on the earth! And they go on telling people, "Without marriage, where will children get love?" They will get more love; nobody is going to prevent their parents from loving them, but they will be available to others, too. They will not be dependent, they will start learning independence. From the very beginning they will have a certain new feel of freedom. And that's what is needed.

The whole of human history has been full of religious wars for the simple reason that everybody becomes conditioned, and once you are conditioned it is very difficult to uncondition you. I know the difficulty because that's my while work here - to uncondition you. It takes months, years; and you struggle hard, you resist in every possible way because your conditioning means your ego.

You ask me, Sarjan: WHAT IS THE SECRET OF REMAINING HAPPY AND MARRIED?

I don't know! Nobody has ever known. Why would Jesus have remained unmarried if he had known the secret? He knew the secret of the kingdom of God, but he did not know the secret of remaining happy in marriage. He remained unmarried. Mahavira, Lao Tzu Chuang Tzu, they all remained unmarried for the simple reason that there is no secret; otherwise these people would have discovered it. They could discover the ultimate - marriage is not such a big thing, it is very shallow - they even fathomed God, but they could not fathom marriage.

Socrates got married and he suffered his whole life. He did not discover through marriage the secret of remaining happy; he simply discovered that it would have been better if he had not got married.

But in Greece there had never been such incidents as Jesus, Lao Tzu - Jesus had yet to come, five hundred years after Socrates. Socrates was a contemporary of Lao Tzu, Mahavira, but he knew nothing about them because the world in those days had no communication. So whatsoever was conventional happened in his life.

Mohammed married not one woman, he married nine women! Many times I have been asked, "What about Mohammed?" I know the secret of Mohammed but I don't know the secret of remaining happy in marriage. If you have nine women they will fight amongst themselves and you will be free! Mohammed managed it and he has said to his followers, "Marry at least four women."

So Mohammedans are allowed to marry four women. Four women are enough to fight amongst themselves and the husband will be spared.

Krishna did the best: he married sixteen thousand women! Now it is very easy to get lost. Sixteen thousand women... who will notice Krishna, where he has gone, where he is? There will be so much noise and fight, and in that cloudy, smokey atmosphere Krishna can escape anywhere. He can even sit in the middle of it and meditate and nobody will bother about him! They will all be concerned about each other's saris and each other's ornaments.

Buddha got married, but then he escaped. He had a beautiful wife, Yashodhara, but he escaped. He came back home only when he became enlightened, after twelve years. Yes, if you are enlightened then you can be happy anywhere, even in marriage, but no enlightened person has been known to get married after enlightenment.

Two friends meet.

"Hello, Luisa, how is your great love?"

"It's over," she replied sadly.

"Over? How come?"

"We got married!"

Two friends were talking.

"I've placed an advertisement in the newspaper, looking for a wife," says one.

"Did lots of women write back?" asks the other.

"Just a few women... but lots of husbands!"

The wife left home for the fifth time and the husband rushed to place an advertisement in the newspaper.

It read: "Do not come back and all will be forgiven."

It was a wise old woman who, when people asked her why she never married, would answer: "Why marry? I have a dog who snores, a parrot who speaks only dirty words and a cat who stays out all night what do I need a husband for?"

The jealous husband hires a detective to find out if his wife betrays him. After a few days the detective comes back with a movie showing his wife and his best friend swimming, dancing, making love, having fun.

While watching the movie the husband keeps saying, "I can't believe it! I can't believe it!"

"But," says the detective, annoyed, "I'm giving you proof of it!"

"No, it's not that," replies the husband, "I just can't believe someone can have so much fun with my wife!"

In heaven everybody is quiet and silent except for Paolo who keeps saying, "What peace here! What peace here!"

Even St. Peter gets tired of him and so one day he sends him to purgatory. Even there though Paolo keeps muttering, "What peace here! What peace here!"

Everybody gets so tired that they decide to send him down to hell. But even in hell, among the flames and the devils, he keeps uttering, "What peace here! What peace here!"

So Beelzebub calls him and asks him the reason for his behavior.

"Well, Beelzebub," replies Paolo, "you would say the same if you had lived for fifty years with my wife!"

