Unless a Buddha becomes absolutely ordinary, it is still an ego trip - Osho

A tremendously beautiful pack of cards existed in China, in the days of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu.

It has ten cards describing the search, the pilgrimage. Those ten cards are called The Ten Bulls of Zen.

In the first picture, the bull is lost. And naturally, the owner is looking all around, thick forest, and he cannot see his lost bull.
In the second picture he finds footprints; now he has some clue. In the third picture he sees the bull -- not completely, but just his tail -- by the side of a huge tree. But now things are becoming more certain.
In the fourth picture he sees half of the bull.
In the fifth picture he has found the bull in its completeness.
In the sixth picture he holds the bull by the horns.
In the seventh picture he is riding home on the bull.
In the eighth picture the bull is put in his place, and in the ninth picture the man is sitting outside his house, playing a flute.

When these ten pictures were transferred to Japan, they cut out the last picture. They accepted only nine pictures. What more is there? You have come home, you are playing the flute, everything is beautiful. That which was lost has been found.

But when I looked at the tenth picture I said, "These people got stuck at the ninth. The tenth is the most important." But it went against their ideological, religious, moral training. The tenth picture is: the man is going towards the marketplace with a bottle of wine. The buddha has now really come home.

Unless a buddha becomes absolutely ordinary, it is still an ego trip. To be as ordinary as the trees, as the birds, as the animals, as the mountains -- no bragging about any spirituality, because even the bragging about spirituality is nothing but a very subtle ego trip...

It hurts me to say to you that Gautam Buddha declared, "I am the only enlightened man in the whole history of man. My enlightenment will never be superseded" -- this is the ninth picture. The same was the situation with J. Krishnamurti; he could never get out of the ninth picture. He could not become what he has always been.

Mind's ways are very cunning. It will become the richest man, it will become the most powerful man, it will become the "most" of anything. But it has to be on the top. It will be difficult for you if you find a Buddha in a pub, but that is the right place. He has come home, he has accepted his natural spontaneity.

Don't ask , about total acceptance -- ask rather about more clarity, more spontaneity, more naturalness, and acceptance will come just like a shadow. You don't have to bother about it.

Osho