From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 24. IMITATION IS YOUR CREMATION
smell will be dulled, will be killed by the stink, the continuous stink. Your nose is not so strong, it is
not made of steel, and very small parts in your nose have the capacity to smell. If there was this
continuous warfare against your capacity to smell your nose would become dead.
He survived, but after three years had passed he ran as fast as he could. And before he could raise
his hand, the abbot said, ”Stop! Since you have come I have never heard anything but complaints.
You get out! I don’t want to listen any more.”
He said, ”But I have not said anything yet. Just please listen to me.”
The abbot said, ”This type of people are not acceptable in a Trappist monastery. I have not heard
anything from you in nine years except complaints, complaints, complaints.” They threw the poor
man out.
And you say that you cannot follow the sannyas discipline? I have not given you any discipline. Yes,
three things I have done....
I have given you a new name so that you can start disidentifying yourself from your old personality,
and you can begin anew, as if a new child is born.
I have given you the red clothes just to destroy the monopoly of traditional sannyasins on red clothes
– they are nobody’s monopoly. And it was just a mockery of the sannyas that has existed in the East
for thousands of years. I was saying that just by changing your clothes to red you don’t become a
sage.
I have given you a mala, because all the ancient sannyasins of all religions have used a rosary for
prayer. I have not given it to you for any prayer.
It was an old method of counting. For example in Hinduism: how many times you take God’s name,
that’s your account in the other world. But to remember ”Ram, Ram, Ram....” You will forget. But
to continue to remember, ”One Ram, two Ram, three Ram” will be a disturbance. And ”one, two,
three, four, five” will grow to ”one thousand and four... one million, two million, three million....” You
are going to get lost somewhere and forget the counting. Then it will be a real loss because God will
ask, ”How many times...?”
So the rosary was a method: you count, you just go on, you say ”Ram” and you slip one bead down.
You needn’t say ”One.” You say ”Ram,” and you slip the second bead down. You don’t say ”Ram two,
Ram three,” you just go on slipping the beads down. And it was good also because you could say it
inside with nobody knowing about it. In India they have a small bag hanging around the hand, and
the rosary is inside; so even walking on the road they can go on counting.
You will see shopkeepers selling things, and their hand is in their rosary bag: they are counting.
With the customer they are talking but deep down they are saying, ”Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram,” and
with the rosary they are counting. In between they will say to the wife: ”The beggar!” and their rosary
continues.
It was just to mock all these idiots that I put the rosary around you. It is not a prayer method for you,
it is just a mockery of the whole tradition.
From Ignorance to Innocence 347 Osho