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He asked the Babylonians, "Would you like to have one commandment?"
They said, "What is it?" Naturally, first you should inquire what the commandment is.
God said, "You should not commit adultery."
The Babylonians said, "Forget all about it. What shall we do then? In this meaningless life, adultery is the only game. Just get lost!"
God was very angry, but what to do? If they won't take ... He went to the Egyptians, he went to other races, but everybody asked, "First tell us what the commandment is." And they all refused. They said, "We don't want anybody else to tell us what to do. We want to find from our own innermost spring what is right and what is wrong."
And then finally he came across Moses, who had been struggling in the desert of Saudi Arabia for forty years continuously to find the Holy Land, Israel. Almost two-thirds of the original group that he had taken from Egypt had died on the way.
By the time he reached Israel he was old, utterly tired, and there had grown a generation gap, because his old friends with whom he had come had almost all died; a new generation had come up. In fact, a third generation was growing up, and they didn't have any respect for Moses. They didn't know the fellow: Who is this man who goes on commanding, "Do this, don't do that"?
But it was not his fault. It was God who had met Moses, and not knowing the Jews exactly, he asked him, "Would you like to have one commandment?" -- very hesitantly, because he had been refused everywhere else.
But Moses asked a totally different question. He did not ask, "What is the commandment?", he said, "How much does it cost?" Just like a Jew ...
God said, "It is free."
Then Moses said, "I will take ten. If it is free, why take only one?"
But any commandments taken from anybody -- even from God -- are not going to give you a revolution in your being. They will only create an actor, a pretender, a hypocrite, a repressed person, inhibited, feeling guilty on every account. Whatever he does goes against the commandments.
But ten commandments are nothing compared to Gautam Buddha, who has thirty-three thousand principles
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