Osho on Parenting

 

 

In a better world no parent will give you any belief. Certainly he will give you courage to inquire, courage to adventure. He will sharpen your intelligence so that when you come across a lie you can see it and when you come across a truth you can immediately recognize it, but he will not give you any belief. No parent, if he loves the child, can give beliefs because beliefs are poisonous. They destroy your intelligence, they destroy your courage, and they create prejudices in you.

 

-Osho, "Zen - Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing, #5, Q1"

 

 

 

Every parent distracts the child from his essential being, leads him astray. Every teacher, every priest goes on doing the same. Nobody respects the individual. They have already decided what is right and what is wrong, and for all! 

 

Each individual is a unique phenomenon. Hence no law no morality can be applicable to all. Of course, we have to agree on a few minimums, just to exist together, but those minimums have to be the non-essentials.

 

-Osho, "Guida Spirituale, #5"

 

 

 

The children need privacy, they need freedom -- they need the freedom to be. But every parent is trying to make the child into something other than he is. They are telling the child to become a Jesus Christ or to become a Gautam Buddha or to become a Mahavira or a Zarathustra. And this is such an ignoble project because nobody can become a Bud&a again, nobody can become a Jesus again. Existence is so creative it never repeats itself. Two thousand years have passed since Jesus -- has anybody become a Jesus again? That is not possible, that is not allowed, and it is good that it is not possible. Twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha and millions of people have tried and imitated in order to be Buddhas, but nobody has succeeded. It is good that nobody succeeds, because everybody has his own uniqueness.

 

Imitation is to destroy yourself, it is suicidal! But all the parents are teaching the children some suicidal thing: 'Become somebody, somebody else. Become anybody, but don't become yourself.' The child is condemned, rejected in every possible way, told directly, indirectly that 'Whatsoever you are is not right, whatsoever you are doing is not right.' You have to be following some e%ample, some ideal. 'Unless you behave like a Buddha or Mahavira, Confucius or Moses, you are not right' -- and the child starts imitating. This world is full of imitators, that's why there is so much misery, that's why there is so much uncreativity and so much insensitivity, so much ugliness.

 

It is like telling the roses to become marigolds and telling the marigolds to become lotuses. Neither the rose can become a marigold nor the marigold can become a lotus. Only one thing is possible: if the lotus gets the idea of becoming a rose and the rose gets the idea of becoming a marigold and the marigold is conditioned to become a lotus, there will be no more lotuses, no more marigolds, no more roses, because the whole energy of the rose will be wasted on becoming a marigold, which the rose cannot become, which is not possible. And because it cannot become a marigold its energy is wasted -- the same energy which would have blossomed as a rose.

No conditioning is needed for the children, no direction has to be given to them. They have to be helped to be themselves they have to be supported, nourished, strengthened. A real father, a real mother, real parents will be a blessing to the child. The child will feel helped by them so that he becomes more rooted in his nature, more grounded, more centred, so that he starts loving himself rather than feeling guilty about himself, so that he respects himself.

 

Remember, unless a person loves himself he cannot love anybody else in the world, unless a child respects himself he cannot respect anybody else. That's why all your love is bogus and all your respect is pseudo, phony. You don't respect yourself, how can you respect anybody else? Unless love for yourself is born within your being it will not radiate to others. First you have to become a light unto yourself, then your light will spread, will reach others.

 

-Osho, "Zen - Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing, #14, Q1"

 

 

 

If the child is afraid of the parent, love is not possible. If the parent is afraid of the child, love is not possible. How can you love in fear? Now you are afraid of the child -- that some harm may happen, that you may do something wrong. You will become so self-conscious about it -- so much so that you will do harm, because you will lose all naturalness and all spontaneity.

Just try to be a human being. Don't try to be an idealist and don't try to be a perfectionist. All perfectionistic people are neurotic. A sane person is never a perfectionist. Whatsoever he can do, he does, and then it is finished. So simply be yourself.

