The Budding of a Buddha
Question :
How did you manage to stay with your own clarity as a child and not let yourself become intimidated by the grown-ups around you? Where did you get that courage from?
Innocence is courage and clarity, both. There is no need to have courage if you are innocent. There is no need, either, for any clarity because nothing can be more clear, crystal clear, than innocence. So the whole question is how to protect one's own innocence.
Innocence is not something to be achieved. It is not something to be learned. It is not something like a talent: painting, music, poetry, sculpture. It is not like those things. It is more like breathing, something you are born with. Innocence is everybody's nature. Nobody is born other than innocent. How can one be born other than innocent? Birth means you have entered the world as a tabula rasa, nothing is written on you. You have only future, no past. That is the meaning of innocence.
So first try to understand all the meanings of innocence. The first is: no past, only future. You come with an innocent watcher into the world. Everybody comes in the same way, with the same quality of consciousness. The question is, how did I manage so that nobody could corrupt my innocence, clarity; from where did I get this courage? How could I manage not to be humiliated by grown-ups and their world? I have not done anything, so there is no question of how. It simply happened, so I cannot take the credit for it.
Perhaps it happens to everybody but you become interested in other things. You start bargaining with the grown-up world. They have many things to give to you; you have only one thing to give, and that is your integrity, your self-respect. You don't have much, a single thing - you can call it anything: innocence, intelligence, authenticity. You have only one thing.
And the child is naturally very much interested in everything he sees around. He is continuously wanting to have this, to have that; that is part of human nature. If you look at the small child, even a just-born baby, you can see he has started groping for something; his hands are trying to find out something. He has started the journey.
In the journey he will lose himself, because you can't get anything in this world without paying for it. And the poor child cannot understand that what he is giving is so valuable that if the whole world is on one side, and his integrity is on the other side, then too his integrity will be more weighty, more valuable. The child has no way to know about it. This is the problem, because what he has got he has simply got. He takes it for granted.
You are asking me how I managed not to lose my innocence and clarity. I have not done anything; just simply, from the very beginning.... I was a lonely child because I was brought up by my maternal grandfather and grandmother; I was not with my father and mother. Those two old people were alone and they wanted a child who would be the joy of their last days.
So my father and mother agreed: I was their eldest child, the first-born; they sent me. I don't remember any relationship with my father's family in the early years of my childhood. With these two old men - my grandfather and his old servant, who was really a beautiful man - and my old grandmother - these three people. And the gap was so big...I was absolutely alone. It was not company, it could not be company.
They tried their hardest to be as friendly to me as possible but it was just not possible. I was left to myself. I could not say things to them. I had nobody else, because in that small village my family were the richest; and it was such a small village - not more than two hundred people in all - and so poor that my grandparents would not allow me to mix with the village children. They were dirty, and of course they were almost beggars. So there was no way to have friends. That caused a great impact.
In my whole life I have never been a friend, I have never known anybody to be a friend. Yes, acquaintances I had. In those first, early years I was so lonely that I started enjoying it; and it is really a joy. So it was not a curse to me, it proved a blessing. I started enjoying it, and I started feeling self-sufficient; I was not dependent on anybody. I have never been interested in games for the simple reason that from my very childhood there was no way to play, there was nobody to play with.
I can still see myself in those earliest years, just sitting. We had a beautiful spot where our house was, just in front of a lake. Far away for miles, the lake...and it was so beautiful and so silent. Only once in a while would you see a line of white cranes flying, or making love calls, and the peace would be disturbed; otherwise, it was exactly the right place for meditation. And when they would disturb the peace - a love call from a bird - after his call the peace would deepen, it would become deeper.
The lake was full of lotus flowers, and I would sit for hours so self-content, as if the world did not matter: the lotuses, the white cranes, the silence! And my grandparents were very aware of one thing, that I enjoyed my aloneness. They had continuously been seeing that I had no desire to go to the village to meet anybody, or to talk with anybody. Even if they wanted to talk, my answers were yes or no; I was not interested in talking either. So they became aware of one thing, that I enjoyed my aloneness, and it was their sacred duty not to disturb me. It happens with children that you tell them, "Be silent because your father is thinking, your grandfather is resting. Be quiet, sit silently." In my childhood it happened the opposite way.
Now I cannot answer why and how; it simply happened. That's why I said it simply happened - the credit does not go to me. All those three old people were continuously making signs to each other: "Don't disturb him - he is enjoying so much." And they started loving my silence. Silence has its vibe; it is infectious, particularly a child's silence which is not forced, which is not because you are saying, "I will beat you if you create any nuisance or noise."
