Be Playful

Seriousness

I am surprised when I come across a man whose wife has died – and he is still crying and in anguish: his beloved has died. Why be so monopolistic? There are so many beautiful women still alive! This makes no sense. Your husband has died and for your whole life you will remain in a nightmare – because you cannot love anybody else? Your love is so tiny? So fixated? It was a kind of obsession? It was neurotic, it was not healthy. Otherwise, when the husband is dead, yes, there will be sadness, but you will say goodbye and you will move. You will not sacrifice your life – because sacrificing your life is dangerous. If you sacrifice your life and you become a martyr, you will take revenge on life; you will create guilt in your children, you will create guilt all around. And you WILL suffer! And when a person suffers, he creates vibes of suffering all around.

No, this makes no sense! The world is full of so many people, why should you be so fixated? But the fixation comes from the very beginning: the moment a child says ‘my mother’, and the mother feels very happy, the fixation has started. Now the child will remain obsessed his whole life.

And when the child is small, he is naturally dependent on the mother – and mothers and fathers have exploited that dependence immensely. He is helpless, he cannot survive on his or her own; he HAS to look up to the mother and the father. His helplessness is exploited. He knows if the mother is gone, he will be dead. If the mother is no more available, he will be dead, he will not be able to survive. This idea goes on and on getting deeper and deeper…. And the mother helps it, because the mother enjoys the ego trip that “You cannot survive without me.” She threatens many times, “Listen to me, otherwise I will leave and go forever, or I will die – and THEN YOU will know!”

And the child is shaken to the very roots – he cannot survive without the mother.

This becomes, by and by, a conditioning. Later on it will be reflected in all his relationships. He will think the same about his wife: if the wife is no more, he will not be able to survive. This will become unconscious. He will think the same again and again about everything: “If this job is gone, then I am finished. If this house is no more with me, then where will I be? If this bank balance is no more with me, then where will I be?” His whole life he will think in terms of fixation, and his whole life will be a long long, unnecessary suffering. He is no more a child, but he remains childish because of the conditioning.

Love, and immediately you turn it into bitterness because you become serious about it. You start thinking of the future. Think of the future – marriage, children, security – and you have destroyed the play and it has become a game, and a very dangerous game. And you will be a loser – nobody is ever a winner.

With play, everybody is a winner. With seriousness, nobody is ever a winner – all are losers.

You go to meditation and you become serious about it. Don’t become serious. Meditation can happen only in playfulness, in utter playfulness, when you are not searching and seeking for anything, when you are simply dancing or singing or chanting; when you are not asking, when the activity is all and all in itself, no future is provoked, no future is involved in it… then it happens. Meditation is happening. You cannot snatch it from God’s hands. You cannot desire it and you cannot have it. You can only do one thing: you can become an empty receiving end – and that’s what happens when you are playful.