 

-Osho, “Blessed Are the Ignorant, #8”

 

 

 

My feeling is: please don't try to do anything. Simply love the child, and leave everything else to god. Love the child, and whatsoever you can do, do. But that doing should not become such a deliberate act as you are trying to do. Simply love! You are a human being with all the flaws and limitations of a human being, and now what can you do?

The child has chosen you to be her mother -- it is not just your responsibility. The child is also responsible. She must have some karmas to be born to you, otherwise why? She could have chosen.... There are so many women always ready to receive. She has particularly chosen you, so not only are you responsible -- she is also responsible.

Now just be natural and be happy! Whatsoever happens out of happiness is good. And whatsoever creates misery in you, drop all that nonsense. Now you have become so miserable. Rather than being happy that you are a mother and a child is there, you are becoming miserable. Your misery will certainly be reflected in the child. The child by and by will become aware that her mother is miserable because of her. Your guilt will be reflected, and you will create a complex in the child. Forget about it! Dance with the child, love the child, hug the child... and be natural! Don't listen to the pundits and the experts -- just be natural! Don't you see all the animals? Nobody teaches them how to be a good parent; there exists nothing like transactional analysis -- and they are good parents. Who bothers? Only man is very difficult.

 

-Osho, “Blessed Are the Ignorant, #8”

 

 

 

God will take care. It is none of our business to be too concerned. Whatsoever we can do, we do, but one should not hanker about things going the way one wants. That is very egoistic. You have given birth to a child, but once he is out of the womb, he is free of you.

 

First he depended for his breath on you when he was in the womb. Then he will take his own breath. You don't say. 'What are you doing? Are you trying to be free of me? Trying to be independent?' You feel happy that your child is breathing. First he will take milk from you, then one day he will start eating on his own. First he will go on clinging to your apron and then one day he will leave it.

 

You will be happy because the child is growing, becoming mature. Then finally one day he falls in love with a woman. He has found his woman, so he will go on his own way. Bless them, and whatsoever happens, they have to find their own life and their own meaning to life. Now you are free. Just try to find your meaning, your life, your goals, and devote the few days that are left to the search of the ultimate. Don't be concerned with ordinary things.

 

I have never seen a single parent who is happy about their children. [....]

 

Nobody is ever happy. Even the father of Buddha was not happy. He was very very annoyed because his son turned out to be a beggar. He became a sannyasin and the father was hoping he would become an emperor. He crushed all his father's hopes. Whatsoever happens to the children -- good or bad; even if they become saints -- it doesn't matter. One thing is certain -- that the child is not here to fulfill your expectations. That much is certain. The child is here with his own destiny, and he will unfold his own destiny. You are trying somehow to direct his destiny and that is going to be frustrated.

 

So if the child becomes a thief or a murderer, of course the parents feel bad, and it looks logical. But even if he becomes a Jesus or a Buddha, then too they feel frustrated because they have their own ideas and the children try to do their own thing. Don't be concerned; it is okay. Accept it and bless them. They have to find their own ways. Who are we to interfere? And how can we? Pray for them but leave them on their own. You try to grow yourself.

 

And this is my feeling: if you change, much will change. Even in your relationship with your children, much will change. When you change, the relationship cannot be the same. There is a possibility that they will look at you again with a different view, with different eyes. But you change. It is irrelevant what they do.

 

-Osho, "The Cypress in the Courtyard, #6"

 

 

To be a parent is a great art. To give birth to children is nothing -- any animal can do it; it is a natural, biological, instinctive process. To give birth to a child is nothing great, it is nothing special; it is very ordinary. But to be a parent is something extraordinary; very few people are really capable of being parents.

 

And the criterion is that the real parents will give freedom. They will not impose themselves upon the child, they will not encroach upon his space. From the very beginning their effort will be to help the child to be himself or to be herself. They are to support, they are to strengthen, they are to nourish, but not to impose their ideas, not to give the shoulds and should-nots. They are not to create slaves.

