a very non-violent method
There were other teachers in Buddha and Mahavira's time too. One was Sanjay Vilethiputta. He avoided even initiation, he said, "You simply listen to me. If you feel like doing what I am saying, you do it, but I will not initiate you. If I initiate you, soon you will create an organization. You will need an organization to keep all the people who are my disciples together. There are so many reasons for them to be together -- for their security, for their safety, because they will be persecuted by the other religions. And if they are left alone in the vast ocean of enemies, they will be destroyed."
In India they have a very simple method of destroying anybody. India is a country of small villages, very small villages, millions of small villages. In a small village there are only twenty houses; twenty families are living there. They can destroy anybody by a simple method, a very non-violent method. They decide that a man is not to be accepted as part of them, so he cannot be invited to any marriage, to any ceremony.
Nobody will talk with him. He's not allowed to take water from the village well. If the river is five miles away, he has to carry his water from there. When crops are to be cut, nobody is to support him. Otherwise, in a village, that's the way: when one person's crops are ripe, the whole village helps him to cut the crop. Then somebody else's are ready and the whole village helps him. Singlehandedly, he will be in immense trouble.
Nobody will talk to him. People should not recognize him on the street, should not say hello. You will kill the man -- and he cannot go anywhere else because in India people are tethered to their land. Nobody is going to purchase his land, his house. If he wants to leave he can leave, but where is he going to go and what he is going to do?
It's a very easy, very non-violent, but really cruel method; far more cruel than killing the man. His children will not be playing with other children, his wife will not be meeting with any other woman. He's boycotted.
So Sanjay Vilethiputta said, "If I initiate you an organization will be necessary. I will not give you initiation, then it cannot be known to others that you are my followers. You just go on living, experiencing, doing what I have told to you. And if you feel to convey it to somebody, you can convey it, but there is no question of initiation. So nobody knows that you belong to Sanjay Vilethiputta."
But what happened? Sanjay Vilethiputta's scriptures we don't have. The man must have been of immense intelligence because Buddha criticizes him, Mahavira criticizes him. Otherwise, Mahavira and Buddha would not criticize a man who had no status. He must have had a status exactly the same as Buddha and Mahavira.
