When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 10. MAN IS A BORN IN TAO
of movement, aliveness, vitality. The more dead you are, the more secure. When you are in your
grave there will be no danger. What can happen to you anymore? Nothing! Nobody can harm you
when you are dead. But when you are alive, you are vulnerable, you can be harmed. But I tell you,
that is the beauty of life.
A flower in the morning cannot believe that by the evening it will be gone. But that is the beauty of
it – in the morning it is so glorious, so magnificent, an emperor, and by the evening it is gone. Just
think of a flower made of stone or plastic – it remains. It remains; it will never fade. But whenever
something never fades it means it never bloomed. Marraige is a plastic flower, love is the real flower
– in the morning it blooms, by the evening it hag gone. A marriage continues, it has a permanency
about it. But in this impermanent world how can anything real be permanent?
Everything real will have to exist moment to moment. And there is insecurity; any moment it can
disappear. The flower that blooms will fade; the sun that has arisen will set. Everything will change.
But if you are too afraid of insecurity then you will make arrangements. And with those arrangements,
you will kill everything – a wife is a dead beloved, a husband is a murdered lover. Then things are
settled, now there is no problem. But then the whole life drags.
I’m not saying that love cannot be eternal – it can be. But insecurity is its nature; you cannot make
it permanent. Remember! You have to move moment to moment. If it fades, you have to accept it;
if it goes on blooming, you enjoy it. It depends. But you cannot be secure about it. How can you be
secure about the future? Who knows whether you will be there or not? If even about yourself you
cannot be secure, what about your love?
But you go on promising and you don’t know what you are doing. When you love a person, you feel
that you will love him forever and ever. This is a feeling of this moment; don’t make it a promise. Just
say: This moment, I feel that I will love you forever and ever, but I don’t know how I will feel about
the next moment. Nobody can say anything about the next moment, nobody can promise. If you
promise, you live in a plastic world. A promise cannot be given. And this is the truth, the honesty of
love it will not promise. But everybody wants the promise just to be secure; and the more afraid you
are, the more promise you require. That’s why women want more promises than men, they are more
afraid, they feel naturally more insecure. They would like to make everything permanent, only then
will they move a step. And then you go on giving false promises which cannot be fulfilled. Every
promise is broken. And with every promise your heart is broken and the other’s heart is broken. And
with every promise disappearing life becomes futile and meaningless; the poetry is lost, it becomes
a flat prose, a legal phenomenon. You come and make love to your wife, and it becomes a legal
thing, you have to do it, it is not spontaneous. You have to kiss your child, it is not spontaneous, you
have to do it, it is a duty.
And duty is the ugliest thing, I tell you. Love is the most beautiful; duty is the ugliest.
Love is an unknown phenomenon, you cannot manipulate it. Duty is a social by product. Now the
wife can say: You have to love me; this is your duty, and you promised! And you know that you
promised. Then what can you do? If the love has disappeared, or at this moment you don’t feel
like loving, or this night you don’t feel like making love, what to do? Just to keep the promise of the
past you have to be false and act. So you say: Okay, yes, I promised. What will you do? Can you
promise love on demand? Is it possible? Has it ever happened? Can you produce love?
When the Shoe Fits 141 Osho