 

But that's what parents all over the world go on doing: their whole effort is to fulfill their ambitions through the child. Of course nobody has been ever able to fulfill his ambitions, so every parent is in a turmoil. He knows the death is coming close by every day, he can feel the death is growing bigger and bigger and life is shrinking, and his ambitions are still unfulfilled, his desires are still not realized. He knows that he has been a failure. He is perfectly aware that he will die with empty hands -- just the way he had come, with empty hands, he will go.

 

Now his whole effort is how to implant his ambitions into the child. He will be gone, but the child will live according to him. What he has not been able to do, the child will be able to do. At least through the child he will fulfill certain dreams.

 

It is not going to happen. All that is going to happen is the child will remain unfulfilled as the parent and the child will go on doing the same to his children. This goes on and on from one generation to another generation. We go on giving our diseases; we go on infecting children with our ideas which have not proved valid in our own lives. [....]

 

But the parents go on pretending before their children, go on deceiving their own children. They are not even authentic with their own children! They will not confess that their life has been a failure; on the contrary, they will pretend that they have been very successful. And they would like the children also to live in the same way as they have lived.

 

-Osho, "I Am That, #6, Q2"

 

 

 

The children are always afraid. The fear is that if they are true then the parents are hurt. If they want to satisfy the parents they have to be untrue; then it hurts them. This is the problem. Parents don t allow authenticity they don't want you to be yourself. They have a certain idea of how you should be, what you should be. If you are that, they are happy; if you are not that, they are unhappy. And nobody can fulfill their idea, nobody at all, because you are not here in this world to fulfill anybody's idea. And your parents cannot conceive who you are going to be. The future is open -- utterly open and unpredictable -- but each parent tries to control the future and each parent feels frustrated.

 

It is very difficult to find a parent who is satisfied. Not even the father of Buddha was satisfied. Now, where can you get a better son? But his ideas were not fulfilled. He wanted him to become a great king -- naturally. He was a king and he wanted his son to become even greater. For centuries they had been kings -- they had a long tradition of royalty -- and they wanted the son to have more money, more power, a greater empire. And the son was really frustrating: he became a beggar! Just think of the man in his old age... and the only son simply escaped! The father was really hurt, he was really angry.

 

Nobody can fulfill the idea of the parents, and if you try to you will remain miserable your whole life because you will be carrying somebody else's idea in your head, which is not you. You will be false. So if you carry the idea, you are false, you are untrue to yourself, and because you are false and you are miserable and you cannot bloom, you cannot forgive your parents either. It is because of them that this whole pseudo personality has happened. Or, if you want to be yourself and you start moving on your own way then the fear arises, and that is the fear.

 

-Osho, “God's Got a Thing About you, #14”

 

 

You ask me, Corry, "How did conditioning start originally?" It starts with every child, because the parents would like the child to be just a carbon copy of them. Their ego would like the child to represent them -- their philosophy, their religion, their ideology, their politics, their nationality, their race, everything. The child has to be the carrier, the vehicle, the medium of all their ambitions and desires, of all their frustrations, failures. They are hoping, "We will die but part of us will live in the child" -- so program the child in such a way that "what we have not been able to achieve, he will achieve."

 

They are trying to enforce their ambitions on the child; that's how conditioning begins. They are not allowing the child to be himself. No parent ever allows the child to be himself; it has not happened up to now. That's why humanity is living in such misery: because no child is allowed to be himself. How can he be happy? Happiness happens only when you are authentically yourself.

 

And don't ask me how it happened in the very beginning, because there has been no beginning. Whenever a child is born there is a beginning; otherwise existence has continued forever and forever.

 

And you also ask, "And if existence is just a flowing, why is it important that many people become enlightened?" That's why: existence is just a flowing, and many people are not flowing.

