How Can I Love Better?
by Osho
 "How can I love better?"
Love is enough unto itself. It needs no betterment. It is perfect as
it is; it is not in any way meant to be more perfect. The very desire
shows a misunderstanding about love and its nature. Can you have a
perfect circle? All circles are perfect; if they are not perfect, they
are not circles. Perfection is intrinsic to a circle and the same is
the law about love. You cannot love less, and you cannot love
more — because it is not a quantity. It is a quality, which is
immeasurable.
Your very question shows that you have never tasted what love is,
and you are trying to hide your lovelessness in the desire of knowing
"how to love better." No one who knows love can ask this question.
Love has to be understood, not as a biological infatuation — that is
lust. That exists in all the animals; there is nothing special about
it; it exists even in trees. It is nature's way of reproduction. There
is nothing spiritual in it and nothing especially human. So the first
thing is to make a clear-cut distinction between lust and love. Lust is
a blind passion; love is the fragrance of a silent, peaceful,
meditative heart. Love has nothing to do with biology or chemistry or
hormones.
Love is the flight of your consciousness to higher realms, beyond
matter and beyond body. The moment you understand love as something
transcendental, then love is no longer a fundamental question. The
fundamental question is how to transcend the body, how to know
something within you that is beyond — beyond all that is measurable. That is the meaning of the word matter. It comes from a Sanskrit root, matra, which means measurement; it means that which can be measured. The word meter
comes from the same root. The fundamental question is how to go beyond
the measurable and enter into the immeasurable. In other words, how to
go beyond matter and open your eyes toward more consciousness. And
there is no limit to consciousness—the more you become conscious, the
more you realize how much more is possible ahead. As you reach one
peak, another peak arises in front of you. It is an eternal pilgrimage.
Love is a by-product of a rising consciousness. It is just like the
fragrance of a flower. Don't search for it in the roots; it is not
there. Your biology is your roots; your consciousness is your
flowering. As you become more and more an open lotus of consciousness,
you will be surprised—taken aback—with a tremendous experience, which
can only be called love. You are so full of joy, so full of bliss, each
fiber of your being is dancing with ecstasy. You are just like a rain
cloud that wants to rain and shower.
The moment you are overflowing with bliss, a tremendous longing arises in you to share it. That sharing is love.
Love is not something that you can get from someone who has not
attained to blissfulness — and this is the misery of the whole world.
Everybody is asking to be loved, and pretending to love. You cannot
love because you don't know what consciousness is. You don't know the satyam, the shivam, the sundram;
you don't know truth, you don't know the experience of the divine, and
you don't know the fragrance of beauty. What have you got to give? You
are so empty, you are so hollow ... Nothing grows in your being,
nothing is green. There are no flowers within you; your spring has not
come yet.
(Editor's note: Satyam = Sanskrit for 'true, real, pure', that which abides and exists beyond 'maya', illusion.)
Love is a by-product. When the spring comes and you suddenly start
flowering, blossoming, and you release your potential fragrance sharing
that fragrance, sharing that grace, sharing that beauty is love.
I don't want to hurt you but I am helpless, I have to say the truth
to you: You don't know what love is. You can't know because you have
not yet gone deeper in your consciousness. You have not experienced
yourself, you know nothing of who you are. In this blindness, in this
ignorance, in this unconsciousness, love does not grow. This is a
desert in which you are living. In this darkness, in this desert, there
is no possibility of love blossoming.
First you have to be full of light, and full of delight — so full that
you start overflowing. That overflowing energy is love. Then love is
known as the greatest perfection in the world. It is never less, and
never more.
But our very upbringing is so neurotic, so psychologically sick that
it destroys all possibilities of inner growth. You are being taught
from the very beginning to be a perfectionist, and then naturally you
go on applying your perfectionist ideas to everything, even to love.
Just the other day I came across a statement: A perfectionist is a person who takes great pains, and gives even greater pains to others. And the outcome is just a miserable world!
