Beauty In Sadness...

Can’t you see any beauty in sadness? Meditate over it. Next time, when you are sad don’t fight it. Don’t waste time in fighting – accept it, let it be a welcome guest, look deep into it with love, care… be a real host! And you will be surprised – you will be surprised beyond your comprehension – sadness has a few beauties that happiness can never have. Sadness has depth, and happiness is shallow. Sadness has tears, and tears go deeper than any laughter can ever go. Sadness has a silence of its own, a melody, which happiness can never have. Happiness will have its own song but more noisy, not silent.

I am not saying to choose sadness. I am just saying, enjoy it too. When you are happy, enjoy happiness. Swim on the surface, and sometimes dive deep into the river. It is the same river! On the surface is the play of ripples and waves, and th un rays and the wind – it has its own beauty. Diving deep into the river has its own quality, its own adventure, its own dangers.

And don’t become attached to anything. There are people who have become attached to sadness, too – psychologists know about this, they are called masochists. They go on creating situations in which they can remain miserable forever. Misery is the only thing they enjoy, they are afraid of happiness. In misery they are at home. Many masochist becomes religious, because religion provides a great protection for the masochists mind. Religion gives a beautiful realization for being a masochist.

Just being a masochist without being religious, you will feel condemned and you will feel ill, ill at ease, and you will know that you are abnormal. You will feel guilty about what you are doing to your life, and will try to hide it. But if a masochist becomes religious he can exhibit his masochism with great pride, because now it is no longer masochism – it is asceticism, it is austerity. It is “self-discipline” not torture. Only the labels have been changed – now nobody can cal the person abnormal, he is a saint! Nobody can call him pathological; he is pious, holy. Masochist have always moved towards religion, it has great attraction for them. In fact, so many masochists down the ages have moved toward religion – and it was natural, that movement – that ultimately religion grew to be dominated by masochists. That’s why so much of religion insists on being life negative, life3 destructive. It is not for life, it is not for love, it is not for joy – it goes on insisting that life is a misery. By saying that life is a misery, it rationalizes its own clinging to misery.

I have heard a beautiful story – I don’t know how far it is correct, I cannot vouch for it.

In paradise one afternoon, in its most famous café, Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Buddha are sitting and chatting. The waiter comes with a tray that hold three glasses of the juice called “Life,” and offers them. Buddha immediately closes his eyes and refuses; he says life is a misery.”

Confucius closes his eyes halfway – he is a middlist, he used to preach the golden mean – and ask the waiter to give him the glass. He would like to have a sip – but just a sip, because without tasting how can one say whether life is a misery or not? Confucius had a scientific mind; he was not a mystic, he had a very pragmatic, earth bound mind. He was the first behaviorist. The world has known, very logical. And it seems perfectly right – he says, “First I will have a sip then I will say what I think.” He takes a sip and he says, “Buddha is right – life is a misery.”

Lao Tzu takes al the three glasses and he says, “Unless one drinks totally, how can one say anything?” He drinks all the three glasses and starts dancing!

Buddha and Confucius asked him “Are you not going to say anything?” And Lao Tzu says, “This is what I am saying – my dance and my song are speaking for me.” Unless you taste totally, you cannot say. And when you taste totally, you still cannot say because what you know is such that no words are adequate.

Buddha is on one extreme, Confucius is in the middle. Lao Tzu has drunk all the three glasses – the one that was brought for Buddha, the one that was brought for Confucius and the one that was brought for him. He has drank them all; he has lived life in its three dimensionality.

My Own approach is that of Lao Tzu. Live life in all possible ways; don’t choose one thing against the other, and don’t try to be in the middle. Don’t try to balance yourself – balance is not something that can be cultivated. Balance is something that comes out of experiencing all the dimensions of life. Balancing is something that happens; it is not something that can be brought about through your efforts. If you bring it through your efforts it will be false, forced.  And you will remain tense, you will not be relaxed, because how can a person who is trying to remain balanced in the middle be relaxed? You will always be afraid that if you relax you may start moving to the left and to the right. You are bound to remain uptight, and to be uptight is to miss the whole opportunity, the whole gift of life.

