From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 27. BAPTISM: WADING FOR GODOT
a sin then all the popes up to now have been sinners because they have been continually warring,
crusading against Mohammedans, against Jews, against everybody. And they have been saying
that the crusade is a holy war!
No war is holy. No war can ever be holy.
How can destruction be holy?
How can killing be holy?
How can butchering, slaughtering innocent people, children, women, old people, be holy? It must
be holy in the same sense as the Holy Ghost: it is absolutely unholy.
But the classes are there. The capitalist wants the classes to remain there because he feels that
without the poor he will not be rich. That is wrong! That is absolutely wrong! Do you think that if
poor people breathe then you cannot breathe? All that you need is enough air.
Certainly if air is in short supply then only rich people will breathe, because you will have to pay for
it. Of course millions of poor people will die because they cannot pay – they don’t have money to
breathe. It is just like in a desert: you have to pay for water.
When Alexander came to India he met a fakir. The name of the fakir, he reports in his diary, does
not seem to be Indian, but perhaps he misspelled it, mispronounced it, which is natural – just like
me!
The Oregonians are very angry because I pronounce it Oreg-on; it should be Oreg-un. I cannot do
that. I will go on pronouncing it Oregon. OreGUN? – sounds like son-of-a-gun. It doesn’t feel right.
Alexander pronounces the name of the fakir, Dandamesh. Dandamesh is not an Indian name at
all, it cannot be. It must have been Dandami. And there is in India a sect of monks who carry a
staff in their hands called a danda: danda means a big staff. These monks are called Dandadhari,
staff holders; that is their symbol, their sect’s symbol. Perhaps that man was carrying a danda and
was known as Dandami: one who always keeps a danda. He was a naked man but the danda was
absolutely necessary.
You may not understand why it is so. India is so full of dogs, and for certain reasons dogs are very
much against monks, policemen, postmen: anybody who has a uniform. All the dogs are against
uniforms. I don’t know whether it is true in other countries or not, but in India.... Indian dogs are
absolutely against uniforms; anybody in uniform will be in trouble. And because of non-violence
dogs cannot be killed, so their population goes on increasing.
This staff was invented so that the poor monk, who has nothing, can at least protect himself against
the dogs, because naked men also look like they are in a uniform, to the dog. In a way it is a uniform.
All the naked monks, and there are many.... And at the time when Alexander went to India, India
was full of naked monks. The poor naked monk had to keep the danda, the staff.
He met Dandami, and a small dialogue between the two happened. Dandami was so blissful that
Alexander felt jealous. He writes in his memoirs, ”I felt jealous. That man had nothing except a staff
From Ignorance to Innocence 404 Osho