Everybody is trying to be perfect. And the moment somebody starts
trying to be perfect, he starts expecting everybody else to be perfect.
He starts condemning people, he starts humiliating people. That's what
all your so-called saints have been doing down the ages. That's what
your religions have done to you — poisoned your being with an idea of
perfection.
Because you cannot be perfect, you start feeling guilty, you lose
respect for yourself. And the man who has lost respect for himself has
lost all the dignity of being human. Your pride has been crushed, your
humanity has been destroyed by beautiful words like perfection.
Man cannot be perfect. Yes, there is something that man can
experience, but which is beyond the ordinary conception of man. Unless
man also experiences something of the divine, he cannot know perfection.
Perfection is not something like a discipline; it is not something
that you can practice. It is not something for which you have to go
through rehearsals. But that is what is being taught to everybody, and
the result is a world bill of hypocrites, who know perfectly well that
they are hollow and empty, but they go on pretending all kinds of
qualities that are nothing but empty words.
When you say to someone. "I love you" have you ever thought what
you mean? Is it just biological infatuation between the two sexes? Then
once you have satisfied your animal appetite, all so-called love will
disappear. It was just a hunger and you have fulfilled your hunger and
you are finished. The same woman who was looking the most beautiful in
the world, the same man who was looking like Alexander the Great — you
start thinking how to get rid of this fellow!
It will be very enlightening to understand this letter written by Paddy to his beloved Maureen:
My Darling Maureen,
I would climb the highest mountain for your sake, and swim the
wildest sea. I would endure any hardships to spend a moment by your
side.
Your ever-loving, Paddy.
P.S. I'll be over to see you on Friday night if it is not raining.
The moment you say to someone "I love you," you don't know what you
are saying. You don't know that it is just lust hiding behind a
beautiful word, love. It will disappear. It is very momentary.
Love is something eternal. It is the experience of the Buddhas, not
the unconscious people the whole world is full of. Only very few people
have known what love is, and these same people are the most awakened,
the most enlightened, the highest peaks of human consciousness.
If you really want to know love, forget about love and remember
meditation. If you want to bring roses into your garden, forget about
roses and take care of the rosebush. Give nourishment to it, water it,
take care that it gets the right amount of sun, water. If everything is
taken care of, in the right tune the roses are destined to come. You
cannot bring them earlier, you cannot force them to open up sooner. And
you cannot ask a rose to be more perfect.
Have you ever seen a rose that is not perfect? What more do you
want?' Every rose in its uniqueness is perfect. Dancing in the wind, in
the rain, ... the sun ... can't you see the tremendous beauty, the
absolute joy: A small ordinary rose radiates the hidden splendor of
existence.
Love is a rose in your being. But prepare your being — dispel the
darkness and the unconsciousness. Become more and more alert and aware,
and love will come on its own accord, in its own time. You need not
worry about it. And whenever it comes it is always perfect.
Love is a spiritual experience nothing to do with sexes and nothing
to do with bodies, but something to do with the inner-most being. But
you have not even entered into your own temple. You don't know at all
who you are, and you are trying to find out how to love better. First,
be thyself; first, know thyself, and love will come as a reward. It is
a reward from the beyond. It showers on you like flowers ... fills your
being. And it goes on showering on you, and it brings with it a
tremendous longing to share.
In human language that sharing can only be indicated by the word love. It does not say much, but it indicates the right direction.
Love is a shadow of alertness, of consciousness. Be more conscious,
and love will come as you become more conscious. It is a guest that
comes, that comes inevitably to those who are ready and prepared to
receive it. You are not even ready to recognize it! If love comes to
your door, you will not recognize it. If love knocks on your doors, you
may find a thousand and one excuses; you may think perhaps it is some
strong wind, or some other excuse; you will not open the doors. And
even if you open the doors you will not recognize love because you have
never seen love before; how can you recognize it?