Don’t be uptight. Don’t live life according to principles. Live life in its totality, drink life in its totality! Yes, sometimes it taste bitter – so what? That taste of bitterness will make you capable of tasting sweetness. You will be able to appreciate the sweetness only if you have tasted its bitterness. One who knows not how to cry will not know how to laugh, either. One who cannot enjoy a deep laughter, a belly laugh, that person’s tears will be crocodile tears. They cannot be true, they cannot be authentic.

I Don’t teach the middle way. I teach the total way. Then balance comes of its own accord, and then balance has tremendous beauty and grace. You have not forced it, it simply come. By moving gracefully to the left, to the right, to the middle, slowly a balance comes to you because you remain so unidentified. When sadness comes, you know it will pass, too. Nothing remains; everything passes by. The only thing that is always abides is your witnessing. The witnessing brings balance. That witnessing is balance.

OSHO 

Subtle is the path of Love!

Subtle is the path of Love!

Why subtle? – because one has to be sensitive, one has to be more and more in the heart, one has to become capable of feeling and response. Feel, cry, laugh, dance, weep, shout, but do it from the heart. and by and by you will feel a new change, a transformation – energy falling from the head towards the heart. and you will start moving in a totally different way. New values will arise, because the head has different values.

You fall in love with a beautiful woman, but the head says, “what are you doing? This woman is beautiful but she has no money.” The head says, “Better find a girl who has money.” The head is calculating, the heart is mad. Hence I say to you, if you want to love, be mad. Only mad people – mad in the sense that they are not calculating, mad in the sense that they can risk tomorrow for today – only mad people can move on the path of love.

Excerpts from “The Path of Love”

On the Songs on the Indian Mystic Kabir.

THE SONG OF LOVE

The flute of the infinite is played without ceasing,

and its sound is love:

When love renounces all limits,

it reaches truth.

How widely the fragrance spreads!

It has no end, nothing stand in its way.

The form of this melody is bright

Like a million suns:

Incomparably sounds the veena.

the veena of the notes of truth.

Subtle is the path of Love!

Therein there is no asking and no not asking,

there one looses one’s self at this feet,

there one is immersed in the joy of the seeking:

plunged in the deeps of love

as the fish in the water.

The lover is never slow in offering his head

for his lords service.

Kabir declares the secret of this love.

…Lovers penetrate into each other. It is not only a sexual metaphor; the penetration is spiritual, the sexual is only a shadow of it.

Lovers penetrate into each other. Their boundaries are blurred, they become nebulous, their definition becomes shaky. When living with a woman or with a man for many years, and suddenly the woman dies or the man dies, the pain that is felt, the suffering, the agony that is felt by the partner who is left behind is not only because somebody has died. It is because now he will never be whole. It is because now part of his being is destroyed completely, utterly. Now there will exist a black hole in his being, an abyss, an emptiness. When a lover dies, something deep inside you dies too. You had become so together; your life was no longer separate, it was overlapping. You were in two bodies, but you had become one soul – that is the meaning of love.

When the same happens to the whole of existence – that you start feeling that you are not separate, your boundaries overlap; not only do your boundaries overlap, your centers overlap; the world is your center too – in that ecstasy of oness is the fragrance called love.

… We can forget the word God, but we should not forget the word love. Love is far more valuable than the word God, because love is the very spirit of God. God may be just the body, love is the very soul.

When love renounces all limits… there are many limits, and our love is confined in limits. That’s why even if we love, we are never happy with it. The unhappiness that comes through love is not because love, but because of the limitations that surrounds it.

…People escape to the Himalayas: they are escaping from love, not from the world. They are afraid of love, and their fear has some reason behind it. Whenever you are in love, you are in a turmoil. Whenever there is love there is difficulty; whenever there is love there is conflict; whenever there is love there is hell. Says Jean-Paul Sartre, “The other is hell.” So whenever there is love the other enter your life, and suddenly there is conflict, collision, struggle to dominate each other, to posses each other, to master each, and other and the misery arises. Lovers are rarely happy. I am not saying that non-lovers are happy; non-lovers may not be happy, but they are never so unhappy as the lovers.

And lovers are more unhappy, because love had promised so much in the beginning – great expectation had arisen, great hope was there – and then everything is shattered on the rocks. A non-lover had no expectations; he was settled, he was not hoping for heaven: you cannot throw a man into hell if he is not hoping for heaven: you can only throw a man into hell only when he hopes for heaven; otherwise there is no possibility.

