From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 20. SURRENDER: THE EGO UPSIDE DOWN
he forgot about the will because he lived so long. For thirty years he must have kept it somewhere.
That man stole the will.
And when the shankaracharya was dying he was asked – by that time that man had left him –
so he chose another person and made another will; the first will could not be found in his papers.
Now before the Allahabad High Court there are two wills from the same man and both persons are
claiming that they are the head. And the temple is one of the richest temples in India so it is not only
a question of being head: it has money, it has power, it has lands – and it has millions of followers.
But both wills are from the same man. Now, how to decide? The signature experts have decided
that both signatures are from the same man. There are eyewitnesses for both. But neither
shankaracharya is able to function because the court goes on postponing, simply for the reason
that they don’t see any way of deciding it. They are simply hoping that one of these two dies, so that
will decide the case. Otherwise it won’t be decided.
Hinduism has so many sects because each person in Hinduism... the caste system is very strict but
as far as thinking is concerned you are absolutely free. If you are born in the house of a shoemaker
you cannot change it, you will have to remain a shoemaker. No other profession will allow you in.
You cannot move from one caste to another caste; that movement is absolutely closed.
So for centuries your forefathers and their fore-fathers and their forefathers and their forefathers were
all making shoes – so you will make shoes. If they were weaving clothes, you will weave clothes;
you will be a weaver. If they were carpenters, you will be a carpenter. There is no movement
as far as your business, trade, lifestyle is concerned, but as far as thinking is concerned there
is no bondage. You could move from being a follower of Shankaracharya and you could become a
follower of Vallabhacharya, another spiritual head, a contemporary of Shankaracharya’s and against
Shankaracharya.
Sanskrit is such a language that with just a little logic everything can be interpreted in many ways.
Each word has many meanings; that gives beauty to it. It gives it poetry because you can play
with the word in so many ways, it does not have a fixed meaning. But it is also dangerous: you
cannot write signs in Sanskrit because then there will be so many interpretations, and that is what
has happened. On the Gita there are one thousand famous commentaries, to say nothing about
non-famous commentaries! – there will be many thousands more. But there are one thousand very
famous commentaries.
It is thought that anyone who writes a commentary on three of the scriptures – the Vedas,
Badarayana’s Brahmasutras and Krishna’s Shrimad Bhagavadita – becomes an acharya, a head:
he can create a following. Now it is not very difficult to write commentaries on these three scriptures.
Many commentaries are available. Shankara wrote one in his own time. Vallabhacharya wrote
differently, a totally different interpretation. Ramanujacharya wrote one, different again from both.
Nimbarkacharya wrote one different from them all – not only different but quite the opposite. But
the Gita is capable of being looked at from 8any angle. It gives tremendous freedom to think, to
comment, but it also creates great confusion.
So Hinduism is not a religion like Christianity, Judaism or Mohammedanism. In Mohammedanism
there is one prophet, one god, one book – that’s all. In Hinduism there are thousands of scriptures,
From Ignorance to Innocence 280 Osho