Love is enough. Live only out of love. It may last long, it may not last, but don't be worried whether it lasts long or does not last long. Even if it is there for a single moment it will give you the taste of eternity.

And there is every possibility that if you are not afraid it may last longer, because fear is poison; it poisons everything. If you are not worried about tomorrow you may live today so totally that out of that totality a beautiful tomorrow will arise. But if you are afraid of tomorrow you may destroy today.

And once today is destroyed, from where is tomorrow going to come?

Live fearlessly - that is one of my fundamental messages to my sannyasins - and live dangerously.

Don't compromise for conveniences, for comforts. It is better to live in discomfort but to live rather than to be in comfort and dead. For that you can wait - in your grave you will be perfectly comfortable and out of danger. Nothing can happen there; there is no danger. You cannot die again, no illness can happen, nobody can leave you, you can't go bankrupt, nothing can be stolen from you. You will be perfectly at peace.

You must have come across gravestones - and it is written on almost all graves: "Rest in peace."

What else is there?

One man died. He had made his own gravestone, a beautiful, artistic thing, because he did not rely on his wife - she was such a miser that she might put up some ordinary stone. So he had purchased the most costly marble, asked the best artist to make rose flowers on it, and he had written on it:

"Rest in peace."

When he died his wife discovered that he had not left any money for her. When the will was opened there was only one sentence: "I was a wise man, hence I have spent all that I had. I have not left anything to anybody."

The wife was furious. She went to the grave with the artist and told the artist to add a few more words: "Rest in peace til I come!"

But don't be worried: even wives can't come in the same grave; they will have their own graves. And even if they come they won't recognize you, and you won't recognize them either.

You can rest in peace in the grave, in absolute security, but while you are alive BE alive. Accept all insecurity. In that very acceptance, insecurity disappears, and without any compromise on your part. Love totally, but don't ask for permanence. Only fools ask for permanence. And remember one thing: if you ask for permanence you will get only false things; only false things are permanent.

Real roses are bound to wither sooner or later, but plastic roses are permanent; they don't wither away. But they don't have any fragrance either, they don't have any life; they have only the appearance of roses.

Marriage is a plastic rose; love is a real rose. Grow real roses in your life. Of course they will wither - so what? You can grow them again, you can go on growing them. You can go on creating more and more love, sharing more and more with more and more people.

And this is my experience - and whatsoever I am saying I am saying out of my own experience - that if you love totally without desiring any permanence, even the impossible is possible. Your love may remain for a long period, maybe your whole life. But don't cl.k for permanence; in that very asking you have disturbed the whole thing: you have moved from the real to the unreal. Live totally!

"Totality" is my keyword - and up to now "permanence" has been the keyword. You have been told that your love should be permanent, only then it is real; if it is not permanent it is not real. That is sheer bullshit! A real love has nothing to do with permanence; there is no necessary relationship. It may happen only for a moment, it may be just like lightning, but that does not mean that lightning is unreal because it happens only for a moment. The rose flower opens in the morning; by the evening the petals have dropped, withered away, gone back to rest in the earth. That does not mean that the rose flower was unreal.

But you have been told again and again by the priests that if you are really looking for reality then the touchstone is permanence. They have moved your mind from reality to permanence, and once you become attached to permanence you are bound to purchase something false and you lose track of the real. The real is changing, constantly changing; the unreal remains the same. And you have to be available to the constantly changing.

Even if for a single moment love happens, be total in it. If you are total in it, the next moment will come out of this totality. It is possible - I cannot tell you it is certain, I can only tell you it is possible - that the next moment will deepen your love. But it will not be the same: either it will deepen or it will disappear, but it will never be the same again. No two moments are the same, and they cannot be the same.

And that is the beauty of life, that is the incredible adventure of life: that it is always a surprise, it is always unexpected. If you live totally things may deepen, but remember, when things are deepening they are not the same. If you think of permanence you have missed the target.

So don't ask me: WHAT IS THE SECRET OF REMAINING, HAPPY AND MARRIED?

