But that’s how so-called religious people have lived: trying to follow somebody else, imitating. Now, an imitator cannot be simple. He constantly has to adjust life to his ideas.

A really innocent person goes with life, he simply flows with life. He has no goal as such. If you have a goal you can’t be innocent. You will have to be clever, cunning, manipulating. You will have to plan, and you will have to follow certain maps. How can you be innocent? You will be carrying so much rubbish from others. You will be just a carbon copy of Jesus, Buddha or Mahavira. You will not be the original.

Bodhidharma says again and again: Find your original face. And the only way to find your original face is to drop all imitation. Who is going to decide what is the requirement? Nobody can decide, and any decision is bound to disturb, because life may not turn the way you expect it to turn. It really never turns the way it is expected. Life is a constant surprise. You cannot prepare beforehand. Life needs no rehearsal.

You have to be spontaneous: that is innocence. Now, if you are spontaneous you cannot be Christian and you cannot be Hindu and you cannot be Buddhist. You have to be a simple human being.

Simplicity is not a requirement but a by-product of innocence. It comes just like your shadow. You don’t try to be simple. If you try to be simple, the very effort destroys simplicity. You cannot cultivate simplicity: a cultivated simplicity is superficial. Simplicity has to follow you like the shadow. You need not bother about it. You need not look back again and again to see whether the shadow is following you or not. The shadow is bound to follow you.

Attain to innocence, simplicity comes as a gift from god.

And innocence means becoming a no-mind, a no-ego: dropping all ideas of goals, achievements, ambitions, and living just as it happens in the moment.

So I don’t tell you to be celibate. Yes, one day celibacy can happen, but it will not be something to be practiced. It will be something that you will see happening. Yes, certainly, before one becomes a buddha one becomes celibate, but that is not a requirement, remember. Remember again and again: it is not a requirement that you have to fulfill, then you will become a buddha.

No, if you simply go on becoming more aware of your mind, as the mind starts disappearing, becomes distant and distant from you, and you become unidentified with the mind, and you start seeing that you are separate, that you are not the mind, you will find many things happening with this disappearance of the mind.

You will start living moment to moment, because it is mind that collects the past. You cannot depend on it. Your eyes will be clear, not covered with the dust of the past. You will be free from the dead past. And one who is free from the dead past is free to live: to live authentically, sincerely, passionately, intensely. One can become aflame with life and its celebration.