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also we are burdened with the unessential, in religion too, in every dimension.
The religious person goes on doing certain rituals which are taught by others to him. He never finds his own religiousness, a quality which can not be imposed on you, a quality which can only be helped to grow in you. It is not like a plastic flower that can be given to you from the outside, by the priest. It is a real roseflower, and for that you have to be very alert, very aware.
The Christian goes to the church every Sunday. It is a formality; it does not make him religious, but it gives him a false sense of religiousness. The Hindu goes on chanting the Gita. It does not make him religious at all; on the contrary it prevents, because by reciting the Gita he becomes very knowledgeable. He becomes a parrot or a computer. He can recite the whole Gita, but he understands nothing because he has not experienced anything. He knows words; he has not encountered the meaning of those words. People go on being imitative.
For example, Mahavira lived naked; that was his individuality. Nobody else is supposed or expected to live naked, unless one finds it an inner, intuitive vision, unless one finds that that is the only way he can be true to his self. Then it is another matter. But the Jaina muni, the Jaina monk, practices nudity -- just an imitation, a carbon copy. And remember. imitation is always ugly because it creates a false person; it never gives you authenticity.
Mahavira was naked not because anybody had told him to be naked. He felt the immense urge to be just like a child and he followed his urge, and he suffered for his urge. He was chased from one village to another, mad dogs were put after him, he was stoned, because people thought he was destroying their morality, that he was a dangerous man.
In an orthodox country like the India of twenty-five centuries ago, a man walking naked would have been certainly a nuisance to people, to their conventional way of living, to their traditional style of thinking. Krishna has not lived naked, Rama has not lived naked, no Hindu avatara has lived naked. This man is destroying the whole tradition, culture, religion.
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