Question: Beloved Osho, You have said that Krishnamurti can get angry. How is that possible, as in enlightenment there is no one there to be angry?
Osho: Henk Faassen, in enlightenment there is nobody there to get angry, and there is nobody there not to get angry either. So whatsoever happens, happens. Krishnamurti does not get angry the way you get angry. Everything with an enlightened person happens on a totally different plane. His anger comes out of his compassion. Your anger comes out of hate, aggression, cruelty. He becomes angry — sometimes he starts pulling his hair out, he hits his own forehead — but out of compassion.
Just think, for fifty years or more he has been teaching a certain kind of truth to the world, and nobody understands him. The same people gather each year to listen to him — the same people. Once he was talking in Bombay… somebody reported this to me, and the person who reported it to me is an old lady, older than Krishnamurti. She saw Krishnamurti when he was a child, she has seen him and listened to him for fifty years. And because she is a little deaf, very old, she sits in the front on a chair.
And for fifty years Krishnamurti has been saying that there are no methods for meditation, that meditation is not needed at all. Just be in the present and live your life, that’s enough meditation, no other technique is needed…. For one and a half hours he poured his heart out, and at the end the lady stood up and asked, “How to meditate?” Now, what do you suppose he should do? He hit his head. This is not your anger. This is so unbelievable! He is tired of this lady, but this lady is not tired of him.
She comes to every talk to listen to him, and asks the same stupid questions. When I say Krishnamurti can get angry, I don’t mean, Henk, that he can get angry like you get angry. His anger is out of compassion. This situation is unbelievable! He wants to help this lady and he feels so helpless. He tries this way and that. His message is very simple, singular, one-dimensional. For fifty years he has been saying only a single word. In essence his whole teaching can be printed on one side of a postcard.
He has been saying it in as many possible ways as one can invent, but it is the same citadel that he attacks from the north, from the south, from the west, from the east. And still people go on listening to him and go on asking the same old foolish questions. He certainly gets angry. And when a man like Krishnamurti gets angry, he is pure anger. Many in India have felt very disappointed with Krishnamurti because he gets angry. They have a certain concept that a buddha should not get angry. They go with a prejudice.
And when they see that Krishnamurti can get angry, they are disillusioned, “So this man is not a buddha, he has not become enlightened yet.” I say to you that he is one of the most enlightened persons who has ever walked on this earth. Still he can get angry, but his anger comes out of compassion; it is condensed compassion. He cares about you, so much so that he becomes angry. This is a totally different quality of anger.
And when he becomes angry he is real anger. Your anger is partial, lukewarm. Your anger is like a dog who is not certain how to behave with a stranger. He may be a friend of the master, so he wags his tail; he may be an enemy, so he barks. He does both together. On one hand he goes on barking, on the other hand he goes on wagging his tail. He is playing the diplomat, so whatsoever the case turns out to be, he can always feel right. If the master comes and he sees that the master is friendly, the barking will stop and his whole energy will go into the tail.
If the master is angry with the intruder, then the tail will stop completely, and his whole energy will go into barking. Your anger is also like that. You are weighing up how far to go, how much will pay; don’t go beyond the limit, don’t provoke the other person too much. But when a man like Krishnamurti becomes angry he is pure anger. And pure anger has a beauty because it has totality. He is just anger. He is like a small child, redfaced, just anger all over, ready to destroy the whole world. That’s what happened to Jesus.
When he went into the great temple and saw the moneychangers and their tables inside the temple, he was in a rage. He became angry — the same anger that comes out of compassion and love. Singlehanded, he drove all the moneychangers out of the temple and overturned their boards. He must have been really very angry, because driving all the moneychangers out of the temple singlehanded is not an easy thing. And reports say — I don’t know how far they are right, but reports say that he was not a very strong man.
Reports say that he was not even a very tall man; you will be surprised, he was only four feet six inches. And not only that — on top of it he was a hunchback. I don’t know how far those reports are true, because I don’t want to go to court! But it is there in the books, ancient books, very ancient books. So how did this hunchback, four feet six inches high, drive out all the moneychangers singlehanded? He must have been pure rage! Indians are angry about that. They cannot trust that Jesus is enlightened — just because of this incident.
People have their prejudices, their ideas. Rather than seeing into reality, rather than looking into an enlightened man, they come ready with so many concepts, and unless he fits them he is not enlightened. And let me tell you, no enlightened person is going to fit with your unenlightened prejudices; it is impossible. It happened, a lady came to me. She had been a follower of Krishnamurti for many years, then a small thing disturbed the whole thing and the whole applecart was upturned. The thing was so small that I was surprised.
There was a camp in Holland where Krishnamurti holds a camp every year, and the woman had gone there from India. Nearabout two thousand people had gathered from all over the world to listen to him. The next morning the lectures were going to start, and the woman had gone shopping. And she was surprised, Krishnamurti was also shopping. An enlightened person shopping? Can you believe it? Buddha in a supermarket? And not only that — he was purchasing a necktie.
Enlightened people need neckties? And not only that — the whole counter was full of neckties and he was throwing them this way and that, and he was not satisfied with any. The woman watched, looked at the whole scene, and fell from the sky. She thought, “I have come from India for this ordinary man who is purchasing neckties. And even then, of thousands of neckties of all colors and all kinds of material, nothing is satisfying to him. Is this detachment? Is this awareness?”
She turned away. She didn’t attend the camp, she came back immediately. And the first thing she did was to come running to me, and she said, “You are right.”
I said, “What do you mean?”
She said, “You are right that it was useless wasting my time with Krishnamurti. Now I want to become a sannyasin of yours.”
I said, “Please excuse me, I cannot accept you. If you cannot accept Krishnamurti, how can I accept you? Get lost! … Because here you will see far more disappointing things. What are you going to do with my Mercedes Benz? So before it happens, why bother? What are you going to do with my air-conditioned room? Before it happens, it is better that you go and find some Muktananda, etcetera. You have not been able to understand Krishnamurti, you will not be able to understand me.”
People like Krishnamurti live on a totally different plane. Their anger is not your anger. And who knows that he was not just playing with those ties for this stupid old woman? Masters are known to devise things like that. He got rid of this stupid old woman very easily.
Source: from book “The book of wisdom” by Osho
