With play, everybody is a winner.
With seriousness, nobody is ever a winner — all are losers. OSHO
Playfulness is not then and there: it is herenow.
Seriousness is goal-oriented. And even when a serious person starts playing, he transforms the quality of the play — it becomes a game; it is no more play.
That is the difference between a game and a play. When a play becomes serious, it becomes a game.
People go to see wrestling, people go to see bull-fights or American football — ugly, violent, inhuman. The people who are going to see these things are immature, a little perverted too. The spectators are as ungrown as the gladiators. And both are in some way catharting; in the name of the game, they are throwing their rubbish, they are simply vomiting their violence.
This is a very violent, violent world! That's why love cannot exist here. When human beings will really be human beings, things like bullfighting and wrestling will be unheard of, they will become part of history. Just to imagine that thousands of people have come to see a bullfight looks so ugly, disgusting. But people are serious. They change the play also into seriousness.
A play is something in which a goal is not at all concerned. The very being together is beautiful! for the sheer joy of it! In a better world, with more understanding, games will disappear — there will only be plays. There will be nobody as a winner, nobody as the defeated — because the very idea of defeating and winning is inhuman. There is no NEED for it! Why can't we enjoy the sheer togetherness? There should be no counting, no marking. There should not be any result out of it.
If you are in love with playing football, play football! Just play it! Don't look for the result. If the result comes in, you become serious, the play is destroyed; it has become almost businesslike. Enjoy the sheer outpour of energy. Enjoy the moment — don't sacrifice it for anything else.
That's what LEELA is, playfulness is. But you are in love and it becomes serious, and you start thinking of marriage and you start thinking of having children and you start thinking of having a family — and the whole thing has gone ugly! If these things happen, let them happen as by-products, not as results. Yes, if you love a woman, you would like to be with her — this is marriage! There should be no other marriage. There should not even be the idea, because the VERY idea makes things down-to-earth; the poetry is destroyed. It becomes mundane; the romance is destroyed.
But the moment you are in love, immediately your mind starts weaving and spinning… about family, how to have a family of one's own. Why should you need 'a family of one's own'? People possess things and people possess people too. If you possess things, it can be forgiven, but how can it be forgiven when you start possessing people? You say 'my wife', 'my husband', 'my child' — what have you DONE to call this child yours? Who are you? How do you come in? Can you create a child? Can you create the child according to your own desire?
A child comes from the unknown, is a gift. You are not the creator, how can you be the possessor? It IS NOT according to you that the child takes shape and form and being. You were longing for a beautiful child and you are hit with a lulu and still you call it 'my child'. You have been just a passage in the great play of existence.
Just as there are liberation movements, women's lib movement, so a new movement should be mounted: children's liberation movement. Nobody should be allowed to possess children. Possessiveness should not be allowed! Nobody should say 'my child'. All children are of God. You can only be a caretaker, not more than that. And you should be grateful that you have been chosen to be a caretaker of a new life evolving. That is more than enough! Enjoy the game of it! of being a caretaker of an evolving life, but don't start possessing.
But our mind is possessive. The possessiveness has gone to the very roots, and that has been the greatest hindrance in human growth.
When love is possessive it becomes exclusive. Then 'this woman is mine, and exclusively mine!' — then she cannot laugh with anybody else, then she cannot hold hands with anybody else, then she cannot look into the eyes of somebody else. What nonsense! Why? Who am I to possess? And how can love be possessive?
Love is always inclusive; it can never be exclusive. If I love the woman, I will love to see her happy in a thousand and one ways, with a thousand and one people. I would like her to be happy. That will be my joy. If she is happy dancing with somebody, I should not feel jealous — I love her! how can I feel jealous? I should be thrilled that she is happy. But when you claim that she is your wife, then you cannot allow this. You start crippling her. She starts paralyzing you in revenge. You both become destructive to each other.
Love is the greatest creative energy, but up to now it has been a misfortune, the greatest misfortune.
People have not been killed because of hatred: people have been killed because of love. Life has become so bitter, not because of anger: it has become so bitter because of love.
You fight for the love of a woman or a man; you fight for the love of your family or clan. You fight for the love of your ideology or religion; you fight for the love of your mother-country or father-country, father-land, motherland. You go on fighting for your love! All murders, all killings — all kinds of sufferings exist because of your so-called love.
Something is basically wrong with your love — your love is a fixated love; it is not a flowing play. It is serious, it is exclusive, it is possessive. It is full of stupidity.
One should be able to see all this — and just SEEING it, you start relaxing. You see the point of it and you start relaxing, and a new awareness arises in you.
Just…. 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.
OSHO
