Love

Last night I was talking with my childhood friend after many years. He has grown into man and I couldn't see none of his childhood childishness. He is a man, now. And he is in love. So obviously I enquired him about his love life and his partner and about their understanding in life. He answered me short and witty: In life, you cannot Change (with a pun!) your partner, you can only understand her. That reminded me of a wonderful quote of Osho about women & men's mentality.

The woman is not worried of freedom at all. She is ready to become a slave if only she can make the other a slave also. She is ready to move into any commitment if the other is also forced into a commitment. She is ready to live in a prison if the other is ready to live in a dark cell. And the man is even ready to sacrifice love if it becomes too risky for his freedom. He would like to live in the open sky; even alone, it is okay. He would like to live in a loving relationship, but it becomes dark and an imprisonment. So this is the trouble.

Having seen woman of THAT type who can sacrifice her freedom to slave the other, I understand these words very personally and could feel the truth in these words. When my friend was narrating some typical incidents of jealous and possessiveness salted with love, and his need for freedom and personal space, I recollected some of the words of Osho that I read, and told him in my own words. Here is the same but in the words of Osho:

If you ask for a hundred percent commitment and he asks for a hundred percent freedom, then there is going to be continuous conflict and bickering and nagging – and this is ugly. And what is the point of it all? You find somebody else. You may find someone who wants to be committed, and he may find someone who allows him freedom. One has to become aware that this asking for too much commitment or for too much freedom, are both immaturities. Somewhere one has to come to terms with the other person. Once you understand that man needs more freedom, you put down your demands for commitment. Once the man understands that the woman needs commitment, he puts down his demand for freedom, that’s all. If you love, you are ready to sacrifice a little. If you don’t love, it is better to separate. Come to an understanding that will create growth.

Down the ages, or at least, as seen in my lifetime, one of the questions that doesn't find a solid answer is WHAT IS LOVE? I personally have a considerably complicated (in the eyes of society) love relation and I also witness a few great couples, and also on the contrary, many who were once 'two in one' breaking up their relation. As a result, all my life, this question of 'What is Love?' keeps visiting me as an old faithful dog and everytime I find that the answer I have is different from the one I had earlier. Sometimes, I have tried to go beyond What is Love and look into Why great lovers who had enjoyed each other's presence get separated as time passes? How does the enjoyment of each other turn into annoyance? How does the desire to be with each other turn to relief of getting separated? Osho has beautiful answers for this:

Once you are in a relationship you start taking each other for granted– that's what destroys all love affairs. The woman thinks she knows the man, the man thinks he knows the woman. Nobody knows either! It is impossible to know the other, the other remains a mystery. And to take the other for granted is insulting, disrespectful. To think that you know your wife is very, very ungrateful. How can you know the woman? How can you know the man? They are processes, they are not things. The woman that you knew yesterday is not there today. So much water has gone down the Ganges; she is somebody else, totally different. Relate again, start again, don't take it for granted.

I understand we all dont want to know just why relationship end, rather want to know how to prevent it from breaking. Afterall, knowing why it breaks is just the priliminary step. In the following post, I will post on the same topic and how to maintain a relation for life.

If there is anything that affects your life more than anything else, it is how a man relates with a woman in marriage life. When you are a child, the quality of your parents’ marriage life affects you (for better or for worse) and when you are mature enough, your own way of relating yourself with your spouse defines the way you live. Osho believes that the highest point of love is marriage but when he makes such a statement, he doesn’t refer to the legality of marriage. He just refers to the state where a man and a woman melt with each other (regardless of whether the society accepts it as marriage or not). What Osho refers to as marriage has nothing to do with the ceremony accompanied marriage of the society.

It is a merging of two hearts into totality. It is the functioning of two persons in synchronicity -- that is marriage. But quite ordinarily we find that most marriages fail. Either they end up with a life long committed love-fight relationship which none of the partners dare to break, or they split up so easily and find the love they had for each other turned into bitter hate. Osho reasons out that it’s our immaturity or false understanding of love that causes problems in marriage. Be it an arranged marriage or a love marriage, it is bound to have problems, unless love is understood on a new level.

