When I lived around Osho, , now all those years ago, I never thought that he approved of ‘having’ children. I am not sure that ashram policies at the time emanated from him, which for so called ashramites, encouraged sterilisations. Many were not ready for such a teaching, and that was it seems to me, something of a mistake to push it. Nonetheless one could see, then and now, that to dedicate oneself to personal awakening, does involve something which is very single minded, and where children might get in the way.
Despite this Osho did offer some advice on ‘parenting’. and seemed very critical of the normal parenting that is/was around. The short extract below certainly covers the matter in a succinct way: (Pamartha)
Osho says:
“The major mistakes in bringing up children are many, but I will talk only about the most important. First: the idea that they belong to you. They come through you; you have been a passage, but they don’t belong to you. They are not your possessions. Out of this idea of possessiveness many mistakes arise.
Once you start thinking that they (chidren) are your possessions, you have reduced them into things, because only things can be possessed, not human beings. It is the ugliest act you can do. And those poor children are so helpless, so dependent on you, they cannot rebel. They accept whatever your idea is. And to protect your possessiveness you make them Christians the moment they are born. You make them Hindus, you make them Mohammedans, you make them Buddhists, you make them Jews – you can’t wait! And can’t you see the absolute absurdity of it?”
Osho, Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries, Talk #2
I can see why Osho advocated ‘no children’ for growth of a spiritual life & very well relate to the point He is making.
Few of my close friends (women & men) who are parents also envy me for this, but frankly I think it’s an individual case and whatever the path one takes towards the pathless one has little choice over the choices one eventually makes, and both the paths have their pros & cons.
Last 2500 years of recorded religious history has the common idea, those who want to be on spiritual path and get free from life and death wheel should restrain from wealth, women and children.
Osho has tried to modify this a bit as per the need of the times. Every Newness again brings its own light side and shadow side.
I wonder how much this was just about then, and addressed primarily to those at the ashram; because he was in a a hurry, laying foundations; and he knew he had finite time, knew he wouldn’t always be around, in a way we probably didn’t.
So many people at the ashram were in their twenties. Who thinks about the finiteness of their lives, the finiteness of the lives of older people who matter to them at that age? (Individuals I’ve met way older than twenty-something, don’t really appreciate they will die one day).
I remember in my early sannyas days Osho saying in one of his Poona 2 discourses that “humans should stop having children for at least 10 years” – that should have been considered by at least sannyasins. Anyway, guess it’s not easy to always listen & imbibe every word of the Master!
I am personally very glad that many people choose not to have children. This great idea that parents learn a lot and therefore it is worth doing it, sounds romantic but not appealing. Most families are dysfunctional and the society with its schools and universities makes things worse. We all learn, whether from our children, or from our loneliness. To me, learning to be alone is way more important before the death bed.
When I was going deeply into this subject I realised that for a woman it is about being/wanting to be a mother. How many loving mothers are out there? Or maybe once you blossom into a mother you actually would not care who to love? So not having children might benefit more humans around?
I do not feel there are many loving mothers out there – women are trying very hard but what I see is suffering of women and not blossoming of love. Hence our world keeps producing hate and violence.
It is important that some women can now choose whether to have children or not – in some countries this is out of the question. My own mother is convinced that the woman’s only path is to reproduce.
Being 36, I have been bombarded for the past 10 yrs by my family, friends, colleagues, you name it, to have children, only because you have to. When you start a discussion with them they have no clue why they want children for themselves. I feel this subject is related to the fear of death and loneliness – precisely the path of meditation.
When I see a beautiful mother: relaxed, content, calm, loving, my heart sings. So beautiful when a woman can be a mother and not just a reproduction mechanism – so unfair for the arriving human being.
Chetna, you asked: “Maybe once you blossom into a mother you actually would not care who to love?”
To me, that is how it happened. I have learned the hard way. Osho was totally right! But I came to know only after motherhood, very paradoxical.
I guess everybody is different, that’s the beauty of our race.
Cheers!
What a great response.
Good on yah, Tan. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Such a big fat yes. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Well, Tan, even if Arpana is thrilled to bits by your ´great´, motherly answer, I, at least, didn´t get your motherly loving paradox.
