RELATIONSHIP
Relationship
is a structure, and love is unstructured. So love relates, certainly, but never
becomes a relationship. Love is a moment-to-moment process. Remember it. Love
is a state of your being, not a relationship. There are loving people and there
are unloving people. Unloving people pretend to be loving through the
relationship. Loving people need not have any relationship – love is enough.
Be
a loving person rather than in a love relationship – because relationships
happen one day and disappear another day. They are flowers; in the morning they
bloom, by the evening they are gone.
You
be a loving person, Mantra.
But
people find it very difficult to be a loving person, so they create a
relationship – and befool that way that “Now I am a loving person because I am
in a relationship.” And the relationship may be just one of monopoly,
possessiveness, exclusiveness.
Relationship
may be just out of fear, may not have anything to do with love. Relationship
may be just a kind of security – financial or something else. The relationship
is needed only because love is not there. Relationship is a substitute.
Become
alert! Relationship destroys love, destroys the very possibility of its
birth.
Freedom
is the ultimate desire of man. Man comes to flowering only in freedom.
Meditation will bring freedom.
And
I am not against love; it is just one step lower than freedom, and it is
beautiful to have love as a fragrance around you. Let freedom be your center
and love be your circumference. Let love be the circumference and freedom the
center, and you will have a total being, a whole being.
But
relationship never works. You are asking me: “How can two people be committed
to each other?” They cannot be. Commitment is toward existence, not toward each
other. Commitment can only be toward the whole, not to each other.
“How
does a relationship work?” you ask. It does not work – and you can see it
everywhere. It only pretends to. People go on saying that everything is okay,
everything is good. What is the point of showing one’s misery? What is the
point of showing one’s wounds? One goes on hiding them. It is humiliating to
show one’s wounds, so people pretend that everything is going well. They go on
smiling, they go on repressing their tears.
Friedrich
Nietzsche is reported to have said, “I go on smiling and laughing for the
simple reason that if I don’t smile I may start crying.” Smiling is a way to
cover up tears: you shift your energy from the tears to the smile so that you
can forget your tears. But everybody is full of tears.
I
have looked into thousands of people’s lives, their relationships. It is all
misery, but they are covering it up, pretending everything is going okay. A
relationship does not work, cannot work.
And
you say: “I am afraid of commitment, so I avoid relationships.” You are
perfectly right in being afraid of commitment and you are perfectly right in
avoiding relationships, but don’t avoid relatedness. Don’t make any exclusive
relationship, be friendly. Let love rise to the level of friendliness, let it
be just your quality. Be loving. Don’t make it a relationship, just be loving.
These
are the three stages. Relationship is the lowest, it is animal. Love as a
quality of your being. Just as you breathe, let love be, that is human. And
love at its ultimate expression is not even a quality, you become love itself.
Then it is not even like breathing, it is your very being; then it is
spiritual. But the third possibility can happen only through meditation. That
refinement is possible only if your energies go through the whole alchemy of meditativeness.
Relationship is beautiful because it is a mirror. But there are stupid people –
they see their face in the mirror and they see it is ugly so they destroy the
mirror. The logic is apparent: this mirror is making them ugly, so destroy the
mirror and then they are beautiful.
Relationship
is a mirror. Wherever you are related with a person – a wife, a husband, a
friend, a lover, an enemy – a mirror is there. The wife mirrors the husband.
You can see yourself there. And if you see an ugly husband, don’t try to leave
your wife – the ugliness is in you. Drop that ugliness. The mirror is
beautiful; be thankful to this mirror.
But
stupid and cowardly people always escape and renounce; brave and wise people
always live in relationship and use it as a mirror. Living with someone is a
constant mirroring around you. Every moment the other reveals you, exposes you.
The closer the relationship, the clearer is the mirror; the more distant the
relationship, the less clear is the mirror.
Live,
and live so totally that you come in contact with yourself. And there is no
other way to come in contact with yourself. The deeper you live, the deeper you
know yourself, in relationship, in aloneness. The deeper you move in
relationship, in love, the deeper you know. Love becomes a mirror. And one who
has never loved cannot be alone, he can at the most be lonely.
One
who has loved and known a relationship can be alone. Now his aloneness has a
totally different quality to it, it is not loneliness. He has lived in a
relationship, fulfilled his love, known the other, and known himself through
the other. Now he can know himself directly, now the mirror is not needed. Just
think of someone who has never come across a mirror. Can he close his eyes and
see his face? Impossible. He cannot even imagine his face, he cannot meditate
on it. But a man who has come to a mirror, looked into it, known his face through
it, can close his eyes and see the face inside. That’s what happens in
relationship. When a person moves into a relationship, the relationship
mirrors, reflects him, and he comes to know many things in himself that he
never knew existed.
