교육에 대하여... (영문)

BELOVED MASTER,

I AM AN UNEDUCATED MAN. CAN I STILL BECOME ENLIGHTENED?

John, there is more possibility for you than for an educated man. The education that exists in the world is not true education. True education will be a help towards enlightenment because it will make you more meditative, more silent, more aware, more inward-looking.

The education that exists in the world makes you more ambitious, outward-looking, more egoistic, more superficial. It gives you all kinds of wrong values. It is a kind of poisoning. It does not help you, in any way, to be yourself. It is destructive. It helps you to be somebody else, and that's its very destructive foundation. It is a poisoning, but so slow that you never become aware. It begins the day you are born and it goes on slowly slowly destroying you, distracting you from your nature.

By the time you come out of the university you are no longer a natural being. You are artificial, arbitrary. Universities are like factories, assembly lines, where man is destroyed and machines are created, where man is reduced to a machine.

Enlightenment means discovering your being. It has nothing to do with education. In fact, those who are educated will have to become, in a certain sense, uneducated again. Those who are knowledgeable will have to cease to be knowledgeable. They will have to become again childlike, innocent, so their eyes can be full of wonder, surprise, so they can again see the tremendous beauty of existence, the eternal joy, the celebration that surrounds you. But the knowledgeable person is absolutely unaware because he thinks he knows; that is his barrier.

less you wonder. And God is only for those whose wonder is total, who know the experience of being in awe; those who can dance with the wind and the sun and the rain; those who, seeing a roseflower, are so struck by its beauty that they become speechless, that for a moment their minds stop functioning. only those few can know God. only those few can become enlightened.

John, you are fortunate. Of course, if you are educated you will be able to earn more money -- but not more meditation. You will be able to have more political power because you will be more cunning, more clever -- but not insight into your own being. You may be able to possess many things, but that will be only a deception. In fact, things will possess you because you will not be your own master. It is better to possess one's own being than to possess the whole world. It is better to be a buddha -- a beggar -- than to be Alexander the Great, because the buddha lives a full life and dies a full death, and Alexander the Great lives an empty life, hollow, somehow stuffing it in an effort to convince himself that he is not empty, and then dies utterly empty.

When he died he said to his generals, "Let my hands hang out of my coffin."

"Why?" they asked, because that was not the way to carry a dead body.

He said, "That may not be conventional, but I would like my hands to hang out of my coffin so people can see that I am dying empty-handed."

That's how his body was carried. Millions of people had gathered to see, and everybody was wondering, "Why are his hands hanging out?" And, slowly slowly, the rumor went around that Alexander wanted it to be known by everybody that he was going empty-handed. His life had been utterly futile.

John, no need to be worried about education, knowledge. In the inner world, the ordinary education is not needed -- something else, a TRUE education.

The word 'education' is beautiful. It means "drawing something out": drawing out that which is within you. In fact, we should not use it for the ordinary education. It is wrong to use a beautiful word like 'education' for this rotten system of schools, colleges and universities. It is not education in the literal sense even, because instead of drawing out what is within you it forces things from the outside upon you. It is an imposition.

Real education is like drawing water from a well, not pouring something into the well. Real education is drawing out your being so that your inner luminosity starts filtering through your body, through your behavior.

I am reminded of a beautiful story. It really happened, it is not just a story.

Stosh, a new immigrant, got off a boat at Ellis Island and set about finding himself a job. Door-to-door inquiries brought no luck until he rang the bell of a whorehouse. The madam was sympathetic and employed him to clean up the basement. After completing the task in record time, Stosh asked for further work, whereupon the madam suggested that he become their permanent bookkeeper.

When Stosh explained that he could neither read nor write, the madam paid him ten cents and sent him off on his way with her best wishes.

With the ten cents Stosh bought two apples in the market. He ate one and sold the other in the town center for ten cents. He returned to the market and bought two more apples which he sold again for ten cents each. Increasing his business this way he eventually became the owner of a small fruit wagon, then several fruit wagons, then a small fruit store, then a supermarket, and finally a chain of supermarkets.

When several of the giant national food chains offered to buy him out, he accepted the highest bid -- seven and a half million dollars. The contracts were drawn up and the corporate executive and Stosh, surrounded by a large number of attorneys, met in the plush corporate offices atop one of Manhattan's most prestigious skyscrapers. The contracts were looked over, heads were nodded and finally the executive signed on the relevant dotted line. Then Stosh picked up the solid gold pen and laboriously scrawled his 'X' at the bottom of the page.

The corporate executive leaped up from his chair and shouted, "My God, man! You mean to say you have amassed this business worth seven and a half million dollars without being able to read or write?"

"Hell!" snorted Stosh emphatically. "If Stosh could read or write, Stosh would still be a bookkeeper in a whorehouse!"

- OSHO, <The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 10>, Chapter #12 -