For four months he lived in her house and finally the day of departure came. He thanked her, saying, “It has been a great discipline for me, and the whole credit goes to you. My meditation has deepened. I am more at home than ever before. My master will rejoice seeing me.”

Amrapali said, “Perhaps you do not know that your master will not only see you, he will also see me reformed. I can see all the fallacious world of lust and love and power. Also I can see, against it, a totally different world of watchfulness and peace and serenity. You say you are grateful to me – I say I am immensely grateful to you. Just help me, so that your master does not reject me.”

The young prince said, “He never rejects anybody.” They both came. They both touched the feet of the master, and the young monk asked, “Amrapali wants to be initiated…”

And as an initiation gift…They were staying in a very big mango grove – it must have been, because ten thousand people were there and every man had a place under one mango tree. There must have been more than ten thousand mango trees…Before coming Amrapali had asked the owner of the land if he would sell it.

He said, “I cannot sell it; it has become sacred for me. Buddha has stayed here; it has now become part of history. This land is no longer ordinary land.” Amrapali said, “You don’t know how much I can pay.” The man said, “If you really want to purchase it, my price is very high. I’m putting it so high that nobody can purchase it – not even the emperor!”

Amrapali said, “You simply say it – no haggling.”

His price was certainly very strange. He said, “You can have the land if you put golden coins all over it, covering it completely. I don’t know how many millions of coins will be needed.”

The woman said, “It does not matter. The land is mine; you come with me and count the coins and measure the land.”

So the young monk said to Buddha, “This woman has bought this whole beautiful mango grove to be used only for meditators, and she has asked me to ask you for her initiation because she has seen something in me that is missing in her.”

And Amrapali said, “I don’t even have the face to ask for initiation. I have been a sinner all my life. You must know that I’m a prostitute. Your young monk – I hoped to change him, but on the contrary, he has changed me. Now I don’t have any desire, except to sit at your feet and follow the path where one comes to one’s own innermost center. Now I know – up to now I have not even been aware that there is an inner center of life.”

That inner center is the most powerful thing in the world. That innermost center is not of the individual. With that innermost center we are all joined. It is the center of the whole cosmos. And once you feel yourself as part of the cosmos – eternal and immortal…