You can recognize only something that you know. When love comes for
the first time and fills your being you are absolutely overwhelmed and
mystified. You don't know what is happening. You know your heart is
dancing, you know you are surrounded by celestial music, you know
fragrances that you have never known before. But it takes a little time
to put all these experiences together and to remember that perhaps this
is what love is. Slowly, slowly it sinks into your being.
Only mystics know love. Other than mystics there is no category of
human beings that has ever experienced love. Love is absolutely the
monopoly of the mystic. If you want to know love you will have to enter
into the world of the mystic.
Jesus says "God is love." He has been part of a mystery school, the
Essenes, an ancient school of mystics. But perhaps he did not graduate
from the mystery school, because what he is saying is just not right.
God is not love, love is God — and the difference is tremendous; it is
not just a change of words. The moment you say God is love you are
simply saying that love is only an attribute of God. He is also wisdom,
he is also compassion, he is also forgiveness, he can be millions of
things besides love; love is only one of the attributes of God.
And in fact, even to make it a small attribute of God is very
irrational and illogical, because if God is love then he cannot be
"just." If God is love then he cannot be cruel enough to throw sinners
into eternal hell. If God is love then God cannot be the law. One great
Sufi mystic, Omar Khayyam, shows more understanding than Jesus when he
says, "I will go on just being myself. I am not going to take any
notice of the priests and the preachers because I trust that God's love
is great enough; I cannot commit a sin that can be greater than his
love. So why be worried? Our hands are small and our sins are small.
Our reach is small; how can we commit sins which God's love cannot
forgive? If God is love then he cannot be present on the last judgment
day to sort out the saints and throw the remaining millions and
millions of people into hell for eternity."
The teachings of the Essenes were just the opposite; Jesus quotes
them wrongly. Perhaps he was not very deeply rooted in their teachings.
Their teaching was, "Love is God." That is such a tremendous
difference. Now God becomes only an attribute of love; now God becomes
only a quality of the tremendous experience of love. Now God is no
longer a person but only an experience of those who have known love.
Now God becomes secondary to love. And I say unto you, the Essenes were
right. Love is the ultimate value, the final flowering. There is
nothing beyond it; hence, you cannot perfect it.
In fact, before you attain to it you will have to disappear. When love will be there you will not be there.
A great Eastern mystic, Kabir, has a very significant statement — a
statement that can be made only by one who has experienced, who has
realized, who has entered the inner sanctum of ultimate reality. The
statement is, "I had been searching for truth, but it is strange to say
that as long as the searcher was there, truth was not found. And when
the truth was found, I looked all around ... I was absent. When the
truth was found, the seeker was no more; and when the seeker was, truth
was nowhere."
Truth and the seeker cannot exist together. You and love cannot
exist together. There is no coexistence possible: Either you or love,
you can choose. If you are ready to disappear, melt and merge, leaving
only a pure consciousness behind, love will blossom. You cannot perfect
it because you will not be present. And it does not need perfection in
the first place; it comes always as perfect.
But love is one of those words that everybody uses and nobody
understands. Parents are telling their children, "We love you" — and they
are the people who destroy their children. They are the people who give
their children all kinds of prejudices, all kinds of dead
superstitions. They are the people who burden their children with the
whole load of rubbish that generations have been carrying and each
generation goes on transferring it to another generation. The madness
goes on ... becoming mountainous.
Yet all parents think they love their children. If they really loved
their children, they would not like their children to be their images,
because they are just miserable and nothing else. What is their
experience of life? Pure misery, suffering ... life has been not a
blessing to them, but a curse. And still they want their children to be
just like themselves.
I was a guest in a family. I was sitting in their garden in the
evening. The sun was setting and it was a beautiful, silent evening.
The birds were returning back to the trees, and the small child of the
family was sitting by my side. I just asked him, "Do you know who you
are?" And children are clearer, more perceptive than the grownups,
because the grownups are already spoiled, corrupted, polluted with all
kinds of ideologies, religions. That small child looked at me and he
said, "You are asking me a very difficult question."
