Innocence is courage and clarity both.
There is no need to have courage if you are innocent. There is no need, either, for any clarity because nothing can be more clear, crystal clear, than innocence. So the whole question is how to protect one's own innocence.
Innocence is not something to be achieved.
It is not something to be learned.
It is not something like a talent: painting, music, poetry, sculpture. It is not like those things. It is more like breathing, something you are born with.
Innocence is everybody's nature.
Nobody is born other than innocent.
How can one be born other than innocent? Birth means you have entered the world as a tabula rasa, nothing is written on you. You have only future, no past. That is the meaning of innocence. So first try to understand all the meanings of innocence.
The first is: no past, only future.
The past corrupts because it gives you memories, experiences, expectations. All those combined together make you clever but not clear. They make you cunning but not intelligent. They may help you to succeed in the world but in your innermost being you will be a failure. And all the success of the world means nothing compared to the failure that finally you are going to face, because ultimately only your inner self remains with you. All is lost: your glory, your power, your name, your fame -- all start disappearing like shadows.
At the end only that remains which you had brought in the very beginning. You can take from this world only that which you have brought in.
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And in that moment you will understand that all that you possessed was not yours; the very idea of possession was wrong. And because of that possession you were corrupted.
To increase that possession -- to have more money, to have more power, to conquer more lands -- you were doing things which even you cannot say were right. You were lying, you were dishonest. You were having hundreds of faces. You were not true even for a single moment to anybody or to yourself; you could not be.
You had to be false, phony, pretending, because these are things that help you to succeed in the world. Authenticity is not going to help you. Honesty is not going to help you. Truthfulness is not going to help you.
Without possessions, success, fame; who are you?
You don't know.
You are your name, you are your fame, you are your prestige, your power. But other than these, who are you?
So this whole possessiveness becomes your identity. It gives you a false sense of being.
That's the ego.
Ego is not something mysterious, it is a very simple phenomenon. You don't know who you are, and to live without knowing who you are is impossible. If I don't know who I am, then what am I doing here? Then whatsoever I am doing becomes meaningless. The first and the foremost thing is to know who I am. Perhaps then I can do something that fulfills my nature, makes me contented, brings me home.
But if I don't know who I am, and I go on doing things, how can I manage to reach where my nature was supposed to reach, to lead? I have been running hither and thither but there is not going to be any point that I can say, "Now I have arrived, this was the place I was searching for."
You don't know who you are, so some false identity is needed as a substitute. Your possessions give you that false identity.
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You come with an innocent watcher into the world. Everybody comes in the same way, with the same quality of consciousness.
The question is, how did I manage so that nobody could corrupt my innocence, clarity; from where did I get this courage? How could I manage not to be humiliated by grown-ups and their world?
I have not done anything, so there is no question of how. It simply happened, so I cannot take the credit for it.
Perhaps it happens to everybody but you become interested in other things. You start bargaining with the grown-up world. They have many things to give to you; you have only one thing to give, and that is your integrity, your self-respect. You don't have much, a single thing -- you can call it anything: innocence, intelligence, authenticity. You have only one thing.
And the child is naturally very much interested in everything he sees around. He is continuously wanting to have this, to have that; that is part of human nature. If you look at the small child, even a just-born baby, you can see he has started groping for something; his hands are trying to find out something. He has started the journey.