Excuses and excuses and excuses — excuses just to avoid one single insight that “I am responsible for myself. Nobody else is responsible for me; it is absolutely and utterly my responsibility. Whatsoever I am, I am my own creation.”
The ordinary mind always throws the responsibility on somebody else. It is always the other who is making you suffer. Your wife is making you suffer, your husband is making you suffer, your parents are making you suffer, your children are making you suffer, or the financial system of the society, capitalism, communism, fascism, the prevalent political ideology, the social structure, or fate, karma, God... you name it.
People have millions of ways to shirk responsibility. But the moment you say somebody else — x, y, z — is making you suffer, then you cannot do anything to change it. What can you do? When the society changes and communism comes and there is a classless world, then everybody will be happy. Before it, it is not possible. How can you be happy in a society which is poor? And how can you be happy in a society which is dominated by the capitalists? How can you be happy with a society which is bureaucratic? How can you be happy with a society which does not allow you freedom?
Excuses and excuses and excuses — excuses just to avoid one single insight that “I am responsible for myself. Nobody else is responsible for me; it is absolutely and utterly my responsibility. Whatsoever I am, I am my own creation.”
This is the meaning of the third sutra:
Drive all blame into one.
And that one is you. Once this insight settles: “I am responsible for my life — for all my suffering, for my pain, for all that has happened to me and is happening to me — I have chosen it this way; these are the seeds that I sowed and now I am reaping the crop; I am responsible” — once this insight becomes a natural understanding in you, then everything else is simple. Then life starts taking a new turn, starts moving into a new dimension. That dimension is conversion, revolution, mutation — because once I know I am responsible, I also know that I can drop it any moment I decide to. Nobody can prevent me from dropping it.
Can anybody prevent you from dropping your misery, from transforming your misery into bliss? Nobody. Even if you are in a jail, chained, imprisoned, nobody can imprison you; your soul still remains free.
Of course you have a very limited situation, but even in that limited situation you can sing a song. You can either cry tears of helplessness or you can sing a song. Even with chains on your feet you can dance; then even the sound of the chains will have a melody to it.
Just be responsible to yourself
Can anybody prevent you from dropping your misery, from transforming your misery into bliss? Nobody. Even if you are in a jail, chained, imprisoned, nobody can imprison you; your soul still remains free. Of course you have a limited situation; you can either cry tears of helplessness or sing a song
Do whatsoever you feel like doing. If it is wrong, the punishment will immediately follow. If it is right, the reward will follow immediately, instantly; there is no other way. In this way you will start finding what is wrong, what is right on your own. You will grow a new sensitivity - Indians call it the third eye. You will start seeing a new vision, a new eye. Instantly you will know what is wrong, because in the past so many times you have done it and always suffered in consequence. You will know what is right, because whenever you did existence showered great blessings on you. Cause and effects are together, they are not separated by years and lives.
This is what I mean by “Being Responsible” to yourself. There is no God on whom you can dump your responsibility, but you are always searching to dump on somebody, even on a poor man like me, who is continuously telling you that I am not responsible for anything, for anybody, Still, somehow, deep down you go on carrying the illusion that I must be joking. But you don’t understand. Dumping your responsibility on me, you will remain retarded, childish. You will never grow. The only way to grow is to accept all the good, the bad, the joyful, the sorrowful. Everything that happens to you, you are responsible for. This gives you great freedom.
Religiousness is born in you only when you begin to feel total responsibility for yourself. Philosophy is one thing: philosophy can continue its meaningless absurd theorizing. Religion is different: religion is a decision, it is to feel totally responsible for yourself. Whatever I am - a violent, angry, greedy, lust-filled mind, a bundle of desire - I am responsible.
The moment I feel that my ugliness is my responsibility that my sin-centred mind is my responsibility, then the jump becomes possible. Because I am responsible for my ugliness, no one else can be responsible for my beauty. If I am responsible for all the darkness that is within me, then all the light that comes to a Buddha can also come to me. By taking responsibility for the one, the other potential becomes open..
By Osho
