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Innocence is a state of thoughtless awareness. It is another name for no-mind. It is the very essence of buddhahood. You become attuned with the ultimate law of things. You stop fighting, you start flowing with it.

The cunning mind fights because it is through fight the ego arises, and the cunning mind can exist only around the ego. They can only be together, they are inseparable. If the ego disappears, the cunning mind disappears, and what is left is innocence. If you are fighting with life, if you are going against the current, if you are not natural, spontaneous, if you are living out of the past and not in the present, you are not innocent.

To live according to the past is to live an irresponsible life. It is a life of reaction. You don’t see what the situation is, you simply go on repeating your old solutions. And problems are new every day, every moment. Life goes on changing and the mind remains static. That is the whole problem: the mind remains a static mechanism and life is a constant flux. Hence there can be no communion between life and the mind.

If you remain identified with the mind you will remain almost dead. You will not have any share of the joy that overwhelms existence. You will not be a participant in the celebration that is continuously going on: the birds singing, the trees dancing, the rivers flowing. You also have to be a part of this whole.

You want to be separate, you want to prove yourself higher than others, superior than others, then you become cunning. It is only through cunningness that you can prove your superiority. It is a dream, it is phony, because in existence there is nobody who is superior and nobody who is inferior. The blade of grass and the great star are absolutely equal.

Existence is fundamentally communist. There is no hierarchy. But man wants to be higher than others, wants to conquer nature, hence has to fight continuously. All complexity arises out of this fight.

The innocent person is one who has renounced fighting; who is no longer interested in being higher, who is no longer interested in performing, in proving that he is something special. Who has become like a roseflower or like a dewdrop on the lotus leaf. Who has become part of this infinity. Who has melted, merged, become one with the ocean, is just a wave, has no idea of the “I.” The disappearance of the “I” is innocence.

Hence innocence cannot require that you should live a simple life, innocence cannot require anything of you. All requirements are cunning. All requirements are basically to fight, to be somebody. The so-called simple saint is not simple because he is fighting: fighting with his instincts, fighting with his body. He is continuously at war, never at peace. How can he be simple? He is more complex than ordinary people are. His complexity is, of course, very subtle and invisible. He cannot even sleep peacefully.

Mahatma Gandhi was very much afraid of sleep for the simple reason that while he was awake he was able to repress his sexual desire. He believed in celibacy. He believed that celibacy is a basic requirement for a simple life, innocent life. While awake he was able to repress, to control, to be the master of the instinct, but in sleep all control disappears. The mind goes to sleep. The controlling, the fighting mind is no longer in power and the repressed starts surfacing. Hence, sexual dreams. He was suffering from sexual dreams even when he was seventy, and he was afraid of sleep. Saints have always been afraid of sleep. What kind of saints are these people? Sleep should be one of the most innocent things in life, and they are afraid of it. The fear comes because of a certain requirement that they have imposed upon themselves, which they cannot fulfill in sleep. In sleep, sex will surface. You may start dreaming things that you don’t want, but now you cannot have control over things.

It is because of this fact that psychoanalysis is more interested in your dreams than in your waking life. It is strange, it is ironical, but it is very indicative: indicative of man and his repressions. You can’t trust a man while he is in the so-called awake state. You cannot trust him. He is bound to falsify things, he is bound to be phony. And it may not be that he is deliberately phony. He may have become so accustomed to his phoniness that that’s all he knows about himself. He may have repressed his natural instincts so deeply, buried them so deep underground, that he himself has become absolutely unaware of their presence. You cannot trust what he says about himself when he is awake. You can only trust his dreams. Hence psychoanalysis has to go into your dreams, because your dreams show your reality more clearly than what you say when you are awake. What kind of awakening is this? Your dreams are far more natural, far more authentic, than your waking life.

Mahatma Gandhi suffered to the very end from sexual dreams. He was very much afraid of sleep, as all the saints have always been. They always go on cutting their hours of sleep. And people think if the saint sleeps only two hours he is such a great saint. He only sleeps for two hours! And the reason he sleeps for two hours is fear: fear of his own unconscious. It is not a simple life, it is very complex.

