WORSHIPING THE RELICS OF A BUDDHA

All the scholars of the world are gravediggers. They dig deeply into graves and find bones of all kinds of people, but they never dig deep into themselves. They may find the bones of Buddha... they even worship the bones when they find them.

In Sri Lanka, in Kandy, they have a great temple devoted to a tooth of Buddha. Every scientific test has proved that it is not a tooth of a human being, it is too big; it can only be that of an animal. But who cares about it? Kandy attracts more pilgrimages to Sri Lanka than any other temple because it has a tooth of Gautam Buddha.

Scholars sometimes seem to be so stupid. There was a hair in Srinagar, in Kashmir, thought to be Hazrat Mohammed's. Mohammedans worshipped it because that was the only relic left from the body of Mohammed. Nobody knows whose hair it is, and there is no way to prove that it is Mohammed's hair. But a few years back it was stolen.

Then there was great fuss all over the world amongst the Mohammedans. That mosque, Hazrat Bal...bal means hair; even the bal is to be called Hazrat, Osho -- "revered hair." And it was such a difficult situation. Riots started happening because Mohammedans thought certainly it must be the Hindus. And Hindus are a very small minority in Kashmir. Even though Hindu leaders in Kashmir declared again and again, "We are not concerned at all with your religion," it was to no avail.

Finally the Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had to send the chief of the armies with a great number of soldiers to surround the mosque and somehow manage to restore the hair. Now, how can you manage? Somehow it was managed: somebody's hair has been put in the tube which was empty. Now everybody is happy that the hair has been found. What kind of stupidity...? What will you do with the hair? If you find the whole head of Mohammed, that too will not help. But people are concerned with absolute absurdities, so much involved, and this is because of the scholars, the so-called learned who provoke the masses.