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Osho reprehends Jainism - Time to think
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I have brought many different views appreciating Jainism in my previous posts. This article is little different as I am bringing u a view that fulminate against Jainism. Osho (Rajneesh Jain) criticizes Jainism for their mild way of living.
The below article is an extract from the Osho's book "The Rajneesh Upanishad" and "The Great Pilgrimage: From Here To Here". He questions the correctness of the Jaina approach and urges them to correct their food habit. It is time to think how valid this argument from Osho is........
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Thousands of people have come to me and gone. There was a time I was surrounded by Jainas. Unfortunately I was born in a Jaina family, so naturally my first audience was of Jainas. They were immensely happy because I was saying things which they had never thought about, I was interpreting their scriptures in a totally new way. They had great hope in me. They thought that...
Their religion has remained very small; it is the smallest religion in India. And it is the ancientmost religion--it is more ancient than Hinduism. But what calamity has happened? Even today there are not more than thirty-five lakhs of Jainas in a country of nine hundred million people. What has happened? Jainism is at least seven thousand years old--that is at least. It can be more, older, because in Harrappur and in Mohanjodro two ancient cities have been excavated, and Jaina statues have been found in those cities.
Now it is a scientific fact that those cities were destroyed somewhere between seven thousand and ten thousand years ago, and that is a very conservative estimate. But even if we take that estimate, in ten thousand years the population of the Jainas has remained negligible--thirty-five lakhs. That is not worth any consideration! That is why in the great religions of the world Jainism is never counted--never counted with Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism. They are great religions, and they are all very new as far as Jainism is concerned.
Because of my interpretations they had a tremendous hope in me, that perhaps I may spread their religion to the whole world, take the message to the whole world. But they were unaware--they were my first audience--they were not aware what kind of man I am: I cannot support anything which my heart is not ready to support.
So a few things I have supported in Jainism--people were very happy. But the moment I started telling about things which I cannot support, they were shocked. I have walked on their fingers. Just a small thing--which is so rational--and the Jaina community...their supreme command decided to expel me. I wrote a letter to them saying, "Don't be stupid. I expel you all from my life. You don't have to expel me; you cannot. I am no more part of you."
And what was the reason? I addressed a Jaina conference and told them, "You are the oldest vegetarians of the world. You eat the purest food, but you have not produced a single Nobel prize winner. What is your contribution to art, to music, to science, to mathematics, to painting, to poetry? What is your contribution to the world? There are the Jews who get forty percent of all the Nobel prizes, and the rest of the world has to live only on sixty percent."
And I told them, "The reason is--I have deeply enquired into the matter--that in vegetarian food something is missing which is necessary for intelligence. That is why you have remained retarded."
Vegetarian food is not complete, and particularly for intelligence certain vitamins are missing. Those vitamins can be found in meat. Certainly I cannot support non-vegetarian food. Even though it gives you better intelligence, it destroys your very soul; it makes you cruel, violent, inhuman.
So I suggested to them, "I have found something which should be immediately accepted if any intelligence is left in you, and that is eating eggs which are not fertilized, non-fertilized eggs. They are not living, there is no life. If you leave them they will simply rot and disappear. There is no life in them because the male sperm has not entered into the mother's egg; the mother has grown the egg without the male sperm. It is not alive, so there is no harm in eating it. It is vegetarian."
Suddenly they were very angry. I am suggesting for them to eat eggs, and they are afraid even to eat tomatoes, because tomatoes look like meat--just the color, poor tomatoes...How can they conceive of themselves eating non-fertilized eggs? Somebody stood up and said, "Maybe that is right that they are not living, but they are coming from animals."
I said, "So is milk; what is the difference? If you are avoiding anything that is coming from any living being, your children are from the very beginning against Jainism; they are drinking their mother's milk. And you are drinking milk"--and Jainas drink milk and milk-made products more than anybody. They cannot enjoy meat and non-vegetarian foods, so to substitute they have invented thousands of ways of delicacies made of milk products.
But the very word `egg' was enough for them to leave me completely; the Jainas disappeared. I was dangerous! I was teaching something that they have never done in ten thousand years. No scripture of theirs suggests anything about it. But they were absolutely unable to answer my questions--"If you are eating the purest food, your intelligence should have been the purest flame, the sharpest genius, the most creative, but it has not been so." And immediately--they had come to me because they thought I was supporting their system, but I am not supporting anybody's system--they disappeared....
Now the vegetarians are very much against me. They would like to kill me--although they are vegetarians. They don't want to kill anybody, but as far as I am concerned, they are ready to kill me: "This man is going to teach people to eat eggs."
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