Through
the other he comes to know his anger, his greed, his jealousy, his
possessiveness, his compassion, his love, and thousands of moods of his being.
Many climates he encounters through the other. By and by a moment comes when he
can now be alone; he can close his eyes and know his own consciousness
directly. That’s why I say that for people who have never loved meditation is
very, very difficult.
Those
who have loved deeply can become deep meditators; those who have loved in a
relationship are now in a position to be by themselves. Now they have become
mature, now the other is not needed. If the other is there they can share, but
the need has disappeared; now there is no dependence.
“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up it dies
and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it
be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.”
If
you can love without jealousy, if you can love without attachment, if you can
love a person so much that his happiness is your happiness…. Even if he is with
some other woman and he is happy, it makes you happy because you love him so
much: his happiness is your happiness. You will be happy because he is happy,
and you will be grateful to the woman who made the person you love, happy – you
will not be jealous. Then love has come to a purity.
This
love cannot create any bondage. And this love is simply the opening of the
heart to all the winds, to the whole sky. It looks a little strange; but we
have been taught continually that love is a relationship, so we have become
accustomed to the idea that love is a relationship. But that is not true. That
is the lowest kind – very polluted.
Sources:
Osho, Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind, Talk# 8
Osho, Zen: Zest Zip Zap and Zing, Talk #5
Osho, My Way: The Way of the White Clouds, Talk #11
Osho, Living Tao, Talk #1
Osho, Light on the Path, Talk #25
Source: http://www.osho.com/read/osho/osho-on-topics/relationship
RELATIONSHIP
Relationship
is a structure, and love is unstructured. So love relates, certainly, but never
becomes a relationship. Love is a moment-to-moment process. Remember it. Love
is a state of your being, not a relationship. There are loving people and there
are unloving people. Unloving people pretend to be loving through the
relationship. Loving people need not have any relationship – love is enough.
Be
a loving person rather than in a love relationship – because relationships
happen one day and disappear another day. They are flowers; in the morning they
bloom, by the evening they are gone.
You
be a loving person, Mantra.
But
people find it very difficult to be a loving person, so they create a
relationship – and befool that way that “Now I am a loving person because I am
in a relationship.” And the relationship may be just one of monopoly,
possessiveness, exclusiveness.
Relationship
may be just out of fear, may not have anything to do with love. Relationship
may be just a kind of security – financial or something else. The relationship
is needed only because love is not there. Relationship is a substitute.
Become
alert! Relationship destroys love, destroys the very possibility of its
birth.
Freedom is the ultimate desire of man. Man comes to flowering only in freedom. Meditation will bring freedom.
And I am not against love; it is just one step lower than freedom, and it is beautiful to have love as a fragrance around you. Let freedom be your center and love be your circumference. Let love be the circumference and freedom the center, and you will have a total being, a whole being.
Freedom is the ultimate desire of man. Man comes to flowering only in freedom. Meditation will bring freedom.
And I am not against love; it is just one step lower than freedom, and it is beautiful to have love as a fragrance around you. Let freedom be your center and love be your circumference. Let love be the circumference and freedom the center, and you will have a total being, a whole being.
But
relationship never works. You are asking me: “How can two people be committed
to each other?” They cannot be. Commitment is toward existence, not toward each
other. Commitment can only be toward the whole, not to each other.
“How
does a relationship work?” you ask. It does not work – and you can see it
everywhere. It only pretends to. People go on saying that everything is okay,
everything is good. What is the point of showing one’s misery? What is the
point of showing one’s wounds? One goes on hiding them. It is humiliating to
show one’s wounds, so people pretend that everything is going well. They go on
smiling, they go on repressing their tears.
Friedrich
Nietzsche is reported to have said, “I go on smiling and laughing for the
simple reason that if I don’t smile I may start crying.” Smiling is a way to
cover up tears: you shift your energy from the tears to the smile so that you
can forget your tears. But everybody is full of tears.
I
have looked into thousands of people’s lives, their relationships. It is all
misery, but they are covering it up, pretending everything is going okay. A
relationship does not work, cannot work.
And
you say: “I am afraid of commitment, so I avoid relationships.” You are
perfectly right in being afraid of commitment and you are perfectly right in
avoiding relationships, but don’t avoid relatedness. Don’t make any exclusive
relationship, be friendly. Let love rise to the level of friendliness, let it
be just your quality. Be loving. Don’t make it a relationship, just be loving.
