You are fortunate. Of course, if you are educated you will be able to earn more money – but not more meditation. You will be able to have more political power because you will be more cunning, more clever – but not insight into your own being. You may be able to possess many things, but that will be only a deception. In fact, things will possess you because you will not be your own master. It is better to possess one’s own being than to possess the whole world. It is better to be a buddha – a beggar – than to be Alexander the Great, because the buddha lives a full life and dies a full death, and Alexander the Great lives an empty life, hollow, somehow stuffing it in an effort to convince himself that he is not empty, and then dies utterly empty.
When he died he said to his generals, “Let my hands hang out of my coffin.”
“Why?” they asked, because that was not the way to carry a dead body.
He said, “That may not be conventional, but I would like my hands to hang out of my coffin so people can see that I am dying empty-handed.”
That’s how his body was carried. Millions of people had gathered to see, and everybody was wondering, “Why are his hands hanging out?” And, slowly, slowly the rumor went around that Alexander wanted it to be known by everybody that he was going empty-handed. His life had been utterly futile.
No need to be worried about education, knowledge. In the inner world, the ordinary education is not needed – something else, a true education.
The word education is beautiful. It means “drawing something out”: drawing out that which is within you. In fact, we should not use it for the ordinary education. It is wrong to use a beautiful word like ‘education’ for this rotten system of schools, colleges and universities. It is not education in the literal sense even, because instead of drawing out what is within you it forces things from the outside upon you. It is an imposition.
Real education is like drawing water from a well, not pouring something into the well. Real education is drawing out your being so that your inner luminosity starts filtering through your body, through your behavior.
I am reminded of a beautiful story. It really happened, it is not just a story.
Stosh, a new immigrant, got off a boat at Ellis Island and set about finding himself a job. Door-to-door inquiries brought no luck until he rang the bell of a whorehouse. The madam was sympathetic and employed him to clean up the basement. After completing the task in record time, Stosh asked for further work, whereupon the madam suggested that he become their permanent bookkeeper.
When Stosh explained that he could neither read nor write, the madam paid him ten cents and sent him off on his way with her best wishes.
With the ten cents Stosh bought two apples in the market. He ate one and sold the other in the town center for ten cents. He returned to the market and bought two more apples which he sold again for ten cents each. Increasing his business this way he eventually became the owner of a small fruit wagon, then several fruit wagons, then a small fruit store, then a supermarket, and finally a chain of supermarkets.