The first question:

Osho,
What can I do with a beggar? Whether I give him a rupee or not, he will remain a beggar all the same.

The beggar is not the problem. If the beggar was the problem then everybody who passes by would feel the same. If the beggar was the problem then beggars would have disappeared long ago. The problem is within you: your heart feels it. Try to understand it.

The mind interferes immediately whenever the heart feels love, the mind immediately interferes. The mind says, “Whether you give him something or not, he will remain the beggar all the same.’’ Whether he remains the beggar or not is not your responsibility, but if your heart feels to do something, do it. Don’t try to avoid. The mind is trying to avoid the situation. The mind says. “What is going to happen? He will remain the beggar, so there is no need to do anything.” You have missed an opportunity where your love could have flown.

If the beggar has decided to be a beggar, you cannot do anything. You may give him: he may throw it. That is for him to decide.

The mind is very clever.

Then the question, it says:

Why are there beggars at all?

Because there is no love in the human heart. But again, the mind interferes:

Have not the rich taken away from the poor?
Should not the poor take back
what the rich have stolen from him?

Now you are forgetting the beggar and the heartache that you felt. Now the whole thing is becoming political, economical. Now the problem is no more of the heart: it is of the mind. And mind has created the beggar. It is the cunningness, the calculativeness of the mind that has created the beggar. There are cunning people, very calculative: they have become rich. There are innocent people, not so calculative, not so cunning: they have become the poor.

You can change the society – in Soviet Russia they have changed. That makes no difference. Now the old categories have disappeared – the poor and the rich – but the ruler and the ruled, a new category, has come up, Now the cunning are the rulers and the innocent are the ruled. Before, the innocent used to be poor and the cunning used to be rich. What can you do?


From Osho, Yoga: The Science of Living, Chapter 2

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