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When there are no longer any clouds, when your perception is clear, you see the sky – but the sky is indefinable, indescribable, avachya, unspeakable. Nothing can be said about it, and whatever you do say will be wrong. But the enlightened ones have to say something about it because you go on asking and you are not capable of listening to silence – so they have to say something!

Buddha says one thing, Christ says another thing; they are invented things. They cannot agree about those things. That is Buddha’s choice: when he faces you he has to say something to you, to convey something to you, knowing perfectly well that whatever he is saying is going to be misunderstood. But there is no other way to have a communication with you. Even if he wants you to come closer to him, to understand his silence, even if he wants to share his joy with you, he will have to use words to call you closer and closer.

Now, it is his choice to use certain words. Christ chooses different words; that is his choice. Patanjali chooses still others, Lao Tzu still others. They don’t agree about those words, they can’t agree. There is no need – they are all arbitrary. They agree about only one thing: drop the ego, drop the mind. About that they all agree.

Then what happens? – they have different stories to tell. Those stories are all invented stories; they have nothing to do with reality. They are just compromises with you, just to hold your hand a little longer so you can become infected with the buddha. Just to hold your hand a little longer, a buddha has to talk to you.

If he is allowed his own way, he will never talk. Exactly that happened: when Buddha became enlightened, for seven days he remained silent. There was no point in talking. That which had exploded in his being was so vast that there was no way to relate it to others. There was not a single word to indicate toward it. His silence was absolute. The story is beautiful…

The gods in heaven became very disturbed, because it rarely happens that a man becomes a buddha, and if Buddha kept quiet then the message would be lost. And there were a few beings who could be helped by him.

The gods came to Buddha and prayed to him: “Speak, sir!”
Buddha said, “But what is the point? First, whatever I say will not be true.”

The gods said, “We know it will not be true, but it will attract a few people and then slowly, slowly you can lead them toward truth. Let them come. If you don’t speak, nobody will ever come – then how will you lead them to silence? Let words be just traps, just traps, to catch hold of people. Let words be just seduction, because people only understand words. Once they are caught in the net of words, then you can take them anywhere you want – but first let them be caught!”

Buddha again said, “But they will not understand – they will misunderstand. They have always done that – misunderstanding – they will do that again. What is the point?”
The gods said, “But there are a few people, very few, certainly, who can be counted on the fingers – they will understand.”

Buddha insisted again. He said, “Those few who will be able to understand me will be able to reach on their own. I don’t think that they really need me. Maybe on their own they will take a little longer, but those who can understand me are aware enough – they will reach the truth on their own. I need not bother about them. And those who will not understand me, why should I bother about them?”

The gods were in much difficulty as to how to convince Buddha. They conferred amongst themselves: “What to do? This man seems to be stubborn!” They discussed, argued among themselves, and they brought a legal point. They said to Buddha, “You are right: there are many who will not understand you, who will certainly misunderstand you; for them, your speaking is not needed. And there are a few who will understand you, but they are very few, and you are right: they will reach the truth even without you. But between these two, do you think there is nobody? Between these two there are a few who will not go to truth if they don’t get caught by you. And they will not misunderstand you. They may not be able to understand you immediately, but they will not misunderstand you. There is a category between these two categories: think of those people.”

And Buddha could not find anything against it. It looked so logical – and Buddha was a man of logic. He spoke for those few. But whatever he says, there are two things in it: one, the negative part of it. The negative part is: drop the ego, drop the concept of self. About that all enlightened people are in agreement. Once the ego is dropped, then what happens? Then they are not in agreement – not that truth is separate, but truth is vast.

Just think: three blind men are told by a physician, “This medicine will help you, it will cure your eyes. One thing is certain,” says the physician, “your eyes have to be cured, your blindness has to be dropped.”

Now, the three blind men are cured and they are standing there in the garden, and then they go home and they each relate what they have seen – do you think they will agree about it? They will say the same things? About one thing they will agree, that their blindness has disappeared. But what happened after the blindness disappeared will be totally different. Somebody may have seen the colors of the trees, the rainbow, the sun. Somebody else may not have been interested in the trees and the rainbow and the sun, may have looked at people, the faces, eyes, children laughing, jumping; and somebody else may have seen something else.

Those three blind people will agree on one thing, that blindness has to be dropped. But what happens after blindness is dropped will be different – although the world they open their eyes on is the same; but it is a vast world, multidimensional. They will choose according to themselves. And their choice will depend on their likings, dislikings, aptitudes, types.

For example, Buddha says, “When the ego is dropped there is no misery.” Just look at his words: no misery. He never uses the word bliss; whenever he says it, he says “no misery.” Now this seems to be a little roundabout. Why should he say “no misery”?

Mahavira says “bliss.” “When the ego is dropped, you are utterly blissful.” And Buddha says, “Misery disappears; you are in a state of no misery.” There is a great difference, their choice is different, their framework is different. Mahavira always likes positive words. Buddha always likes negative words.

Buddha says that with positive words there is a difficulty, and the difficulty is that they create greed – so he will never use them. For example, if you talk about blissfulness then people become greedy, desire arises. Everybody starts thinking, “I should become blissful! I should have this bliss this Buddha is talking about – I must have it.” And the problem is, if you become desirous of bliss, you will not have bliss. The very desire will be the obstruction.

So Buddha says that by talking positively you have destroyed the possibility. The man has become greedier. First he was greedy about the house and the money and the power and the prestige, now he is greedy about God and bliss and sat-chit-anand and truth – but he is still greedy. Now his desire is even bigger. He is more entangled in desire. You have not helped him – you have even harmed him. So Buddha says, “I am not going to use any positive words. All positive words create desire in people’s minds. I will say only that there is no misery.”

It has some point, some valuable point in it. You don’t become greedy about no misery. Just think of the words “no misery” – “there will be no misery.” You don’t feel any greed, you don’t feel very enthusiastic about that state of no misery. It does not create desire. And Buddha says that only without desire can that state be attained.

But Mahavira also has a point. He says that if you talk about no-misery, no-self, people will not feel enthusiasm.

Now, what Buddha thinks is desire… Mahavira thinks that people will not feel enthusiasm: Who feels enthusiasm for no-misery? Why should one meditate for years and years just to attain a state of no-misery? That does not look very appealing. Why should one go into sadhana – into work upon oneself – just to attain a state of no-selfhood? You will not be there. Just to attain no-selfhood, who will bother? People will become unenthusiastic; they will lose nerve, they will not be attracted toward religion. So Mahavira says that he has to use positive words – bliss, freedom, absolute selfhood.

Both are right and both are wrong. With words, that is the problem. No word is absolutely right and no word is absolutely wrong – it depends on how you look at those words.
That’s why they don’t agree in anything else. Just about one thing they agree: that the ego has to be dropped.