He goes on starving himself in the name of fasting. As if starving your body is in any way going to help you to come closer to God: as if God is a sadist and he wants you to be tortured. Do you think God is an Adolf Hitler, a Mussolini, a Genghis Khan, a Tamerlane or a Nadir Shah? What do you think about God? No father would like his children be starved. But all religions, the so-called religions – Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Mohammedanism – all preach fasting because fasting gives you great ego.

These two are basic instincts: food and sex. Food is needed for your survival, and sex is needed for the survival of the race. Both are basically needed for survival. If everybody fasts, and everybody becomes a celibate, there is no need for atom bombs! There will be no third world war. People will die on their own accord. Sex and food are deeply joined: food keeps the individual alive, and sex keeps the race alive. That is their similarity: sex is food for the race, and food is sex for the individual.

Hence, one more point is to be remembered: if you repress sex you will start eating more food because you will have to compensate. If you stop eating enough food for the body, you will become more and more sexual. You will have to compensate. And your saints are against both.

Your saints are suicidal. Of course, their suicide is a very, very slow suicide. They are not even courageous enough to commit it in a single blow. They go on cutting themselves limb by limb, they go on destroying themselves slowly. They enjoy the whole process, they are masochists. They torture themselves and they feel that by torturing themselves they are purifying themselves and they are becoming holier.
They are simply becoming pious egoists. And the pious egoist is far more dangerous than the ordinary egoist, because the ordinary egoist has a very gross ego. He knows he has it, everybody else knows he has it.

The politician lives with the gross ego, and the saint, the mahatma, lives with a very subtle ego – and with such a facade of holiness that others will not be able to see it. He is so humble, he is so surrendered to God… And he lives such a simple life – little food, clothes are… There are saints who don’t use clothes at all. Jaina saints live naked. Their requirements are almost none. Living a naked life in a cave, in a primitive way, they seem to be very nonpossessive. But that is only an appearance. Deep down they are hankering for heaven, deep down they are greedy. Deep down they are thinking nobody is more humble, more pious than they are. Deep down they think about you as sinners and themselves as saints.

This is a very complex situation. This is a fight with themselves. They have divided themselves into two: the higher and the lower. Even in the body they have a division: the higher part and the lower part. Above the sexual organs the body is higher, below the sexual organs it is lower – as if the body is divided anywhere. These stupid people should know that the body is one. The blood circulates continuously from the feet to the head, from the head to the feet. It knows no division. Life pulsates all over the body. The body is an orgasm, an organic unity, a deep ecstasy. But if you divide it, you disturb its orgasmic quality. If you divide it, you become schizophrenic.

And they divide the body, they divide the mind: the good mind, the bad mind, the sinner’s mind, the saint’s mind. And this way they go on becoming more and more schizophrenic. This is not simplicity, this is pathology. And they live in misery. They will never know anything of joy, they will not know anything of laughter. They have condemned laughter as a sin. That’s why Christians say Jesus never laughed. They can’t believe Jesus laughing; that looks so profane, almost sacrilegious. Ask the Jainas. They don’t say anything in their scriptures, but they will also agree with Christians, that Mahavira also never laughed.

How can these ideas create simple human beings? Those who cannot laugh, those who cannot dance, those who cannot sing, those who cannot enjoy the very ordinariness of life… I don’t think that Christians or Jainas are right. I know Jesus, he laughed. I know him not through the scriptures. I know Mahavira. If he cannot laugh, then who will laugh? I know them from my innermost being. But the people who have imposed on them the idea of no laughter, of no joy, are the people who have been driving the whole humanity crazy, mad, insane. They have converted the whole earth into a mad asylum.

You ask me, “What is innocence? Does being innocent require one to live a simple life?”

Innocence requires nothing. If it requires, it becomes complex. Innocence simply lives without any idea of how to live. Bring in the “how” and you become complex. Innocence is a simple response to the present.
Ideas are the accumulated past. How Buddha lived – live like that and you will be a Buddhist. How Jesus lived – live like that and you will be a Christian. But you will be imposing something upon yourself.

Existence never creates two persons alike. Each individual is unique. So if you impose Jesus upon yourself you will be phony. All Christians are bound to be phony – all Hindus, all Jainas, all Buddhists – because they are trying to be somebody they cannot be. You can’t be Gautam Buddha. You can be a buddha, but not Gautam Buddha. Buddha means awakened – that is your birthright – but Gautam is an individual. You can be a christ, but not Jesus Christ; Jesus is an individual. Christ is another name for buddhahood. It is the ultimate state of consciousness. Yes, that is possible, that is your potential. You can bloom and flower into christ consciousness, but you can never be Jesus, that is not possible and it is good that it is not possible. But that’s how so-called religious people have lived: trying to follow somebody else, imitating. Now, an imitator cannot be simple. He constantly has to adjust life to his ideas.

