Buddha said that you can only know through emptiness: to make this sink deep within your heart he said that you would not be able to know through fullness. You have heard that you cannot know through fullness so it is pointless to go through fullness. And as far as knowing the divine through emptiness is concerned, when you cannot know it through fullness then how can you know it through emptiness? It seems as if Buddha is ignorant because he argues, he refutes, he uses logic. It seems that Buddha has gone astray: he says that only he is right and everyone else is wrong. This is what the ignorant people hear. What Buddha is saying out of his compassion, the ignorant hear through their unconsciousness. There is a very ancient story:

Jesus was running through a farm. Seeing him running, the owner of the farm asked him, “Where are you going? You are running as if a lion or a tiger is chasing you and there is nobody. Nobody seems to be following you!”

But Jesus was running so fast that he could not stop even to answer. So the man ran after him. Soon he caught hold of him and said, “Listen, why are you running? Who is after you? Why are you so afraid? And I know you – you are the fragrance of this earth! Who would harm you? You have given eyes to the blind, you have given ears to the deaf. I have heard that you have made birds out of earth and given life to them and that they have flown away in the sky; that you have called the dead from their graves and they have become alive. What is your fear? Who are you running from? Is what I have heard not true?”

Jesus said, “No, what you have heard is right. I am the one by whose gesture the blind started seeing, by whose breath the deaf started hearing, who created life even from mud and turned it into birds that flew in the sky. I am the one by whose call the dead awoke and were resurrected. But don’t stop me! Let me go!”

Again the man asked, “If you are the same man then why are you running away? From whom are you running?”

Jesus said, “An idiot is chasing me. I am running from him!”

The farmer started laughing. He said, “You could give eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, life to the earth, you could resurrect the dead – then why can’t your power work on an idiot?”

Jesus said, “It never works. I have tried all the ways and nothing works. There is no way. I do something and it turns out to be something else. I want one thing and the outcome is something else.”

Then the farmer asked, “Just tell me one more thing, then I will not stop you: you were successful with the blind, with the dead – is an idiot in a worse state than a dead man? Doesn’t your power work on him?”

Jesus said, “There is a reason: a blind man wants his eyes to be cured so my blessings work; the deaf man wants his ears to be cured and the dead man also wants to be alive; soil also asks that it be given life. So whatever I do, they cooperate with it. The idiot thinks that he already knows so he is not ready to come out of his stupidity.”

Not only is Jesus running from the idiots – Buddha is also running from them, Shankara is also running from them.