I can only tell you the secret of being happy - marriage is irrelevant. If you live together with somebody out of love, out of gratitude, good; if it goes on happening your whole life, good. If it disappears one day, depart from each other in deep gratitude, in the remembrance of the love that was once there - it has enriched you. Rather than clinging to each other in anger, in frustration, in rage, and being violent to each other and destructive, it is better to depart with grace. One should know how to fall in love and one should also know how to fall out of it gracefully.

The second question:

Question 2:

Garimo,

JESUS HAS SAID Unless you hate your parents you can not follow me. Now, the words are very strange - and they come from a man like Jesus. They are shocking. One cannot expect them, at least from Jesus, because he says: Love your enemies as you love yourself. Not only that, he even says: Love thy neighbor as thyself - which is far more difficult than loving your enemies! But when it comes to parents he is very clear. He says: Unless you hate your parents you cannot follow me.

Why is he so hard on parents?

But it is nothing if you think of Gautam the Buddha. He used to ask his BHIKKHUS - his sannyasins, his disciples: Have you killed your parents yet or not? A man like Buddha, who is absolutely non- violent! Jesus is not so non-violent, at least he eats meat, he is not averse to eating fish. Buddha is a vegetarian, absolutely vegetarian; he is the greatest propounder of non-violence on the earth.

And he asks to his disciples again and again: Have you killed your parents yet or not?

Of course they don't mean it literally, neither Jesus nor Buddha, but their words are significant. What they really mean is a great message; it is metaphoric. You will have to understand the metaphor.

They are not concerned with the OUTER parents, your father and mother, they are concerned with the inner imprints that your mother and father have created in you.

It is not the outer parents, Garimo, who are dominating you. What can they do? You here and they may be thousands of miles away somewhere in Germany. What can they do? They cannot dominate you. But you have something inner: you have inner ideas, inner reflections, imprints, impressions of your parents, and those ideas go on dominating you. If they don't like your being a sannyasin, then your conscience will feel guilt. You will feel that you are hurting your parents, that it is not good, that this should not be so, that something has to be done.

But parents are always against anything that is new.

Buddha's father was not happy with him; he was very unhappy, he was angry at him. Buddha had to escape out of his kingdom because he was afraid that he would be caught, because detectives were sent to catch hold of him. He was the only son of his father and the father was getting old; the father was seventy when Buddha escaped from his home. The father was afraid - who was going to possess his kingdom? And stories were coming to him, rumors, gossip of all kinds: that he had become a monk, that he was begging, that he had become a beggar. And, of course, the old king was getting very angry: "What is this nonsense? The son of a king begging - for what? He has everything - why should he beg? And he is begging from house to house, walking barefoot and surrounded by other beggars like him. What is he doing? He has betrayed me in my old age!"

Naturally he was angry, but the real anger is somewhere else. The anger is because he has gone against his religion, his ideology. He has gone against all that the father represents - he has gone against the ego of the father.

Jesus' parents were not happy with Jesus either. They were orthodox Jews, how could they be happy with a son who was preaching strange things and who was talking in such a way as if he knew more than Moses? - because Jesus was saying again and again: "It has been said to you in the past... but I say unto you that that is wrong. It has been told to you that if somebody throws a brick at you, answer him by throwing a rock at him. But I say to you, if somebody hits one of your cheeks, give him the other cheek too."

Now this was absolutely against the Jewish idea of justice; this seemed almost anti-Jewish - because even the Jewish God declares in the Talmud: I am a very jealous God. If you go against me I will destroy you.

And he destroyed two cities completely. What happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Jewish God had done three thousand years before! He destroyed two cities for the simple reason that people were not behaving according to his idea of morality, they were becoming immoral. He destroyed two whole cities.

Now, all the people could not have been immoral and even if all the people had been immoral, they could not have been immoral to the same degree. There were small children also; they could not have been immoral. They didn't know anything of morality or immorality. There were very old people also; they could not have been immoral. There were ill people who could not even get out of their beds. What immoral acts could they have been doing? But he was so angry that he destroyed two whole cities just to teach a lesson to humanity.

And this young man Jesus is saying: Forgive... He was going against all the ideas of the Judaic religion completely. He was teaching people new concepts, new visions, new ways of approaching God. The parents were angry.

