From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 6. RENUNCIATION: MORTGAGE TODAY FOR A TOMORROW THAT NEVER COMES
I said, ”Good arrangement! You have nothing to do with money, then what have you to do with
this man? You will go to heaven and this man will go to hell, and he, poor man, is simply serving
you continually, following you everywhere – and yet he is going to hell! If you have renounced
money, then live without money, then suffer without money. Why send this man to hell? You will be
responsible for sending this man to hell. You will fall into a deeper hell than this man.”
People can find strange ways because they have not understood what they are doing; they are
simply following a dead creed, a dead dogma. Because for centuries money has been condemned
by the religious people, they are renouncing it. I said, ”But it is becoming more complicated. It would
have been simple to put your hand in your own pocket; now you have to put it in somebody else’s
pocket. That is pickpocketing.” I said, ”You are also a thief What are you doing? And you are a bigger
pickpocket than others because at least they use their hand – you use his hand, picking up money
from his pocket. His pocket, his hand, and you are completely above it – superior.”
I said to the disciple, ”You escape right now, leave this man here. I will not allow him to go with
you. Just escape as far as you can, where he cannot find you again, because he is managing
and arranging for your hell. And whatever money you have, it is yours, because he has renounced
money. He cannot claim it.”
He said, ”Is it so – all the money?”
I said, ”What do you mean by’all the money’?”
He said, ”Right now when we go somewhere, I keep just two or three hundred rupees in my pocket
– but at our temple we have thousands.”
I said, ”All that money is yours. You simply go. I will keep this man here, so you take all that money
and escape. And if this man leaves here I will give him to the police because he has renounced
money. He cannot even report to the police that his money is stolen.”
The monk said, ”What! I came here to learn meditation.”
I said, ”I am teaching you what renunciation means. And what you are doing is just cheating yourself,
cheating this poor man, cheating God – cheating everybody.”
Renounce anything and you will become more attached to it than when you had not renounced it.
Your mind will move around and around it.
An ancient parable.... A man was continually wanting to learn the secret of miracles. He had heard
so much about it – that there are sages in Tibet, in the high peaks of the Himalayas who can teach
you, who know all kinds of miracles. So he was always serving any kind of sage. In India there are
so many sages – just as here there are so many sage bushes. When I first came here and I came
to know that there are so many sages here also, I said, ”These people are not going to leave me
alone!”
He found a very old, ancient sage and he was continually massaging his feet, bringing him food
and doing whatsoever the poor man could do. The old sage knew, the whole town knew, why he
From Ignorance to Innocence 79 Osho