Osho on marriage

Osho,
What is the secret of remaining happy and married?

Sarjan,
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE! It has never happened -- it cannot happen in the very nature of things. MARRIAGE IS SOMETHING AGAINST NATURE. Marriage is an imposition, an invention of man -- certainly out of necessity. But now even that necessity is out of date. It was a necessary evil in the past, but now it can be dropped. And it should be dropped: man has suffered enough for it, more than enough. IT IS AN UGLY INSTITUTION for the simple reason that love cannot be legalized. Love and law are contradictory phenomena.

MARRIAGE IS AN EFFORT TO LEGALIZE LOVE. It is out of fear. It is thinking about the future, about the tomorrows. Man always thinks of the past and the future; and because of this constant thinking about past and future, he destroys the present. And the present is the only reality there is. One has to live in the present. The past has to die and has to be allowed to die.

THE REALLY INTELLIGENT PERSON NEVER LOOKS BACK; he never bothers about the past -- that which is finished is finished forever. And he never thinks of the future either, because that which has not come yet has not come yet. And he knows that whenever it comes, he will be capable of responding to it, so why ponder over it? Why make ready-made answers to questions which have not even arisen? And all your ready-made answers are going to be irrelevant because life goes on changing. Life remains always a surprise; it is unpredictable.

But man thinks that he is being very clever by preparing for the future. You love a woman, you love a man, but what about the future? TOMORROW THE WOMAN MAY FALL IN LOVE WITH SOMEBODY ELSE. If she can fall in love even with you, Sarjan, why can she not fall in love with somebody else? You know it, you are aware of it that: "She has fallen in love even with me, so there is every possibility she can fall in love with somebody else."

So something has to be done to prevent her from falling in love with somebody else, so that your tomorrow is safe and secure, so that you can use her tomorrow, too. WHETHER LOVE REMAINS OR NOT, at least you will have the physiology of the woman. You are not much concerned with her soul -- because law cannot restrain the soul, but law can create barriers for the body; the body is not beyond its reach. Law can control her; law can condemn her, can punish her in many ways.

And another thing: not only are you afraid of the woman, YOU ARE AFRAID OF YOURSELF TOO. If you can fall in love with this woman, you can fall in love with somebody else. You know that your mind is constantly thinking of other women. You know there is every possibility that TOMORROW YOU MAY LOSE INTEREST IN THIS WOMAN; in fact it is almost a certainty, not just a possibility, not just a probability. And then you are afraid of yourself. You may escape, you may run.

AND YOU WANT TO CLING because this woman is taking care of you. She has been a comfort to you, she has been a consolation in your life, she has been in many ways a mother to you, a nourishment. You are afraid to betray her. YOU ARE AFRAID OF YOUR OWN MIND, of your own unconscious; it can take you anywhere.

AND YOU HAVE PROMISED HER THAT YOU WILL NEVER LEAVE HER, that you will always love her, that you will love her forever, life after life. You are afraid of breaking your promises. Your ego feels that to break those promises will mean only one thing: that you will never be able to forgive yourself. It will remain a heavy weight on you, it will create guilt for you.

And the same is the situation from the side of the woman. Hence it has been a necessary evil, and men and women have agreed to plan for the future. AFRAID OF THEMSELVES, THEY HAVE TAKEN SUPPORT FROM THE LAW, from the society, from conventions, from respectability. They have created thousand and one barriers around themselves so that they remain together.

But if -- and that "if" is not a small "if", it is a big "if" -- something happens tomorrow, then your life will become miserable. AND SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN TOMORROW; tomorrow is not going to remain the same. Life never remains the same, not even for two consecutive moments. Nothing can be said about the future; it remains unknown, unknowable, unpredictable. No astrology can help, no palmistry can help, no tarot-card reading can help, no I-ching can help -- nothing can help. Man has tried every possible way to make something certain out of the uncertain future, but nothing can be done. The nature of the future is unknown, and it remains unknown and open.

SO YOU CLOSE YOURSELF TO ALL POSSIBILITIES. You close all the doors, all the windows. But then you will feel suffocated and you will feel angry and you will feel constantly in conflict. With the woman you had loved once, you will feel angry for the simple reason that now it is difficult to get out of this prison. YOU HAVE IMPRISONED YOURSELF; now the only way to go on living in it is to make yourself as insensitive as possible, to become as unloving as possible, to become as false as possible, to be as dead as possible.

