Saturday, March 19, 2016

Osho on Love and Relatedness


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When you fall in love with a woman, everybody laughs. They think, 'This man has gone crazy!' People start asking, 'What do you see in this woman?' People start asking the woman, 'What do you see in this guy?' But lovers go on seeing things -- all kinds of hallucinations. In a very ordinary girl's face, a lover can see the moon! And the woman can see in her lover all kinds of gods! She cannot believe that such a love has ever happened before or is going to happen again. It is happening for the first time and the last time!
That's why in every language there exists the expression 'falling in love'. It is really falling -- it is falling from your intelligence, falling from your humanity. it is really falling into a ditch! And if you become committed, then you cannot get out of the ditch either! Commitment means, 'I am falling forever,' so the ditch is going to become your grave.

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Marriages have become people's graves -- and I have seen no relationship that works. What works is love, but love is a delicate flower; you cannot depend on it. What works is momentary, but under the impact of love you can become committed and then you will repent, but then you cannot escape from the commitment. You have been brought up with these beliefs: that you have to stick to your promise that you have to be consistent, that you have to fulfill whatsoever word you have given. Now your whole work is wasted. What works as far as love is concerned is momentary; it certainly works for the moment, but no relationship works.

                                  
Relatedness works but not relationship, and you have to understand the difference between the two. Love, the moment it becomes a relationship, becomes bondage. And when you are in bondage it is impossible for you to be festive, to be joyous. You can fulfilL the duty, but duty is an ugly, four-letter word. Duty means now you are caught and you have to do it. Love is not something that you do, it is something that happens; duty is something that you have to do. It is a drag! You become a martyr. You start carrying your cross on your own shoulders, and you may think that you are becoming a Christ...
Look at all the husbands carrying crosses! Look at the wives! Nobody seems to be happy. They are continuously quarrelling, continuously fighting, continuously destroying each other, and reducing each other to commodities, to means. The wife is using the husband; the husband is using the wife. It may be for different purposes -- the wife uses the husband for economic purposes and the husband uses the wife for sexual purposes -- but both are using each other. And how can one be happy when one is being used?
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So the moment the husband says, 'What about it tonight?' the wife immediately says, 'I am suffering from a headache,' or she goes into a tantrum or starts a quarrel. So when the husband wants to make love to the wife he has to bring ice cream and a bouquet and a sari, or something economic; then it is business, then it is simply a give and take.
This is not working -- you cannot say that the relationship is working. Yes, if love becomes conscious, then there is a tremendous joy -- it works.
Love ordinarily is unconscious and animal. If you make it conscious -- that means love plus meditation -- then there is a totally different quality to it, a different beauty, a different flavour; then it works. But it works because of consciousness not because of love. And consciousness changes love from a relationship into a relatedness; it changes it more into a friendliness. It is no longer bondage, it gives freedom.
Zen - Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing
Osho

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