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Book Name: From Ignorance to InnocencePrevious     Next
 

I don't know what you call it in English -- KHATMAL...?

"It means 'bedbug', Osho."

Bedbug -- that is a parasite. Jainas cannot kill them because of their philosophy of non-violence. They cannot kill them, but if nobody sleeps on those cots, the bedbugs will die -- so they hire people. They will give you five rupees per night: you sleep in a cot full of bedbugs and they will suck your blood the whole night. Non-violent people are not necessarily life-reverent. Now what kind of business is going on? They are saving the bedbugs -- but what about these poor men? But they don't think about that. They are paying them so there is no problem about it. They have agreed to sleep on the cots; and they are paying them.

But just to think of the idea... that you will put a man in such a situation. And the man must be in trouble because why should he be ready, for five rupees, to destroy his whole life? Maybe his mother is dying, maybe his wife is in the hospital, maybe his father had an accident and those five rupees are very essential for medicine, for food, for something. And every day there is a line; all the people don't get in. Only one hundred cots are there; those who get in are fortunate. And these people who are paying them are earning virtue. Their bank balance in the other world is growing: they have saved so many bedbugs from dying. A strange love affair -- with bedbugs. And they don't think about this man, the whole night being tortured. No, for him they have paid, so there is no guilt about that.

I want you to remember: a man believing in nonviolence need not be necessarily life-reverent. But one who reveres life is bound to be non-violent -- that is just its necessary corollary. But his non-violence will have a totally different flavor. It will not be Mahatma Gandhi's non-violence.

For example: Gandhi is continually trying to teach non-violence to his disciples -- and following it himself He is not a fraud; whatsoever he believes may be wrong, but he does it with his totality. His intention is always sincere, you cannot doubt his sincerity, but his intelligence is not so indubitable. And a man with strong intentions, but not a

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