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THE MIND CREATES QUESTIONS. They may look very relevant and rational, but
they are against experience, against existence. And because the whole world
is communicating with each other only through the mind, nobody raises his
voice against such questions, that they are basically wrong.
For example, this question is
fundamentally wrong. It is out of total misunderstanding. Love knows no
responsibility, because love itself is responsibility. To separate love and
responsibility is simply stupid. But all moral systems of the world separate
it. Their idea of responsibility does not correspond with existence, but only
with their logic.
And it has to be understood that logic is man-manufactured. It does not grow in the fields. It
is not like the mountains and the stars and babies. It is simply a mind
projection. And it has dominated humanity for centuries. It has destroyed
many valuable possibilities, potentialities. It has closed many doors to the
mysteries of life. It has made man almost blind to light, to consciousness,
to bliss, to truth.
But its domination has been so
long that it isn't easily apparent that it goes on committing mistakes
against existence. I would like to dissect this question as minutely as
possible. Only dissection of the question will make you aware that it does
not need an answer.
RESPONSIBILITY, ACCORDING TO ALL all moral codes, is a
kind of duty; and a duty is a burden. You have to do it, because you have
been told to do it in spite of yourself. It is a should. And you feel guilty
if you don't do it. You feel you are escaping from your responsibility. If
you do it, you feel enslaved, destroyed as an individual, destroyed as
freedom. So on both counts, you are in trouble.
Morality makes man psychologically
sick. It gives ideas which are going to make you uneasy whatever you do.
Whether you follow them or not makes no difference.
You are told, "This is your
responsibility towards the nation." Now, the nation is a fiction. There
are no nations in the world as far as nature is concerned, existence is
concerned. All your maps are just meaningless and a better humanity is going
to burn them all, because all the boundaries that discriminate against any
part of humanity are ugly, insane.
I
have told you a story ...
WHEN INDIA WAS DIVIDED into two
nations, India and Pakistan, a rumor was heard that there was a madhouse just
on the boundary. Neither India nor Pakistan was interested to take the
madhouse. But something had to be done. It had to go somewhere. Finally, the
chief superintendent of the madhouse called all the mad people and asked
them, "Do you want to go to India?"
They said, "No, we are
perfectly happy here."
The superintendent said, "You
will be here. Don't be worried about that. Just tell me -- do you want to go
to India?"
They all looked at each other and
they said, "People think we are mad! Something has gone wrong with our
superintendent. If we are going to be here then the question does not arise
of going to India. Why should we go to India?"
The superintendent was in a
difficulty how to explain to these insane people. He said, "Then would
you like to go to Pakistan?" They said, "No, not at all. We are
perfectly happy here. Why should we go anywhere?"
He again tried to explain to them
that, "You will be here, whether you choose India or Pakistan. You are
not going anywhere."
Then they said, "It seems to
be very strange. If we are not going anywhere, then why should we even be
asked about it? We are here."
It was impossible to convince them
that it is not a question of physically moving to India or Pakistan. It is a
political question: "Under which country, within which boundary do you
want to remain?" Finally it was decided by the officials that the
madhouse should also be divided into two parts. One will be in India, one
will be in Pakistan. They raised a huge wall, just dividing the whole
madhouse in two.
And I have heard that the mad
people still climb up on the wall, talk to the people on the other side and
say, "We cannot figure it out. We are here, you are here, but you have
gone to Pakistan and we have gone to India -- just because they have raised
this wall. And the strangest thing of all is that they think we are
mad."
IT IS A MAD WORLD. All boundaries
are absolute nonsense. Anything that divides man from man is inhuman,
uncivilized, uncultured. But nobody asks whether nations are a fiction, and
because you never ask you start believing in the reality of nations. Then
arise questions of responsibility towards the nation. You even have to
sacrifice your life for the nation which is a fiction. No such thing exists
anywhere, no India, no Germany, no Japan, no America. It is a single planet,
one humanity.
But because of the fiction, people
go on killing each other. Real people are killed for an unreal idea.
Responsibility towards the nation has been the cause of all the wars. If all
those people who had gone to the wars had refused: "We are not going to
kill anybody for a fiction and we are not going to be killed for a
fiction," there would have been no wars, no politicians. The world would
have been a peaceful, beautiful place to live in.
For centuries we have done nothing
else except fight, except kill. Our only profession seems to be war.
