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"Is it a rule of the synagogue that only prime ministers can sit on the balcony?" -- because Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi both were women. Golda Meir did not want to say that in the Jewish tradition the woman is kept separate. But Indira Gandhi thought, "It is because we are both prime ministers, so a special place is being given to us." Yes, it was a special place, but not for prime ministers -- it was for two women. Even though they are prime ministers, it doesn't matter; a woman is a woman.
The people I have spoken of in the past with great respect -- I have to confess to you that I had to drop many aspects of their life, otherwise you would not have been able to understand me at all. Now I want to make the whole thing complete. I want you to know them in their utter nudity -- good, bad, right, wrong. Many of my statements will look contradictory to my old statements. Don't be worried. What I am saying now is the right thing, and whatever I say tomorrow will be more right. The last sentence that I will utter on my death bed will be the ultimate right -- before that you cannot decide. I am alive and I am not in any bondage with the past.
On Buddha, how much I have spoken! But he was very disrespectful about women. He wouldn't allow women to become nuns, he would not initiate them. There seems to be some fear of women deep inside him. And it is clear in his statement -- for almost fifteen years he continued to deny them: "I am not going to initiate women." What is the fear? Why not initiate a woman, when the women are asking to be initiated? Why prevent them from seeking and searching the truth? Is it man's monopoly? Truth also, is it a commodity and man's monopoly?
Finally, very reluctantly he agreed -- but not happily. He had to agree, because the woman who came to ask was the woman who had mothered him. His own mother died in giving birth to Gautam Buddha. His mother's sister remained unmarried, sacrificed her whole life to raise Gautam Buddha. And she gave him more love than any mother can give and she sacrificed her own life, naturally; she poured all that she had on him. When she came -- her name is Mahamaya -- old, tears in her eyes,
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