Buddha is sitting under a tree with his disciples. A man comes and spit in his face. Buddha wipes his face and asks the man, “Anything else? What else do you want to say?” The man is surprised, because when spit in a person’s face, “Anything else?” He didn’t expect her to ask. He has no such experience. He has always insulted people before, and they have reacted with anger. Or they smiled out of fear and tried to please the man. But Buddha did neither, neither angry nor afraid. Just plain “What else?” he asked. He did not react. But Buddha’s disciples became angry, they reacted. Ananda, his closest student, says: “This is too much, we cannot bear it. You keep on teaching and we’ll show this guy you can’t do that. He must be punished. Otherwise everyone starts doing the same thing.”
Buddha speaks: “Don’t be silent. He didn’t piss me off, but you did. He’s a foreigner, he just got here. He must have heard something about me; Things like ‘this guy is atheist, he’s dangerous, he’s misleading people’. He got an idea about me. He didn’t spit on me, he spit on his own opinion; he doesn’t know me, how could he spit on me? If you think about it, he spat in his own mind. I’m not part of it, and I see that this poor man must have something else to say. Because it’s a way of saying something; spit is a way of saying something. Sometimes there are moments when you feel that the language is not enough; in deep love, intense anger, hatred, prayer. There are intense moments when language is not enough. Then you have to do something. When you are deeply in love, you hug someone; what do you do there You say something. When you are very angry, you hit someone, you spit, you are saying something. I can understand this man. He must have something else to say. That’s why I asked, ‘Another?'”
The man is even more surprised! And Buddha says to his disciples: “You have angered me more because you know me, you have lived with me for years, but you still react.”
Surprised and confused, the man returns home. Can’t sleep all night. After seeing a Buddha, it is difficult to sleep as before, it is not possible. This experience comes to mind over and over again. He can’t explain to himself what happened. Tremors, sweating attacks. He had never met such a man; His whole mind, all his patterns, all his past dissolves.
He returns the next morning. He fell at Buddha’s feet. Buddha asks: “Anything else? This is another way of saying the unspoken. When you touch my feet, you say something unspeakable, unspeakable in ordinary language.” Buddha continues: “Look Ananda, this man is here again, saying something. This is a man with very deep feelings.”
The man looks at Buddha: “Forgive me for what I did yesterday.”
Buddha answers: “Forgive? But I’m not the man you made that move yesterday. The Ganges river is constantly flowing, it is never the same Ganges. Every man is a river. The man you spit on is no longer here; I look just like him, but I’m not the same, so much has happened in those twenty-four hours! A lot of water has flowed from the river. So I cannot forgive you, because I am not angry with you.”
“And you are renewed. I see you are not the man who came yesterday, because that man was angry. He was angry, but you kneel before me and touch my feet, how can you be the same man? You’re not him, so let’s forget about that. Those two men; The spitting man and the spitting man no longer exist. Come closer. Let’s talk about other things.”
Osho
