What is the relationship between love and responsibility?

What is the relationship between love and responsibility? Does loving another person mean trying to solve their problems as well as your own?

If you can solve your own, that is already too much. Please never try to solve anybody else's problem; you will create a mess. You have not solved your own. Never do that. The mind has a tendency and a temptation to do it. You ask: What is the relationship between love and responsibility? No relationship, because love IS responsibility. But the word has to be understood well -- what it means. I insist on the root meaning of the word. Responsibility means: ability to respond. It does not mean a duty. Responsibility -- go to the root meaning of the word: it means to be responsive. Love is a response! When the other calls, you are ready. When the other invites, you enter the other. When the other is not inviting, you don't interfere, you don't trespass. When the other sings, you sing in response. When the other gives…

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.

Osho, can you talk about responsibility and what it means for us? I feel its importance more and more, but I am also confused about it. Am I avoiding something?

What I am saying is that if they had experienced it at its peak, its grip over them would have been lost. Then their whole life they would not be looking at PLAYBOY magazines; there would be no need. And they would not be dreaming about sex, having sexual fantasies. They would not be reading third-rate novels and looking at Hollywood movies. All this is possible because they have been denied their birthright. In the aboriginal society they live together in the night. One rule only is told to them: "Don't be with one girl more than three days, because she is not your property, you are not her property. You have to become acquainted with all the girls, and she has to become acquainted with all the boys before you choose your life partner." Now, this seems to be absolutely sane. Before choosing a life partner you should be…

You said the other day that duty was a four-letter word, but I have also heard you say many times that you want your sannyasins to be tremendously responsible. Please tell me, are not a sense of duty and a sense of responsibility the same thing? I hope, beloved Osho, that I am not confusing you!

You cannot... because I am utterly confused. You cannot confuse me any more. I am absolutely confused. Duty and responsibility are synonyms in the dictionary. but not in life. In life they are not only different, they are diametrically opposite. Duty is other-oriented, responsibility is self-oriented. When you say 'I have to do it', it is a duty. 'Because my mother is ill, I have to go and sit by her side.' Or, 'I have to take flowers to the hospital. I have to do it, she is my mother.' Duty is other-oriented: you don't have any responsibility. You are fulfilling a social formality -- because she is your mother; you don't love her. That's why I say that duty is a four-letter, dirty, word. If you love your mother, you will not say 'This is a duty.' If you love your mother, you will go to the hospital, you…

Beloved Osho, taking care of a business -- continuity, commitment, responsibility ... Unnecessary values, which are quite contrary to being in the moment, freedom and spontaneity, which the heart longs for. Please say something about the way in which these two spaces can live peacefully together, if there is any.

Anand Nada, if you want to ride on two horses together, it is going to be a difficult job. You will have to understand one thing: if you have a longing for freedom, spontaneity and being in the moment, you will have to be not businesslike. You can continue the business but you will have to transform your business attitude, approach. You cannot compromise both, you cannot synthesize both. You have to sacrifice one in the favor of the another. I remember my grandfather. My father and my uncles did not want the old man in the shop. They would tell him, "You just rest, or you can go for a walk." But there were customers who would ask for him, and they would say, "We will come back when he comes." The problem was that he was not a businessman. He would simply say, "This commodity costs ten rupees…