Just have been trying to digest your (virtual given) promise to ‘soooo kick Shantam in the balls’, then – that.
Wondering what it does mean in your response: do you care, who comes across your way, choiceless? Or don´t you?m Or must I understand a kicking of this kind as a sign of love?
Didn´t get it. Was not thrilled about your response. And what, please, has Osho to do with it?
Please enlighten me, if possible. As a woman from another culture, that´s true.
Madhu
As always, the glass is half-empty for Madhu.
Madhu,
A kicking in the balls is a Punjabi way to say “I like you.” Ask Shantam if you doubt it.
My very last comment about this topic:
All the women that don’t want kids, it’s really fine! There is no reason at all to find any excuse: overpopulation, need to belong, etc…Give me a break! It is like they need to slag off the mothers to feel that they are right. Get a life!
My 33 year-old daughter doesn’t want children. She has taken care that will never happen. And she never gave any excuses for that: it’s her business.
Cheers!
Tan, what is the reason many young western women want to have sex but no children, not even one child?
Does it means their mothers are not good role models or it is evolution gone too much in the head?
You are a cool mom, Tan. I wish my mother could accept that I want other things in life.
The people who might make good parents don’t opt for it. Or that is my experience of people.
Many become parents simply unconsciously, there is no thinking about it at all. I am not of the opinion that mankind is about to wake up as a species!
Whatever happens over the next millenium, it will be the same old, same old, as far as the bulk of men and women.
I have the greatest respect for those who choose not to have children; it seems to me they may be on the way to ‘creating’ themselves.
Creating a child is a biological natural urge for some women, which men don’t have. Also, some say it satisfies a woman sexually & they don’t run around sexually hungry & having group sex etc.:)
P.S:
Multiple sex partners, group sex etc – & no responsibility – was the major attraction for most at the time. Bit like a hippie era….
I have heard that was going on, and yet no one I knew personally in Poona 1 lived like that.
Did you work in Poona 1, Kusum? Do groups? Were you one of the people fucking everybody you could, or just a disapproving, or maybe envious, hungry onlooker?
ONLY AWARE…:)
Kusum, you are repeating what you’ve heard, you mean.
NO
Kusum,
So you were in Poona 1?
Big P, you have a big point there. Cheers!
This has undertones of the notion that those who are most certain how everybody else should live are those any sane individual pays least attention to.
“All the women that don’t want kids, it’s really fine! There is no reason at all to find any excuse: overpopulation, need to belong, etc…Give me a break! It is like they need to slag off the mothers to feel that they are right. Get a life!” (Tan).
There is no black-and-white according to that issue, Tan. At least on my side. And the virtual chat simply can´t cover up the complex fields, life stories and experiences around that essential issue, how life was playing with it in each and everyone´s life posting here.
The ‘slagging off’ you are speaking of, surely happens from both the sides, I suggest. “Get a life!”, you say.
Well, we both and all others already have got one. No need to “slag”…
Simply from the outside looking very differnt. Our life-stories.
The topic posted here in all its facets is a big issue for me, even at my age of ´68 and has had and still has many ‘colours’.
Madhu
P.S:
Walking in the virtual realms sometimes feel like a tightope walker´ess…
Would be more easy, maybe, to meet in the body sometimes, but I don´t really know also this….
Why Muslim intelligentsia never talk about over-population, environmental pollution?
Maybe they have a solid trust in their belief, “Prophet and Allah won’t make us fall.”
Thanks for your post, Chetna. I found it very constructive.
Compared to sexual activities among the hot-blooded disciples in the commune during Osho’s lifetime, rate of childbirth was in single digit percentage.
Those who were not sterilized were very particular about other forms of contraceptives and also, Osho’s warning, “Two-thirds of the humanity will be wiped out due to Aids and other natural disasters” was taken very seriously by the disciples.
Those were the days when if Osho had said Earth will be free from gravitation during particular day, majority would have tried to jump out from their flats to see the floating effect.
Where did you get these figures from, Shantam? Who did the research. Give details of the source material.
Source material is unbiased observation and photogenic memory.
What I have written is not fact? Look at your life and people like you who were not too much careful not to make Mas inseminated.
On a sociological study level too, as a collective, sannyasins on average had more partners than the ratio in their countries and less children too. Is it not a fact?
