Cunningness
Ignorance is healthy; ignorance is innocent, innocent like a child, a newly-born babe. Ignorance is never cunning, knowledge is always cunning. When you have knowledge you call it cleverness; when somebody else has it you call it cunningness -- but cleverness and cunningness are the same.
Knowledge can deceive others. It is a criminal. Ignorance cannot deceive anybody -- at the most it can be deceived by everybody else. Ignorance is never a crime. Knowledge is active, aggressive, male; ignorance is inactive, passive, female. Ignorance is receptive, a womb; knowledge is never receptive, it is always rejecting. Have you seen people who are knowledgeable? It is very difficult for them to say yes, it is very easy to say no. No is always ready on their lips. No gives them power, the feeling of power, that they can argue and they can destroy.
Knowledge does not know how to say yes, and it misses much, misses all. Because the existence is known only by one who has given a total yes to it, who has signed a blank cheque and given it to existence. Only in that trust are mysteries revealed. You become intimate. Ignorance is wonderful.
So be an idiot, and be one totally. Don't hesitate. Then there will be no pain, no suffering. The suffering and pain is not coming from ignorance, it is coming from the dying ego.
-Osho, “Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 2, #8, Q3
⯎
Cunning! And people think that to be cunning is to be clever. It is not so -- only mediocre people are cunning. A really intelligent person need not be cunning. He is intelligent and that's more than enough. Cunningness is a poor substitute, a plastic substitute for intelligence. The mediocre person tries to look intelligent; in that very effort he becomes cunning.
And the greatest cunningness is to be a hypocrite: to be one thing and to show something else. But then life will be easy. Buddha makes it clear: you will fit with other cunning people, they will understand your language.
What was the fault of Jesus? The only fault was that he was not cunning. What was the fault of Socrates? The only fault was that he was a really intelligent person, utterly innocent, full of intelligence but with no cunningness.
Cunningness is cowardice, intelligence is courage. And the greatest courage in the world is to be exactly what your consciousness says to you to be.
The greatest cowardice in the world is to follow others, to imitate others. Then you remain artificial. Then you are never a real rose, just a plastic rose that looks like a rose but is not a rose. It will not have any fragrance and it will not have any aliveness, and it will not dance in the wind and sing in the sun. It will be dead!
-Osho, “The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 7, #3“