The only responsibility is towards yourself

IF I AM TO BE MY BROTHER’S KEEPER, HOW FAR DOES MY RESPONSIBILITY GO?

No, you are not. Nobody is. Nobody is meant to be anybody’s keeper. You are here to be yourself. Your only responsibility is towards yourself. I would like you to be totally selfish because only in that is there a possibility that you may be helpful to others. Unless you are deeply self-centred, unless you are so selfish in your being that you are happy,celebrating, you will not be able to share it. Humanity has been put on the wrong track by altruists, by people who say: Serve others, you are responsible for others. Nobody is responsible for anybody. The only responsibility is towards yourself. And if you are fulfilled in that responsibility you respond beautifully. A really fulfilled husband will love his wife, because out of his fulfillment love flows. But if he thinks he has to fulfill responsibilities, he has a duty to care because he has got married to this woman, then he will be killing his woman, poisoning the woman, because this very attitude is poisonous. He will be dragging the  weight, and with his every gesture he will be showing that he is not satisfied. With every gesture he will go on hinting to the woman: You are a heavy weight on me.

Your mother is old; if you have really a deeprooted centring within you you will love and serve her – not because this is your responsibility, no, but because this is how it happens to be. You enjoy serving the old woman. You love it! It is simple. You are not being a martyr, you are not trying to sacrifice yourself – remember always whenever you are a martyr you can never forgive the person for whom you have been a martyr. You will carry the wound, and you would like to take revenge. But the whole world has been trained: the father has to fulfil his duties to the children, then those children never forget and never forgive the father. Now one of the greatest insights that has come to Western psychology is that children never forgive their parents. This seems to be ridiculous because parents have been doing so much; but the very idea that ’I am doing so much’ is a crippling thing, heavy. The father goes on saying: I am sacrificing for you. This is simply stupid. Nobody is sacrificing for anybody else. If you love the children – you work, if you don’t love – you don’t work. It is better that the children should die than they should live a burdened life. If you love your wife – you love, and there is no question of any responsibility. If you don’t love, be frank and be true. Don’t love her. Somebody else

may love her, why waste her life and your life? No, nobody is anybody’s keeper.

The only responsibility is towards yourself. This will look as if I am teaching selfishness. Yes, I am teaching it. If everybody in the world was selfish the world would be beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Just think – everybody trying to be happy, everybody trying to be celebrating, everybody trying to be silent, meditative, prayerful, loving – because these are the things which will make you happy; the world will be happy. But here, nobody is trying to be happy himself. People are trying to make others happy. And if you are not  happy how can you make others happy? You make them more unhappy. Public servants

who are trying to change others’ lives so that they can become happy, are the most mischievous people in the world. Who are you to make anybody happy? If they want to be unhappy please let them be unhappy. At least that is their right! To be happy or unhappy is one’s right. You keep to yourself. You become unhappy if you want, you become happy if you want. Nobody wants to be unhappy and nobody will be unhappy if he looks to his own affairs, pays attention to his own affairs. A world absolutely selfish will be the best world possible. That’s why I am against communism and all socialistic tendencies. Because they kill the individual. They sacrifice the individual for the society, for the state. They say: For the country you have to die. For the religion you have to die. For the good of all you have to die – and they go on saying this to everybody, and everybody is dying – and for nobody! And everybody is unhappy trying to make everybody else happy. It is not possible – you cannot make anybody happy. In fact you cannot make anybody unhappy either. The most that can be done, that which is humanly possible, is to be happy or unhappy. Decide that. That’s all. And out of that, beautiful things start happening. When your house is lighted, when you have a fragrance of happiness, suddenly your fragrance

enters into others’ lives, changes them, transforms them, without any mind on your part to transform them.

Osho, Tao The Three Treasures_Volume 4