From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 4. DANGER: TRUTH AT WORK
The man could not say to the king, ” You are talking like a fool.” He said, ”It is better, your majesty,
that you go to him and you negotiate. I am a poor man, don’t put me in this situation. You are a
great king; he is a great tirthankara, a great soul which rarely happens. Only twenty-four persons
reach that height in one cycle of existence.” He is saying that in millions and millions of light years,
only twenty-four... and he is the last for this cycle. Now there is not going to be another man of his
caliber again in this cycle of existence. When this whole existence burns out – when all these stars
and galaxies and solar systems have gone, disappeared, and a new creation starts from the very
scratch – then the first tirthankara will appear. ”Now this man is very rare because for millions of
years there is not going to be another comparable to him. So it is better you go.”
Bimbisara went with all his paraphernalia, and he was respectful to Mahavira – just a formality. In
India even if a king goes to a sage, he has to touch the feet of the sage; that is just a formality. And
he said. ”I have come for a simple thing. Give me your truth, and whatsoever you want – even if
you ask for my whole empire – I will give it to you. This is my whole life’s standpoint: anything that I
want, I have to have it. What it is going to cost matters not.”
Mahavira laughed, he said, ”You unnecessarily came this far. In your very capital lives one of my
disciples. He has got the truth; and he is a very poor man – he may be ready to sell it. I am not ready
to sell it. And you must know that I am also the son of a king. I was going to inherit the kingdom of
my father; I renounced it to get the truth. Now, how can I sell it for a kingdom? Even if you give me
the whole kingdom, how can I sell it? I have already renounced a whole kingdom to get this truth,
and after forty years of struggle, I have found it. I cannot sell it.
Mahavira must have had a sense of humor that Jainas have missed completely. He sent him back
to the poor man in the capital. He had never gone to that quarter of the capital, because only the
poorest, the very poor, in fact the outcasts, lived there. His golden chariot was standing there before
the poor man’s hut. The poor man came running, and Bimbisara said, ”Rejoice! I am ready to give
anything you want, just give me the truth. Your Master has sent me; I am coming from Mahavira.”
The poor man said, ”My Master must have joked with you. Perhaps he did not want to hurt you
before so many people because you had gone with your whole court, all your advisers, ministers,
generals. He did not want to hurt you or say no to you. That’s why he has sent you to me. I can give
my life if you want. I am just your poor servant; I clean your streets. You can ask for my life and it is
here, ready – you cut off my head But truth...? Yes, I have got it, but the very quality of truth is such
that it cannot be given. Not that I don’t want to give it to you; I am absolutely willing.
”If you can take it, take it. You can kill me; if you find it inside me, so far so good – I am ready. I will
be happy that I had the chance to serve you so intimately and so closely. But I warn you, you will
not find it there because the truth has to be authentically yours, only then is it true. If it is somebody
else’s, then it is no longer true. My truth cannot be your truth. The moment I say something about
the truth, you only hear the words – the truth is left behind. The truth can never be squeezed into
words; there is no way.”
Words have been reaching the common people and they have been believing that those words are
the truth – somebody believing in the words of Jesus, somebody in the words of Buddha, somebody
in the words of Mohammed – but they are not the truth.
No book contains truth, no word can ever contain it.
From Ignorance to Innocence 47 Osho