For example, you can say, “I have discarded Buddha.” But you never had him in the first place, so how can you discard? You can say, “I have discarded the void.” But how can you discard unless you have achieved it? If, without having images, you think now you have become one with the ultimate because you don’t have any images, you are in the first state of ignorance. You are a child, not childlike. You are ignorant, you are not a sage.

Create, then you can renounce. But one will ask, “Why create? If something is to be renounced, why create it at all?” The very effort to create enriches you. And then the second act of throwing it enriches you more.

Look at it in this way. Buddha became a beggar, so any beggar on the street can think, “I am also like Buddha, because he was a beggar.” And he was! And if Buddha is begging before your house and some other beggar is there, what is the difference? Both are beggars. But the difference is there, very subtle.

Buddha is a beggar by his own effort. It is an achievement. It is not any ordinary achievement; it is the highest possible when someone becomes, by his own effort, a beggar. The other is also a beggar, but not by his own effort. He is a beggar in spite of all his efforts. When you are a beggar by your own efforts, you have become an emperor. And even if you are an emperor, not by your own efforts, you are a beggar.

Buddha is a beggar knowing the futility of riches. The other one is a beggar not knowing the futility of riches – so the other will feel that he is a beggar, and Buddha can never feel that he is a beggar. The other will hide the fact that he is a beggar and Buddha will declare that “I am just a beggar.”

These are the paradoxes of life. The real beggar will always hide the fact that he is a beggar. He will try to create a facade that he is not a beggar – even if he is begging, he is not a beggar. Circumstances are such or a particular circumstance has created this phenomenon, but he is not a beggar.

Buddha calls himself a bhikkhu, a beggar. There is no hiding of the fact; he declares it. Why? Because he is not afraid of being a beggar. Only an emperor can declare that he is a beggar. A beggar can never declare it. Buddha with his begging bowl is a sovereign, he is a king. Even kings are just beggars before him. He had something and he has discarded it. Unless you have, you cannot discard. So remember this: don’t go on discarding things which you don’t have.

Many of us go on thinking that we have renounced many things. Then you deceive yourself, and this deception is very costly on the inward journey. For example, Krishnamurti goes on talking about discarding images, thoughts, beliefs. Then many people listening to him will think – they think, “This is okay. We don’t have any beliefs, so we are already in that state of mind Krishnamurti is talking about.” They are not; they are deceiving themselves.

First you must have beliefs, only then can you discard them. If you don’t have any beliefs, you cannot discard them. If a child listens to me and I say to him that sages are childlike, they unlearn, the child can say, “Then okay, I am already a sage. I am not going to learn. When one is going to unlearn, why this long suffering of learning? I am already a sage.”