Shantam.
Not even Richard Dawkins claims to be unbiased.
All the adjectives are used in relative terms. For example, I am very honest person. This has to be taken in comparison with other Indians.
Anyway, thanks, Arpana, for mentioning Richard Dawkins. A fine specimen of British education system. Someone should encourage him to visit Mother Meera during her next London visit and get healed!
In my experience, there are two ways to look at it:
With the kids, you don’t have money, time or energy to go around ‘meditation’, and I am talking about Dynamics, it’s difficult to travel, etc…You are stuck with schools, measles, pregnancy and so on.
Having said that, the good side is that being a parent you learn a lot, the kids are great teachers!
And, in the end, when you are ‘back on the path’, it is like you have never left. Things, somehow, fit in the right place.
I don’t regret my choice, not at all! Cheers!
Believe it or not, Tan, it has never been a question of money to ´go around meditation´, as you put it.
But it was and is for sure, besides having inner space, a question of money, to book seminars, travel to places and gatherings, find new friends there, meet fellow-travellers.
You say: “Having said that, the good side is that being a parent you learn a lot, the kids are great teachers!”
And how true is that!
However, what I found out as a woman who did not give birth to a child, at least in the Sannyas realm, that sisters did quite often cut contact with those without children, declaring one could not speak any more to those without that experience. (At the most, one was asked to give a helping hand in the household or with the car or whatsoever, listening to many complaints and sorrows, while the beautiful sides of being with children has mostly not been shared).
You then write: “And, in the end, when you are ‘back on the path’, it is like you have never left”.
That´s right, I suggest, as you had never left ´your´ path, I would say.
As what we call ‘the path’ is made by walking, step by step, and is truly unique.
There were many women of my generation and in the area I grew up here, who, after world war II, couldn´t gather courage to give birth to a child, even decided for abortion when pregnancy happened, and didn´t do that at all light-heartedly or with indifference.
They were persecuted then in former time by the vested interests of christian priests and roughly said, held in contempt now by even a broader majority of new upcoming generations, to whom having children belongs to life-style and is truly supported other than in former times, materialistically and also ideologically.
I remember clearly how that turned out, when I tried to share with my late mother, long, long ago the beautiful verses of Khalil Gibran (´The Prophet’) about having children; verses to which Osho referred, when He talked about it, that no other human is your ´possession´, more so a child, who came through you.
My mother hated the book, these thoughts and the path my life took as well.
The very last generations have brought many major changes, according to the reality of the here presented topic. What didn´t change is that having children is as well part of the spiritual development as not having children (of one´s ´own´).
The verses of a Khalili Gibran are still asking in my understanding an ever-renewed, effortless effort to embody the wisdom shared there within.
And maybe more communication and sharing amongst those whose paths are seemingly so different.
Would be nice, Tan, to hear more of your beautiful spiritual experiences of being a mother of a son.
Cheers
Madhu
Madhu,
There is no question of possession.
To quote Frank boy, “everyone has their own story.”
To start off, any child deserves respect and respecting a child how can you possess the child? Impossible!
Cheers!
And a PS…
And me, in my situation, I had to learn to ´mother´ myself´, and as I see it, ´mothering´ has only superficially to to with the genes and the body equipment, to give birth to a child. It´s a challenge to give birth to a new (old?) soul, be a response-able lover and partner to that.
And it´s as well a challenge to mother that, what´s embodied in one´s own body and to take care of this as well.
These are deep issues, the ´mothering´ and the ´fathering´. Glad that it came up here…never ending stories…
Need to add that I was around my thirties when entering the commune around Osho, and met a lot of beautiful grown-ups there, other than some male contributors here are suggesting about ´average standards´.
They all, like me, had been passing already through a lot of stuff, feeling the urge for a drastic change in habits and attitudes, above all around the issues of sharing love and living in peace.
And another P.S. to my recent response to Tan, this time as a quote, quoting some from Priya Huffmann´s (aka Yoga Priya´s) expression around spiritual growth, growing a family and much more in terms of growing up:
“The rewards of eating from the tree of knowledge, of biting tart, is like being ejected from the cocoon of projected safety and order, propelled into a world with sharp bright edges, with the knowledge of having a finite life and the potential to experience harshness, cruelty (of some sort or another) and maybe great mystery too. That is the truth of expulsion. It is being thrown out of our first home and it is the call to find the true home within, which will surely be more inclusive of the good, bad and the ugly.
