Saadi is a great poet and a great philosopher, he is a wise man. And remember, by “wise man” I don’t mean a man who knows much, no. Knowledge has nothing to do with wisdom. Remember knowledge is a substitute, a false substitute for wisdom. Wisdom grows in your consciousness; knowledge is implanted in you, imposed on you. Knowledge you get from the universities, wisdom you get from life itself; no university can give it to you. You have to live life. Knowledge you can get from books, scriptures, teachers, experienced people, by your own life’s experiences; wisdom is a totally different phenomenon. Wisdom you get only if you are open, vulnerable to existence, in deep love with existence. Then an old, dead leaf falling from a tree will give you wisdom. It will show you the momentariness of life, it will give you a message of death. And the way it falls – so gracefully, so fearlessly – will also give you wisdom, that this is the way to die. In the morning the rose blooms and by the evening it has gone. Coming, it was joy, going, it is joy.

 

Wisdom comes from watchfulness – not by study but by awareness, not by concentration but by meditation. One has to be just open to this infinite splendor called life. One has to be open to the earth and to the sky. One has to be open to everything, each and everything. Without judgment, one has to be open; then wisdom comes.

 

If you judge, you prevent; if you choose, you prevent; if you condemn, you prevent; if you evaluate, you prevent. The man who wants wisdom to shower on him remains just a pure witness. Thoughtless, he looks; he is just a mirror, he reflects. He does not conclude, he is not in a hurry. He never gathers knowledge; he goes on learning. He goes on learning, but never gathers knowledge.

 

The knowledgeable person lives in his memory, in the past. The wise man lives in the present – not in his memory but in his awareness this very moment. Saadi is a wise man.

 

A man came to Saadi and said: “I wish for perception, so that I shall become wise.” Now, no one can become wise. It is not an effort. One can become knowledgeable; it is an endeavor, an enterprise. One can cultivate knowledge, one cannot become wise. Wisdom is not becoming, it is being. That has to be understood.

 

Becoming is a process of time: today you have this much knowledge, tomorrow you can have more, and the day after tomorrow, more and more and more. Wisdom is not a quantity. Knowledge is a quantity, so the quantity can be more or less. The student has less, the professor has more. But wisdom is never less or more; it is a quality. Buddha is wise, so is Mahavira, and so is Bahauddin, and so is Zarathustra. Now, you cannot say who is wiser, that is not possible. It is not a quantity, you cannot compare. They are all wise. Wisdom knows nothing of more or less.

 

But about knowledge that is possible. You can say, “This professor is more knowledgeable – he has three PhD’s. That professor is not so knowledgeable – he has only one PhD. This professor is more knowledgeable – he has published in many academic journals. He has written so much, so many books have been published. That man, the other man, is not so knowledgeable.”

 

Knowledge is a quantity, it can be compared. Wisdom is not a quantity, it is a quality. You cannot become wise. It is a sudden happening, it is not gradual. It is not that one moment you are wise, and another moment a little more, and a little more, and gradually one day you become perfectly wise. No, it happens instantly: it is a sudden enlightenment, it is a state of being. When you have dropped all knowledge, it happens. When you have come out of the prison that the society has created for you, it happens. When you are again a child, it happens.

 

Remember the words of Jesus: “Unless you are like a small child, you will not enter my Kingdom of God.” What does he mean? Unless you attain the same freedom that you were born with, “…you will not enter my Kingdom of God.” Drop all that the society has given to you: character, morality, the idea of good and bad, the division of body and soul, the split between the earth and heaven. Drop all that the society has imposed on you. Become innocent again, a clean slate, and suddenly you are wise.

 

Wisdom is something that happens like a sudden lightning. That is the meaning of enlightenment, satori, samadhi.

 

The man said to Saadi: “…I wish for perception, so that I shall become wise.” Now, he is asking a wrong question. But people are not aware of what they are saying, they go on using words. He has heard, he is using words. He does not know with whom he is talking. He is not even aware that he is facing a buddha. Saadi is an enlightened man, but the man is talking in the same way, in the same gibberish, that he has been speaking to other people. He is perfectly unaware of whom he is talking with.

 

I have heard…

 

A lady went into a pet shop to buy a bird. She saw one that interested her. “What kind of bird is that?” she asked the salesman.

 

“That is a crunch-bird,” he replied. “Let me show you what he can do.”

 

“Crunch-bird, my paper!” the man ordered. The bird flew down and in one gulp ate the sheet of paper.

 

“Crunch-bird, my pencil!” The crunch-bird swooped down and swallowed the pencil.

 

“He is wonderful!” said the lady. “I will buy him.”

 

The lady brought the bird home. Her husband looked at the bird and wondered what kind of bird it was. He had never seen a bird quite like it before.