Once it happened Jesus was teaching, surrounded by his disciples and a crowd also. His mother came and somebody informed him from the crowd: "Your mother is waiting outside and she wants to see you urgently." Jesus is reported to have said, "Tell that woman" - not "my mother" - he says, "Tell that woman that nobody is my father and nobody is my mother and nobody is my relative. All my relatives are those who are with me; those who are not with me, I have nothing to do with them.

Tell her to go away."

It seems hard, it seems cruel, but there is a reason in it. These are all symbolic stories, I don't think it really happened. I don't think Jesus would say, "Tell that woman..." But it says something. You have to drop the idea of your father, of your mother from your innermost core; only then do you become mature. If you carry that idea you remain childish, you never become mature. And no father, no mother ever wants you to become really mature because maturity will mean that you will become free.

All the religions have taught you to respect your parents for the simple reason that if you respect your parents you will respect the past, you will respect traditions, you will respect conventions. If you respect your father you will respect God the Father. If you don't respect your parents then naturally you are cut off from tradition, and no church can afford it.

I will not say to you don't respect your father and mother1 I will say to you that you can respect your father and mother only when you are completely free of your inner impressions of father and mother; otherwise your respect is false, pseudo. You can love your father and mother only when you are completely free of them, otherwise you cannot love them; you will remain angry with them.

Nobody can love anybody unless one becomes free of that person. If there is dependence of any kind, love remains only a facade; deep down there is hatred. And every child hates his father and mother - every child, without any exception. But respect is imposed from the outside.

Just look within your unconscious, look deep down within yourself, and you will find a great revengeful fire. You want to take revenge on your parents. You are angry because they are responsible for the way you are. It is the way they have brought you up that is making you miserable.

It is the way they have conditioned you that is making you crippled and paralyzed. Hence, naturally, there is hatred.

I would like you to become aware of it so that you can drop it, because whatsoever they have done they have done unconsciously. They need to be forgiven. Forgive them.

Jesus says: Hate your father and Mother; Buddha says: Kill them. I say to you: Forgive them - which is far more difficult. Forgive them because whatsoever they have done they have done unknowingly; they were conditioned by THEIR parents and so on and so forth. Even Adam and Eve were conditioned by their father, God; conditioning begins there. God is responsible for conditioning Adam: "Don't eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge." That "don't" became an attraction; that is a negative way of conditioning. And if it is said emphatically that you shouldn't do a certain thing, a great urge arises in you to experiment, to experience it. Why? Why is God so interested? - because the Tree of Knowledge cannot be a bad thing, knowing cannot be bad. If you become wise, what is wrong? Wisdom is good, knowledge is good.

Certainly Adam must have thought with himself: "God is trying to keep me from becoming as knowing as he is so that I always remain dependent on him, so that I always have go to for his advice, so that I can never live on my own, so that I always have to be just a shadow to him. He does not want me to be free and independent." That is a simple logical conclusion.

And that's what the devil did - he argued the same thing. He told Eve... Why had he chosen Eve, not Adam? - because if you persuade the wife, if the wife is convinced, then you need not worry about the husband.

Every advertisement expert knows it, hence all advertisements are meant for women. Once they are convinced then nobody can unconvince them, at least not their husbands. They have to follow suit, they have to do it, because the woman will become a continuous torture if you don't do it.

The devil was the first advertisement expert. He was the pioneer, he was the founder of the whole art. He did not bother about Adam - he must have known that all husbands are henpecked, so why bother about them? Persuade the wife. He persuaded her, and of course she was convinced because the logic was so clear. He said, "God has prohibited it only because he does not want you to become like gods. Once you eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge you will be like gods. And he is jealous, he is afraid. And it will be foolish on your part if you don't eat. Be like gods!"

And who would not like to be like gods? Once the temptation was there it was impossible to resist.

But the whole conditioning came from God himself; it was a negative kind of conditioning.

Your parents are not responsible really. An unconscious person cannot be held responsible: he functions unconsciously, he does not know what he is doing.