Sometimes we fight, and sometimes we prepare for a future fight. But all the
time we are engaged in a single profession, that of murderers, because we
have been taught a stupid idea: responsibility towards your nation,
responsibility towards your religion. All the religions have been teaching
that your life is not more valuable than your religion. It is such a strange
idea. All these things should be for man, not vice versa. A religion exists
to help man, not to destroy man. But all religions have been destroying man,
none has been helping.
They say, "It is your
responsibility, if your religion is in trouble or if your religion is trying
to conquer bigger territories, to acquire more people, it is your
responsibility to sacrifice." It reminds me of the primitive religions,
because it is a relic of those days. In the ancient book of the Hindus, Rigveda,
they sacrificed to a fictitious God. Nobody has seen him, nobody has any idea
what you mean by the very word. There exists no proof, no evidence, no witness.
But for that unreal, fictitious God, which is just a hypothesis, even men
were sacrificed before a stone statue -- a statue that you have made.
There is mention in Rigveda
of narmedh yagna. Sacrificing man to God was the greatest ritual. And
the man who was ready to be sacrificed was thought to be a saint. Those who
could not do such a thing were thought to be cowards, not fulfilling their
responsibility. Dying for God -- what can be more valuable than that?
After man, they started
sacrificing animals. Today all the Hindus of this country continuously try to
stop cow slaughter. But they are not aware that their forefathers in the Rigveda
were themselves killing cows as a sacrifice to God. And they were eating the
meat of the cows, because stone statues don't eat. You can offer and then you
can take it back as a divine gift. Everything is yours: you are killing the
cow, you are offering to a stone god who cannot eat and then you are taking
it back and distributing it to all the worshippers. And these people are
continuously trying to stop cow slaughter. They were killing horses, they
were killing all kinds of animals. They are still killing.
In Calcutta, at one of the most
famous temples of the mother goddess Kali they still kill every day a few
goats and then the goats' meat is distributed as prasad, as God's gift to the
worshippers. And this is a vegetarian country. A strange kind of
vegetarianism! But in the name of God, everything is allowed. When they
stopped sacrificing man -- because it became more and more hammered in by
people like Gautam Buddha and Vardhamana Mahavira that this is absolutely
ugly and uncivilized, it is just a strategy to hide your cannibalistic
tendencies, in the name of religion you are eating man -- because it was
criticized so much, finally they dropped killing man.
But something had to be
substituted. So even today, people who are using the substitute may not be
aware what they are doing. They have found a substitute in the coconut,
because it looks like the head of a man -- with two eyes, a little nose, a
small beard, hair -- and in Hindi the head is called khopari, and the
coconut is called khopera; there is not much difference. And if you
want to visit any temple, you will have to take coconuts. You don't know what
you are doing! The statues once were bathed in human blood. Now, that has
become difficult. Coconuts are being used, so the statues are colored red.
Why red? Blood red.
IN
THE NAME OF GOD, which is a fiction, your responsibility was to sacrifice
yourself. In the name of religion, there have been crusades: Mohammedans
killing Christians, Christians killing Mohammedans, Mohammedans killing
Hindus, Hindus burning Buddhists alive. And the greatest problem is that what
you are doing to man is in the name of something for which you cannot provide
any existential proof.
But responsibility ...!
Responsibility to your parents, responsibility to your wife, responsibility
to your husband, responsibility to your children ... Perhaps you may never
have thought about it that if you love your children, there is no question of
responsibility. Because you love, you do things, you enjoy doing it. Nobody
can enjoy responsibility. It is too big a word, too heavy. If you are
educating your children, is it responsibility or your love?
If
it is love, then there is no question of any burden; you are not doing
something reluctantly in spite of yourself, because it has to be done. But
you are concerned about respectability, what others will say. You will be
condemned, so you have to take care of your old parents -- out of
responsibility, not out of love.
LOVE IS COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN,
because love needs a revolution in your consciousness. It is not so cheap as
responsibility. Responsibility can be taught to you by the priests, by the
teachers. Nobody can teach you love. Love you have to find yourself, within
your being, by raising your consciousness to higher levels. And when love
comes, there is no question of responsibility. You do things because you
enjoy doing them for the person you love. You are not obliging the person,
you are not even wanting anything in return, not even gratitude.
On the contrary, you are grateful
that the person has allowed you to do something for him. It was your joy,
sheer joy. Love knows nothing of responsibility. It does many things, it is
very creative; it shares all that it has, but it is not a responsibility,
remember. Responsibility is an ugly word in comparison to love.
Love is natural. Responsibility is
created by the cunning priests, politicians who want to dominate you in the
name of God, in the name of the nation, in the name of family, in the name of
religion -- any fiction will do.
