Osho on Marriage

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( Osho's view on marriage was very shocking to me when read this post first few years ago. but this is very important realization- that in present format- marraige is hell. stress. becauce basic need of any human is freedom. and marriage is binding. against freedom. one has to cultivate a kind of understanding with the fellow human being.... my hope with post has been tremendous.  what works in relationship is love... there is no other way....) osho says-    This is the compromise that human beings have made: to be secure about the future, to be certain about the tomorrows, to have a guarantee that the woman who loves you is going to love you forever, that it is not a temporary affair....  That’s why religious people say that marriages are "made in heaven"... a strange kind of heaven, because if these marriages are made in heaven, then what can you make in hell? They don’t show the signs, the fragrance, the freshness, the beauty of heaven. They are certainly disgusting, ugly... they show something of hell certainly. But man settled for marriage because that was the only way to have private property.  Animals don’t have private property -- they are all communists, and far better communists than have appeared in human history. They don’t have any dictatorship of the proletariat and they have not lost their freedom, but they don’t have any private property.  Man also lived for thousands of years without marriage, but those were the days when there was no private property. Those were the days of hunting; man was a hunter. And those people thousands of years ago had no cold-storage system, no technology -- whatever food they got they had to finish as quickly as possible. They could only hope that tomorrow they will get some food again.  Because there was nothing to accumulate, there was no question of marriage. People lived in communes, tribes; people loved, people reproduced, but in the beginning there was no word for "father." The word "mother" is far more ancient and far more natural. You will be surprised to know that the word `uncle’ is older than the word "father" -- because all the people who were the age of your father... you didn’t know who your father was. Men and women were mixing joyously -- without any compulsion, without any legal bondage, out of their free will. If they wanted to meet and be together there was no question of domination. The children never knew who their father was, they knew only their mother. And they knew many men in the tribe; someone amongst those men must have been their father, hence they were all uncles.  As private property came into existence with cultivation.... With hunting, man could not survive long. People have destroyed complete species of animals. Hundreds of species which once used to dance and sing on this earth... man has eaten them up. Something had to be done because hunting was not reliable. Today you may get food, tomorrow you may have to be hungry. And it was very arduous. The search for animals did not allow man to develop any of his other talents, his genius. But cultivation changed the whole life of man.  You must be reminded of the fact that  cultivation  is the discovery of women,  not of men. The woman was confined -- she was not able to go hunting. Most of the time she was pregnant, she was weak, she was carrying another soul within her. She needed care, protection...so she was living in the house. She started making the living space more beautiful -- and this you can see even today, after thousands of years.  If you enter into a bachelor’s room you can immediately say that it is a bachelor’s room. You may not be able to decide by seeing the bachelor whether he is bachelor or not, but his room certainly is a bachelor! The woman, her touch, is missing. The house of a bachelor is never a home, it is just a place where he sleeps. It is not something with which he feels a certain intimacy, a certain creative relationship.  The home, the village, the city and the whole civilization are because of the woman, because she was free from hunting and she had different values of the heart and of the mind -- she was more aesthetic, more graceful, more earthly, not at all interested in hell and heaven and God and the devil and all that crap! No woman has written a single religious scripture. No woman has been a philosopher thinking about abstract, faraway things.  Woman’s consciousness is interested only in the intimate surroundings -- she would like a beautiful house, she would like a beautiful garden. She wants to create a small world of her own -- cozy, comfortable. She imparts a certain quality to a dead house and it becomes a living home. It is a magical transformation.  Man continued to hunt, and the woman started looking around...the man had no time. He has always been busy without business, but the woman had all the time there is. The basic work of hunting was being done by the groups of men and the woman started looking around. She discovered cultivation because she saw wild fruits growing, she saw many other things growing and she also saw that every year the crop dies, the seeds fall back into the earth and when the rains come, again those seeds sprout in thousands of plants.  She started experimenting to find what was edible and what was not edible. Soon, as hunting was becoming more and more difficult, men had to agree with women: "We have to shift our whole economic focus. We have to go for cultivation, for fruits, for vegetables. And these are in our hands -- we can produce as much as we want, as we need it, and there is tremendous variety."  Slowly, slowly the nomads, the wandering tribes...because hunters cannot stay in one place. They have to go on moving as the animals escape. Once hunting was dropped and cultivation became our very measure of survival a new thing also happened alongside.  There were people who were powerful people and there were people who were weak people. The people who were physically powerful managed to claim much ground as their property. They earned much...slowly, slowly the barter system started, because when you have too much of one crop, what are you going to do with it? You have to exchange it; then you can have many more things. Life became more complex, with more excitement.  But a problem was felt: after a person dies, who is going to inherit his property? Nobody wanted their property to be inherited by any XYZ. They wanted their property to belong to their own blood.  It is out of economics, not out of the understanding of love that marriage came into existence.  Its very birth was wrong,  under the wrong stars. And because man had to agree for marriage.... The woman was very willing for the simple reason that for thousands of years in the hunting period she was not financially a part of the society; man was all. Man continued his power, although the whole social structure changed. The hunter’s nomadic life became a peaceful life in a village but man’s concern about his property.... He wanted a contract with the woman to be certain that the son she was giving birth to is not somebody else’s, but his own. For this simple purpose all the woman’s freedom had to be destroyed. She had to live almost like a prisoner, or worse.  Man agreed -- under compulsion, he compromised. If the woman was losing a few things -- her freedom of movement, her freedom in changing lovers -- man was also ready to sacrifice his freedom. They would remain devoted to each other forever.  But it is against nature. Even if you want to do it nature is not going to support you.  Nature is for freedom, not for any kind of bondage.  So new problems started arising. Men started finding prostitutes who were no-one’s wives, or as it was phrased in India, the prostitute was the wife of the whole town: nagarvadhu. She belongs to anybody, she is a commodity; you have to pay and buy her time and her body. Because of marriage it was very difficult to find married women because then there were more complexities: they had their husbands.... Prostitutes were good.  And you will be surprised to know that in India every city had its topmost prostitute -- she was the most beautiful girl born in that city. Because she was so beautiful it was not right to let her get married to one person, she had to be shared. She was so beautiful that if she got married there would be trouble, there would be problems -- people would go on falling in love with her. It was better to keep her free for anybody who would pay.  Marriage created suspicion. The husband was always suspicious about whether the child born to them was his own or not. And the problem is, the father had no way to determine that a child was his own. Only the mother knew. Because the father had no way of being certain, he created more and more walls around the woman -- that was the only possibility, the only alternative -- to disconnect her from the larger humanity. Not to educate her, because education gives wings to people, thoughts, makes people capable of revolt, so no education for women. No religious education for women, because religion makes you saints, holy people and it has been a male-dominated society for centuries and man cannot conceive a woman to be higher and holier than himself.  Man has been cutting from the very roots any possibility of woman’s growth. She is just a factory to manufacture children. She has not been accepted by any culture in the world as equal to man.