Self-knowledge arises as we loosen certainty about who we are. As we wake to ourselves, we come to know that we contain the universe and all that it contains, the carbon and the diamonds. With this comes the question of what else we may be, be capable of, given the right circumstances…
…What a rare luxury it is to live in a world that does not force us into atrocious acts or deeds, that we are not at war, we are not fighting for the last drop or morsel for our families. Yet part of self-knowing, part of the light of awareness includes anticipating the full spectrum of our capacities. It’s so easy to imagine a high moral standard when nothing in life is forcing another hand, another side to surface. I live in Boulder, Colorado, a city with lots of spiritual pretension, often by the very folks who least suspect that they too would pick up the pickaxe against a neighbour to save a grandchild. Their grandchild….”
I owe Priya so much gratitude as a friend, a sannyasin female fellow-traveller, and I am enjoying it very much, after such a long long while, to be able to at least read her sharings from far away, geographically.
And the quote – the way I understand it – comprehends, as the vision we once strove towards, to make that world we are in, a better place – as also the pain of realizing delusions and immaturity to embody that.
And comprehends that that journey never ends, in whatsoever role we are taking.
(That Priya is a mother of a by now grown-up son, I came to know factually only recently). Her thoughts belong to that chat-topic, I feel.
Some sannyasins who were young, immature, naive & impulsive at the time had made wrong decision to have birth control surgeries. Now they are regretting it as they cannot make their own children.
The life of an anchorite or a hermit is surely a mixed blessing. Maybe it allows one a full heaven of stars to look upon from one’s solitary eyrie, but such a solitude needs to be informed by all the richnesses of life before such exploration, and that would include the care of children, etc.
Have you ever visited a monastery? I have visited a few Buddhist and Christian ones in my time. Yes, I have occasionally seen one-pointedness there, but the monks lack something. In fact, I have often felt that they are drawn to such a life because they are afraid of intimacy, and their way of life sure insulates against that. Some are also running away from some broken relationship, but is that the real way to deal with such a thing?
I feel sad when I have met some women sannyasins who were contemporaries of mine in the seventies and eighties who “regret” their surgery. I have also met a few who do not. Whatever which way, the ashram or commune at the time should never have felt empowered to ‘encourage’ such procedures, such a choice needs to be absolutely a free one and absolutely free of anyone else’s persuasion.
Somehow I never felt without a family, even now, and would say that is the sannyas family, and those loosely associated with it too.
I feel the similar about Sannyas family, therefore a freedom struggle to make the joint family property free from the grip of illegal occupation.
Once the basic freedom and collective Sannyas will has established its rule, I intend to inspire Osho Management to create a building complex for senior sannyas citizens with European quality round-the-clock service.
It is no good that people who gave their youth for the ideal end up in Christian caring hands.
Further evidence (if any more were needed) that you’ve misunderstood what it’s all about. Not to mention the laughable measure of self-deluded self-importance you’ve allowed your emotional brain to create. You appear to have succumbed to the trap of thinking that simply because you desperately want something to happen, you therefore must be ‘right’ and hence it ‘must’ happen.
What do you actually know about “the collective Sannyas will”? I suggest that so-called “will” would be far more likely to vote to keep you well away from anything of a remotely executive nature, if – and it remains a considerable ‘if’ – regime change were to take place.
And by the way, who the hell would ever choose to spend their last years in polluted Pune, let alone a place where you, Shantam, have any say in management policy issues? You’re living in a dream, building castles (or rather, an ashram) in the air, detached from reality.
Sorry and all that, but no one here supports you. Why do you bother propagandising at SN? Are you really so utterly thick you still don’t get this?
Parmartha, what prompted this remark? I can’t fit the statement to any other posts.
Women from Christian background will remain in dilemma, “Just sex, or sex for procreation?” In the process, developed countries are losing their demographic balance.
On the other side, women of Islam will go on making the march forward with the agenda, “One day, Islam will rule the world. British Parliament will have Muslim MPs.”