But they don't talk about love. On
the contrary, they are all against love, because love is unable to be
controlled by them. A man of love acts out of his own heart, not according to
any moral code. A man of love will not join the army because it is his
responsibility to fight for his nation. A man of love will say there are no
nations, and there is no question of any fight.
When I was a student in the
university, it was made compulsory for every student that they should join
army training. Otherwise they would not be given their postgraduate
certificates. It was my last year in the university. I went to the
vice-chancellor and told him, "It goes against my consciousness, it goes
against my heart to learn anything destructive. And I refuse absolutely to
join any training that you are providing for students. I don't care whether
you give me the certificate or not."
He immediately said, "But
don't you feel any responsibility for your nation?"
I said, "Where is the nation? I have never come across it, except on the
map."
And I told him a story about two
men sitting on the sea beach who suddenly began to beat each other, so a
crowd gathered. They were somehow separated and the police came, they were
arrested and taken to the court and the magistrate said, "I know you
both. You have been known in the city as the best of friends. What
happened?"
They both felt very ashamed and they looked at each other. "You tell him
what happened," and the other said, "Better you tell it."
The magistrate said, "What can be such a secret that you are having so
much difficulty in saying it?"
They said, "It is not a secret. It is simply so shameful that we don't
want to say it, but ... if you insist, we will have to speak. We were sitting
-- we are great friends -- just sitting on the beach, and this person, my
friend, said that he is going to purchase a buffalo. I said, `Buffalo? But
remember, she should not enter into my field. I am going to purchase a farm
and if she enters into my farm, I will not tolerate your buffalo simply
because you are my friend. I will kill your buffalo.'
"My friend said, `This is too much. Buffaloes are buffaloes. And I
cannot follow my buffalo the whole day wherever she goes. She will go into
your farm and I will see then who kills my buffalo. I will kill anybody who
kills my buffalo. I will not remember that you are my friend. You are my
enemy if you kill my buffalo.'"
And the thing came to such a point that the man who had made it clear that he
would not tolerate the buffalo, made a square with his finger and said,
"This is my farm. Now let us see where your buffalo is." He does
not have a farm yet, nor has the other any buffalo. Both are thinking to
purchase. But the other said, "This is your farm," and he brought
his finger running across the farm saying, "This is my buffalo. Now do
what you want to do." And the fight started.
The magistrate said, "This is too much. Neither does he have the farm,
nor do you have the buffalo. You should at least have waited."
They said, "It was a hypothetical question, but we forgot that it was
hypothetical. We became so hot. Please forgive us."
We have all forgotten that many
hypotheses are asking us to do things which we would never do in our senses,
in our intelligence, in our consciousness.
You
are asking, "What is the responsibility of love?" You don't
understand those words. And you don't understand because you have not loved
yet. That's the only reason that you don't understand. If you had loved, you
would have experienced a responsibility arising out of it, with no sense of
duty, with no sense of burden, but just a sheer joy, a dance, a song of the
heart. You are doing something that is needed. You never think that you are
obliged.
Love never obliges anybody. Love
is always obliged that you allowed the heart to shower upon you its flowers,
its joys, its songs. Love is obliged to you for your receptivity. Responsibility
always thinks, "I have done well and everybody should know it. And
everybody should feel obliged. I have sacrificed so much for the freedom of
the country; I have done so much in the war in defending the country; I am
working so hard so that my children can be educated, can be well-nourished,
so that I can provide facilities for my grandparents or my parents." But
you find this a burden. You are crushed under it. It is not a joy, it is not
blissfulness, it is not ecstasy.
MY GRANDFATHER loved very much. He
was old, very old, but he remained active to the very last breath. He loved
nature almost too much. He lived in a faraway farm. Once in a while he would
come to the city, but he never liked it. He always liked the wild world,
where he lived.
Once in a while I used to go to
him and he always liked somebody to massage his feet. He was becoming so old
and he was working so hard, so I would massage his feet. But I told him,
"Remember, I am not fulfilling any responsibility. I don't have any responsibility
towards anyone in the world. I love you, and I will massage your feet but
only up to the point where it is not troublesome to me. So when I stop, never
ask me to do a little more. I will not. I am doing it out of my joy, not
because you are my grandfather. I could have done the same to any beggar, any
stranger, just out of love."
He understood the point. He said,
"I never thought that responsibility and love are two things. But you
are right. When I am working on the field, I always feel I am doing it for my
children and their children, as a duty. It is heavy on my heart. But I will
try to change this attitude of responsibility. I may be too old to change --
it has become a fixation in my mind -- but I will try to change."