Garimo, you have to go within yourself and cleanse yourself of all the impressions that your parents have put upon you, both negative and positive. Then there will arise great compassion in you for your parents, great compassion and great gratitude also, because whatsoever they have done they have done - according to them at least - thinking that it is good. They have not deliberately done anything wrong to you. Even now, if they are against your sannyas, if they are not happy with your sannyas, it is because they think you have fallen into wrong hands, that you have fallen from their traditional heritage. They are afraid you may go astray, you may suffer later on, you may repent one day. They feel for you.

Their love is unconscious, hence you need not listen to them, but you are not to become angry with them; you have to understand them.

You say: MY JEWISH PARENTS ARE NOT HAPPY THAT I HAVE BECOME A SANNYASIN.

First, they are Jewish; that is one of the oldest religions in the world. There are only two old religions in the world, the Judaic religion and the Hindu. The older a tradition, the greater is its weight; it crushes people more. Anything new is light.

My sannyasins can walk light-footedly, almost dancingly. But a five thousand year old tradition creates a great weight; it is a long past. They could not forgive Jesus, how can they forgive you?

And Jesus has not become my sannyasin! If fact, he never went outside the tradition; he remained a Jew. He was not a Christian, remember, because there was no Christianity at that time. Christianity was born out of his death, out of his crucifixion. Hence I always call Christianity "Crossianity"; it has nothing to do with Christ, it has something to do with the cross. That's why the cross has become the symbol of Christianity - far more important than Christ.

They could not forgive Jesus, and he never went outside the tradition. Of course he was saying things which looked a little strange, a little new. He was bringing new light; he was clearing the mirror of the Jewish consciousness from the old dust. But they have not been able to forgive him, not even now. I have not come across a single book written by a Jew in favor of Jesus. They still think he was wrong, they still think that it was right to crucify him, they still think that he was a criminal.

And to become my sannyasin is certainly far more dangerous because it is going totally out of all traditions. It is not just changing one tradition for another, it is dropping the very traditional mind itself. It is dropping being traditional as such; it is becoming non-traditional, unconventional. It is pure revolution! And they are afraid, naturally; for many reasons Jews are afraid.

And there is some attraction between me and the Jews. I have attracted so many Jews here that sometimes I myself wonder - am I a Jew or what is the matter? - because Jews are not so easily attracted to anybody. They were not attracted to Jesus. They are not attracted to anybody else.

Why have they come to me? I have touched something deep in them. In fact, they have suffered from tradition more than anybody else; that's the reason why they have become so interested in my vision, because I am anti-traditional. They would like to get rid of it.

A Jew and a black man are sitting next to each other on the train. Suddenly the Jew realizes that the black is reading a Hebrew magazine. He keeps silent for a while, then whispers to him: "Listen, friend, is it not enough to be a black?"

Your parents, Garimo, may be afraid: "Is it not enough to be a Jew? Now you want to suffer more?"

Because to be with me is going to be dangerous. Freedom is far more dangerous than anything else in the world. Freedom is fire: it burns your ego, and because it burns your ego it hurts many other people's egos and they all become enemies to you.

And then Jews are very worldly people. It is the only religion which is very worldly. There are two kinds of religions: the worldly religions - Jews represent the worldly religion - and there are the other-worldly religions, for example, Buddhism. Buddhists will be against me because to them I will look a little worldly, and to Jews I will look a little too other-worldly.

I am both: I am a bridge. My sannyas is a synthesis because I don t divide "this world" and "that world". To me both are beautiful. And one has to live in both worlds together because they are not separate they are inseparable. The very idea of dividing them has been a great calamity.

Jews are more interested in money than in meditation. Now, thinking that you have become a meditator they will be afraid. "What are you doing? This is the time to earn money. This is the time to get rooted in the world. Don't waste this precious time!" According to them, when you are young you can do something; as you become old you will be less and less able to make money, to have power, prestige, to make a name in the world. You are wasting your time here.

Even with those who are here, if they are Jewish, the hangover continues. One of the sannyasins went to the office a few days ago, in a euphoria - must have touched something intangible in meditation, may have been silent here in the discourse, may have had a glimpse of something unknown. In those moments even if you are a Jew your Jewishness disappears. She went to the office and said that she wanted to donate one hundred thousand dollars to the new commune. After five minutes she went back and said that she wanted to cancel it! She was asked, "What happened?

