These three words — compulsion, purpose and guilt — are about the crowd of small human beings. They live a life of compulsion; they even love out of compulsion, they work out of compulsion. They do everything without any joy, out of duty.
My father used to love his feet to be massaged, so whoever he would find… and I was always available because I had nothing to do in the world and everybody knew that I am good for nothing, so nobody gave me any work. People gave me work a few times and the result was such a disaster that they stopped… I was always around. He would ask me and sometimes I would say yes, sometimes I would say no.
One day he asked me, "What decides? Sometimes you say yes, sometimes you say no."
I said, "I say yes when I feel that I can do it lovingly, joyously, without any compulsion. I say no when I feel that I will be doing it out of compulsion, as a duty. And to me, duty is an ugly word."
Sometimes it used to happen, I would start massaging his feet and in the middle I would say, "That's the end." And he would say, "I am not satisfied yet."
I said, "It is not a question of your satisfaction. I am perfectly satisfied. Now, going on massaging you will be out of compulsion, and I hate to do anything out of compulsion; just forgive me."
He said, "You are a strange boy. You started, you were doing so well."
I said, "I was doing so well because I loved it. Whenever I love, I do it. But whenever I don't feel any love, I don't want to pretend. And I want it to be clear to you that this is going to be my approach in everything about life. When I say yes, I mean yes.
And when I say no, I mean no. Never try to change my no into yes, you will never succeed. I would rather die than do anything as obedience, under compulsion because you are my father."
But all over the world people are doing things which they hate. And they say that they hate it, but there is some compulsion and they have to do it.
Doing anything under compulsion is slavery — and Zarathustra hates slavery — or for a purpose, which is also another kind of slavery.
You are doing something to gain something, there is a purpose behind it. You are being very nice to someone, there is a purpose behind it. Then your niceness is disgusting. You should be aware that a life lived without purpose, just out of sheer joy, is the only pure life. Purpose contaminates, poisons.
But there are people… for them everything has some purpose behind it. In fact, if there is no purpose they will think you are mad. Then why are you doing it? Purpose has become to them the very aim of every act; they have lived under this kind of idiotic idea.
Now, if anybody is doing something out of sheer joy, not asking for any reward in the end, not asking for anything in response — whose every act has its own reward in itself…. Only such a man knows the depths of life, the heights of life. And those depths and heights are certainly the depths and heights of the sky.
Or people are living out of guilt. Every Sunday people are going to the churches — not that they really want to, not that there is great joy in going, not that they have a feeling for Jesus. But they are going there; otherwise they will feel guilty. Just watch how many things you are doing because of the fear that if you don't do them there will be a guilt feeling.
OSHO