“Give us our daily bread.”

When the mind-needs are fulfilled – when you have listened to all kinds of music and you have danced all kinds of dances, and you have gone deep into philosophy, art, poetry, sculpture, architecture, when you have seen all these things and you are satisfied, saturated – the third kind of need arises: that is religion. That is the God-need, the spiritual need. That is the highest need.

If a hungry man is interested in God, his God cannot be the true God. His God will only be a provider of food. […]

That is a poor man’s God. It is not strange that the Christian prayer has it: Give us our daily bread.

Buddha could not have conceived such a prayer… Buddha’s miracles are so different that you will be surprised!

A woman goes to Buddha: her child is dead and she is crying and she is weeping and she is a widow and she will never have another child and the only child is dead and that was all her love and all her attention.

She goes crying and weeping to Buddha.

If she had gone to Christ, then the miracle would have been that Christ would touch and bring the dead back, as he brought Lazarus back.

What did Buddha do?

Buddha smiled and said to her, ”You go into the town and just find a few mustard seeds from a house where nobody has ever died.”

And the woman rushed into the town and she went to each house.

And wherever she went they said, ”We can give you as many mustard seeds as you want, but the condition will not be fulfilled, because so many people have died in our house. And, woman, don’t be mad! Buddha has played a trick on you. You will not find a single house on the whole earth.”

But she hoped, ”Maybe… who knows? There may be some house that has not known death.” And she went around and around the whole day.

By the evening a great understanding had dawned on her: ”Death is part of life; it happens. It is not something personal, it is not something like a personal calamity that has happened to me.”

With that understanding she went to Buddha. He asked, ”Where are the mustard seeds?” And she smiled … and she said, ”You did it!”

She fell at his feet and said, ”Initiate me. I would like to know that which never dies. I don’t ask for my child back, because even if he is given, he will die again. So what is the point? Teach me something so that I can know inside myself that which never dies.”

Now this is a totally different story. Jesus’ miracle looks more miraculous because the earth was still poor. Can’t you see the point? The East is turning Christian and the West is turning Buddhist. The more the West becomes rich the more Buddhist it will be. The new Christians are born in the East – poor tribes, primitive tribes, untouchables, the downtrodden. To them, Jesus has appeal. They would like somebody to turn stones into bread, they are hungry. What have they to do with Buddha? Buddha seems too aristocratic, talks about great things which make no sense to the poor and the hungry.

Osho, The Wisdom of the Sands, Vol 1, Ch 3, Q 2

Series compiled by Shanti
All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales