GRAY HAIRS DO NOT MAKE A MASTER.
A MAN MAY GROW OLD IN VAIN.

 

 

Just becoming old does not mean that you have become a wise man. Age in itself does not make anybody wise. One may grow old; that does not mean that one has become a grown-up. Growing old and becoming grown-up are totally different phenomena.

 

A young reporter was interviewing old Harry Blackwell on his one hundred and first birthday.

 

“Tell me, Mr. Blackwell, if you had your life to live over again, would you still make the same mistakes?”

 

“Sure as hell would!” came his emphatic reply.

 

“You mean you would not do ANYTHING differently?”

 

“Sure would. I would start sooner.”

 

This man must have been at least sincere. Otherwise old people become cunning, insincere, dishonest. Sunday was to be the day of Joe’s wedding, and he and his father were enjoying a nightcap together. Lifting his glass in a toast to his father, Joe asked, “Any advice before I take the big step, Dad?”

 

“Yes,” the father said, “two things. First: insist on having one night out a week with the boys. Second: don’t waste it on the boys.”

 

People go on growing in age but not in maturity. They don’t become really ripe; they remain as childish as anybody else. And when you are a child and are childish it is not so embarrassing, but when you have become old and you are childish it is very embarrassing. They hide it, but deep down they are the same person, nothing has happened — because nothing ever happens without meditation. Just accumulating experience of the outside world does not transform you. It makes you very well informed about many things, but information is information, it is not transformation.

 

- Osho, “The Dhammapada, Vol 7, #5″