No, that is not silence. That will not create the joyous vibration that I am talking about, when a child is silent on his own, enjoying for no reason, his happiness is uncaused; that creates great ripples all around. In a better world, every family will learn from children. You are in such a hurry to teach them. Nobody seems to learn from them, and they have much to teach you. And you have nothing to teach them.
Just because you are older and powerful you start making them just like you without ever thinking about what you are, where you have reached, what your status is in the inner world. You are a pauper; and you want the same for your child also? But nobody thinks; otherwise people would learn from small children. Children bring so much from the other world because they are such fresh arrivals. They still carry the silence of the womb, the silence of the very existence. So it was just a coincidence that for seven years I remained undisturbed - no one to nag me, to prepare me for the world of business, politics, diplomacy.
My grandparents were more interested in leaving me as natural as possible - particularly my grandmother. She is one of the causes - these small things affect all your life patterns...she is one of the causes of my respect for the whole of womanhood. She was a simple woman, uneducated, but immensely sensitive. She made it clear to my grandfather and the servant: "We all have lived a certain kind of life which has not led us anywhere. We are as empty as ever, and now death is coming close." She insisted, "Let this child be uninfluenced by us. What influence can we...? We can only make him like us, and we are nothing. Give him an opportunity to be himself."
I am tremendously grateful to that old woman. My grandfather was again and again worried that sooner or later he was going to be responsible: "They will say, 'We left our child with you and you have not taught him anything.'" My grandmother did not even allow...because there was one man in the village who could at least teach me the beginnings of language, mathematics, a little geography. He was educated to the fourth grade - the lowest four of what was called primary education in India. But he was the most educated man in the town.
My grandfather tried hard: "He can come and he can teach him. At least he will know the alphabet, some mathematics, so when he goes to his parents they will not say that we just wasted seven years completely."
But my grandmother said, "Let them do whatsoever they want to do after seven years. For seven years he has to be just his natural self, and we are not going to interfere." And her argument was always, "You know the alphabet, so what? You know mathematics, so what? You have earned a little money; do you want him also to earn a little money and live just like you?" That was enough to keep that old man silent.
What to do? He was in a difficulty because he could not argue, and he knew that he would be held responsible, not she, because my father would ask him, "What have you done?" And actually that would have been the case, but fortunately he died before my father could ask. But my father continuously was saying, "That old man is responsible, he has spoiled the child." But now I was strong enough, and I made it clear to him: "Before me, never say a single word against my maternal grandfather. He has saved me from being spoiled by you - that is your real anger. But you have other children - spoil them."
He had other children, and more and more children went on coming. I used to tease him, "You please bring one child more, make it a dozen." Eleven children? People ask, "How many children?" Eleven does not look right; one dozen is more impressive. And in later years I used to tell him, "You go on spoiling all your children; I am wild, and I will remain wild." What you see as innocence is nothing but wildness. What you see as clarity is nothing but wildness.
Somehow I remained out of the grip of civilization. And once I was strong enough.... And that's why people insist, "Take hold of the child as quickly as possible, don't waste time because the earlier you take hold of the child, the easier it is. Once the child becomes strong enough, then to bend him according to your desires will be difficult."
And life has seven-year circles. By the seventh year the child is perfectly strong; now you cannot do anything. Now he knows where to go, what to do. He is capable of arguing. He is capable of seeing what is right and what is wrong. And his clarity will be at the climax when he is seven. If you don't disturb his earlier years, then at the seventh he is so crystal clear about everything that his whole life will be lived without any repentance. I have lived without any repentance. I have tried to find: Have I done anything wrong, ever? Not that people have been thinking that all that I have done is right, that is not the point: I have never thought anything that I have done was wrong.
The whole world may think it was wrong, but to me there is absolute certainty that it was right; it was the right thing to do. So there is no question of repenting the past. And when you don't have to repent the past you are free from it. The past keeps you entangled like an octopus because you go on feeling, "That thing I should not have done," or, "That thing which I was supposed to do and did not do."
All those things go on pulling you backwards. I don't see anything behind me, no past. If I say something about my past, it is simply factual memory, it has no psychological involvement. I am telling you as if I am telling you about somebody else. It is just factual; it has nothing to do with my personal involvement. It might have occurred to somebody else, it might have happened to somebody else.
So remember, a factual memory is not enslaving: psychological memory is. And psychological memory is made up of things that you think, or you have been conditioned to think, were wrong and you did them. Then there is a wound, a psychological wound.
-Osho, "From Darkness to Ligh, #2, Q1"