…When two people find themselves bound together, by and by they become acquainted with each other, and by and by they start liking each other. By and by they adjust. It is very mundane, it has no poetry in it.

In the West marriage is not a bed of roses. The boat is always rocking; it is always on the rocks, it is always is a state of collapse at any moment. Why? If you love, you expect. When you expect, love becomes contaminated, polluted. Then love is not really love; it now has limitation – because of the expectation. When you love a person you start possessing the person: you are afraid your woman may move to somebody else. You become so much afraid that you cannot even tolerate her looking at somebody. You cannot tolerate the idea that she was laughing with somebody else. That she can laugh without you? …it is impossible, it hurts. You start creating a prison for her – a beautiful cage, of course that you call home, but you create a cage. Certainly, when you start creating a cage, she has to create a cage for you too – because nobody can become the jailer unless he becomes a prisoner too. When you possess somebody, you are possessed. When you force somebody to be a slave, you have become a slave in the process itself.

…Never try to use anybody; share but never use. Respect the dignity of the other, never interfere, and then love has a bigger space, less limited. But still, it will be limited.

…Love is something bigger than you, you cannot control it. If you want to control, you can remain in hate. Hate can be controlled, hate is smaller than you. Love cannot be controlled, love is bigger than you. If you try to control love you will miss all possibilities. You will become a loveless being – and that’s what a dead person is: a loveless being who exist in the head and who has forgotten his own heart.

Kabir says: Bhakti ka marag jhina re – subtle is the path of love. Yes, it is not gross. The head is nothing but logic, arithmetic, calculations, cunningness, cleverness; good to exploit people, good to collect money, have a big bank balance; good to become a politician, good to overpower people, good to destroy. The head is very gross.

…Love concrete human beings, love concrete trees, love concretes rock, particulars. And only then will you know what love is. Forget great abstractions, they are dangerous. Man has been fighting because of them, destroying each other. A Mohammedan is ready to fight for Islam, and he will kill human beings for the love of Islam. Now this is foolish. The Christian is even ready to kill Christians if it is to save Christianity. What is this Christianity?

Love the concrete, love the immediate. Enjoy this moment, don’t prepare for tomorrow. Today is beautiful – delight in it, let it be a celebration.

Excerpts from “The Path of Love”

On the Songs on the Indian Mystic Kabir.

FREEDOM TO CHOOSE

…And one who knows life knows that death is another birth and nothing else. Death is another birth; a new door opens. Death is the other side of the same door you call birth: from one side the door is known death, from the other side the door is known as birth. Death brings another birth, another beginning another journey.

                  …Never be anywhere halfheartedly. Either be or don’t be, but never be half hearted; otherwise you are committing a wrong against yourself.

Excerpts from “The Path of Love”

On the Songs on the Indian Mystic Kabir.

… for in thatness I have seen beyond thatness…

                  Through the mind you have come across your own projections. Through the mind you never come to the real. The mind goes on creating ideas about the real. You never face reality as it is; there is always a screen of thought, and the thought goes on distorting the reality. You never see that which is, you are not objective. Your imagination goes on working, your wish-fulfillment goes on working. Your desire go on coloring things. You can never see things as they are unless the mind is completely put aside. When you see through the heart, you see reality.

 

Excerpts from “The Path of Love”

On the Songs on the Indian Mystic Kabir.

He who found both love and renunciation…

 

                  Very difficult to understand, the very extreme of illogic. We can understand love. But then what about renunciation? We can understand renunciation, but what about love? They seem to be the greatest contradiction possible. When you love how can you renounce? And when you renounce how can you love?

                  Try to understand it. Ordinary love is sort of sleep: you become attached to the object of love, you start feeling jealous, you become possessive – and your possessiveness and jealousy really poison the whole love. They destroy it. Love is destroyed by jealousy, possessiveness. The moment you try to possess your love object, you have denied love; you have already denied. You have declared that you don’t love.

                  Love is possible only if there is no possessiveness and no jealousy. That means love has attained renunciation. You love the person but you renounce the possessiveness; you love the person  but you renounce jealousy; you love the person but you don’t want to make a slave out of him or her; you love the person but you respect his or her freedom; you love the person but your love does not become an imprisonment. You love, yet you remain unattached. You love, you love tremendously, but still you don’t cling: that is renunciation.

