Buddha renounced the world; it is reported in all the scriptures, but the report is not given in the true context. It is reported that the Buddha renounced the world because he was against the world -- because unless you renounce the world you cannot gain the eternal, the other world, the other shore. This is giving a totally false interpretation to Buddha's great renunciation.
He certainly renounced the world, but not to gain anything in the other. If there is any motive in your renunciation, it is not radical enough, it is not a revolution. It is again the same old business, the same old bargaining mind; it is based in desire and desire is the world. The world does not consist of things, the world consists of motives, desires, ambitions.
If you renounce the world to gain something, whatsoever it is -- nirvana, enlightenment, moksha, freedom, truth or God, whatsoever it is -- if you renounce the world to gain something, it is not renunciation.
Hence I will not say that Buddha renounced the world to attain something. The very idea of attaining something IS the world. The very idea of attaining something is to live in imagination, is to live in the future. And a man of understanding lives in the present, not in the future. A man of understanding does not really renounce the world -- the world simply falls from him, the world simply becomes irrelevant; it loses meaning. His insight is such that he can see through and through the falsity of all desire -- not to attain something, but seeing the futility of desire, desiring ceases. That is true renunciation.
That's what Buddha did. In fact to say he did it is not right. Language creates so many problems. When you start talking about the buddhas, language is not an adequate vehicle; it becomes very inadequate. To say Buddha renounced the world is not exactly the truth. It will be better if we say the world disappeared from his vision. It was not an act but a happening.
When he became aware, alert, watchful, a witness, when he saw the absurdity of desire, desire ceased on its own. It is not an act. How can you go on desiring if you see the absurdity of it? You will not try to pass through a wall. Seeing that it is a wall, you will not try to pass through it. If you are still trying to pass through a wall, hitting it hard with your head, that simply shows your eyes are closed. And you are not seeing it as a wall -- somewhere you are imagining that it is a door. You are hoping to get through it. The moment you see it as a wall the transformation has happened.
To understand is enough -- there is no need to practice it. People practice only because they don't understand.
Many come to me and ask, "Give us a certain discipline to practice." For centuries they have been given disciplines to practice. I give you no discipline -- because you can practice a discipline, you can become very skillful, you can become very artful, crafty; still deep down you will remain the same person, because it is not a question of practicing a discipline.
The question is of SEEING, the question is of understanding your life, its unconscious motives. The question is to understand the darkness in which you are living. And the miracle is that if you can understand the darkness in which you are living, suddenly there is light, because understanding is light.
Buddha has been very much misunderstood, not only by his enemies but by his friends too -- in fact by friends more than by enemies. The enemies can be forgiven, but the friends cannot be forgiven.
Millions have followed him for these twenty-five centuries with a wrong understanding. Their very first step is wrong. The Buddhist monk has not been able to understand what Buddha is really pointing at. He has completely forgotten the moon which the finger of Buddha is pointing at. He is clinging to the finger, he is worshipping the finger, he has become obsessed with the finger. He has completely forgotten that the finger is only a means to point at the moon. Forget the finger and look at the moon. You cannot look at the moon if you cannot forget the finger.
Thousands and thousands of commentaries have been written on these beautiful sutras. But if the first step is wrong then everything goes wrong. The first wrong step all the commentaries have taken is saying that Buddha renounced the world.
It is not true. The world simply fell; it ceased to have any meaning for him.
The night he moved away from his palace to the mountains, when he was crossing the boundary of his kingdom, his charioteer tried to persuade him, tried to convince him to go back to the palace.
The charioteer was an old man, he had known Buddha from his very childhood; he was almost of the same age as Buddha's father. He said, "What are you doing? This is sheer madness. Have you gone insane or what? Look back!"
It was a full-moon night and his marble palace was looking so beautiful. In the full moon the white marble of his palace was a joy to see. People used to come from faraway places just to have a glimpse of Buddha's palace in the full moon, just as people go to see the Taj Mahal. White marble has a tremendous beauty when the moon is full. There is some synchronicity between the full moon and white marble, a certain harmony, a rhythm, a communion.
The charioteer said, "Look back at least once at your beautiful palace. Nobody has such a beautiful palace."
Buddha looked back and told the old man, "I don't see any palace there but only great fire. The palace is on fire, only flames. Simply leave me and go back; if you see the palace, go back to the palace. I don't see any palace there -- because death is arriving every moment, and I don't see any palace there because all palaces disappear sooner or later. In this world everything is momentary and I am in search of the eternal. Seeing the momentariness of this world I can no longer befool myself."
These are his exact words, "I cannot befool myself anymore."
