From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 28. SCIENCE PLUS RELIGION – THE DYNAMIC FORMULA FOR THE FUTURE
There are millions of statues in the East so beautiful that Michelangelo would feel jealous, but the
sculptors have not even signed their name: that would become a serious affair. Millions of statues
of the same caliber and quality as those of Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo – but nobody knows
who made them. The people who made them were just enjoying, playing. Out of play, if something
comes, you cannot claim it is your creation and that you have to sign it.
Who made the Ajanta caves? – the Ellora caves? Who made the Khajuraho temples? Who made
the Konarak temples? There is no way to find out. The people who made such tremendous beauty,
incomparable, were not concerned at all to leave even a single trace behind. They enjoyed making
it, of course, but that was all. It was not an obsession.
If you go to the Ajanta caves, which are Buddhist caves, where for thousands of years Buddhist
monks must have been working.... Many caves are incomplete. I used to go there, and I asked
the guides – different guides – again and again.... There were many guides, and I would always
choose a different one so I could torture him. Incomplete caves, incomplete statues, Buddhas only
half-made... and I would ask, ”What was the matter?” And they would have no explanation.
Somebody said, ”Perhaps the artist died.”
I said, ”There were so many other artists – there must have been thousands of artists for so many
caves; each cave must have needed hundreds of artists to make it – couldn’t they complete even a
Buddha? Just the body is there, the head was just being started. This looks a little disrespectful to
Buddha. You should complete it.”
And they would say, ”What can we do? Nobody knows who made them. Nobody knows why they
stopped in the middle.”
I said, ”I know, that’s why I am asking. This whole thing was just a big game. The person who was
making it was not obsessed, otherwise he would have completed it. If he was dying, he would have
taken a promise from a friend to complete it.”
The obsessional man is a perfectionist.
He will not leave anything incomplete, he will make it entire; he will not rest till it is complete. But to
a religious man.... They played as long as they enjoyed it. The moment they felt it was time to stop
this game, they stopped the game. And because they stopped the game, no other artist – they were
all religious people – would interfere with it.
Anybody could have completed it; just a little work was needed and it could have been completed. It
was almost complete, but nobody interfered with it because that was trespassing. If that man wanted
his Buddha to remain this way, it was his business. And that man may have started something else,
because it was all play.
A religious man can create playfully but cannot be serious. Seriousness is part of obsession.
For example, Karl Marx is the ideal obsessional man. His whole life he spent in the British Museum
library. He had no actual experience of poverty; he had never been part of the proletariat, the
laborers for whom he was going to be the messiah. He had not a single friend who was a laborer.
From Ignorance to Innocence 414 Osho