From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 6. RENUNCIATION: MORTGAGE TODAY FOR A TOMORROW THAT NEVER COMES
But what he said, I have not forgotten. He said, ”You are the first man who has made me feel
guilty; otherwise, whenever people give to us we feel they are fools. If they don’t give to us, we say
these are sinners; we never think about ourselves.” No beggar does. He is simply giving you an
opportunity to be virtuous, you should be obliged to him. He is putting a ladder before you: you can
go to paradise. No beggars, although they are begging, even feel inferior.
The mind is so cunning, it can take you in any direction and distort your simple, natural being.
Now, nobody naturally would ever like to beg, nobody is a born beggar. But the sexual instinct can
take any form – it can become the greed of a rich man, it can become the greed of a beggar.
When I was a professor, one student of mine, studying in the post-graduate philosophy department,
was always coming with costly clothes and looked rich. One day it happened, I was coming out of
the station – because I was continually moving from Jabalpur all over India... twenty days per month
I was out of town. I would come back after three days for a few hours, just to show myself in the
university, that I was there – because they could not give me that much leave nor could I take that
much leave; otherwise from where would I get money?
So this was the arrangement: one of my students used to take my car and park it in the same place
where I would normally park it. The car was always parked there; that was a symbol that I was in
the university. I told him, ”So park the car there at two o’clock and at four o’clock take it away –
just two hours. Everybody should know it is there because that is the rush hour, when everybody is
there, and everybody knows that I never come before two; from twelve to two I sleep. So there is no
problem.”
So every third day or fourth day I was coming and going: coming in the morning and going in the
evening. And there was this beggar who was continually getting one rupee, fixed – whether I came
or went, he would get it. One day, just by coincidence, I saw this student of mine with that old man,
just behind the shed where my car was parked. I went closer: What was this rich man’s son doing
with the beggar? And the beggar was giving him rupees.
So I went outside and called them both. They started trembling. The old man said, ”Don’t tell
anybody – he is my son.”
I said, ”How much do you manage to earn? – because this boy lives the best in the university, so
you must be earning nearly thirty, forty or fifty rupees.”
He said, ”You are right.”
I said, ”How much have you got in the bank?”
He said, ”Now I cannot hide anything from you. He had fifty thousand rupees in the bank.
I told him, ”Then why are you begging? – because you can do some business.”
He said, ”This is business. And with no investment, in what business can you earn fifty rupees a day
in India?”
From Ignorance to Innocence 77 Osho