From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 19. RELIGION IS REBELLION
You should not desire your Master to be extraordinary. You should rather rejoice that an ordinary man
has become enlightened. That means he has opened the doors to enlightenment for everybody. You
need not be the only begotten son of God, you need not be a tirthankara earning virtue for millions
of lives, you need not be born with special qualities, talents.
Have you seen the statue of Mahavira? In India you may have visited a jaina temple – otherwise
you can look in a book. On all twenty-four tirthankaras you will see a few very strange things. One
is that all twenty-four statues look exactly alike. You cannot say which is which, who is who. Even
Jainas cannot say, so they have made small symbols under every statue: under one statue a lion,
under another statue something else, under another statue the swastika. You may not be aware of it
but just underneath the statue, there is the symbol which indicates whose statue it is – mahavira’s?
– otherwise there is no difference.
Now, this is not possible. These twenty-four people were born over ten thousand years; there is
no possibility of them all being similar – the same face, the same nose, the same body, the same
proportions. You will see one thing more strange: all their ears, their ear lobes, will be touching their
shoulders – such long ear lobes. That is especially needed if you are a tirthankara.
I have seen foolish jaina monks massage their ear lobes, pull them to make them longer, because
the longer they are, the more respectable you start becoming. It is possible that perhaps Mahavira
had long ear lobes – I don’t think that long; he was a man not a donkey. Otherwise all donkeys have
at least one quality to help them become a tirthankara. I have seen one man with ear lobes that
long, so it is possible that Mahavira had them... but twenty-four people!
It is all imagination. Once Mahavira becomes established, then whatsoever he has becomes a
necessary characteristic for anybody else to become a tirthankara. All tirthankaras have also to be
molded again into the same pattern.
Remember, I don’t have any talents – because religion is not a talent. Music is, poetry is, painting
is.
Religion is not a talent.
Religion is simply seeing yourself
You may be a painter, you may be a poet, you may be a musician, you may not be anybody, but you
are!
This is not a talent, this is your existence.
And to experience it is everybody’s birthright.
You can save this living religion only so long as you go on meditating and you go on creating new
flowers, new blossomings – so that you never become a desert; there is always some oasis. Just a
single person amongst you is enough to keep the religion alive and prevent anybody from reducing
it to a cult.
But please don’t call it my religion.
From Ignorance to Innocence 275 Osho