A really innocent person goes with life, he simply flows with life. He has no goal as such. If you have a goal you can’t be innocent. You will have to be clever, cunning, manipulating. You will have to plan, and you will have to follow certain maps. How can you be innocent? You will be carrying so much rubbish from others. You will be just a carbon copy of Jesus, Buddha, or Mahavira. You will not be the original.
Bodhidharma says again and again, “Find your original face.” And the only way to find your original face is to drop all imitation. Who is going to decide what the requirement is? Nobody can decide, and any decision is bound to disturb because life may not turn the way you expect it to turn. It really never turns the way it is expected. Life is a constant surprise. You cannot prepare beforehand. Life needs no rehearsal.

You have to be spontaneous; that is innocence. Now, if you are spontaneous you cannot be Christian and you cannot be Hindu and you cannot be Buddhist. You have to be a simple human being. Simplicity is not a requirement but a by-product of innocence. It comes just like your shadow. Don’t try to be simple. If you try to be simple, the very effort destroys simplicity. You cannot cultivate simplicity; a cultivated simplicity is superficial. Simplicity has to follow you like a shadow. You need not bother about it. You need not look back again and again to see whether the shadow is following you or not. The shadow is bound to follow you.

Attain innocence, and simplicity comes as a gift from existence. And innocence means becoming a no-mind, a no-ego: dropping all ideas of goals, achievements, ambitions, and living just as it happens in the moment.

So I don’t tell you to be celibate. Yes, one day celibacy can happen, but it will not be something to be practiced. It will be something that you will see happening. Yes, certainly, before one becomes a buddha, one becomes celibate, but that is not a requirement, remember. Remember again and again: it is not a requirement that you have to fulfill, then you will become a buddha.

No, if you simply go on becoming more aware of your mind, as the mind starts disappearing, becomes distant and distant from you, and you become unidentified with the mind, and you start seeing that you are separate, that you are not the mind, you will find many things happening with this disappearance of the mind. You will start living moment to moment, because it is the mind that collects the past. You cannot depend on it. Your eyes will be clear, not covered with the dust of the past. You will be free from the dead past. And one who is free from the dead past is free to live: to live authentically, sincerely, passionately, intensely. One can become aflame with life and its celebration.

But the mind is continuously distorting, continuously interfering, continuously telling you, “Do this. Do that.” It is like a schoolmaster. A meditator becomes free of the mind. And once the past is no longer dominating you, the future simply disappears because the future is nothing but a projection of the past. In the past you have experienced certain pleasures and you would like to repeat them again and again; that is your projection for the future. In the past you have been through many miseries. Now you project into the future that you don’t want those miseries again. Your future is nothing but a modified form of the past. Once the past is gone, the future is gone.

Then what is left? This moment – now. To live in the now and in the here is innocence. You cannot follow religious commandments if you really want to be innocent. A man who constantly has to think what to do and what not to do, a man who has constantly worried about what is right and what is wrong, cannot live innocently. Even if he goes on doing right according to his conditioning, it is not right. He is simply following others, how can it be right? It may have been right for them. What was right for one person two thousand years ago can’t be right for you today. So much water has gone down the Ganges! Life is never the same for even two consecutive seconds. Heraclitus is right: you cannot step twice in the same river. And I say to you: you cannot step even once in the same river. The river is so fast flowing.

An innocent person lives not according to certain requirements imposed by the society, church, state, parents, education. The innocent person lives out of his own being, responsibly. He responds to the situation that is confronting him. He takes the challenge, he accepts the challenge, and does whatever in this moment his being wants to do – not according to certain principles.

The innocent man has no principles, no ideology; the innocent man is absolutely unprincipled. The innocent man has no character. He is absolutely characterless – because to have a character means to have a past. To have a character means to be dominated by others. To have a character means the mind is still the dictator and you are just a slave.