In a way, religiously gullible West is being dragged to its downfall by two forces. One is fanatic side of Islam, another Tibetan Buddhism. Islam is pumping their population in to destroy the demography and Buddhism is making the West sleep due to out-of-time doctrines.
Tibetan Buddhism dragging the West “to its downfall”? What total tripe.
Shantam Prem,
I am sooooo going to kick your balls.
Faceless Tan;
Aristocrat or working-class, yet protected by the great British monarchy and strong military and generous church, won´t understand what one feels as an Indian.
Indians were made helpless, first by stupid idea of non-violence which destroyed the fighting capability, and then were brutally raped by the barbarous followers of Islam, not for a day or month but last 25 centuries.
It is only because of British intervention and the western education eyes of Indian elites got opened and finally a concept of nation got birth. What India is today, it is thanks to British occupation and their gift of English and analytical thinking.
Unfortunately, most of the spiritual seekers of the West have forgotten the strength of their roots, therefore going like orphans to Indian Ammas and Papajis for consolatory blessings.
Children always need & love their parents as we all do.
It is nice feeling to be needed & loved & surrounding oneself by young, fresh energies of children. That is the main reason most people choose to make children. It certainely feels different if you sit with an old person or a child. Children are almost like God.
Yes, Kusum, it´s (almost) true for the majority of cases: the longing to be needed (by a child), the longing to be loved almost unconditionally (by the child) and enjoying the ´fresh energy (from the child).
Also, your chosen descending order, starting with the need to be needed, in any way loved, and the guarantee to have fresh energy to enjoy around oneself, mirrors perfectly and exactly in that kind of sequential order the kind of ´meaning as a profit for the so called grown-up.
How many playmates for your needs do you have at home? mIf I am allowed to ask.
Madhu
P.S:
Kusum, I am glad Arpana (12 October, 2016 at 10:23 pm) reminded me of another in the range of grown-up needs that a child fulfils : The need to dominate and to have the last word. Playing the one who knows (it all).
Madhu, aka the virtuous.
Human being is a social animal. Religions, families etc. are nothing but a longing to belong.:)
Yes, so true, Kusum, the longing to belong is such an enormous and essential issue, being rarely shared in a healthy way and by that I mean: not exploited.
Animals, I suppose, get pretty much only into heavy problems when they are held (and captured) in the zoo. Otherwise: eat, sleep, excrete, reproduce, going for hunting to get food, looking for a safe place, etc, fighting with neighbours for domination of the food chain…
Without ‘belonging’, most of them die. Yes, belonging is a very essential issue. In every dimension.
And there, in the human realms, and a plane where we are happening to meet just now, sometimes Masters come into this mysterious play of existing together.
Inviting us to share ´another way´, as it is predominantly happening.
Madhu
And a premium P.S., added with so much JOY:
Just heard that Bob Dylan got the Nobel prize for Literature this year!
Cannot say how much I appreciate this extraordinary choice, and I am happy to share my joy about it.
There is indeed music in these containers as well as multitudes of story-tellings, and wasn´t it Frank who recently said our world is partly made of story-telling?
Madhu
Every human heart is longing to belong….
& every being is longing to be free of any longing!
I put to you, vast numbers of people would just like to be free of hunger, free of living in a war-torn land. Notions of free of longing are pretty far removed from those in such situations.
Yes, but that criterion negates almost everything debated at SN, and indeed, the whole of Sannyas and other radical spiritual concerns and practices!
You haven’t been mixing recently with Christians by any chance, have you, Arps?!
Arps, in essence they are the same, if one looks at longing/hunger objectively, I guess.
Ok, Kavita, to test your idea, off you go to Syria or some other God-forsaken hell-hole, don’t eat for a few days, then give us your, er, “objective” findings….
SD, btw, I have an early dinner these days and I had just finished one before writing that!
P.S. (for 14 October, 2016 at 2:45 pm):
I can’t bear hunger, so forget Syria, I can’t stay hungry even here in India!
Which begs many questions, Kusum, eg the pathologies of religious belief and of families, both institutions having been responsible for enormous suffering for many centuries.