 

-Osho, "Come, Come, Yet Again Come, #3"

 

 

 

If you are a parent you will need this much courage -- not to interfere. Open doors of unknown directions to the child so he can explore. He does not know what he has in him, nobody knows. He has to grope in the dark. Don't make him afraid of darkness, don't make him afraid of failure, don't make him afraid of the unknown. Give him support. When he is going on an unknown journey, send him with all your support, with all your love, with all your blessings. Don't let him be affected by your fears. You may have fears, but keep them to yourself. Don't unload those fears on the child because that will be interfering.

 

After seven years, the next circle of seven years, from seven to fourteen, is a new addition to life: the child's first stirring of sexual energies. But they are only a kind of rehearsal. To be a parent is a difficult job, so unless you are ready to take that difficult job, don't become a parent. People simply go on becoming fathers and mothers not knowing what they are doing. You are bringing a life into existence; all the care in the world will be needed. Now when the child starts playing his sexual rehearsals, that is the time when parents interfere the most, because they have been interfered with. All that they know is what has been done to them, so they simply go on doing that to their children.

 

Societies don't allow sexual rehearsal, at least have not allowed it up to this century -- only within the last two, three decades, and that too only in very advanced countries. Now children are having co-education. But in a country like India, even now co-education starts only at the university level. The seven-year-old boy and the seven-year-old girl cannot be in the same boarding school. And this is the time for them -- without any risk, without the girl getting pregnant, without any problems arising for their families -- this is the time when they should be allowed all playfulness. Yes, it will have a sexual color to it, but it is rehearsal; it is not the real drama. And if you don't allow them even the rehearsal and then suddenly one day the curtain opens, and the real drama starts .... And those people don't know what is going on; even a prompter is not there to tell them what to do. You have messed up their life completely.

 

Those seven years, the second circle in life, is significant as a rehearsal. They will meet, mix, play, become acquainted. And that will help humanity to drop almost ninety percent of perversions. If the children from seven to fourteen are allowed to be together; to swim together, to be naked before each other, ninety percent of perversions and ninety percent of pornography will simply disappear. Who will bother about it? When a boy has known so many girls naked, what interest can a magazine like PLAYBOY have for him? When a girl has seen so many boys naked, I don't see that there is any possibility of curiosity about the other; it will simply disappear. They will grow together naturally, not as two different species of animals.

 

Right now that's how they grow: two different species of animals. They don't belong to one mankind; they are kept separate. A thousand and one barriers are created between them so they cannot have any rehearsal of their sexual life which is going to come. Because this rehearsal is missing, that's why in people's actual sex life foreplay is missing; and foreplay is so important -- far more important than actual sexual contact, because actual sexual contact lasts only for seconds. It is not nourishment. It simply leaves you in a limbo. You were hoping for so much, and nothing comes out of it. In Hindi we have a proverb: kheela pahad nikli chuhia. `You dug out the whole mountain and you found one rat.' After all the effort -- going to the movies and going to the disco and going to the restaurant, and talking all kinds on nonsense which neither you want nor the other wants to do, but both are talking -- digging the mountain, and in the end, just a rat! Nothing is so frustrating as sex.

 

-Osho, "From Darkness to Light, #3"

 

 

Make love only when you are ready to be in a meditative space. And create a meditative atmosphere while you are making love. You should treat the place as sacred. Creating life... what can be more sacred? Do it as beautifully, as aesthetically, as joyously as possible. There should be no hurry. And if the two lovers meet in such an atmosphere outside, and such a silent space within, they will attract a soul, the highest available.

 

You give birth to a child according to your state of love. If every parent is disappointed, he should think about it, that this is the child they deserved. They never created a possibility for a higher and more evolved soul to enter into the womb -- because the male sperm and the female egg only create an opportunity for a soul to enter. They create the opportunity for a body, so some soul can become embodied. But you will attract only that kind of person which your sexual activity makes possible.

