Marriage

- [A sannyas couple returning from the West said they had trouble with their families and had to marry in order to settle it.]

(notice how Osho talks like Yoda?)

Osho: Mm! So nothing to be worried. Marriage is just a joke -- nothing to be worried about. Don't take it seriously, mm? Once you start taking marriage seriously, marriage is on the rocks. Take it as just a joke -- because nobody can be married. How can one be married? One can be in love -- that's natural -- but marriage? Nature knows no marriage. It is social and it is an institution, and it is good not to live in an institution. It is one of the ugliest institutions.



So, good that you have done it for the family so that they are happy, but don't you take it seriously otherwise you will become unhappy. Then your parents will be very happy if you become unhappy.



That's what they are trying to do. Love is not accepted because love is very dangerous. People are very worried if two persons are in love and not married; they are worried very much. It should not be a concern at all, but they are worried very much. They cannot believe and they cannot trust. They cannot allow that you should be happy and without any responsibility; that is the problem. Deep down the problem is that two persons are happy and without any responsibility. That cannot be allowed. So they have to get married and they have to become responsible and heavy and burdened -- then it's okay.

Then nobody bothers whether you are happy or not; nobody ever asks. Once you are married the society is at ease. They have forced you into a prison; now it is up to you to make what you make out of it.



Never take it seriously, because it gets into the mind. The mind is made by the same society, so it gets into the mind. One starts leaning on the other more. One starts taking the other more for granted. One starts behaving more and more like a wife and like a husband -- not as two human beings, not as two strangers.


When two strangers are there, it is beautiful... something transpires. When there is a husband and a wife, two mummies, two dead things are there. Nothing transpires between a husband and a wife except conflict. So beware! Keep your happiness, and keep your freedom. And it has been just to satisfy your parents, so good. But you should not take it in any way into your mind.

Osho



But India.... Aren't you yourself married? Yes, I am. My husband and I considered our "marriage" a union of hearts and mind, in love. If it were that easy we would still be "married" in only that manner and not on paper. Unfortunately in order for him to speak for me and I for him in times of crisis or emergency...in times when I would want no one other than him to speak for me, we had to get "officially" married.

Society and institutions don't recognize humans based on loving one another. You have to have a piece of paper that says so...bought and paid for. If I were critically sick or ill or in a coma, I want my "husband", my best friend, my lover to speak for me, not my mother, father or a sister or brother. None of them can know me like my beloved and no one do I trust more to look out for me. So in my heart, I agree with what Osho says here. And it is a creed my husband and I have lived by for 12 years.

India Summer