Perhaps one key factor in unsuccessful or just mediocre families is the parents putting more importance on their children than on the quality of their relationship? Thus guaranteeing problems in the home.
And, as others have said here, people’s motives for having children are so often suspect, eg I recall one woman, around 40, married with kids, anxiously asking me what I was going to do in my old age if I don’t have children.
Some young people’s minds are very vulnerable. They are easy to be brainwashed or programmed by religions or families.
Also, not everybody knows how to be good parents.
Kusum,
Can you please introduce yourself a bit? Just the name suggests you are a woman!
@SD,
I didn’t experience desiring to be free of desire until my early thirties, as the pleasure I found in sex and drugs and booze and rock and roll began to slake.
I just wanted to party in one form or other, or read if I wasn’t in the mood to party; and I liked eating, but that was part of partying as well sometimes; and I liked to visit my mum and dad.
Oh, and I desired to be in a relationship when I wasn’t, but desired to be out of that situation whenever I was in one.
Lol….who does not like to party at the age of 18 or early twenties? Who wants a bondage of relationship when intoxication of youth is enough unto itself?
But many people are into relationships in their teens and early twenties, and don’t find it a “bondage” at all! Even if they do, or sometimes do, it’s all part of getting experience.
And “intoxication of youth” sounds a rather idealised version of that stage of life to me. Many young people have quite acute personal problems and it’s all too easy for them to drown them via various ‘unnatural’ forms of “intoxication”. And pick up the pieces later, maybe much later….
It was awful at times.
Holy Moly, Heaven and Hell.
Backwards and forwards.
I remember an aunt saying to me during a phone conversation that life was sweet, and I thought to myself, “No, it isn’t, life is bitter-sweet”; and I found that really liberating.
Maybe one of the first times I ‘honoured’ my own life experience, without deluding myself that my experiencing pain as well as joy was exceptional. (I didn’t get a big head about the understanding or that I had known both).
Curiosity & wanting to experience are the major characteristics of most youth & hormones (natural intoxication) play part as well.
Some are born as a wild child without any unnatural intoxication.
Are pubs still open??….Want some divine wine…Lol….
After I wrote this remark, SD, I recalled an incident that took place when I was about twenty-five, and the aftermath of that incident was that I inched towards desiring to be desireless. (I supose in some nascent way I began to understand that I was dragged around by desire).
Not having a go at you here, Arps, but that word ‘desire’ seems so old-fashioned, of another, more genteel age, somehow almost ‘respectably pompous’, even reeking of ‘spiritual correctness’!
I much prefer the word ‘want’, eg “I began to want to want nothing/to be without wants”, and “I was dragged around by what I wanted”. (Acknowledgement to Aussie Barry Long for highlighting this).
Or, to be more specific, “I was dragged around by my sexual wants / by wanting sex”. And “I began to not want sexual wanting”.
Yeah, fair point.
I used it really to avoid being specific. I would have used a different word if I was prepared to be more specific. (I didn’t do anything bad I got hung out to dry).
“I have the greatest respect for those who choose not to have children; it seems to me they may be on the way to ‘creating’ themselves.”
Dear Parmartha,
Are you not creating a vertical divide between haves and have-nots?
I also hope in this ‘Creating Oneself Scenario’ (COS) you have also the space for millions of Cambodian, Burmese, Thai monks and also the Catholic priests and nuns spread all around the world.
“I have the greatest respect for those who choose not to have children; it seems to me they may be on the way to ‘creating’ themselves.”
Shantam says:
“Dear Parmartha,
Are you not creating a vertical divide between haves and have nots?
I also hope in this ‘Creating Oneself Scenario’ (COS) you have also the space for millions of Cambodian, Burmese, Thai monks and also the Catholic priests and nuns spread all around the world.”
Parmartha’s reply:
No, Shantam. I make a distinction between all monastic ‘cults’ and those who ‘truly choose’ something for themselves, and without the crutch of any organisation whatsoever.
Celibacy has nothing to do with that. One can choose to be childless without celibacy!
If and when global scale war happens, it will be due to the people who pump religious beliefs into their children´s brains.
Religion will be the cause of large-scale war. It is only a matter of time. (It is not from Nostradamus’s book).
MOD: THEN WE SHOULD DELETE “If”?