Hence people die very soon. They may be buried after forty years, fifty years, but they die nearabout thirty. BY THE TIME THEIR LOVE STARTS DYING THEY DIE, because life is love. But love is not law, life is not law. Life is not logic, love is not logic. LIFE IS BASICALLY INSECURE, and that is the beauty of it.

Hence I don't see that with the coming age, with the new maturity that man is attaining, MARRIAGE CAN EXIST ANYMORE IN THE SAME OLD WAY. It has to become more fluid; that means it can no more be an institution. People will live together -- they need each other... Men and women are halves of one whole; their need is intrinsic. Together they become one whole, together they are complementary to each other. But they will live together only because of love, not because of any law. AND THEY WILL LIVE TOGETHER OUT OF FREEDOM, NOT OUT OF BONDAGE.

And with the disappearance of the institution of marriage, THE WHOLE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY WILL CHANGE -- it cannot change otherwise -- because once marriage disappears many things will disappear automatically. THE FAMILY WILL NOT BE THE SAME ANYMORE; the family will be replaced by communes -- that is inevitable. And children will not belong to persons but to the commune. Hence they will not be much of a problem -- because children have been a big problem: WHAT TO DO WITH THE CHILDREN WHEN PEOPLE SEPARATE? The children are left in a limbo; something has to be done about the children. And marriage has persisted for the simple reason that children have to be protected, they have to be helped; they are helpless. And it is your responsibility.

LOVE BECOMES DUTY, RESPONSIBILITY. And the moment it is duty and responsibility it loses all poetry, it becomes pure calculation. Then it is a compromise, then you have somehow to pull it, then you start dragging your life.

A GREAT REVOLUTION IS ON THE WAY, and with the disappearance of marriage that revolution will become possible. Once children no more belong to persons, they will have more generosity, they will be more human. They will not be Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians -- because they will not belong to certain parents and they will not be conditioned by the parents; they will belong to the commune. And once children belong to the commune they will have a larger experience of people. One child may come in contact with many women as mothers, aunts; with many men as fathers, as uncles; with many children as brothers, sisters.

RIGHT NOW THE EXPERIENCE OF THE CHILD IS VERY LIMITED. Each child is brought up by a certain woman. The impact of that woman remains hanging on the child's consciousness for his whole life; it becomes an imprint. And he is always searching for the same woman: in every woman he falls in love with, HE IS REALLY LOOKING FOR HIS MOTHER, whom he cannot find. Where can he find his mother? There are no two persons alike. He will never find his mother anywhere, but he is looking for his mother in every wife, in every beloved. And the same is the case with the woman: SHE IS LOOKING FOR THE FATHER IN EVERY HUSBAND, IN EVERY LOVER. And they cannot find them, but that is their IDEA.

THE WOMAN'S IDEA OF A MAN is nothing but her idea of the father, and the man's idea of a woman is nothing but his idea of the mother. They will never find them. Hence there will be frustration, hence there will always be despair, misery, failure, anguish.

IF A CHILD IS BROUGHT UP BY MANY WOMEN IN THE COMMUNE and comes in contact with many men and many women he will not have a certain idea, he will have a more vague vision. He will not have a certainty how a man should be or a woman should be. His idea of a woman will contain many pictures. AND THEN THERE WILL BE MORE POSSIBILITY OF FINDING A WOMAN WHO CAN FULFILL HIM or a man with whom life can be a contentment -- because one of the greatest miseries is that you are looking for someone you cannot find. Hence everybody will seem to be falling short; nothing will ever satisfy you.

And because you will not be confined to one family, YOU WILL NOT CARRY THE ROTTEN HERITAGE OF THE FAMILY. Otherwise the Hindu parents will make the child Hindu, and a Hindu child is bound to be against the Mohammedans, against the Christians, against everybody else. And so is the case with the Jews and with the Christians and the Mohammedans. If the child moves with many people in a commune and feels attuned with the whole commune....

NOW, THIS CHILD WILL BE A TOTALLY DIFFERENT CHILD! He has lived with Jews and with Christians and with Hindus. He will not be conditioned by anything, he will not have any conditioning. He will have a vast territory of being available to him.

