“Secondly, whenever I want somebody to meet you, you cannot refuse. It may be in the middle of the night…and that too is not for me, because I know there are people who come from thousands of miles with great love just to touch your feet, just to listen to a word from you, just to see you to believe that such a man really exists. I cannot refuse. Your guardians look very cruel to me.

“And thirdly, whenever you are talking with somebody I will be constantly present there. Nobody can say that he wants to meet you alone. And this is also not for me, because I know that the more you become known to the world – the more you are gathering friends and lovers – you are also creating enemies.

“I don’t want to leave you alone, because who knows? – the man may not be a friend. And you are so vulnerable that anybody can kill you very easily. To follow you is very difficult, to kill you is very easy; because in following you one has to kill one’s own ego – which is a difficult task – but to kill you…a fragile man, so delicate: I will not leave you alone in privacy with anybody, without exception.”

When an elder brother asks these things – or anything – in India, the younger simply accepts. And a man like Buddha simply laughed. He said, “That’s perfectly okay. Your conditions are accepted.”

Only once, just one time in his whole life of forty-two years with Ananda, Buddha had to ask him to relax just a little bit about one condition, because he had gone back to the palace which he had left twelve years before, and he wanted to see his wife.

“And I know her – she is a very proud woman. In front of you not even a single tear will come from her eyes. And she will welcome me as if I had just gone the other day for some business. But for twelve years she must have been boiling, angry. Not that I left her…because I know her perfectly. Her anger is not that, it cannot be.

“I know her quality. She comes from a warrior family where every girl is taught that one day the husband has to go to war: then tears should not come to your eyes; then you should not be a hindrance. Then you should touch his feet and help him to go completely at ease that he is not leaving behind a weeping, crying wife.

“So it is not a question that I left her, the question, I know perfectly well, is that I did not say it to her, that I did not trust her. That will be her wound; and your presence will not allow her to open up whatsoever in twelve years, she has gathered about me.”

Ananda said, “I can understand – and I can make an exception.”

And actually that’s what happened. The moment Buddha went in to see his wife, the first thing she said was, “I am not disturbed by your search for truth – it is really my pride that my husband is a seeker of truth, that he has dedicated his whole life to it. But one thing hurts: why did you not tell me? Do you think I would have prevented you?