https://oshofriends.com/dictionary/69432Responsibility
Responsibility means: ability to respond. It does not mean a duty.
Responsibility -- go to the root meaning of the word: it means to be responsive. Love is a response! When the other calls, you are ready. When the other invites, you enter the other. When the other is not inviting, you don't interfere, you don't trespass. When the other sings, you sing in response. When the other gives you her or his hand, you take it with deep response.
Responsibility means openness, readiness, to respond. Somebody is calling and you don't respond, you remain closed. Somebody wants to love you but you don't help, you don't co-operate; rather, you create barriers. If this is the thing you are doing -- and the majority of lovers go on doing this -- when the other calls you don't respond, then when you call the other does not respond. Because when the other calls you see that this would be a good ego enhancing thing -- not to respond. Then you feel your own master: nobody can push you, and nobody can pull you into something which you were not going into already; you don't follow anybody.
Comes your beloved -- and she is happy, and she would like to be in a deep silence with you, but you remain closed. Then when YOU call, there is no answer. Have you seen birds calling each other? -- that is responsibility. A cuckoo calls; there is silence; and then another cuckoo responds. By their sounds, by their song, they answer. They may be far away in farther away trees, then they start flying closer; they have responded. By and by they come to the same tree, then they are sitting together, loving.
When the other's being calls READY! -- be ready; respond with your totality. Don't be a miser -- that is the meaning of responsibility.
But in your sense love has no responsibility. The word has been corrupted, destroyed, poisoned. A mother says to the child, I am your mother, you have to be responsible for me. A husband says, I am your husband, and I work hard for you. You have to be responsible for me. A father says to the son, Don't be irresponsible! Whenever you do something always think of me. This is not responsibility, you have corrupted a beautiful word. It has become ugly. Responsibility has become almost synonymous with duty. And duty is an ugly word.
-Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3, #8, Q5“
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Responsibility means the ability to respond. It is not a duty that has to be fulfilled in the ordinary sense. It is a responsiveness, a sensitivity. But the more sensitive you become, the more you will find that many people think that you are becoming irresponsible -- and you have to accept that -- because their interests, their investments will not be satisfied. Many times you will not fulfill their expectations, but nobody is here to fulfill anybody else's expectations.
The basic responsibility is towards oneself. So a meditator first becomes very very selfish, but later on when one has become more centred, rooted into one's own being, energy starts overflowing. But it is not a duty. It is not that one has to do it. One loves to do it; it is a sharing. That will come; don't be worried.
-Osho, "A Rose is a Rose is a Rose, #11“
