The sixth question:

Question 6

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CHILD AND A BUDDHA?

There are great similarities and great differences.

The child is as innocent as a Buddha. They are as full of wonder... Buddhas are as full of wonder as any child. The child functions from a state of not-knowing, so functions a Buddha -- but there are differences too, and great differences.

The child's innocence is a natural innocence -- it will be lost, it will have to be regained. The child's innocence is only un-experience, it is not an earned phenomenon. It is like the first teeth: they will fall, the milk-teeth are going to fall. The child is going to go astray; it has to go, it has to fall from its innocence. That is the meaning of the biblical story of Adam's fall; Adam means every child. It is not a story that happened somewhere in the past, it happens every day. Whenever a child is born it happens again. It is repeated again and again. It is one of the most significant parables ever discovered by man. There is no comparison to it.

Each child is born in the Garden of Eden, is innocent, naked, knows nothing and is full of wonder, lives moment-to-moment. When a child is angry he is simply angry -- he is anger, in fact; and when a child is loving he is love, he is simply love. And he goes on moving from one stage to another without any hitch, hesitation. Just a moment before he was so loving, and now he's so angry and he says to you, "I will never see you again!" and the next moment he is sitting in your lap and asking for a story or for a song. It is moment-to-moment, he carries no past. But he will fall. This innocence cannot last. The fall is intrinsic. It is significant too, because only if he falls from this innocence will he attain to that innocence which is called Buddhahood. He has to go astray, he has to lose all track, he has to move in the deepest hell, in misery, in anguish, in agony. Then, through experience of life, he will start moving backwards. He will start searching again for those days of innocence; the memory will haunt him, the nostalgia of them.

That's what happened to the stream when she came across the desert. And when the desert said, "Evaporate to the winds," the stream started feeling some memories arising: "Yes, it has once been so.?'

When you come across a Buddha some memories arise in you and you start feeling, "Yes, I have tasted something of this." The taste is forgotten, almost forgotten, but still something lingers on the tongue. It is not absolutely forgotten. Forgotten, certainly, but one remembers that one has forgotten it -- that much remembrance is there. It is not absolutely erased, it can't be erased. You have lived in that wonder called childhood; coming close to a Buddha again those childhood memories start surfacing. Again you start feeling like becoming a child, the second birth. You become twice-born.

Buddha is again a child, but now this childhood will never be lost. It has been earned. It has come through the experiences, sweet and bitter and all.

Buddhahood is similar to childhood, and yet not similar.

A little boy was prodding his mother's bust and saying, "Mummy, what are these?" Now the mother was too shy to tell him the truth, so she replied. "They are balloons and when you die they get bigger and float you up to heaven."

The lad went away but a short while later he came rushing back in shouting, "Mummy, Mummy, the maid is dying."

His mother was taken aback and asked why he should say that the maid was about to die. "Well," replied the lad, "both her balloons are out, Daddy is blowing them up and she keeps shouting 'God, I'm coming!"'

A child is innocence. He does not know what is what. He trusts. He has not yet doubted, he has not yet fallen from that innocence. He has not tasted of the Tree, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

The teacher explained to her class, "Every good story must contain four elements -- sex, religion, royalty, and mystery. In the next half-hour, produce a short story made up of these four subjects."

Inside of ten minutes a boy announces, "My story is finished."

"So soon!" exclaims the astonished teacher. "Stand up and read it out loud."

"Holy Moses," said the Princess, "I think I am pregnant again. I wonder who done it this time."

This un-knowing, this state of ignorance, this beautiful ignorance, makes the child available to mysteries. The whole life looks like a mysterious world, a fairyland. Everything seems to be so superb, so psychedelic, so colorful. Just small shells on the seabeach, and they look so precious to the child. Just colored stones, and they are Kohinoors. The child lives in a totally different world; he lives in the world of poetry.

The Buddha again enters into that world, and the poetry is enhanced, far deepened by his experiences. He had lost all touch with the innocence; now the innocence has been regained, paradise regained. It was lost; and when you lose something and regain it, then for the first time you recognize its value, its true value. The child cannot have any idea of the value. How can you have an idea of value when you have never lost it? Take the fish out of the ocean and THEN she starts feeling the value of the ocean. In fact, before this moment, she had not even been aware of the ocean. She had taken it for granted.