To be characterless, to be unprincipled, and to live in the moment… Just as the mirror reflects whatever is in front of the mirror, your consciousness reflects and you act out of that reflection. That is awareness, that is meditativeness, that is samadhi; that is innocence, that is godliness, that is buddhahood.

There is no requirement in innocence, not even the requirement to live a simple life. You can live a simple life, you can force a simple life upon yourself: it will not be simple. And you can live in a palace in all the luxuries, but if you live in the moment you are living a simple life. You can live like a beggar and you will not be simple if your effort to be a beggar is something you have imposed upon yourself. If it has become your character then you are not simple. Yes, once in a while it has happened that even a king lives a simple life. A simple life not in the sense that he had not the palace and the possessions – they were there – but he was not possessive.

This has to be understood: you may not have any possessions yet you may be possessive. Possessiveness can exist without possessions. If that is so, then the vice-versa is also true: nonpossessiveness can exist with all kinds of possessions. One can live in the palace and yet be totally free of it.

There is a Zen story…

A king was very much impressed by the simple and innocent life of a Buddhist monk. Slowly, slowly he accepted him as his master. The king watched: he was a very calculating man. He inquired about the monk’s character: “Is there any loophole in his life?” When he was totally convinced logically… His detectives informed him that “This man has no dark spots in his life, he is absolutely pure, simple. He is really a great saint, he is a buddha” – then he went to the man, touched his feet and said, “Sir, I invite you to come to my palace and live there. Why live here?”

Deep down, although he was inviting the saint, he was expecting that the saint would reject, that he would say, “No, I am a simple man. How can I live in the palace?” Although he was inviting him! You see the complexity of human mind: he was inviting him, he was hoping that if the invitation was accepted he would be greatly joyous, and still there was an undercurrent: that the saint, if he is truly a saint, would reject him. He will say, “No, I am a simple man, I will live under the tree. This is my simple life. I have left the world, I have renounced the world. I cannot come back to it.”

But the saint was really a saint; he must have been a buddha. He said, “Okay. So where is the vehicle? Bring your chariot and I will come to the palace.” He said, “Of course, when one comes to the palace one has to come in style. Bring the chariot!” The king was very much shocked: “This man seems to be a cheat, a fraud. It seems that he was pretending all this simplicity just to catch hold of me.” But now it was too late. He had invited him and he could not go against his own word. Being a man of his word – a samurai, a warrior, a great king – he said, “Okay, now I am caught. This man is not worth anything: he did not even reject once. He should have rejected!”

He had to bring the chariot, but he was no longer happy, he was not joyous. But the saint was very happy. He sat in the chariot like a king, and the king sat in the chariot very sad, looking a little silly. And people were watching on the streets: “What is happening? The naked fakir…” And he was really sitting like an emperor, and the king was looking very poor compared to this man. The monk was so joyous, so bouncing with ecstasy. And the more ecstatic he was, the sadder the king became.

“Now, how to get rid of this man? I have become caught in his net on my own. All those detectives and spies are fools. They could not see that this man had a plan.” As if he was sitting under that tree for years so that the king became impressed. All these ideas came into the head of the king.

The king had arranged the best room for the saint, if he was to come. But he did not believe that he would ever come. You see the split of the human mind: you go on doing one thing, you go on expecting something else. If the man was cunning he would have simply denied. He would have said, “No!”

If you take money to Vinoba Bhave, he closes his eyes, and deep down you say, “Now, this is a saint!” Bring the money to me and I will take the money and I will not even thank you. Then you will be very shocked: “What kind of man is this?”

I was travelling in the Impala and people started writing to me: “You should not move in an Impala.” I said, “That is true. So,” I told Laxmi, “find something else, something better, because in America the Impala is just a plumber’s car.” So Laxmi has brought a Buick. Now people are saying, “Are you going to travel in a Buick?” I told Laxmi, “This won’t do. Find something better, because the Buick is the pimp’s car in America!” So now Laxmi is bringing a Cadillac.

The king had arranged the best room. The saint reached the room – he was sitting under the tree for years – and he said, “Bring this, bring that… If you have to live in the palace you have to live like a king!”
The king was getting more and more puzzled. Of course, he had invited him, so whatever was asked for was brought. But it was heavy on the heart of the king; it was becoming heavier every day, because the saint started living like a king – in fact, better than the king because the king had his own worries and the saint had none.