Osho: Sermons in Stones, Chapter 13.

Bliss and Pleasure

what is the difference between bliss and pleasure?                           
              
Pleasure is physical, physiological. Pleasure is the most superficial
thing in life; it is titillation. It can be sexual, it can be of other
senses, it can become an obsession with food, but it is rooted in the
body. The body is your periphery, your circumference; it is not your
center. And to live on the circumference is to live on the mercy of
all kinds of things that go on happening around you.

The man who seeks pleasure remains at the mercy of accidents. It is
like the waves in the ocean; they are at the mercy of the winds. When
strong winds come, they are there; when winds disappear, they
disappear. They don't have an independent existence; they are
dependent, and anything that is dependent on the other brings bondage.
Pleasure is dependent on the other. If you love a woman, if that is
your pleasure, then that woman becomes your master. If you love a man,
if that is your pleasure and you feel unhappy, in despair, sad,
without him, then you have created a bondage for yourself. You have
created a prison, you are no more in freedom. If you are a seeker
after money and power, then you will be dependent on money and power.

The man who goes on accumulating money, if it is his pleasure to have
more and more money, will become more and more miserable -- because
the more he has, the more he wants, and the more he has, the more he
is afraid to lose it. A double-edged sword: the more he wants... the
first edge of the sword.
Hence he becomes more and more miserable.

The more you demand, desire, the more you feel yourself lacking
something, the more hollow, empty, you appear to yourself. On the
other hand -- the other edge of the sword -- is that the more you
have, the more you are afraid it can be taken away; it can be stolen.
The bank can go bankrupt, the political situation in the country can
change, the country can go communist.
There are a thousand and one things upon which your money depends.
Your money does not make you a master, it makes you a slave. Pleasure
is peripheral; hence it is bound to depend on the outer circumstances.
And it is only titillation. If food is pleasure, what actually is
being enjoyed? -- just the taste! For a moment, when the food passes
your taste buds on the tongue, you feel a sensation which you
interpret as pleasure. It is your interpretation. Today it may look
like pleasure and tomorrow it may not look like pleasure. If you go on
eating the same food every day your buds on the tongue will become
nonresponsive to it. Soon you will be fed up with it -- that's how
people become fed up.

One day you are running after a man or a woman and the next day you
are trying to find an excuse to get rid of the other. The same person,
nothing has changed! What has happened meanwhile? You are bored with
the other, because the whole pleasure was in knowing the new. Now the
other is no longer new; you are acquainted with the territory of the
other. You are acquainted with the body of the other, the curves of
the body, the feel of the body. Now the mind is hankering for
something new. The mind is always hankering for something new. That's
how mind keeps you always tethered somewhere in the future. It keeps
you hoping, but it never delivers the goods -- it cannot. It can only
create new hopes, new desires. Just as leaves grow on the trees,
desires and hopes grow in the mind. You wanted a new house and now you
have it -- and where is the pleasure? Just for the moment it was
there, when you achieved your goal. Once you have achieved your goal,
your mind is no longer interested in it; it has already started
spinning new webs of desire. It has already started thinking of other,
bigger houses. And this is so about everything.