I said to him, "There is no
need. If you feel it is becoming a burden on you, you have done enough. You
rest. There is no need to continue working, unless you enjoy the open sky and
the green field and love these trees and the birds. If you are doing it out
of joy and you love your children and you want to do something for them, only
then continue. Otherwise stop."
Although he was old, something
synchronized between me and him. That never happened with any other member of
my family. We were great friends. I was the youngest in the family and he was
the oldest, just two polarities. And everybody in the house laughed,
"What kind of friendship is this? You laugh together, you joke with each
other, you play with each other, you run after each other. And he is so old
and you are so young. And you don't communicate the same way with anybody
else, nor does he communicate the same way with anybody else."
I said, "Something has
happened between us. He loves me and I love him. Now it is no more a question
of any relationship; neither am I his grandchild nor is he my grandfather. We
are just two friends: one is old, one is young."
Once you taste love, you will drop
the word responsibility completely. Hence your question, "What is the
responsibility of love?" is simply irrelevant. Love needs no
responsibility. And responsibility knows no love. And I don't teach you any
responsibility, because I don't want you to be sacrificed in any fictitious
name. I want you to live as naturally, existentially as possible. Don't live
according to hypotheses. Don't live according to moral codes. Don't live
according to Manu or Moses. Live according to your own heart and whatever you
do will be right. Never ask anybody what is right. Only a man who has no
heart asks that kind of question. Let your heart respond to your question:
your answer is not going to come by any scripture, any holy tradition.
I have heard.... When God made the
world, he went to the Babylonians and asked them: "Would you like to
have a commandment?"
They said, "First tell us what the commandment is."
And he said, "Thou shall not commit adultery."
And the Babylonians said, "Then what shall we do? No, we don't want any
such commandment."
He went to the Egyptians with the same result. He went to other people -- the
same. They all asked, "What is the commandment? Don't trick us into some
trouble. First be completely clear: what is your commandment?"
And then finally he went to Moses and said, "Would you like to have a
commandment?"
Moses said, "How much?"
And God said, "It is free."
Moses said, "Then I will have ten."
And because of this Jewish mind,
millions of Jews since that time have been living according to those ten
commandments.
I WAS IN GREECE and one of my
sannyasins, Amrito, told me that the Greek Orthodox church is very old-fashioned,
very traditional. It insists on every woman being a virgin until she gets
married. She has been one of the most beautiful women herself. When she was
young she was chosen as the beauty queen of Greece and since then she has
been a topmost model. She was telling me about this emphasis of the Greek
church on virginity. I asked her, "But is it followed?" She said,
"Don't ask such a question. You will not find a single virgin in the
whole of Greece."
I remember she told me that in a
church a priest was hammering hard the fact that, "If you are not a
virgin, you will suffer eternal hellfire. So stand up if any woman is a
virgin." Nobody stood up, everybody was looking down. He said, "I
give you another chance. Stand up! At least for God's sake, one or two women
should stand up." Finally, one woman with a small baby stood up. And the
priest said, "You think you are a virgin?"
She said, "No, I am not a
virgin. This baby is virgin. But she cannot stand on her own. And she is the
only virgin in the whole congregation. She is only six months old, so I have
to stand up."
People have been forced into all
kinds of nonsense. And they have been made to feel guilty if they don't
follow the codes. If they follow them, they become unnatural; they start
becoming miserable, they become unnecessarily tense; they lose all juice in
life, because they are going against life.
Love is not a religious
commandment. Love is your very innermost longing, your very nature.
Responsibility is imposed from outside and it is needed only by those who
have not grown up in love.
If you are grown up in love, you
can throw away all responsibility. Love is enough unto itself.
Your question makes me feel sad
that you have not experienced love yet. But this is the situation of the
greater part of humanity. Forget all about responsibility, search deep in
your being for the space which we call love. Once you have found that space
within you, it expands. On its own it starts growing. It goes spreading
around you, radiating around you. It becomes your very aura, your very energy
field, and whoever comes into that energy field is touched, deeply touched
with your joy, with your celebrating realization, with your love. But it is
not a responsibility at all.
Little Ernie is playing with the
girl next door. "Let us play Adam and Eve," he says. "You
tempt me to eat the apple and I will give in."
Be Adam and Eve, as if you are the
first people in the world. You don't have any past, you don't have any Moses
and you don't have any Manu and you don't have any Confucius. There is no
past.