THAT'S MY IDEA HOW ALL CHILDREN SHOULD GROW. Then there will be no ugly religious conflicts, wars, bloodshed; no ugly fanaticism, no fascist ideologies in the world. These are all byproducts of the family, and the family depends on marriage. In fact, if the family disappears, nations will have to disappear, religions will disappear, states will disappear, churches will disappear. That's why nations, churches, everybody is in favor of marriage AND THEY ALL GO ON PRAISING MARRIAGE AS IF IT IS SOMETHING HOLY, SOMETHING DIVINE. It is the ugliest thing on the earth! And they go on telling people that, "Without marriage, where will children get love?" They will get more love; nobody is going to prevent their parents from loving them, but they will be available to others, too. They will not be dependent, they will start learning independence. From the very beginning, they will have a certain new feel of freedom. And that's what is needed.

THE WHOLE OF HUMAN HISTORY HAS BEEN FULL OF RELIGIOUS WARS for the simple reason that everybody becomes conditioned. And once you are conditioned it is very difficult to uncondition you. I know the difficulty because that's my while work here -- to uncondition you. It takes months, years; and you struggle hard -- you resist in every possible way because your conditioning means your ego.

You ask me, Sarjan: What is the secret of remaining happy and married?

I don't know! NOBODY HAS EVER KNOWN. Why would Jesus have remained unmarried if he had known the secret? He knew the secret of the kingdom of God, but he did not know the secret of remaining happy in marriage. He remained unmarried. Mahavira, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, THEY ALL REMAINED UNMARRIED for the simple reason that there is no secret; otherwise these people would have discovered it. They could discover the ultimate -- marriage is not such a big thing, it is very shallow -- they even fathomed God, but they could not fathom marriage.

SOCRATES GOT MARRIED AND HE SUFFERED HIS WHOLE LIFE. He did not discover through marriage the secret of remaining happy; he simply discovered that it would have been better if he had not got married. But in Greece there had never been such incidents as Jesus, Lao Tzu -- Jesus had yet to come, five hundred years after Socrates. Socrates was a contemporary of Lao Tzu, Mahavira -- but he knew nothing about them because the world in those days had no communication. So whatsoever was conventional happened in his life.

MOHAMMED MARRIED NOT ONE WOMAN, HE MARRIED NINE WOMEN! Many times I have been asked, "What about Mohammed?" I know the secret of Mohammed but I don't know the secret of remaining happy in marriage. But if you have nine women they will fight amongst themselves, and you will be free! Mohammed managed it, and he has said to his followers, "Marry at least four women." So Mohammedans are allowed to marry four women. Four women are enough to fight amongst themselves, and the husband will be spared.

KRISHNA DID THE BEST: HE MARRIED SIXTEEN THOUSAND WOMEN! Now it is very easy to get lost. Sixteen thousand women... who will notice Krishna, where he has gone, where he is? There will be so much noise and fight; and in that cloudy, smokey atmosphere Krishna can escape anywhere. He can even sit in the middle of it and meditate, and nobody will bother about him! They will all be concerned about each other's saris and each other's ornaments.

BUDDHA GOT MARRIED, BUT THEN HE ESCAPED. He had a beautiful wife, Yashodhara, but he escaped. He came back home only when he became enlightened, after twelve years. Yes, if you are enlightened then you can be happy anywhere, even in marriage. But no enlightened person has been known to get married after enlightenment.

Two friends meet.
"Hello, Luisa, how is your great love?"
"It's over," she replied sadly.
"Over? How come?"
"We got married!"
....
The wife left home for the fifth time and the husband rushed to place an advertisement in the newspaper.
It read: "Do not come back and all will be forgiven."

It was a wise old woman who, when people asked her why she never married, would answer: "Why marry? I have a dog who snores, a parrot who speaks only dirty words and a cat who stays out all night. What do I need a husband for?"

The jealous husband hires a detective to find out if his wife betrays him. After a few days the detective comes back with a movie showing his wife and his best friend swimming, dancing, making love, having fun.
While watching the movie the husband keeps saying, "I can't believe it! I can't believe it!"
"But," says the detective, annoyed, "I'm giving you proof of it!"
"No, it's not that," replies the husband, "I just can't believe someone can have so much fun with my wife!"

In heaven everybody is quiet and silent except for Paolo who keeps saying, "What peace here! What peace here!"
Even St. Peter gets tired of him and so one day he sends him to purgatory. Even there though Paolo keeps muttering, "What peace here! What peace here!"
Everybody gets so tired that they decide to send him down to hell. But even in hell, among the flames and the devils, he keeps uttering, "What peace here! What peace here!"
So Beelzebub calls him, and asks him the reason for his behavior.
"Well, Beelzebub," replies Paolo, "you would say the same if you had lived for fifty years with my wife!"

