According to Osho, the desire to stay near someone is bondage only when it clashes with your own inner movement—when fear, obsession, or compulsion drives you. Bondage and freedom are attitudes, not locations. Act from inner unity and total acceptance—then staying or leaving is freedom; act from inner conflict, and either choice becomes bondage. Attend to your spirit’s effortless flow.
If your heart is clear and at one, staying or going is free; if fear or inner fights push you, both become cages.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Is the desire to stay near you, not going away, also a bondage?
It depends, because bondage is never in a situation, it is in the attitude. If you want to go away and cannot, then it is a bondage. If you don't want to go away, the question doesn't arise. The reverse is also true: you want to be here near me and you cannot, then going away is also a bondage. If you want to be near me and you can be easily, there is no problem; the question doesn't arise. Bondage or freedom are attitudes. They are not in situations. Do you follow me? If you want to be near me and some inner obsession goes on forcing, "Go away! Don't be here," you would like to be here but some demon inside goes on forcing, "Go away!" -- that's a bondage, going away is a bondage. If you want to go away and some fear within you goes on…
You said that love can make you free. But ordinarily we see that love becomes attachment, and instead of freeing us it makes us more bound. So tell us something about attachment and freedom.
Right now you are not. When you say, "When I love someone it becomes an attachment," you are saying you are not, so whatsoever you do goes wrong because the doer is absent. The inner point of awareness is not there, so whatsoever you do goes wrong. First BE, and then you can share your being. And that sharing will be love. Before that, whatsoever you do will become an attachment. And lastly: if you are struggling against attachment, you have taken a wrong turn. You can struggle. So many monks, recluses, sannyasins are doing that. They feel that they are attached to their house, to their property, to their wives, to their children, and they feel caged, imprisoned. They escape, they leave their homes, they leave their wives, they leave their children and possessions, and they become beggars and escape to a forest, to a loneliness. But go and…
Osho, it is said that the body is a bondage. Then is the attainment of the supreme nonduality not possible while living in the body?
The body has not sought you out—remember this. Driven by your desires, you sought the body. You sought a womb; the womb did not seek you. If the body begins to leave you, you will call the doctor; the body will not call the doctor. The body wants to be rid of the hassle—you have tormented it enough. For the body there will be rest. Earth will fall back into earth and be glad. Water will merge into water—trouble over. Space will dissolve into space; air will dissolve into air. It has suffered enough in your lungs. No, not for a single moment will the body say, “Something bad is happening to me.” The body will be freed. You will cry and scream. When you die, does the body cry—or do you? The body is ready to die peacefully, ready to enter rest. You cling on. You say to the…
Questioner: krishna says that by giving up desiring and attachment, which he calls niskamta and anasakti respectively, one is released from bondage and he attains to the supreme. But it is so difficult for ordinary men and women to be free of desiring and attachment. Please explain the significance of desirelessness and non-attachment and ways to achieve them.
In the first place try to understand the meaning of the word anasakti or non-attachment. It is unfortunately one of the most misunderstood words. Non-attachment is generally taken to mean aversion, but it is not aversion. Aversion is a kind of attachment -- the opposite of attachment. Someone is attached to sex and someone else is attached to its opposite -- brahmacharya or celibacy. Someone is attached to wealth; he is running after wealth, and someone else is attached to renunciation of wealth; he is running away from wealth. One person is obsessed with the idea of looking handsome; another person is obsessed with the idea of looking ugly. But those who are averse to sex, money or good looks appear to be non-attached because their attachments are negative. Attachment has two faces, positive and negative. You can fancy a thing so much that you madly run after it, you…
Shanti Deva. It means goddess of peace. Let it be a remembrance -- feel as peaceful as possible. And it is only a question of feeling. If you feel peaceful, you become peaceful. Nobody is barring you; there is no hindrance. The idea becomes the actuality. A continuous thought can be transformed into a thing. It becomes as material as anything else. Let it vibrate inside continuously. Whenever you forget, again remember, relax and bring peace. Move peacefully, sit peacefully, stand peacefully. Carry a grace, an elegance, and feel that you are surrounded by a small aura of peace. Within a few days there will be no need to remember it. It will be there whether you remember it or not, but in the beginning remembrance helps to materialise it.