 

If the world is full of idiots and mediocre people, you are responsible; I mean, parents are responsible. They never thought about it, their children are accidental. There cannot be a bigger crime than to create a life accidentally.

 

Prepare for it. And the most essential thing is to understand the orgasmic moment: thoughtless, timeless, mindless, just a pure awareness. In that pure awareness you can attract a Gautam Buddha. The way you are making love, it is strange that more Adolf Hitlers, Mussolinis, Stalins, Nadirshahs, Tamerlanes, Genghis Khans, are not attracted. You attract only mediocre people. You don't attract the lowest either, because for the lowest your love has to be almost a rape. For the highest, your love has to be a meditation.

 

The child's life begins from the moment the soul enters into the womb.

 

If it has come into a meditative space, it is possible to have a child without conditioning him. In fact, a child who is born out of meditation cannot be conditioned; he will rebel against it. Only mediocre people can be conditioned.

 

And a couple who is capable of meditativeness while making love is no ordinary couple. They will be respectful to the child. The child is a guest from the unknown, and you have to be respectful to the guest. Parents who are not respectful to their children are bound to destroy their lives. Your respect, your love, your gratitude that, "You have chosen us as your parents," will be responded to with deeper respect, more gratitude, more love.

 

And when you love a person, you cannot condition him. When you love a person, you give him freedom, you give him protection. When you love a person you would not like him to be just a carbon copy of yourself, you would like him to be a unique individual. And to make him unique you will arrange all the conditions, all the challenges which provoke his potential.

 

You will not burden him with knowledgeability, because you would like him to know the truth himself. Any borrowed truth is a lie. Unless it is experienced by you, it is never the truth.

 

You will help the child to experience more and more things. You will not tell him lies, that there is a God. It is a lie, because you have not seen God. Your parents lied to you, and you are repeating it in your turn to your child. Your parents conditioned you, and what is your life? -- a long misery from cradle to grave. Do you want your child's life also to be just a misery, full of suffering, anxiety, despair? [....]

 

A child who is not conditioned is in many ways embarrassing to the parents. But if they love, they will be ready to do anything. Even if it brings embarrassment, there is no harm. Their child is growing into a unique being. They will help him to remain free, to remain open, to remain available to the unknown future.

 

They will make him a seeker, not a believer. They will not make him a Christian, or a Jew, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, because all these religions have done so much harm -- it is more than enough.

 

It is time for all the religions to disappear from the planet. Unconditioned children can make that miracle happen because tomorrow they will be young people, mature, and they will not be Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans. They will be just seekers; seeking will be their religion.

 

That's my definition of a sannyasin: searching, seeking, inquiring is his religion.

 

Beliefs stop all inquiry.

 

Give the child all your experiences. Make him aware that he was conceived in a very loving orgasmic moment, that love is a great gift of existence. And you have to make love the central point of your life, because only through love can you step beyond blind nature into the world of super-nature, where no blindness exists, where you become a seer.

 

Yes, it is possible, but not possible through biology alone. It is possible if you are courageous enough to make your love your temple, your place of meditation. Then you will be attracting a soul already having the potential of uniqueness. And then give him every possibility for freedom, even if it goes against you. The freedom of your child is more valuable, because your child is the future of mankind.

 

Your days are past. What does it matter if it goes against you? What have you gained by it? you are empty, you are beggars. Do you want your children also to be empty and beggars? That's what every parent is trying to do -- to reproduce copies, carbon copies. And remember, existence accepts only the originals. Carbon copies are not acceptable in existence.

 

Let your child have his original face.

 

It may create fear in you, it may create concern in you, but those are your problems. Don't in any way inhibit the child. And a child who has been given freedom -- even against his own parents - will respect you forever, will remain grateful to you forever.

 

Right now, just the opposite is the case: every child is full of anger, rage, hatred for the parents, because what they have done to him is unforgivable.

