Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 10. SPIRITUALISM, RELIGION AND POLITICS
Krishna is a spiritual man, he is not religious. Mahavira is a religious man in this sense, and so
is Buddha; they have opted for one particular avenue of life, which is religion. And for the sake of
religion they have denied all other avenues of life. They have sacrificed the rest of life on the altar of
a part. Krishna is a spiritual man; he accepts life in its totality. That is why he is not afraid of politics,
he does not shrink from going headlong into it. For him, politics is part of life.
It is important to understand that people who have kept away from politics in the name of religion
have only helped to make politics more irreligious; their non-cooperation has not made it any better.
I repeat: Krishna accepts life with all its flowers and thorns, its light and shade, sweet and sour.
He accepts life choicelessly, unconditionally. He accepts life as it is. It is not that Krishna chooses
only the flowers of life and shuns its thorns; he accepts both together, because he knows thorns are
as necessary to life as the flowers. Ordinarily we think thorns are inimical to flowers. It is not true.
Thorns are there for the protection of flowers; they are deeply connected with each other. They are
united – members of each other. They share common roots, and they live for a common purpose.
Many people would like to destroy the thorn and save the flower, but that is not possible. They are
parts of each other, and both have to be saved.
So Krishna not only accepts politics, he lives in the thick of politics without the least difficulty.
The other part of your question is also significant. You say that in politics Krishna uses means that
cannot be said to be right. To achieve his ends, he uses lies, deception and fraud – which cannot
be justified in any way. In this connection one has to understand the realities of life. In life there
is no choice between good and bad, except in theory. The choice between good and evil is all a
matter of doc trine. In reality, one always has to choose between the greater evil and the lesser evil.
Every choice in life is relative. It is not a question of whether what Krishna did was good or bad.
The question is whether it would have resulted in good or bad had he not done what he did. The
question would be much easier if it was a simple choice between good and bad, but this is not the
case in reality. The realities of life are that it is always the choice between greater evils and lesser
evils.
I have heard an anecdote:
A priest is passing a street when he hears a voice crying, ”Save me, save me! I am dying!” It is
dark and the street is narrow. The priest rushes to the place and finds that a big strong man has
overpowered another man, who seems to be very poor and weak. The priest demands that the
strong man release the poor man, but he refuses. The priest physically intervenes in the struggle
and succeeds in releasing the victim from the strong man’s grip, and the poor man takes to his heels.
The strong man says, ”Do you know what you have done? That man had picked my pocket and you
have helped him to run away with my purse.”
The priest said, ”Why didn’t you say it before? I thought you were unnecessarily torturing a poor
man. I am sorry; I made a mistake. I had thought I was doing something good, but it turned out to
be evil.” But the man had already disappeared with the purse.
Before we set out to do good, it is necessary to consider if it will result in evil. It is equally necessary
to know that a bad action may ultimately result in good.
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 177 Osho