 

“That, my dear,” the wife boasted, “is a crunch-bird.”

 

The husband scratched his head, “Crunch-bird?” he said. “Crunch-bird, my foot!”

 

Talking to a Buddha, or to a Saadi, or to a Bahauddin, you should be a little more alert about what you are saying. You should be very careful of what words you are using. And if you are really careful and alert you may not use any words. You may simply bow down, you may simply put your head at the feet of Saadi and wait there for him to say something to you – because what can you ask? Out of your confusion only a confused question will arise. What can you ask out of your unclarity, out of your ignorance, darkness? What can you ask?

 

It is said, when a disciple of Buddha went to see Buddha for the first time…

 

He was a great scholar, one of the very well-known in India in those days; his name was Sariputra. When he went to Buddha for the first time, he went with five hundred disciples, his own disciples; they were all great scholars. He was a well-known Brahmin and he was much known for his debates. He had the capacity to defeat anybody. He used to roam around the country with his disciples, quarreling, debating, discussing, defeating other scholars. He was victorious in his art, nobody had yet been able to defeat him.

 

His disciples were very thrilled that now they were going to defeat Buddha. Sariputra could defeat anybody. They knew it, they had seen it happen again and again, but they were not aware of what was going to happen. The moment Sariputra saw Buddha he started crying, tears came into his eyes. The disciples were bewildered: they could not believe it, they had never seen such a thing. Sariputra was a very arrogant scholar, roaming around the country defeating every kind of philosopher, imposing his philosophy. Crying? A great silence descended. Even Buddha’s disciples could not believe it. They were also waiting: “There is going to be a great debate and discussion.”

 

Sariputra bowed down, put his head at Buddha’s feet and remained there. Buddha asked him, “Do you want to ask anything, Sariputra?”

 

He said, “No. Seeing you, all questions have disappeared. I want to be here with you. If some day you feel that I am worthy and you would like to say something to me, you can say it. But if you don’t say anything, then too I will be contented. I am contented. Seeing you, I have seen all that is worth seeing.” This is the way to approach a man who is wise.

 

The man said to Saadi: “…I wish for perception so that I shall become wise.” Saadi said, “Perception without wisdom is worse than nothing at all.” What is he asking for in the name of perception? He is asking for knowledge, he is asking for the capacity to see more, to know more. He thinks that wisdom can be caused by something – by perception, by knowledge, by the capacity to see.

 

Wisdom is not caused by anything, wisdom is already the case. You were born wise, wisdom is your nature. All that is needed is to drop the pretensions that you have cultivated. All that is needed is to rediscover. It is already there, somewhere deep down, hidden behind all kinds of rubbish that has continuously been poured into you by the parents, by the teachers, by the professors, by everybody around you.

 

All kinds of nonsense are being poured into every child; it becomes piled up. You call it your ideology, your philosophy, your religion – your communism, your Christianity, your Hinduism. It is just junk! And deep down, hidden behind it, is the real treasure. It has only to be rediscovered.

 

Saadi said, “Perception without wisdom is worse than nothing at all.” Knowledge can be dangerous if you are not wise. That’s what is happening in the world: people become knowledgeable, and their life loses all meaning. Just go and see the knowledgeable people – they are the most lost, they feel life to be absolutely meaningless. They cannot feel any joy. They are continuously wondering why they are alive at all: “Why not commit suicide?” Maybe they are cowardly and cannot commit suicide, but they are not able to answer why they are living, for what. They don’t feel any purpose anywhere. Life seems to be accidental, unnecessary. They can’t see the point where they are needed in any way. They are feeling uprooted. The more knowledgeable a person is, the more he feels uprooted.

 

Knowledge does not lead to wisdom, knowledge leads to madness. Knowledge does not lead to enlightenment, it leads to deeper and darker unconscious realms of your being. Knowledge takes all celebration away from your life – it destroys all poetry, all song, all dance. It makes you serious.

 

Wisdom knows how to laugh, knowledge cannot laugh. Knowledge is always serious, wisdom is playful. Wisdom knows how to live, how to love, how to laugh. Wisdom is light, knowledge is heavy. You cannot attain wisdom through knowledge.

 

That’s what the person is asking, and that’s what everybody is thinking: “If I gather a little more knowledge I will be wiser.” You will not be; you will be less wise. The more you know, the less you will know. Socrates was right when, at the end of his long life, he said, “I know only one thing – that I know nothing.” This is wisdom.

 

Knowledge creates specialists who know more and more about less and less, and finally end up by knowing all about nothing. Wisdom is a totally different dimension: it is the dimension of being, not of becoming.

 

- Osho, "The Secret, #3"