 

So by giving freedom, by allowing the child to be himself whatever that means, accepting him in his natural self wherever it leads, you are creating a child who will worship you. You have been not only ordinary fathers and mothers, you have been givers of life, freedom, uniqueness.

 

He will carry the beautiful memory in his heart forever, and his gratitude towards you will make him absolutely certain that what has been done for him, he has to do for the future generations.

 

If every generation behaves towards the children with love and respect, and gives them freedom to grow, all this nonsense of the generation gap will disappear. If you respect your children, if you are friends to your children, no generation gap is possible.

 

Ordinarily what is happening around the world is, there is no communication between the children and the parents. They kiss each other, they shake hands, but it is all hypocrisy -- done because it has to be done.

 

-Osho, “From Death to Deathlessness, #38, Q1”

 

 

 

Every parent wants his child to be the greatest, an Alexander the Great. Each parent is living his unfulfilled desires through his children. He has not been able to fulfil his desires. Nobody has ever been able to fulfil their desires because desire as such is unfulfillable. Nothing can be done about it; it is not in the nature of things, it is not the law of life.

 

To be full of desires simply means to await thousands of frustrations, failures. Desires bring only frustration. They create great expectation, and when they fall apart -- and they are bound to fall apart sooner or later -- one is disillusioned. And one has carried the illusion for so long and has become so attached to it that one feels lost. Whenever a desire gets frustrated one is wounded. And those wounds go on accumulating.

 

Each child comes into the world healthy and whole and we immediately start wounding him. Up to now humanity has existed in a very wrong way. Something basically, fundamentally, is wrong. Our whole education is ambitious, it is political; our religions are political. Maybe they are the politics of the beyond, but they are politics. You have to reach heaven, you have to be a great achiever there in the other world too. Nobody says to just be empty of all content, because in that emptiness, in that nothingness, flowers the ultimate

 

-Osho, "Just the Tip of the Iceberg, #12"

 

 

 

That's what parents go on doing with the children: they try to enforce things on them and the children become serious; and the moment a child becomes serious you have killed him, you have disconnected him from his own source. All that a real parent will do is to help the child to be more and more playful, to be more and more joyous, celebrating. And the parent should help the children to keep that quality intact for their whole life; the child should never disappear. It should not be imposed on by other things: the child should remain an undercurrent always flowing there.

 

-Osho, "Turn On, Tune In and Drop the Lot, #16"

 

 

 

If we were loving our children, there could not have been so many wars in the world. Who is the parent who will send his children to war? If we were loving our children the world could not have become so ugly. If we were loving our children, I go as far as to say, we would not have given birth to children... because which loving parent will be ready to give birth to their children in this ugly and dirty world? They will excuse themselves, saying, "How to bring our children into such a world? Tomorrow, when we face them, we will feel so ashamed in front of them that we gave birth to them in this world. How to send them out into this ugly world full of immorality and darkness?" Parents would have refused to give birth to children if they had love in their hearts.

 

But no, they go on giving birth to children. They have no concern at all for the children. They go on raising their children; they go on raising their children as the fodder for the guns and the cannons. They go on getting their children butchered in the cause of everchanging names and new tricks -- in the name of India, in the name of Pakistan, in the name of China, in the name of communism, in the name of democracy. Parents are ever ready to get their children murdered in the name of any big slogan. These names and slogans are too big for them -- the children are too small!

 

If in this world there was love in the hearts of parents for their children, a different world would have been born in which there could be no wars -- because every child is some mother's child, some father's son. Who would have agreed to send their children to war? We would have said, "Let Pakistan perish, let India perish, but the children cannot go to war! Whether China is saved or not, whether Russia is saved or not, whether America remains or not, no mother is ready to send her son to war. The wars would have vanished from the world, as well as politics, politicians and nations. But nobody loves their sons, we simply do not know love. We simply have no acquaintance with love. We simply have not come across love. The moments that could have been the moments of meeting with love we have wasted in learning numerous useless things.

 

-Osho, "Revolution in Education, #7"