From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 29. POSITIVE THINKING: PHILOSOPHY FOR PHONIES
He said, ”You don’t know? It is so simple. A teacher has become president of the country.”
I said, ”Who is being respected, a teacher or the president of the country? I will call it a teachers’ day
if a president drops his presidency and becomes a teacher. Then it will be a teachers’ day, putting
teaching higher than the presidency of the country. Let him resign from the presidency and become
a teacher.
”This is my challenge to Doctor Radhakrishnan: resign from your post, become a teacher, and we will
celebrate the teachers’ day. Right now this is absolutely absurd. Tomorrow a shoemaker becomes
a president and so then a ’shoemakers’ day’; someday, somebody else is a cloth merchant, then
’cloth merchants’ day’. But in all these days you are respecting the post of the president. So simply
call all these days ’president’s day’. Why drag the poor teacher into it?”
My vice-chancellor said, ”Will you please keep it to yourself! Soon the media will be here, and
if they hear your challenge or anything, then I at least am in difficulty because it is because of
Radhakrishnan that I have been appointed vice-chancellor here in this university. I am his student,
and what you are saying is perfectly right, but – forgive me – don’t say it in front of people.”
I said, ”Everybody goes on:’Be truthful, be honest, be authentic,’ and whenever I try to be truthful,
honest and authentic, immediately I am stopped.”
I am certainly against people like Mother Teresa... because I count them as criminals, not as saints.
And I will not take them positively because they are doing certain harm – and so subtle a harm to
humanity that it cannot be forgiven.
It may have shocked you. Think about your shock and look at both the sides of the shock, the
negative and the positive, so that you can understand why the whole phenomenon happened to
you.
And this is going to be my approach to everything.
Look holistically. Be a realist and you will be surprised, amazed. When you look at both sides they
fit together, they complement each other. They are just like the Chinese symbol of yin and yang.
Have you seen the Chinese symbol of yin and yang? – two fish in a circle, one fish in one half-circle,
the other fish in the other half-circle; but both fish fitting together, making it a whole. Yin means the
feminine; yang means the masculine.
This is applicable to all polarities, positive and negative; they are just like two fish moving in such a
way, so closely, that they make a circle.
Then you look at existence with the eyes of a religious man.
Then there is no saint, no sinner; they are all complementary to each other. They both are needed
in some way.
Yes, better ways can be found so that they can complement each other more lucidly, more gracefully,
more beautifully.
From Ignorance to Innocence 440 Osho