Osho story on Surdas – There is a story in India about a saint, Surdas. I don’t think it is true. If it is true then Surdas is not a saint. Surdas can only be a saint if the story is untrue. I am ready to say that the story is untrue; I cannot say Surdas is untrue. He is so authentic, his insight is so pure — then the story must be wrong.
The story is: Surdas left the world. He was moving in a town. He saw a beautiful woman — he followed almost as if a magnet was pulling him. Started feeling guilty too! He is a sannyasin, renounced the world — what is he doing? But he was incapable of controlling himself, so the story goes.
He went to the woman, he asked for food — but that was just an excuse. Then he started to go to the same woman every day: just to have a look at her face, just to have a look into her eyes, just to have a little contact. He started dreaming about her. The whole day he was continuously thinking and fantasizing, and was waiting for the next day when he would be able to go to the woman again.
Then, by and by, he became aware that he was getting into a trap. And the story says that because it was his eyes that made him aware of the beauty of the woman, he destroyed his eyes and became a blind man.
I say, and I say it categorically, this story is simply invented — because this is so foolish! Surdas cannot do it. It must have been invented by other blind people; it must have been invented by other stupid people who always go on inventing stupid things. It is stupid because eyes cannot do anything — it is the mind. It is the mind that approaches through the eyes. It is the mind that approaches through the hand.
When you hit somebody or you kill somebody, it is not the hand that is the murderer — it is you. And it is not going to help if you cut your hand. And you cannot go to the court and say to the magistrate, “It was my hand.”
It happened once in a court that a man argued this way. He said, “It is my hand which has killed.” The magistrate was also very clever and cunning — they have to be clever and cunning because they have to deal with clever and cunning people. They have the same logic.
The magistrate said, “You are right, you are absolutely logical: you have not killed — your hands have killed. So your hands will remain in the prison. You can go home, but the hands cannot go.” So the hands were chained and the magistrate said, “Why don’t you go now?”
He said, “How can I go without the hands?”
And the magistrate said, “If you cannot go without the hands, how can the hands do something without you? You are both partners. And in fact the hand is simply a servant — you are the master.”