If Jews decided to crucify Jesus, that simply means he has dropped the mind that they have given him to carry his whole life, that he is saying things that are not part of their given mind. And Jesus continuously reminds them of it. He says, “It has been said by the old prophets” – and who were those old prophets? all Jews – “It has been said, ‘An eye for an eye is the law.’ But I say unto you that if somebody slaps you on one cheek, give him the other cheek too.”
This was not part of the Jewish mind. The Jewish God declares, “I am not a nice person! I am a very angry God, I am very jealous. Remember that I am not your uncle.” These are actually the words: “I am not your uncle, I am not nice, I am jealous, I am angry.” And Jesus says, “God is love.”
I am trying to show you that he has dropped the Jewish mind, and that’s the reward he got – the crucifixion. The crucifixion was the reward for dropping the Jewish mind. He was dangerous in the sense that he would create doubt in other people’s minds: “Our God says he is angry, jealous – he will destroy those who are against him, and Jesus is saying that God is love. He is going against our vested interest.”
He was killed – he was not a Jew; he was not Christian because the word Christian does not exist in the Hebrew language, the word Christ does not exist in the Hebrew language. He was called “the messiah” – that is equivalent to Christ. Christ is a Greek word. It was three hundred years later that Jesus’ sayings were translated into Greek; then messiah became Christ, and the followers became Christians.
What I am trying to say to you is that Gautam Buddha was not a Hindu. He was born in a Hindu family, but he had renounced it; he renounced it the very day he started his search for truth. See the simple point: the Hindu need not search for the truth; the Hindu has already got it ready-made. It has been given by the tradition, by the religion, by the scriptures; he need not go in search.
The day Gautam Buddha went in search for truth, he dropped the Hindu mind. And of course he was not a Buddhist; that was a name his followers were given later on by Hindus, to keep a distinction. But he had his own mind.
To have one’s own mind in the world is the richest thing possible. But no society allows it; every society keeps you poor. On your account every society, particularly those who are in power – either through money or through politics or through religion or through knowledge, or for any reason – those who are in power don’t want people to have their own minds. It is dangerous to their interests. They want not men but sheep, not individuals but crowds who are always in need of being led, who are always in need of being told what to do, what not to do; who don’t have their own minds, their own insights, their own consciousness. They are always dependent.
The fear of anybody being different, being a stranger, being an outsider, is always the same for the simple reason that no society will have the courage to accept you – because that society has not made your mind, and that society cannot trust that you will always be obedient to it, that you will never object about anything, or create doubt about anything, or be skeptical about anything.