When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 8. THE TURTLE
is that Chuang Tzu was never crucified and Jesus was crucified – otherwise he is the same man.
You could have found him on the riverbank with a bamboo pole, fishing – he was very friendly with
fishermen. He must have fished around the Sea of Galilee, fishermen were his followers. You would
have been able to find him staying with a prostitute because the prostitute loved him, worshipped
him, and he knew no distinctions. He moved with gamblers, drunkards, people rejected by the
society – and that was his crime! He was crucified because this was his crime: he was moving
with ordinary people living an ordinary life. That cannot be tolerated by the respectable world, that
cannot be tolerated. This man who moves with prostitutes, gamblers, drunkards, who is found in
wrong company, this man says that he is the Son of God! This is heresy!
This man is claiming too much, he has to be punished, because if such things are left unpunished
then the whole morality will be destroyed; and this man lives against all rules, he has no rules except
life. Jesus and Chuang Tzu are similar, just one thing differs: Jesus was crucified. Jews are very
much rule-oriented, they live by rules, they are Confucians, and it is difficult for them to concede that
somebody who lives without rules can be good Jews are very moralistic and their conception of God
is very revengeful. The Jewish God is very revengeful, he will throw you in fire if you don’t obey him.
Obedience seems to be the greatest rule. And this Jesus, the son of a carpenter, an ordinary man,
is moving with suspicious people and claiming that he is a prophet, the prophet for whom the whole
Jewish world has been waiting. No, he has to be punished.
China was more tolerant. Chuang Tzu was not punished because China had no conception of
a ferocious God; in fact there was no conception of God. Confucius never believed in God, he
believed in rules; and he was the basis for China. But he said that rules are human, there is no
divineness about them and they are arbitrary, relative, you can change them. One has to follow
them but there is nothing divine about them, no absoluteness about them. That is why Lao Tzu and
Chuang Tzu could live without being crucified.
But one thing you have to remember. If Chuang Tzu had also been crucified, there would have been
a great following. There is none. Chuang Tzu has no followers, he cannot have, because people
worship death. And he refused to be a turtle, canonised, because the condition is: Be dead! Don’t
do this, don’t to that; just go on cutting and sacrificing yourself; just sit, not even breathing is allowed.
Then people will worship you, then you will have become a dead turtle.
ASKED CHUANG TZU: WHAT DO YOU THINK? IS IT BETTER TO GIVE UP ONE’S LIFE AND
LEAVE A SACRED SHELL AS AN OBJECT OF CULT IN A CLOUD OF INCENSE FOR THREE
THOUSAND YEARS, OR BETTER TO LIVE AS A PLAIN TURTLE DRAGGING ITS TAIL IN THE
MUD?
’FOR THE TURTLE,’ SAID THE VICE CHANCELLOR, ’BETTER TO LIVE AND DRAG ITS TAIL IN
THE MUD.’
Of course, it is logical for the turtle: better to live and drag its tail in the mud! Chuang Tzu said: Go
home, leave me here to drag my tail in the mud! Let me be just a plain turtle. Please, don’t you try to
canonise me, because I know your condition – first I have to die and leave a shell, a dead shell, then
you can canonise me, then you can make a cult of me, then you can have a temple around me, and
incense, and clouds of incense, and then you can worship me for three thousand years. But what
will I gain out of it? I am the turtle, what will I gain out of it? What does a turtle know about gold and
When the Shoe Fits 114 Osho