I said, "What is the difficulty in it?"
He said, "The difficulty is that I am the only child of my parents,
and as long as I can remember, whenever some guests come, somebody
says my eyes look like my father's, somebody says my nose looks like my
mother's, somebody says my face looks like my uncle's. So I don't know
who I am, because nobody says anything looks like me."
But this is what is being done to every child. You don't leave the
child alone to experience himself, and you don't leave the child to
become himself. You go on loading on the child your own unfulfilled
ambitions. Every parent wants his child to be his image.
But a child has a destiny of his own; if he becomes your image he
will never become himself. And without becoming yourself, you will
never feel contentment; you will never feel at ease with existence. You
will always be in a condition of missing something.
Your parents love you, and they also tell you that you have to love
them because they are your fathers, they are your mothers. It is a
strange phenomenon and nobody seems to be aware of it. Just because you
are a mother does not mean that the child has to love you. You have to
be lovable; your being a mother is not enough. You may be a father, but
that does not mean that automatically you become lovable. Just because
you are a father does not create a tremendous feeling of love in the
child. But it is expected ... and the poor child does not know what to
do. He starts pretending; that's the only possible way. He starts
smiling when there is no smile in his heart; he starts showing love,
respect, gratitude and all are just false. He becomes an actor, a
hypocrite from the very beginning, a politician.
We are all living in this world where parents, teachers,
priests — everybody has corrupted you, displaced you, has taken away from
yourself. My effort is to give your center back to you. I call this
centering "meditation." I want you simply to be yourself, with a great
self-respect, with the dignity of knowing that existence needed you — and
then you can start searching for yourself. First come to the center,
and then start searching for who you are.
Knowing one's original face is the beginning of a life of love, of a
life of celebration. You will be able to give so much love — because it
is not something that is exhaustible. It is immeasurable, it cannot be
exhausted. And the more you give it, the more you become capable of
giving it.
The greatest experience in life is when you simply give without any
conditions, without any expectations of even a simple thank-you. On the
contrary, a real, authentic love feels obliged to the person who has
accepted his love. He could have rejected it.
When you start giving love with a deep sense of gratitude to all
those who accept it, you will be surprised that you have become an
emperor — no longer a beggar asking for love with a begging bowl,
knocking on every door. And those people on whose doors you are
knocking cannot give you love: they are themselves beggars. Beggars are
asking each other for love and feeling frustrated, angry, because the
love is not coming. But this is bound to happen. Love belongs to the
world of emperors, not of beggars. And a man is an emperor when he is
so full of love that he can give it without any conditions.
Then comes an even greater surprise: When you start giving your love
to anybody, even to strangers, the question is not to whom you are
giving it — the very joy of giving is so much that who cares who is on
the receiving end? When this space comes into your being, you go on
giving to each and everybody — not only to human beings but to animals,
to the trees, to the faraway stars, because love is something that can
be transferred even to the farthest star just by your loving look. Just
by your touch, love can be transferred to a tree. Without saying a
single word ... it can be conveyed in absolute silence. It need not be
said, it declares itself. It has its own ways of reaching into the very
depths, into your being.
First be full of love, then the sharing happens. And then the great
surprise . . . that as you give, you start receiving from unknown
sources, from unknown corners, from unknown people, from trees, from
rivers, from mountains. From all nooks and corners of existence love
starts showering on you. The more you give, the more you get. Life
becomes a sheer dance of love.
This article was excerpted from:
 Love, Freedom, and Aloneness
by Osho.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, St. Martin's Press. ©2001. www.stmartinspress.com
Info/Order this book (2002 paperback edition).
About the Author
OSHO is one of the best-known and most provocative spiritual
teachers of our time. Beginning in the 1970s he captured the attention
of young people in the West who wanted to experience meditation and
transformation. More than a decade after his death in 1990, the
influence of his teachings continues to expand, reaching seekers of all
ages in virtually every country of the world.
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