He would sleep in the day, in the night. He would enjoy the garden and the swimming pool, and he would rest and rest. And the king thought, “This is a parasite!” One day it became unbearable. He said to the saint… The saint was in the garden for a morning walk, and the king came and said, “I want to say something to you.” The saint said, “Yes, I know. You wanted to say it even before I had left my tree. You wanted to say it when I accepted your invitation. Why did you wait so long? You are unnecessarily suffering. I can see you have become sad. You don’t come to me anymore. You don’t ask great metaphysical, religious questions as you used to ask me when I used to live under the tree. I know – but why did you waste six months? That I can’t see. You should have asked immediately, and things would have settled then and there. I know what you want to ask, but ask!”

The king said, “I want to ask only one thing. Now what is the difference between me and you? You are living more luxuriously than I am living. And I have to work and I have to worry and I have to carry all kinds of responsibilities, and you have no work, no worry, no responsibility. I am feeling jealous of you! And I have certainly stopped coming to you, because I don’t think there is any difference between me and you. I live in possessions, you live in more possessions than I. Every day you inquire, ‘Bring the golden chariot. I want to go for a walk in the country. Bring this and bring that!’ And you are eating delicious food. And you have stopped being naked, now you are using the best clothes possible. Then what is the difference between me and you?”

The saint laughed and he said, “The question is such that I can answer it only if you come with me. Let us go outside the capital.” The king followed. They crossed the river and they continued. The king asked again and again, “Now what is the point of going on further? Why not answer now?” The saint said, “Wait a little. I am in search of the right spot where to answer.” Then they came to the very boundary of his kingdom, and the king said, “Now it is time, this is the very boundary.” The saint said, “That’s what I have been searching for. Now I am not going back. Are you coming with me or are you going back?” The king said, “How can I come with you? I have my kingdom, my possessions, my wives, my children. How can I come with you?”

And the saint said, “Now you see the difference? But I am going and I will not look backward even once. I was in the palace, I lived with all kinds of possessions, but I was not possessive. You are possessive. That is the difference. I am going.” He undressed, became naked, gave the clothes to the king and said, “Keep your clothes and be happy again.”

Now the king realized that he had been foolish: this man was rare, a rare gem. He fell at his feet and he said, “Don’t go. Come back. I have not understood you yet. Today I have seen the difference. Yes, that is true sainthood.” The saint said, “I can come back, but remember, you will become sad again. For me there is no difference whether to go this side or that side, but you will become sad again. Now, let me make you happy. I am not coming, I am going.”

The more the saint insisted to go, the more the king insisted for him to come back. But the saint said, “Once is enough. I have seen you are a stupid person. I can come, but the moment I say ‘I can come,’ I can see in your eyes the old ideas coming back: ‘Maybe he is cheating me again. Maybe this is just an empty gesture, giving me the clothes and saying “I am going,” so I become impressed again.’ If I come, you will be miserable again and I don’t want to make you miserable.”

Remember the difference: the difference is not in possessions, the difference is in possessiveness. A simple person is not one who possesses nothing, a simple person is one who has no possessiveness, who never looks back. This simplicity cannot be practiced. This simplicity can come only as a consequence of innocence. Otherwise, you will practice on one hand, and from some other corner of your being… And you are a vast continent; you are not like an island, you are a really vast continent.

In the deepest core of your being there is still uncharted territory, unmapped territory. You still carry a great, dark, continent like Africa inside you, which you have never traveled, of which you are not even aware: of its presence you are unaware. If you repress – and that’s what cultivation is – then it will start coming in another form from somewhere else. You will become more and more complex in this way. More and more cunning and calculating in this way. More disciplined, more with a character which people respect and honor.

If you want to enjoy your ego, the best way is to be a holy man. But if you really want to celebrate existence, the best way is to be absolutely ordinary, utterly ordinary, and live an ordinary life with no pretensions.

Live moment to moment: that is innocence, and innocence is enough. Don’t try to become simple. Millions of people have tried, and they have not become simple at all. On the contrary, they have become very, very complex, entangled in their own jungle, in their own ideas.

Get out of the mind: that is innocence. Be a no-mind: that is innocence. And everything else follows. When everything else follows, it has a beauty of its own. Cultivated, it is plastic, synthetic, not natural. Uncultivated, when it comes, it is a grace, it is a benediction.