[A sannyasin’s father has died after a long illness and she says: I have to go somehow more to be with my mother, to finish something there. There is something there that feels so… unfinished emotionally with her, and now seems the time.]
Osho – It is always so with parents… very difficult to finish. The relationship is such that to finish it needs great awareness – only then can it be finished. Even the idea to finish it may not allow it to finish. So don’t carry that idea – that you have to finish it. Just be there… naturally there, lovingly there. Do whatsoever you can do – because parents have done much, and in the West they are not even thanked for it. Nobody feels any gratitude.
In the East it has been totally different. In the East it is never an unfinished situation. It is always
complete, because parents have given so much and children have always been giving as much reverence as possible, as much respect as possible. Mm? that has become so natural in the East, and it has to be so for a very deep reason.
If you are not in rapport with your patents you will not be in rapport with yourself, because parents are not just an accidental phenomenon – they are deeply in your roots… you come from them. Half of your being comes from your mother, half of your being comes from your father. They both will carry on in you. All their conflict will continue in you… all their anxieties will deep down continue. It is for your sake that you have to come to a rapport. And the easiest way is not to make any effort for it.
Effort will never help – it is very artificial. So drop this idea, otherwise you will come back feeling again that something has remained incomplete. Simply drop that idea. Go there…. In fact in the east it has been always said that there is no way to repay… no way. Whatsoever we owe to our parents, there is no way to repay it – it is not possible. This has been accepted. With this acceptance, repayment becomes easy, because then there is no problem. If it cannot be done, there is no problem. So we love, we respect.
Just go there, be there. And she will need you in this moment. When your father is gone she will be in a great sorrow – she will need you. So don’t make any effort deliberately, mm? Just be with her, caress her, care about her… sometimes meditate with her, help her to meditate if she can. Otherwise just tell her that you will meditate in her room. She can simply rest in her bed – you will meditate. And that very vibration will help her.
Be happy. It will be difficult in a situation, in this situation, but still be happy. Take cheerfulness for her… make the burden light. Help her to accept the situation. And don’t bother about your relationship, mm? simply don’t bother about it, and suddenly you will see that it is healed. It is indirect – you cannot work directly. And if for two, three weeks you can be very loving and helping and she feels happy that you have come – she feels happy that you have some totally different kind of energy that she needed… that you have been a nourishment to her – that’s enough. You will feel a rapport coming.
If we can be loving, no relationship remains hanging. Each moment it has a completion. And I don’t like the word’finished’, because that seems like a dead end, a full stop, as if something has been closed, filled in, and closed… no need to bother about it – finished. The connotation of that word is not very good – that it was something which had to be done. One is happy that it was finished – that one is out of it, that one need not look back again, that one is able to forget all about it now. That is implied in the word’finished’.
I like the word ’completion’. Completion is never finished in a way and yet it is complete. Each moment of it is a complete moment. If I die right now, my relationship with you all is complete. If I live, the relationship continues. Completion is not against continuity. Finishing is against continuity. Completion is each moment but with an opening into the future – it is not a closed thing.
In fact the more complete a relationship is, the more it becomes open – open-ended – and you can look forward; there is no need to look back. Not that it is finished so there is no need to look back – there is no need to look back because now you can look forward. There is future, there is hope, there is thrill. The next moment will bring another completion. We go from completion to completion, from perfection to another perfection.
And nothing should be finished while you are alive – how and why should it be finished? Everything should continue – that’s what your life is. The more rich it is, the more it is related. If you have thousands of relationships of course you have a richer life, because they all pour their love energy in you and they all share your love energy. You live tremendously enriched in that give and take, in that sharing, in that meeting of energies.
In the West that too is happening – people are becoming very very poor in their relationships. It is becoming a very very small circle every day. First the joint family disappeared – otherwise it was a wider circle. Uncles and aunts were all living together, and children of the uncles and the aunts and the cousins and faraway cousins – they were all living together. It was a big family. One had a better possibility of communion, of relationship. One was richer because of it.
Then the joint family dropped, disappeared. The family became a very small unit wife, husband, children. Now even that is dropping! Even wives and husbands are not living together. Even children are like a burden – servants are taking care of them. The wife has her own life, the husband has his own life. They meet like strangers. The home is no more a home – it is more like a hotel.
At the most a house, but not a home. There is no communion left. Yes, people stay overnight, meet and talk and even make love – but the communion is not there. And people are becoming very very poor.
That’s why these growth groups have become so important in the west. A great need to commune, to relate, to touch people, to be touched by people, exists – and that is fulfilled nowhere. Hence so much impact of encounter, gestalt, psychodrama. They will spread because the family has disappeared and they have become now a temporary sort of family. For ten days you meet in a group – twenty people. At least for ten days twenty people become a family. One wants to relate and belong.
In the East it will be difficult. Unless the family disappears these groups cannot function. People ask me why I am not allowing indians in the groups. I am not allowing because it is pointless! They still live in big groups… the family still survives. Maybe it has disappeared in Bombay and Calcutta – then I will allow Bombay, Calcutta people by and by but in the greater india it is not a problem at all.
In small villages the whole village exists like a family – everybody is related to everybody; nobody is unrelated. Everybody is taken care of by the community. So it is impossible for indians to conceive of any need to be touched, hugged, and they cannot see… they will think, ’These people are crazy! What are they doing?’
There is no need to finish any relationship, but there is a need to make every relationship so complete each moment That if you drop dead suddenly there is nothing left which is incomplete. You will not hang… your spirit will not haunt people. You will simply disappear on your path. There will be no need to look backward – everything is complete.
Source – Osho Book “The Buddha Disease”