According to Osho, you are not your brother’s keeper; no one is meant to manage another. Your sole responsibility is to yourself: become deeply centered, joyful, and fulfilled. From such inner richness, love and service arise spontaneously, not as duty or sacrifice. Obligatory altruism breeds resentment and poisons relationships; authentic care flows naturally when you overflow, first loving yourself, then sharing without burden.
Fill your own cup first; when you’re happy inside, being kind to others happens naturally and doesn’t feel heavy.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
If I am to be my brother's keeper, how far does my responsibility go?
No, you are not. Nobody is. Nobody is meant to be anybody's keeper. You are here to be yourself. Your only responsibility is towards yourself. I would like you to be totally selfish because only in that is there a possibility that you may be helpful to others. Unless you are deeply self-centred, unless you are so selfish in your being that you are happy, celebrating, you will not be able to share it. Humanity has been put on the wrong track by altruists, by people who say: Serve others, you are responsible for others. Nobody is responsible for anybody. The only responsibility is towards yourself. And if you are fulfilled in that responsibility you respond beautifully. A really fulfilled husband will love his wife, because out of his fulfilment love flows. But if he thinks he has to fulfil responsibilities, he has a duty to care because he has…
Beloved Osho, the scientific vision of objective reality and the subjective experience of existence seem to be two completely separate and unbridgeable dimensions. Is this because of the nature of things, or is it only an illusion of our mind?
The scientific approach to existence and the religious approach have been in the past separate and unbridgeable. The reason was the insistence of old religions on superstitions, belief systems, denial of inquiry and doubt. In fact, there is nothing unbridgeable between science and religion, and there is no separation either. But religion insisted on belief -- science cannot accept that. Belief is covering up your ignorance. It never reveals to you the truth; it only gives you certain dogmas, creeds, and you can create an illusion of knowledge through them. But that knowledge is nothing but a delusion. Anything based on belief is bogus. Because religions insisted continuously on belief, and the basic method of science is doubt, the separation happened. And it became unbridgeable. It is unbridgeable if religion does not arise and face the challenge of doubt. The whole responsibility of the religions has been to keep these…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF LOVE? Love never obliges anybody. Love is always obliged that you allowed the heart to shower upon you its flowers, its joys, its songs. Love is obliged to you for your receptivity. Responsibility always thinks, "I have done well and everybody should know it. And everybody should feel obliged. I have sacrificed so much for the freedom of the country; I have done so much in the war in defending the country; I am working so hard so that my children can be educated, can be well-nourished, so that I can provide facilities for my grandparents or my parents." But you find this a burden. You are crushed under it. It is not a joy, it is not blissfulness, it is not ecstasy. My grandfather loved very much. He was old, very old, but he remained active to the very last breath.
Beloved Osho, have we failed you in any way, that you have to start speaking again?
The story is that Bodhidharma was determined to remain awake for twenty-four hours. But the body is the body, the eyelids get tired, and when they get tired the eyes close. He became so angry that he cut off his eyelids and threw them in the grass. Then his eyes could not be closed. It is a symbolic story. It did not happen, it cannot happen -- because I know Bodhidharma perfectly well.... He is the last person to do such a thing. But the story is significant, although it is just a story: those eyelids grew into a plant that became the tea plant. And because those were the eyelids of a man like Bodhidharma, the tea still carries the quality of awareness. That is the significance of the story. In every Buddhist monastery, the first thing is the tea. But in Gandhi's ashram, if somebody was caught drinking…
A: Responsibility according to me is something individual. I can be responsible only to my acts, my thoughts. I cannot be responsible for your acts or your thoughts. But the whole history has been dominated with the idea that you are responsible to somebody else. A Christian is responsible to Jesus Christ is responsible to the Christian. That creates a certain kind of bondage, not freedom. Jesus himself helps, by saying that "If you have faith in me, then I will save you. If you don't have faith in me, you will fall into eternal hell." Now he is taking the responsibility of other people, and he cannot save himself on the cross. This is sheer cheating, this is sheer befooling people. My attitude is totally different. Responsibility has nothing to do with anybody else. It is not a duty. If sannyasins have done anything, it was their responsibility.