A truly honest person will go on changing with every moment. He will keep in tune with existence – that is what I call honesty – he will not lag behind. He will be always harmonious and in deep synchronicity with existence. If existence is moving and changing like a river, he will be moving and changing like a river.

But Christian honesty does not mean responsibility. I want to break that word in two: response and ability.

Christianity has also responsibility as one of its pillars, but their meaning of responsibility is duty: responsibility to your parents, responsibility to your friends, responsibility to your neighbors, responsibility to the church, responsibility to God, responsibility to everybody. But their meaning is duty.

To me, responsibility is not one word, it is two words, response ability, and only a man of deep awareness has the quality. He can respond to everything, but his response is not a reaction, his response is not out of his conditioning. His response comes from his very being.

One day a man asked Gautam Buddha in the morning, just as the sun was rising, “Is there a God?”

Buddha said, “No, there is no God.”

In the afternoon another man asked, “What do you think about God? Is there a God or not?”

Buddha said, “Yes, there is a God – not as a person, but as a quality.”

By the evening a third person came and asked Buddha, “I don’t know anything, I am utterly ignorant. Will you please help me to inquire into the truth of existence, or, in other words, into the reality of God? I don’t know anything.”

Buddha did not answer. He simply closed his eyes, sat in a lotus posture. There was utter silence under the tree where he was sitting. The man also sat. He thought, “Perhaps he is showing the way – sit in the lotus posture.” So he sat in the lotus posture, he closed his eyes, and the silence deepened.

There was also a third man present, Ananda, who was Gautam Buddha’s constant companion his whole life, who took care of his food, his clothes, his shelter. He was also present while all these three answers were given. He was in deep confusion. To one man Buddha says that no, there is no God; to another man Buddha says yes; and to the third he does not speak at all. That silence went on deepening, and it lasted almost one hour.

Finally Buddha opened his eyes, and what was strange for Ananda – the moment Buddha opened his eyes, the other man also opened his eyes. They looked into each other’s eyes, and the other man touched Buddha’s feet and he said, “I am so grateful for your teaching.” And Buddha had not spoken a single word.