The child takes everything for granted. He has not yet fallen from grace. He has to fall. The fish has to come to the shore, the fish has to feel the thirst, the misery, the separation -- only then, the jump. And then the ocean feels so beautiful, so tremendously valuable. The value arises through separation. Every child has to become a sinner. That's why it happens again and again that if some child is protected from going astray, if he is protected too much and is never allowed to do anything wrong, he remains shallow, he has no depth. His saintliness is just superficial, skin-deep, or not even that much. Scratch him a little and he will fall.

That's why your many so-called saints look shallow. You can't see the glint of intelligence in their eyes, you can't see the sharpness in their being. They look dull and stale, no sharpness, no intelligence. They have simply been trying not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. They have simply been trying to protect their milk-teeth. They are simply trying not to lose their childhood.

Childhood has to be lost. One has to go into the path of sin. One has to go deep, as deep as possible, into sin. Sin simply means going away from God, going away from your childhood innocence, nothing else. And then, out of the misery that you will create by going away, one day, when the misery has come to a saturation point, when the misery has come to a peak, you will suddenly feel the desire to go back. Enough is enough! That is the moment when one becomes an initiate, a disciple, a sannyasin. That is the moment when one starts searching for the lost land. And when you have arrived, it is the same place, but you are not the same.

So the child and the Buddha exist in the SAME space, but still it is not the same because the child is a child, and a Buddha is Buddha. Buddha is the child who has gone far away and has now come back.

Remember the Jesus parable:

A man had two sons. They quarrelled, they divided his property, and the elder remained with the father and the younger went to the capital. The younger lived a life of sin: gambling, drinking, prostituting. Soon he lost all his property, became a beggar, started begging. The other son remained with the father, worked hard, was obedient, was religious, was virtuous, increased the property tenfold. And one day the news came that the beggar-son was coming back.

He had suffered a lot, he was almost falling apart. He was no longer his old self; all was lost, he was just a miserable lot. But the idea came to him, "I will go back to my father. I am not worthy to be his son, but he can at least accept me as a servant. There are so many servants in my father's house. I will serve as a servant, I am not worthy to be called his son. I will go and fall at his feet and ask for forgiveness. And I will ask just one thing: .that I be a servant, just let me be here."

The father heard the news that the son was coming back. He prepared a great feast, most precious wine was brought from the cellars, he invited all the people of the town. His elder son was in the field working hard the whole day in the hot sun, and when by the evening he was coming back, somebody on the way told him, "Just look at the injustice of your father. This is unfair! You have been serving him, you have been religious, obedient, virtuous, and not a single feast has ever been given for you. And now your father has ordered that the fattest calf has to be butchered for the feast and the best wine has to be brought from the cellars. And there is great rejoicing, because your younger brother is coming back! And he has lost all, all virtue. He has been a sinner. This is unfair!"

And naturally, it looks logically so -- it is unfair.

And the elder son was angry and sad and annoyed and irritated. He went back to the father and he said, "What are you doing? You never gave a single feast for me, I was never welcomed. And what has your other son done that you are arranging such a big feast for him?"

The father laughed and said, "Don't get annoyed. You don't know -- he went astray and is coming back home. He has sinned and is coming back home. He has lost all, and has understood something in losing that all. And you have always been with me; there is no need to welcome you. Let me receive him with great joy. I have been waiting for him."

To whomsoever reads this story, it looks a little unfair. Whatsoever reasons Jesus gives for it, it looks unfair -- but this is how it happens. It is a tremendously meaningful parable.

Your saints who have been just trying to protect their first childhood remain superficial. That was the case with the elder son; he was superficial. His virtue was imitation, his obedience was only fear. He was a coward, he didn't risk. The other son was courageous -- he risked, he gambled, he lost. The sinner one day starts feeling, "I can go back. I can just be a servant in my father's house." That desire for going back is the beginning of Buddhahood. Adam means the child is going away from childhood, Christ means the return of Adam. The child is coming back, back to the natural state of innocence.

So the Buddha and the child exist in the same space, but the child is getting ready to go out of it, and Buddha has come back. He is back home. The child is simply preparing to go away, and Buddha is back home. So they are similar, and they are not similar too. They are as totally different as is possible.

Childhood has to be lost; only then can you attain to Buddhahood.