LOVE IS ENOUGH. Live only out of love. It may last long, it may not last. But don't be worried whether it lasts long or does not last long. Even if it is there for a single moment, it will give you the taste of eternity.

And there is every possibility that IF YOU ARE NOT AFRAID, IT MAY LAST LONGER, because fear is poison; it poisons everything. If you are not worried about tomorrow you may live today so totally that out of that totality a beautiful tomorrow will arise. But if you are afraid of tomorrow, you may destroy today. And once today is destroyed, from where is tomorrow going to come?

LIVE FEARLESSLY -- that is one of my fundamental messages to my sannyasins -- AND LIVE DANGEROUSLY. Don't compromise for conveniences, for comforts. It is better to live in discomfort but to live, rather than to be in comfort and dead. For that you can wait -- in your grave you will be perfectly comfortable and out of danger. Nothing can happen there; there is no danger. You cannot die again, no illness can happen, nobody can leave you, you can't go bankrupt, nothing can be stolen from you. You will be perfectly at peace.

You must have come across gravestones -- and it is written on almost all graves: "Rest in peace." What else is there?
....
You can rest in peace in the grave, in absolute security. But while you are alive, BE alive. ACCEPT ALL INSECURITY. In that very acceptance, insecurity disappears, and without any compromise on your part. Love totally, but don't ask for permanence. Only fools ask for permanence. And remember one thing: if you ask for permanence, you will get only false things; only false things are permanent.

REAL ROSES ARE BOUND TO WITHER SOONER OR LATER, but plastic roses are permanent; they don't wither away. But they don't have any fragrance either, they don't have any life either; they have only the appearance of roses.

MARRIAGE IS A PLASTIC ROSE; love is a real rose. Grow real roses in your life. Of course they will wither -- so what? You can grow them again, you can go on growing them. You can go on creating more and more love, sharing more and more with more and more people.

And this is my experience -- and whatsoever I am saying I am saying out of my own experience -- that IF YOU LOVE TOTALLY WITHOUT DESIRING ANY PERMANENCE, even the impossible is possible. Your love may remain for a long period, maybe your whole life. But don't ask for permanence; in that very asking you have disturbed the whole thing: you have moved from the real to the unreal. Live totally!

"Totality" is my keyword -- and up to now "permanence" has been the keyword. YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT YOUR LOVE SHOULD BE PERMANENT, ONLY THEN IT IS REAL; if it is not permanent it is not real. That is sheer bullshit! A real love has nothing to do with permanence; there is no necessary relationship. It may happen only for a moment, it may be just like lightning, but that does not mean that lightning is unreal, because it happens only for a moment. The rose flower opens in the morning; by the evening the petals have dropped, withered away, gone back to rest into the earth. That does not mean that the rose flower was unreal.

BUT YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD AGAIN AND AGAIN BY THE PRIESTS that if you are really looking for reality, then the touchstone is permanence. They have moved your mind from reality to permanence. And once you become attached to permanence, you are bound to purchase something false and you lose track of the real. THE REAL IS CHANGING, CONSTANTLY CHANGING; the unreal remains the same. And you have to be available to the constantly changing.

EVEN IF FOR A SINGLE MOMENT LOVE HAPPENS, BE TOTAL IN IT. If you are total in it, the next moment will come out of this totality. It is possible -- I cannot tell you it is certain, I can only tell you it is possible -- that the next moment will deepen your love. But it will not be the same: either it will deepen or it will disappear, but it will never be the same again. No two moments are the same, and they cannot be the same.

AND THAT IS THE BEAUTY OF LIFE, that is the incredible adventure of life: that it is always a surprise, it is always unexpected. If you live totally things may deepen -- but remember, when things are deepening, they are not the same. If you think of permanence you have missed the target.

So don't ask me: What is the secret of remaining, happy and married?

I CAN ONLY TELL YOU THE SECRET OF BEING HAPPY -- marriage is irrelevant. If you live together with somebody out of love, out of gratitude, good. If it goes on happening your whole life, good. If it disappears one day, depart from each other in deep gratitude, in the remembrance of the love that has been once there -- it has enriched you. RATHER THAN CLINGING TO EACH OTHER IN ANGER, in frustration, in rage, and being violent to each other and destructive, it is better to depart with grace. One should know how to fall in love and one should also know how to fall out of it gracefully.

OSHO
Tao: The Golden Gate
Vol 1, Ch #3: Grow Real Roses
am in Buddha Hall