Yes, we will cancel it. It was you, nobody had asked you for anything. You came on your own; now, just after five minutes... what has happened?"

She said, "I went to see Amitabh, one of my friends, and he said, 'Are you a fool or something? Go immediately and cancel it!' He scolded me!"

Now, Amitabh is a Polack Jew! That is the most dangerous combination you can find - Polack and Jew! Of course, he loves me and loves me tremendously - he is here, he is one of my topmost therapists, he lives in my house, in Lao Tzu - but hangovers are hangovers!

Very excited, Isaac calls David, "Come immediately, David, I have an incredible bargain. Three hundred trousers for only fifty dollars!"

David runs to Isaac, where he finds the pile of three hundred trousers. He looks them over and then says to Isaac, "But Isaac, these trousers have only one leg! No one can wear them!"

"Listen, David," replies Isaac, "Besides the fact that there are people with only one leg, I already told you - we have to sell them, not to wear them!"

A Jew arrives in Chicago from Israel; he is coming to America for the first time. It's raining, so he stops at a shop to buy a pair of shoes. Mindful of his father's advice, when the clerk asks twenty dollars for the shoes he starts bargaining: "Ten dollars!"

"That's impossible!" replies the clerk.

"Ten or nothing!" is the Jew's reply.

So the clerk consults the manager, then says, "Okay, ten."

"No," replies the Jew, "five!"

Again the clerk consults the manager..."Okay, five."

"No, two!" replies the Jew.

"Listen," says the clerk, tired of him, "just take these shoes and get out!"

"No! " exclaims the Jew.

"No? You don't want them?" asks the clerk incredulously.

Says the Jew: "I want two pairs!"

Garimo, your parents must be worried about what you are doing here. Such an intelligent guy like you wasting his time meditating? Have you gone crazy or something, sitting silently doing nothing?

Is this a way a Jew is supposed to behave? Time is money - don't waste it!

And, moreover, whether your parents are Jewish or not, parents are parents; they feel offended - they feel offended by the very idea that you think you know more than they know, that you are trying new ways, that you are trying to be wiser than your parents.

A Jew arrives in heaven and God, in a very compassionate voice, asks, "What happened to you?"

He says, "I was brokenhearted. When my only son, my pride and my joy, announced that he had become Catholic, I felt this terrible pain in my chest..."

"You should not have despaired so much. Even my only son did the same!"

And what did you do, my Lord?"

"I made a new will and testament!"

So, Garimo, what can they do? They will make a new will and a new testament - let them make it! Learn to forgive them. I will not tell you to hate them, because hate is not freedom - if you hate somebody you remain attached. Hate is a relationship; Love is freedom. Love is not a relationship; hate is a relationship. That's why those who live in relationship live in hate, not in love. Love is freedom. Love them, then you are free. But to love them you will have to cleanse yourself totally. I will not tell you, like Gautam the Buddha, to kill them, because killing is not going to help. Understand them. Be compassionate. Killing will be doing something in a hurry; there is no need to be in a hurry.

And parents have gone so deep in you; they are not only in your blood and bones, they have entered in your very marrow. You cannot kill them easily - it is impossible. You will have to commit suicide if you want to kill them because only then will they be killed. They have entered your being: you are part of them, they are part of you. But through deep understanding you can be free of them.

A lawyer has succeeded in acquitting a Jew who has killed his mother, his wife and his sister. Before separating he says to the man, "As you still have a father I'll just say 'See you soon!'"

I will not suggest that; my methods are far more subtle. What Jesus said and what Buddha said are very primitive methods; what I am saying is far more sophisticated - it has to be, it is the twentieth century! Forgive them. Understand them. And the whole question is within you; it has nothing to do with the outer parents. If you can relax within yourself and if you can feel compassion for them - because they have suffered in their own way... They have wasted their whole life, now they want to waste your life, because that is the only way they know how to live. Great compassion is bound to arise in you, and out of that compassion maybe you can be of some help to them because compassion functions in a very subtle way. Love is the greatest magic in the world.

