Cleverness

 

 

Question 8

Osho,

Why are you so much against cleverness? does it not pay in life to be clever?

 

 

Cleverness is only a beautiful name for cunningness. Hence I am against it. I am not against being intelligent, but an intelligent person need not be clever. It is only the unintelligent person who has to be clever – because he is missing intelligence, he has to replace it with something else.

 

Cleverness is plastic intelligence, cultivated intelligence. It is a poor substitute. And I know in life—at least in the short range—it pays, but never in the long range. And the wise person has to think of the long range. You can be cunning, and for the moment it may pay, but sooner or later you will have to pay for it.

 

You are sowing seeds that are wrong and you will have to reap the crop. You can’t avoid the consequences; the consequences are bound to come. [....]

 

Cunningness may pay in the short range, but sooner or later you will be caught in your own net. You will fall in the ditch you have dug for others. Beware of it!

 

I am not against being intelligent - I am all for being intelligent - but intelligence is a totally different quality. Intelligence is of the heart and cleverness is of the mind.

 

Cleverness is a heady thing. Even a computer can be clever but not intelligent.

 

Be intelligent! But to be intelligent needs great changes in your life, in your life patterns.

 

Intelligence is a by-product of meditativeness. If you become silent, if you become innocent, then you will be intelligent. Intelligence means responding to the situation immediately, without any preparation, without the past, without any rehearsal... just responding as a mirror reflects immediately whatsoever confronts it.

 

When you start reflecting whatsoever life brings in front of you and you act out of the moment, you are intelligent. But if you are clever and cunning you are using your past, your past experiences, and you are responding according to your past experiences. That is not response - that is reaction. And that can be done by computer. You are not really human when you are bringing your past into the present and acting out of it.

 

Be wise, be meditative, be intelligent. Avoid being cunning. That is ugly, that is unspiritual, and that reduces you into a machine.

 

And you are not a machine, you are a man. Whatever can be done by a machine is not worth doing. Do that which only a man can do. Then your glory is great and then you will release great splendor in your life.

 

-Osho, “The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 7, #10, Q8”