`Love marriage' came into existence but is not going to survive, for the simple reason that love comes, happens, and one day suddenly goes. It was not in your hands to bring it; neither is it in your hands to keep it. The old marriage failed because the insistence was that you should love your wife, you should love your husband. It was a `should'. And you could not even conceive how you could love; at the most you could pretend, you could act.

But love is not a pretension, is not an acting. You cannot do anything. You are absolutely powerless as far as love is concerned. The old marriage failed. The new marriage is failing because the new marriage is simply a reaction to the old marriage. It is not out of understanding, but only out of reaction, revolt -- `love marriage.'

You don't know what love is. You simply see some beautiful face, you see some beautiful body and you think, "My God, I am in love!" This love is not going to last, because after two days, seeing the same face for twenty-four hours a day, you will get bored. The same body... you have explored the whole topography; now there is nothing to explore. Exploring the same geography again and again, you feel like an idiot. What is the point?

This love affair, this love marriage is failing, it has already failed. The reason is that you don't know how to wait so that love can happen.

Love and marriage is not a small thing in life that their whole dimension can be contained in a post. More on this will be dealt, in days to come. For now, it is good start to meditate upon the thoughts of Osho on marriage quoted above. Richard Bach says in one of his books, watch your thoughts often and you will notice that your thoughts change often. This is most applicable for Osho’s speeches. You will understand his speeches in different depths at different intervals.

Mulla Nasrudin and his wife were sitting on a bench in the park one evening just at dusk. Without knowing that they were close by, a young man and his girl friend sat down at a bench on the other side of a hedge. Almost immediately, the young man began to talk in the most loving manner imaginable. "He does not know we are sitting here," Mulla Nasrudin's wife whispered to her husband. "It sounds like he is going to propose to her. I think you should cough or something and warn him." "WHY SHOULD I WARN HIM?" asked Nasrudin. "NOBODY WARNED ME."

In my life, understanding a relationship taught me more than anything else. I remember osho saying in Vedanta: Seven steps to Samadhi that love is not something that we already have, it is something that we need to develop. When I first read that, (at that time I was in love with a guy) my ego was really hurt. Because I always thought I love the most and never thought of myself lacking a bit in my love. Illusions change. That's why they are called so. Now I understand that there are countless possibilities to a love a person (or people) and that love is never complete. It is always incomplete, always with a possibility of loving more. The more I love, the more I feel that less is my love. Here is a passage from Osho's Discourse Series: Vedanta, Seven Steps to Samadhi. It has changed my way of living and loving, it may do the same to you, also.

You cannot live with a woman, and you cannot live without a woman. What is the problem? The problem is that love has to be learned. Love is a creative art; one is not born with the capacity to love, no one is born with the capacity to love. Love is a growth, an achievement, and the finest achievement possible. .... And love is the greatest music, and you have to play it upon the most complex instrument -- the lover or the beloved. You think you are born with the capacity, so you destroy the instrument. You fall in love with a woman, but you don't know that that woman is the most complex instrument in the world. You are going to destroy, and when the woman is destroyed she becomes chaotic, she becomes chaos -- anger and hatred are bound to be there. Love has to be learned as an art, the greatest art, the art of life. That's why we go on talking about love, but love is the most scarce thing on this earth. It happens only once; millions of people are in love and it happens only once -- one in a million becomes capable of love. There are reasons. When a child is born, the child has only self-love. And this is natural: he does not know anybody else, he knows only himself. The child is the most selfish being, the most selfish, self-centered being. He exists for himself, and he imagines that the whole world exists to serve him. And because he is so helpless everybody has to serve him, so he is justified. Whenever he cries the mother runs to give him food, milk, help, warmth, love, and he becomes dictatorial. Every child becomes dictatorial and he knows that everybody follows. Whatsoever his desire it has to be fulfilled immediately, otherwise he goes mad. He is so helpless, and nothing can be done -- we have to serve him. His ego becomes strengthened. The mother, the father, the family, everybody around him helps him, serves him, and he feels that he is the center of the world. And almost always it happens that you never grow out of this childhood nonsense. You remain the center, and you think everybody has to serve you. How can you love? -- because love means the other has become the center. Love is a very great jump: you are not the center, the other has become the center. You have become the shadow.