Question:
What is the difference between real knowledge and turning the other cheek?
There is much difference. Turning the other cheek is just a conditioning. I am reminded of a Christian saint who was always talking about turning the other cheek. One man got very fed up and he hit the saint on one of his cheeks. The saint, of course — according to his ideology — turned his other cheek. The man hit him on the other cheek also.
At that moment the saint jumped on the man and started hitting him as hard as he could. The man said, “What are you doing? You are a nonviolent Christian saint.”
He said, “The question finished when you hit me on the other cheek. Jesus has said, `Turn the other cheek’ but there is no third cheek to turn. Now I am free, and I will show you what it means.”
Buddha, in one of his sermons, said, “Forgive at least seven times.” It is too much. Somebody harasses you seven times, cheats you, deceives you, and you go on forgiving him. But one monk stood up and said, “What about the eighth? Okay, seven times we will manage; but what about the eighth?”
These people don’t understand the idea of nonviolence. They are simply following a certain concept, but every concept has a limitation. Buddha changed it. He said, “I will say seventy-seven times.”
The monk stood up and said, “You can change it, but what about the seventy-eighth time? My argument remains the same. You can make it seven hundred and seventy-seven times, but what about plus one?”
Turning the other cheek is not a nonviolent act. On the contrary, it is very disrespectful of the other person. You are reducing him into a non-human being. He has hit you on your cheek, and you are giving him your other cheek; you are becoming superior and you are putting him into a position of inferiority. This is not nonviolence; this is pure egoism.
Nonviolence simply means that killing, destroying, is ugly. That does not mean that allowing somebody else to do such a thing is not ugly. If somebody hits you on the cheek, you should hit him more strongly on his cheek — for two reasons. One, that you are nonviolent and you don’t allow any kind of violence to anybody, including yourself. Secondly, you have to hit him harder because you respect the other person; if he gives you one rupee’s worth, you give him two rupee’s worth. You don’t make him inferior, you make him superior. I will not say, “Turn the other cheek.”
I will say, “Hit on his cheek as hard as you can so he learns a lesson; otherwise, he will start hitting other people’s cheeks. And you will be responsible for all that violence.” So nonviolence does not mean that you have just to be there, beaten. Then you are allowing violence. This kind of nonviolence has deprived this whole country.
For example, Jainas will not go into war. No Jaina will enter into armies because they are nonviolent people. But if they are nonviolent people, why do they accept the protection of the police? Why do they put locks on their doors? If they are nonviolent people why do they go on giving taxes to the government which go to maintain the army, navy and other kinds of war machinery? They live in this country, protected by the army; somebody else is fighting for them, somebody else is dying for them, so they can remain nonviolent.
Mahavira and Buddha both in some way or other are responsible for twenty centuries of slavery in India. And Gandhi again repeated like a parrot the same stupid nonsense. Nonviolence simply means you should be so powerful that nobody can be violent towards you. It should not be out of weakness; it should be out of power. Of course you will not hurt anybody out of your power — you will protect, you will not kill. But you won’t allow anybody else to kill you either. So my idea of nonviolence is different from Mahavir, Buddha, Gandhi.
My idea is nonviolence should be out of an abundance of power. Don’t use that power to kill, to destroy; but use that power to create, to protect. And if anybody tries to harm you or anybody else, do everything to prevent that harm.
Violence has to be completely removed from the world, but it can happen only if nonviolent people are powerful; otherwise, how can you manage? If violent people are powerful and nonviolent people are powerless, then the violent people will overrule the nonviolent. That has been our experience of two thousand years.
I don’t support weakness. I support power; but power with compassion, love and creativity.
– Osho, “The Last Testament, Vol 4, #17”
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Reverence for life approaches the whole problem from a different angle. I will say respect life, yours included. In fact, you have to be respectful toward yourself first, only then can you be respectful toward anybody else. Be loving toward yourself, then you will be able to love others too.
Reverence for life will not allow any provocation to violence. It will not start violence, but if anybody starts it, it will stop it immediately.
Jesus says, “If somebody hits you on one of your cheeks, turn the other cheek.” I say, “Okay, turn his other cheek – and hit him harder! Teach him a lesson. Make it clear to him that it is not so easy to hit somebody on the cheek; it comes back, and comes back harder. And if you are capable, hit both his cheeks at the same time. Why give him the chance to turn the other cheek and become a saint? Hit him and tell him simultaneously, ‘I do not believe in violence, hence I have to stop it at the first chance. And remember that you cannot just be violent without being prevented.’”
You have to prevent violence if you respect life.
And in another way too, it is respectful to hit the man, not to give him your other cheek, because that is very disrespectful. This may seem a little difficult for you: you hit me, and I don’t hit you, but show my other cheek to you, and say, “Please be kind enough to hit me.” I am trying to be superhuman and reduce you below humanity. I am humiliating you far more than I can humiliate you by hitting you. By hitting you I simply declare you are human, I am human, and I speak the same language that you speak. We are both on the same ground.
This is more respectful because you are not raising yourself higher; you are keeping yourself on the same level as the other man. You are telling him, “You are my brother; if you hit me you are going to get a bigger hit. Be watchful and be careful, because somewhere you may get into real trouble.”
I am not in favor of your being superior to the other man. That’s what Jesus is saying: “Be meek, be humble, turn the other cheek, because then you will inherit the Kingdom of God.”
I am not promising you any Kingdom of God. You are not going to inherit anything. You have already inherited it – that is your life. Be loving and respectful to it. Be loving and respectful to others. But don’t try to be superior and higher and above others. Don’t put the other man down.
You don’t find it in that sentence of Jesus, but it is there: that you are humiliating the other. You are creating guilt in the other. He will think it over at home: “What did I do? What kind of man was he? I hit him, and he gave me the other cheek. How cruel and how animal I am that I again hit him on the other cheek.” The man will not be able to sleep the whole night. He will come back tomorrow. The first thing he will want is to be forgiven. But to forgive him is again to put him down. No, I will say if he hits you, just be a sportsman. Don’t try to be a superman, just a sportsman. Hit him really hard and tell him, “Whenever you need a good hit, you can always depend on me.”
Never do any harm to anybody, but never allow anybody to do any harm to you either; only then can we create a human world. We have tried the other way in India, and the experiment has completely failed. Twenty-five centuries of slavery, slaughter, rape, and still nobody raises a finger to say that Buddha and Mahavira are responsible for it. They created this impotence in the whole country, this weakness in the whole country. No, I am not in favor of creating impotence, slavery, and provoking people to do violence to you.
Never do violence of your own accord, but never allow anybody else to do it to you either. Only then is there a possibility of creating a human world.
-Osho, “From Ignorance to Innocence, #2, Q1”