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in Rajasthan. It is very famous because it is made of a very strange stone -- which is not found in India, but is found in Africa. Somebody must have brought that stone. But in India it has become a miracle because it perspires; tears flow from the eyes. And the people who follow Mahavira, naturally, are deeply impressed. They think perhaps he is weeping for us out of compassion.
One woman had come to me and she said, "I have never been impressed by anything so much as the tears coming from a stone statue of Mahavira."
I said, "You don't understand; I have seen the statue..." The statue is in the middle of the lake -- a small temple, an open temple, just pillars. And because the statue is porous, when the vapors are rising from the lake because of the hot sun -- and Rajasthan is very hot, it is a desert -- that porous statue goes on soaking up much of the vapor that is moving around. You will not find that statue in summer with tears or perspiration or anything, but in winter when it is cold the vapors that it has soaked up start becoming water again. Because of the coldness, they start coming out of the rock.
I told the woman, "You are impressed by it, and you are not impressed by millions of people who cry? And that stone is not doing anything as far as compassion is concerned; it is just that this kind of stone is not available in India."
She was very much shocked because I hurt her religious feelings. I said, "I am not hurting your religious feelings. I am simply making you aware that if you can be so much impressed by the tears of a stone statue, what about living human beings?"
But tears are taboo -- one of the things that have been repressed. Friedrich Nietzsche is quoted as saying that he smiles because he is afraid if he does not smile he will start crying and tears will come to his eyes. His smile is just a protection; it keeps him occupied, he remains with a false smile so that authentic tears cannot come out. Naturally, for a German, it is a question of manliness. How can a German cry and weep and have tears?
But more or less all men around the world are Germans. They are all male oriented, trying to impose a
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