Buddha said, “If you accidentally see a woman, don’t talk to her.”

Is it great spirituality? “Don’t even say, ‘Hello!’ because she is a woman.”

And the man insisted. He said, “If the woman says something, won’t it be embarrassing not to answer her? Will it not be inhuman?”

Buddha said, “If such a coincidence happens, you can talk to her, but don’t touch her.”

Is this spiritual stuff?

What do you call trivia? The whole humanity is going to die and I should not speak!? And your Gautam Buddha is talking absolute nonsense to the people.

And the man was intelligent enough. He said, “There may be a situation in which I have to touch a woman. Perhaps a woman has fallen in a well. What am I supposed to do? Or in a ditch, what am I supposed to do? Should I just go on without looking at her miserable state, without helping her?”

And Buddha said, “If such a coincidence happens, you can touch her. But remember: all that which is outside is illusory.”

If it is illusory then why the first…? The woman is illusory – and don’t touch her! What is the problem if you touch an illusion? Don’t talk to the illusion! Don’t look at the illusion! This I call absolute trivia.

These Buddhist scholars are going to provoke me. I will pull Gautam Buddha down completely! My concern for humanity makes me ignorant, and his concern about women and about clothes and about shoes, and about not touching women, not looking more than four feet ahead, makes him enlightened? His enlightenment is rotten – it is a bullock-cart enlightenment.

I am a contemporary man, twenty-five centuries ahead of Gautam Buddha. He is just old hat. But these Buddhist scholars are provoking me. I will start talking about Gautam Buddha and pull down the whole house that he has built, because it is all built on stupid things.

My concern with humanity is absolutely spiritual. My concern for this beautiful planet is sacred. It is my compassion and my love. And I don’t care about any Gautam Buddha. I am a buddha in my own right, and your old Buddha is too out of date. I belong to my time, and I speak the language of my time.

Buddha was afraid to allow women in his commune. For twenty years continuously he refused women. What was the fear? He did not trust his own sannyasins. This was distrust. A master distrusting his own people? He was afraid what would happen to the celibacy of the monks if women entered into the commune. But if their celibacy is so thin that the entry of a woman is going to disturb their celibacy, it is not much of a celibacy.