Adam and Eve had a certain freedom
which you don't have, because they had no past, only an open future. You
don't have any future, because you are always looking at the past and the
past is gone. You can see the dust a long way back on the road, but you
cannot reach again to the same place. What is gone, is gone.
And remember, existence has not
given you eyes in your neck. If it was the intention of existence that you
should look back, it would have given you eyes in the back of your head. What
is the point of giving you eyes looking forward when you are not looking
forward?
RESPONSIBILITY IS LOOKING
BACKWARD; love is looking forward. Be innocent like Adam and Eve, as if you
have just arrived fresh and you don't have anything to do with the past. You
have to find your own way; there is no guide, there is no holy scripture,
there is no prophet, no savior. You are left alone to find your path. You
will not find responsibility, you will find spontaneity. You will not find
duty, you will find love.
And if your life is nothing but
pure love, you don't need any other spirituality. Love is the best name you
can give to God. Because love is something which is not a hypothesis. It is
your intrinsic reality. And it is the most precious thing in you.
A Jewish boy is courting a
Catholic girl. "I'm sorry I could not see you last night," she
says, "but I had to go to confession."
"I hope you don't tell the old priest all about the things we do when
your parents are out," says the boy.
"Sure, I do," she says. "But don't worry. I just slip Father
Murphy ten bucks and he makes things okay for me."
The next evening the Jewish boy arrives at the Catholic church to see the
priest. "Aha," says Father Murphy. "My son, I suppose you have
come for confession."
"No Father, not likely," says the boy. "I have come for my
commission."
In fact, all your religions are
nothing but business. And the boy is right to ask for a commission!
Love is not business and love is
not a sin. Love is your greatest virtue. Love is your highest flowering.
Sharing it is sheer joy. Don't call it responsibility. That word has become
too heavy by continuous use by those people whose vested interests are served
by it. Love serves nobody. It gives you individuality and a tremendous sense
of freedom. Love makes you courageous enough to assert your uniqueness in a
world where only the crowd respects those who belong to the crowd.
THE UNIQUE PERSON does not belong
to the crowd. He stands alone and aloof like a very tall tree reaching
towards the stars. The small bushes, naturally, feel jealous. Hence every
great man in the world is going to be condemned by the pygmies. They will
find all kinds of excuses to condemn anyone who has something unique in him.
Any individual who is not surrendering his freedom to the crowd is going to
be condemned. But I want you to be individuals, not respectable people. They
are the ugliest people in the world.
Yes, those who are thought to be
respectable are the most condemnable, because they have sold their souls for
their respectability. They have become slaves of a crowd which knows nothing
of the higher things of life, the higher values of life.
Just be yourself ,
silent, peaceful, meditative, and love will arise in tidal waves and will go
on coming to you from unknown sources which are hidden inside you. Those
sources are as oceanic as any great ocean in the world. And you can share
that love without humiliating anyone and without feeding your ego; these two
things are done by responsibility, which feeds your ego, makes it stronger
and humiliates the other person.
You may not be aware that whenever
you do something because of responsibility, the other person can never
forgive you. You have insulted him. But when you do something out of love,
nobody feels any humiliation because love is humble, it cannot humiliate.
Responsibility is not the quality of a humble person, it is the quality of
the egoist who wants to make everybody obliged to him, who wants everybody to
be a beggar and he the giver. He always wants to keep the upper hand. Nobody
can forgive such a man. They may give him respect in the crowd, but behind
his back, they all feel utterly insulted. And they take revenge.
Love never humiliates; hence there
is no question of revenge. It simply rejoices in giving: it gives and it
forgets. It does not even remember to whom it has given, what it has given.
It does not keep an account of all that it has shared. It goes on, moment to
moment, singing its song to whoever is capable of understanding it. Whoever
is capable of receiving it will receive it. But he is not doing any social
service, he is not a public servant. He is a man who knows how to celebrate.
He is celebrating himself.
In
the three hundred years of America, there have not been many men who can be
compared to the great mystics of the world. Only one man, a poet, comes very
close to the mystics, Walt Whitman. One of his beautiful songs is: "I
Celebrate Myself." America has not paid much attention to Walt
Whitman, but he is the only one in the three hundred years of America's life
who has reached the highest peak possible.
When he says, "I celebrate
myself," he is saying everything about love. "And if you can
rejoice in my celebration, you are welcome. If you can be my guest, I invite
you to celebrate." Love celebrates, it is not a responsibility at all.
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