"A child is born and immediately the conditioning starts. Very subtle are the ways of conditioning, directly or indirectly we start pressing the child into a certain mold. He will speak a certain language, and each language has its ways of thinking, each language has its emphasis, its particular direction. That's why sometimes it becomes impossible to translate from one language into another; the other language may not even have words which correspond, the other language may not have looked at reality and life in that way. Life is infinite, the way you look at it is finite; there can be infinite ways of looking at it.

"And then the child starts getting colored by the family, by the school, the church, the priest, the parents and silently it goes on. Slowly, slowly the whole sky of consciousness is closed, only a small window, an aperture, is left open. That aperture is Indian, English, American. That aperture is Hindu, Jaina, Buddhist. That aperture is Eastern, Western.

"Buddhahood is to regain again the consciousness that you had brought with your birth. That uncontaminated purity, that original face without any masks, that innocence is buddhahood. So buddhahood cannot be Eastern and Western; it is transcendental.

"You may be surprised…when a child grows up in a family, and each child has to grow in a family, it is almost a must, there is no other way, some kind of family is needed. Even if it is a commune it will have its own limitations, it may be a kibbutz but it will have its own limitations. And there is no way to bring up a child without a certain nourishing surrounding. That nourishing surrounding is a must; without it the child cannot survive. The child has to be looked after, but the child has to pay for it. It is not simple, it is very complex. The child has to continuously adjust himself to the family because the family is right, the father is right, the mother is right. They are powerful people. The child is helpless: he has to depend on them, he has to look up to them, he has to follow them. Right or wrong is not the question; the child has to become a shadow, an imitator."