These
are the three stages. Relationship is the lowest, it is animal. Love as a
quality of your being. Just as you breathe, let love be, that is human. And
love at its ultimate expression is not even a quality, you become love itself.
Then it is not even like breathing, it is your very being; then it is
spiritual. But the third possibility can happen only through meditation. That
refinement is possible only if your energies go through the whole alchemy of meditativeness.
Relationship is beautiful because it is a mirror. But there are stupid people – they see their face in the mirror and they see it is ugly so they destroy the mirror. The logic is apparent: this mirror is making them ugly, so destroy the mirror and then they are beautiful.
Relationship is beautiful because it is a mirror. But there are stupid people – they see their face in the mirror and they see it is ugly so they destroy the mirror. The logic is apparent: this mirror is making them ugly, so destroy the mirror and then they are beautiful.
Relationship
is a mirror. Wherever you are related with a person – a wife, a husband, a
friend, a lover, an enemy – a mirror is there. The wife mirrors the husband.
You can see yourself there. And if you see an ugly husband, don’t try to leave
your wife – the ugliness is in you. Drop that ugliness. The mirror is
beautiful; be thankful to this mirror.
But
stupid and cowardly people always escape and renounce; brave and wise people
always live in relationship and use it as a mirror. Living with someone is a
constant mirroring around you. Every moment the other reveals you, exposes you.
The closer the relationship, the clearer is the mirror; the more distant the
relationship, the less clear is the mirror.
Live, and live so totally that you come in contact with yourself. And there is no other way to come in contact with yourself. The deeper you live, the deeper you know yourself, in relationship, in aloneness. The deeper you move in relationship, in love, the deeper you know. Love becomes a mirror. And one who has never loved cannot be alone, he can at the most be lonely.
Live, and live so totally that you come in contact with yourself. And there is no other way to come in contact with yourself. The deeper you live, the deeper you know yourself, in relationship, in aloneness. The deeper you move in relationship, in love, the deeper you know. Love becomes a mirror. And one who has never loved cannot be alone, he can at the most be lonely.
One
who has loved and known a relationship can be alone. Now his aloneness has a
totally different quality to it, it is not loneliness. He has lived in a
relationship, fulfilled his love, known the other, and known himself through
the other. Now he can know himself directly, now the mirror is not needed. Just
think of someone who has never come across a mirror. Can he close his eyes and
see his face? Impossible. He cannot even imagine his face, he cannot meditate
on it. But a man who has come to a mirror, looked into it, known his face through
it, can close his eyes and see the face inside. That’s what happens in
relationship. When a person moves into a relationship, the relationship
mirrors, reflects him, and he comes to know many things in himself that he
never knew existed.
Through
the other he comes to know his anger, his greed, his jealousy, his
possessiveness, his compassion, his love, and thousands of moods of his being.
Many climates he encounters through the other. By and by a moment comes when he
can now be alone; he can close his eyes and know his own consciousness
directly. That’s why I say that for people who have never loved meditation is
very, very difficult.
Those
who have loved deeply can become deep meditators; those who have loved in a
relationship are now in a position to be by themselves. Now they have become
mature, now the other is not needed. If the other is there they can share, but
the need has disappeared; now there is no dependence.
“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.”
“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.”
If
you can love without jealousy, if you can love without attachment, if you can
love a person so much that his happiness is your happiness…. Even if he is with
some other woman and he is happy, it makes you happy because you love him so
much: his happiness is your happiness. You will be happy because he is happy,
and you will be grateful to the woman who made the person you love, happy – you
will not be jealous. Then love has come to a purity.
This
love cannot create any bondage. And this love is simply the opening of the
heart to all the winds, to the whole sky. It looks a little strange; but we
have been taught continually that love is a relationship, so we have become
accustomed to the idea that love is a relationship. But that is not true. That
is the lowest kind – very polluted.
Sources:
Osho, Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind, Talk# 8
Osho, Zen: Zest Zip Zap and Zing, Talk #5
Osho, My Way: The Way of the White Clouds, Talk #11
Osho, Living Tao, Talk #1
Osho, Light on the Path, Talk #25
Source: http://www.osho.com/read/osho/osho-on-topics/relationship
Sources:
Osho, Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind, Talk# 8
Osho, Zen: Zest Zip Zap and Zing, Talk #5
Osho, My Way: The Way of the White Clouds, Talk #11
Osho, Living Tao, Talk #1
Osho, Light on the Path, Talk #25
Source: http://www.osho.com/read/osho/osho-on-topics/relationship