Jesus is right when he says: Truth liberates. Truth is liberation. There is every possibility that Jesus learnt the secrets of the truth through Buddhist masters. There is every possibility that before he started his work in Israel, he was in India, in Nalanda, with Buddhist masters. Nalanda was one of the most ancient Buddhafields, a great university of monks. Never before and never after has something like that ever existed again.

 

I am hoping to create something like that again, on a wider scale, a bigger scale. Nalanda was a great experiment, an experiment with truth, an experiment to see truth as it is. Ten thousand monks continuously meditated, worked, penetrated, with no prejudices, with no a priori ideas. They were not bent upon proving anything; they were REAL seekers.

 

The unreal seeker is one who is bent upon proving something from the very beginning. The unreal seeker is one who, says, "I am in search of God" - one thing he has accepted, that God exists.

 

Without knowing? If he knows, then why search? If you don't know, then how can you search for God? Who knows? - God may exist, may not exist. The search is already based on an a priori belief.

 

In Nalanda, those ten thousand monks were not searching for God, they were not searching for any heaven. They were not searching in reality for something a priori. They were simply searching into their own being with no idea of what they were searching for. Their search was pure. They were just LOOKING into reality... to see what is there. And because they were not preoccupied by any idea, they stumbled into nothingness, they came to know nothingness.

 

If you are preoccupied by some idea, then you are bound to create the illusion of your own idea in that nothingness, and that nothingness is capable of supporting any idea. Any dream that you are carrying in you can be projected on the screen of nothingness. If you are searching for Krishna, YOU WITH find him, and it will be just a projection. If you are searching for a Jewish God, you will find. If you are searching for a Hindu God, you will find. Whatsoever you search for you WILL find, but it will not be truth and it will not liberate you. It will be your imagination.

 

Remember, this is one of the most important things in life, that if you start a search with a fixed idea, a fixed attitude, you are bound to find it - and then there is a vicious circle. When you find it you think, "Of course, it is because I have found it." Then it enhances your belief even more, then you start finding it more, and so on and so forth... it becomes a vicious circle. The more you believe, the more you find it; the more you find it, the more you believe. And you go on pouring reality into a dream, and one can go on wasting lives together.

 

Search without any idea - that is Buddha's message. Look, just clean your eyes and look. Don't look for some-thing in particular, just look, a pure look into things, into the suchness of things. The eyes have to be clean and pure, otherwise they can project; even a small particle of dust and it will show on the screen of nothingness. Just a little liking, disliking, a little choice, and you will create reality.

 

Buddha's approach is such an absolute experiment - simple once you understand, not complicated.

 

But if you don't understand, you can go on deluding yourself.

 

There is every possibility Jesus lived in Nalanda. That's why in the New Testament his whole life is not accounted for. You see him when he was nearabout twelve, once he is mentioned, and then you see him when he is thirty. Eighteen years are missing in the New Testament story of Jesus. Where was he for these eighteen years? What was he doing? Why are those days not accounted for? It seems to be a big gap. And in a small life - thirty-three years only he lived. More than half his life is missing.

 

The story is fragmentary; something consciously, deliberately has been dropped. It is impossible that those who were writing the story would not have become aware of the fact that eighteen years are simply missing - and the MOST important years. Because up to twelve a child is a child.

 

When at thirty he suddenly appears with John the Baptist, he is already a mature man, enlightened, arrived, a SIDDHA - one who has known, one who has seen, accomplished, attained. The painting is complete.

 

The three years that are related in the Bible story are just about his work on others - but what about his work upon himself? Where did he meditate? With whom? What was he doing? How did he become what he became? The most important years are missing. And by the thirty-third year he is crucified. So only three years' story is available really. First his birth story; then he is seen arguing with the rabbis in the temple of Jerusalem when he is twelve; and then these three years. The most important part, his preparation, his work upon himself, seems to be deliberately dropped. But his teaching in those three years is ample proof that he must have come in contact with Buddhist groups.

 

He had travelled to India, there are ample proofs; he had lived in India, about that too there are ample proofs. And whatsoever he is saying in those three years time, his ministry, is absolutely in tune with Buddha. Of course, he is translating it into Jewish terms - he talks about love, about compassion. The Jewish God was not a God of love, not at all - a very jealous God, a very angry God; ready to punish, ready to destroy. He was not at all a God of love! From where did this idea of a God of love arise in Jesus? He must have come in contact with people who had worked hard and had come to know that when one becomes enlightened, one's whole energy becomes love energy.

 

And if this happens to man, then this must be so about the ultimate reality too. God can only be love.

 

And then Jesus talks about if somebody slaps you on one cheek - give him the other cheek too.

 

That is an utterly Buddhist approach: Forgive! That too was not a Jewish concept at all. If somebody throws a brick at you you have to throw a rock at him - that was the Jewish approach, tit for tat. If somebody has destroyed somebody's one eye, both his eyes have to be destroyed - justice, not compassion.

 

Jesus brings compassion. Instead of justice he brings the value of love.

 

And Jewish ideas were much too moralistic - those Ten Commandments have been haunting the Jewish mind since then; thirty-five centuries have passed. Jesus brings a new Commandment. He says: I give you a new Commandment - just as I have loved you, you love everybody else. Love is a new Commandment. But that is the flavour of Buddha.

 

- Osho, "Take It Easy, Vol 1, #7"