"We are most fortunate to be on this small planet" - Osho

A right education will teach you how to find your own song and how to learn the dance and not be shy; how to celebrate the small things of life and make this whole planet alive. It is only one, as far as we know, where people can love, where people can meditate, where people can become buddhas, where people like Socrates and Lao Tzu can exist.

We are most fortunate to be on this small planet. It is one of the smallest planets in the universe, but even the greatest stars, millions of times bigger than this earth, cannot claim a single Albert Einstein or a Jesus or a Yehudi Menuhin. It is strange that in this vast universe existence has been successful only on this small planet to create a little consciousness, a little life. Now it is in our hands to grow from this small beginning into the infinite heights which are our potential and which are our birthright.

Up to now education has not been in the right direction. It has been torturing people unnecessarily with history, with geography. If somebody is interested, these subjects should be available. If somebody is interested to know about Constantinople, then let him know. And if somebody is interested to know about Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, let him know. But there is no need to teach people compulsorily all the nonsense and garbage that has happened in the past. That is so stupid and so unbelievable.

To teach people that there have been persons like Genghis Khan and Nadirshah and Tamerlane and Alexander the Great is to teach people about the wrong side of their being.

I have been fighting in the universities,"Why don't you teach about Socrates? Why don't you teach about Chuang Tzu? Why don't you teach about Bodhidharma...?" These are the right side of consciousness. And teaching about the wrong kind of people gives you an idea that it is perfectly good if you are wrong. If you are going slowly to be a Genghis Khan it is perfectly right. You are not doing something new, man has always been doing this.

We have to sort out history, cut out all those wrong people and protect our children from being conditioned that man has been involved in nothing but war, fighting, competition, greed. We should teach our children not what has been but what can be -- not the past, but the future. Why waste so much time on teaching subjects which are of no significance in actual existential life and not give them a single direction about the art of love, the art of life, the meaning of existence, preparation for death with joy, silence and meditativeness. All that is essential is missing, and that which is non-essential and absolutely stupid is being forced.

They say history repeats. History does not repeat. It is our stupidity that we go on and on teaching the same thing to each generation. The poor children are conditioned to imitate the same great heroes who were really criminals, not heroes. Just a single man, Genghis Khan, killed forty million people. It is better to drop all information about these people from education.

Give an education about the dance of a Shiva, the flute of Krishna. Teach them all that has been beautiful and good so that they become accustomed that all that is good is natural, and the bad is accidental -- that the bad does not happen, has never happened, and the good is absolutely normal. To be a buddha is not something abnormal. It should be taught to every child that to be a buddha is a normal phenomenon. Anybody who is wise enough is going to become a buddha.

You are going to become a buddha. The greatest revolution has to happen in education and its systems; otherwise, man will go on repeating history.

Osho,
Om Shantih Shantih Shantih
Chapter #27
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