Pleasure keeps you in a neurotic state, restless, always in turmoil.
So many desires, and every desire unquenchable, clamoring for
attention. You remain a victim of a crowd of insane desires -- insane
because they are unfulfillable -- and they go on dragging you into
different directions. You become a contradiction. One desire takes you
to the left, another towards the right, and simultaneously you go on
nourishing both the desires. And then you feel a split, then you feel
divided, then you feel torn apart, then you feel like you are falling
into pieces. Nobody is responsible. It is the whole stupidity of
desiring pleasure that creates this. And it is a complex phenomenon.
You are not the only one who is seeking pleasure; millions of people
just like you are seeking the same pleasures. Hence there is great
struggle, competition, violence, war. All have become enemies to each
other because they are all seeking the same goal, and they all can't
have it; hence the struggle has to be total. You have to risk all --
for nothing, because when you gain, you gain nothing, and your whole
life is wasted in this struggle. A life which might have been a
celebration becomes a long, drawn out, unnecessary struggle.

When you are so much after pleasure you cannot love, because the man
who seeks pleasure uses the other as a means. And to use the other as
a means is one of the most immoral acts possible, because each being
is an end unto himself, you cannot use the other as a means. But in
pleasure-seeking you have to use the other as a means. You become
cunning because it is such a struggle. If you are not cunning you will
be deceived, and before others deceive you, you have to deceive them.

Machiavelli has advised pleasure-seekers that the best way of defense
is to attack. Never wait for the other to attack you; that may be too
late. Before the other attacks you, you attack him! That is the best
way of defense. And this is being followed, whether you know
Machiavelli or not. This is something very strange: people know about
Christ, about Buddha, about Mohammed, about Krishna; nobody follows
them. People don't know much about Chanakya and Machiavelli, but
people follow them -- as if Machiavelli and Chanakya are very close to
your heart!

You need not read them, you are already following them. Your whole
society is based on Machiavellian principles; that's what the whole
political game is all about. Before somebody snatches anything from
you, snatch it from the other. Be always on guard. Naturally, if you
are always on guard you will be tense, anxious, worried. And the
struggle is such and it is constant. You are one, and the enemies are
millions. For example, if in India you want to become the prime
minister, then millions of people, who also want to become the prime
minister, are your enemies. And who does not want to become the prime
minister? One may say, one may not say. So everyone is against you and
you are against everybody else. This small life of seventy, eighty
years, will be wasted into some utterly futile effort. Pleasure is not
and cannot be the goal of life. The second word to be understood is
happiness.

Happiness is psychological, pleasure is physiological. Happiness is a
little better, a little more refined, a little higher, but not very
much different from pleasure. You can say that pleasure is a lower
kind of happiness and happiness is a little higher kind of pleasure --
two sides of the same coin.
Pleasure is a little primitive, animal; happiness is a little more
cultured, a little more human -- but it is the same game played in the
world of the mind. You are not so much concerned with physiological
sensations; you are much more concerned with psychological sensations.
But basically they are not different; hence Buddha has not talked
about four words, he has talked about only two.

The third is joy; joy is spiritual. It is different, totally different
from pleasure, happiness. It has nothing to do with the other; it is
inner. It is not dependent on circumstances; it is your own. It is not
a titillation produced by things; it is a state of peace, of silence,
a meditative state.
It is spiritual. But Buddha has not talked about joy either, because
there is still one thing that goes beyond joy. He calls it bliss.

Bliss is total. It is neither physiological nor psychological nor spiritual.
It knows no division, it is indivisible. It is total in one sense and
transcendental in another sense. Buddha only talks about two words.
The first is pleasure; it includes happiness. The second is bliss; it
includes joy. Bliss means you have reached to the very innermost core
of your being.
It belongs to the ultimate depth of your being where even the ego is
no more, where only silence prevails; you have disappeared. In joy you
are a little bit, but in bliss you are not. The ego has dissolved; it
is a state of nonbeing. Buddha calls it nirvana. Nirvana means you
have ceased to be; you are just an infinite emptiness like the sky.
And the moment you are that infinity, you become full of the stars,
and a totally new life begins. You are reborn.

Pleasure is momentary, of time, for the time being; bliss is
nontemporal, timeless. Pleasure begins and ends; bliss abides forever.
Pleasure comes and goes; bliss never comes, never goes -- it is
already there in the innermost core of your being. Pleasure has to be
snatched away from the other; you become either a beggar or a thief.
Bliss makes you a master. Bliss is not something that you invent but
something that you discover. Bliss is your innermost nature. It has
been there since the very beginning, you just have not looked at it,
you have taken it for granted. You don't look inwards.
This is the only misery of man: that he goes on looking outwards,
seeking and searching. And you cannot find it in the outside because
it is not there.
Osho, excerpted from Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha,Volume 8, Chapter 5