I will not tell you to go and listen to them and follow them to satisfy them; that will be wrong. That will be destroying your life and it will not help them either. You have to remain yourself and yet be compassionate and forgiving. And if you happen to go there remain compassionate and forgiving.

Let them feel your compassion, your love, your joy. Let them feel.your celebration. Let them feel what has happened to you through sannyas. Let them see the difference .

Buddha's father remained angry till he came to see him. Even when he saw him, for a few moments he was so angry, his eyes were so full of anger, that he could not see. Buddha remained silent. The father went on insulting him, saying, "You have been a deep wound to me - you have almost killed me. Why have you come now after twelve years? I have waited so long! You have not been a son to me, you have been an enemy!"

Buddha listened, did not utter a single word. Then the father suddenly became aware that the son had not spoken even a single word. He asked, "Why are you not speaking?"

Buddha said, "First say everything that you have carried for all these twelve years. Cathart, unburden yourself! Only when you are unburdened will you be able to see me. One thing I would like to say to you: that you are talking to somebody else, not to your son. The man who had left your palace has not come back - he has died. I am a totally new man. I have come with new consciousness, with new love, with new compassion. But first you unburden yourself, otherwise your eyes are so full of rage you cannot see me. Let your eyes be cleared."

The father was trembling with anger. Slowly he cooled down; this very answer cooled him. Tears of anger were coming to his eyes. He wiped his tears, looked again. "Yes, this is not the same man who left my palace; this is a totally different person. Of course, the face is the same, the figure is the same, but it is a totally new being - the vibe is new."

He fell at the feet of Buddha and he said, "Initiate me too, because now I am very old; death is coming closer. I would also like to taste something that you have tasted. And forgive me and forgive all my anger. I have not known what is happening to you and what has happened to you. It is good that you have come. It is good that you remembered me, that you have not forgotten me."

So whenever you go back, Garimo, let them first cathart. And remember, they are German parents so they will cathart longer than Buddha's parent! Listen silently. Don't get angry. Remain meditative, calm and quiet, and your coolness will transform them. If you really want to help them...

And each sannyasin SHOULD want to help his parents, because they have given you birth. They have brought you up in some way, the way they could; it was not possible for them to do otherwise.

Whatsoever they could do they have done and they have done it for your good. Whether it proved good or not is another matter, but their intentions were good. So whenever you go back, remember to help them.

The last question:

Question 3:

GURUDAS,

I RATHER ENJOY IT! Moreover, I have to do something and this is the only thing that one can go on doing forever and forever.

Jesus was bored so he went to God his father and asked him, "Dad, give me something to do - I am bored! "

"Take a file and smooth the top of the Himalayas," said God.

After seven thousand years Jesus came back again "And now what can I do?" he asked God again.

God gave him a spoon and told him to empty the Indian Ocean. After seven thousand years, he was back again.

"It's done... and now?" he asked God.

Tired, God looked at him and said, "Listen, Jesus go down to earth and convince the men down there to love each other - that will keep you busy for eternity!"

I am not a priest; it is not my duty. Otherwise one is bound to get bored and tired. It is my joy, it is my love!

The Pope is redecorating his summer residence of Castelgandolfo. When the work is finished he comes with the chief decorator to see the results. Everything is perfect.

When he arrives at his bedroom, the decorator, to give the final touch, hangs a beautiful antique twelfth-century cross just over the bed.

"Oh, no, no, no, my son!" exclaims the Pope. "I have already told you not to put anything here that reminds me of my office!"

This is not my work, this is my joy, this is my play. I am really enjoying it!

A Russian cosmonaut comes back from his space travel. Brezhnev receives him: "Tell me the truth, comrade. Did you meet God up there?"

"If you want the truth - yes, I found him!" replies the cosmonaut.

"I thought so," replies Brezhnev. "Now promise me never to reveal this to anyone."

After a few months the same cosmonaut is received by the Pope. When they are alone, the Pope whispers to him, "Now, my dear son, please tell me - did you meet God up there?"

Faithful to his promise, the cosmonaut replies, "No, unfortunately not, Your Sanctity."

And the Pope sadly replies, "I thought so. Now listen, promise me never to tell this to anyone!"