Not that he is renouncing the world! What can he do? If you see something as rubbish, if you see that the stones that you have carried all along are not real diamonds, what are you going to do with them? It will not need great courage to drop them, to throw them away; it will not need great intelligence to get rid of them. They will immediately fall from your hands. You were not clinging to those stones but to the idea that they were diamonds. You were clinging to your fallacy, your illusion.
Buddha has not renounced the world, he has renounced his illusions about it. And that too is a happening, not an act. When renunciation comes as a happening it has a tremendous beauty, because there is no motive in it. It is not a means to gain something else. It is total. You are finished with desiring, you are finished with future, you are finished with power, money, prestige, because you have seen the futility of it all.
Seeing is transformation. Remember this as the very fundamental; then these sutras will have a totally different meaning to you. The meaning depends on the context. If you place these sutras in a wrong context they will have a different meaning, and that's what has happened to Buddha.
I repeat: he has been misunderstood more than anybody else in the world. And the reason is that he is one of the most profound masters of the world. His insight is so deep that it is bound to be misunderstood.
Jesus speaks to the common masses in parables, in simple language. He is not a philosopher; he is not very educated or cultured either. He is a son of the earth. He had been working for years with his father as a carpenter -- carrying wood from the forest, cutting wood, helping the old man.
Buddha is a totally different kind of person. He is not a son of the earth, he is a prince. He has never mixed with the crowds, he does not know their language. He speaks a language which can be understood only by the very sophisticated. He tried hard to bring it to the level of the masses, but it is almost impossible. And it is not only a question of language either.
Jesus talks about prayer, which is simple to understand, because prayer is a duality and the whole world consists of dualities. Prayer is a duality because it is a dialogue between you and an imaginary God, but still a dialogue. In prayer you are again desiring, asking to be forgiven for your sins, to be rewarded. Your prayer is a demand; you are a beggar when you are praying. And the prayer is based on the idea of God, and God is nothing but a projection of the human mind. God is anthropocentric. The Bible says God created man in his own image. The truth is just the contrary: man has created God in his own image. Your God simply represents you, your ambitions, your ideals. Your God is a projection of your mind. It is easy to talk about God, and it is easy to be understood when you talk about God; it is easy to talk about prayer, and easy to be understood when you talk about prayer, because everybody is living on that plane.
Buddha talks about meditation, not about prayer. Prayer has no place in his vision. Buddha never talks about God because he knows perfectly well that God has been manufactured by man either out of fear or out of greed; that God is the greatest desire of man and it is because of God that man remains in bondage, never becomes a light unto himself, always remains a beggar, dependent, a slave.
Buddha wants you to become emperors, not beggars. He wants you to be free of all projections -- God, paradise, the other world, all are included in your projections. Buddha wants you to get rid of mind itself, because that is what meditation is all about: entering into the world of no-mind. This is something very subtle, of immense depth; it is not easy to be understood.
Once Buddha was gone, great misunderstanding arose around him. The day he died his followers became divided into thirty-six sects. And what was the reason for their division, and so soon? The reason was that everybody was trying to impose his interpretation on Buddha, and of course they all had their own interpretations.
I am not interpreting Buddha at all because I am not a Buddhist, I am not a follower. I have experienced the same truth as Gautama the Buddha, so when I am speaking on Buddha it is as if I am speaking on myself. It is not a commentary, it is not an interpretation. Buddha is just an excuse to speak to you, a beautiful excuse to communicate my own realization to you. Let it be remembered that it is my own experience that I am talking about. I am using Buddha as a peg to hang my own understanding and experience on. And I love the man, I am in immense love with this man, because nobody else has ever touched such depths and such heights as Gautama the Buddha. He remains the Everest, the highest peak human consciousness has ever reached.
Be very meditative while you are listening to these sutras; that is the only way to understand them. Not analysis, not thinking, not a logical approach, but a meditative silent listening, JUST listening. And truth has a mystery about it: if you can listen silently you will see whether it is true or not, it will be a vision. Immediately. It will strike your heart if it is truth, something will start vibrating in your heart, your heart will immediately respond. It is not a question of the mind.
When you are listening meditatively you are not listening from the mind at all. Of course the words are very ancient -- twenty-five centuries have passed -- Buddha speaks in the language of his day. Don't be deceived by the language, don't be distracted by his language. It is natural because there is a gap of twenty-five centuries between you and him. He can't speak the language that you understand. That's why I am talking about him, on him -- to give you a new version, a twentieth-century version of the same experience, of the same understanding, of the same transformation.
-Osho, “The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 5, #1”