From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 25. JESUS – THE ONLY SAVIOR WHO NEARLY SAVED HIMSELF
”I asked him to sit down and stand up. He thinks this is exercise. And one day it became such a
scene that he told all the students ’Why are you sitting? You also do it. Exercise is exercise, it is
good for the body.’ And all those students – they listen to him more than to me – they all started
doing the exercise. I looked like a fool standing there, and I started thinking why I punished him.
And he won’t stop. Then I started throwing him out of the class, but he enjoyed it so much that it is
not a punishment any more.”
The principal sent me back. He wanted to talk with the teacher in private. He suggested, ”You give
him such punishment that his family comes to know.”
There used to be a register in the principal’s office – whenever somebody was doing real mischief,
the teacher would go and write in it his name and the fine of ten rupees. Then I would have to collect
the ten rupees from my family, from my father; I would have to ask them.
So he did that. He put a ten-rupee fine on me and came back and told me, ”We have found the way:
I have put a ten-rupee fine against your name.”
I said, ”Okay. Now I am going to fine you.”
He said, ”You are going to fine me?”
I said, ”Of course, because in the register it is not mentioned anywhere that only teachers can fine
the students. There is no condition like that.” And I went and I put twenty rupees against his name.
The principal said, ”Are you mad or what? You are a student!”
I said, ”I know I am a student, but is there any prohibition that I cannot fine a teacher if he is doing
mischief? – and this is mischief. If I am doing anything wrong then I should be punished; this fine is
punishing my father. Can you justify it? Why should my father be punished? He is not involved in it
at all.”
I wrote my teacher’s name and the twenty-rupee fine and I said, ”Unless he pays, I am not going to
pay.”
Still in that register those two punishments remain unpaid because he would not pay me what the
principal asked: ”You pay the twenty rupees.”
And I told the principal, ”Don’t cross this out, otherwise I will fine you. And even crossing it out won’t
make any difference because when the inspector of the school comes I am going to report this, and
I am going to show him what has been crossed out, and you will have to answer for it.”
So he never asked for the ten rupees from me because my condition was: ”First you get twenty
rupees from that man, then I will consider it.”
Punishments have been given but I enjoyed the whole thing. It was sheer joy. It is a question of
attitude – how you take it – and that is something to be learned about your whole life.
From Ignorance to Innocence 368 Osho