                  Love the world, and don’t be attached. Be in the world, but don’t be of the world – that is what renunciation is. That is what I call sannyas:  a great harmony between love and renunciation; a great harmony between this world and that; an great harmony between God the creator and the world, the created; a great harmony between the body and the soul; a great harmony, with no conflict – the disappearance of all conflict.

                  If your love is so great that it contain renunciation, only then is it love. If your renunciation is so great that it can contain love, only then is it renunciation. A man who can be loving and yet in renunciation is the greatest growth, the destiny. That is the destiny we are seeking. And unless it is attained. You will never feel fulfilled. God is the lover and the sannyasin.

                  Look: he loves the world, and yet you cannot find him anywhere but he loves the world, and yet you cannot find him anywhere. He is completely absent; his renunciation is utter. He loves the world – he goes on creating it. He loves tremendously, otherwise why should he create? He cares tremendously, but is so unattached that h never comes in the market place to declare, “Look, I am the creator.”

                  He has no “I.” he is the creator without ever feeling, “I am the creator.” His renunciation is utter, his love is utter.

                  A sannyasin will be a miniature of God: his love will be total, his renunciation too. And Kabir says:

He has found both love and renunciation

Never descend to death.

            He goes beyond death; he becomes deathless. He has attained to the nectar of the divine. He has attained to the elixir. For this elixir, the alchemist all over the world have been searching and searching. This elixir can happen to you. Just one combination is needed, one great synthesis: the synthesis between love and renunciation.

Excerpts from “The Path of Love”

On the Songs on the Indian Mystic Kabir.

A HARMONY OF LOVE AND RENUNCIATION

…Kabir does not believe in effort, he believe in effortlessness. That’s what he calls sahaj samadhi, spontaneous ecstasy. Kabir is a lover; his path is the path of love. Love knows no effort.

                  Have you observed it in your own life? Can you do anything about love? If I say to you, “Go and love that man,” what will you do? You will say, “What nonsense! How can I go and love like that?” you cannot command anybody to go and love somebody. If love happens, it happens; if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. There is no way to produce it in order. And that is one of the miseries of the world; we have all learned to produce it on order. So of course it is false.

                  …Real love is greater than you; it is huge, enormous. It simply overfloods you, you are simply taken away. You are no longer standing anywhere. You lose your being in real love; it is great, it pours from the heaven.

Excerpts from “The Path of Love”

On the Songs on the Indian Mystic Kabir.

THE INNER TRINITY

After the thirty fifth year, one has to learn how to learn relaxing and dropping the ego and becoming more and more surrendered to the divine. The West the first part of life; the East the second part of life. Life should start Western and should end Eastern. One should first go into the world; in the world, will be the need. One should go and fight and struggle, because struggle gives you a sharp intelligence, but one should not continue fighting to the very end. Then what is the point?

                  Fight, fight sharpens your intelligence, know the ways of the world, wander all over the world, be a conqueror, and then… Then move inwards. Now you have to know the outside; now try to know the inner.

                  …Tantra is the oldest science to help you to come to an inner harmony, an inner wedding, an inner orgasm. Your woman and man meet inside and give birth to the child, the child Christ. Then you become a trinity: the father, the mother, the child. And when you are a trinity, you are blessed, you have come home. You know what life is, you have achieved the goal.

                  …every individual has a particular weakness, and the weakness persist because you remain unaware of it.

                  …reality cannot be denied for long. That’s why your so called great people, or so called great saints, don’t live in the marketplace, they go to the Himalayas. If they lived in the market place it would be impossible; sooner or later the reality would assert. Reality cannot be defeated forever. You can create fiction for a few days, a few moments, but you cannot live in fiction forever, that is not possible. The fiction is bound to collide with realty and will collapse.

                  …And always remember this: I am never totally against anything, and I am never totally in favor of anything. I always keep a balance.

                  The orange robe, the mala, the locket… innocent ritual, but it adds spice. It gives you a feeling of community. And a man needs a few fictions to live. The truth is too hard. Yes, one day you will become able to live with truth, but right now, no. You have to pass through many stages. Only in the ultimate jump can you drop all fictions. Then too you may not drop them, because they are beautiful in themselves.

                  …I have lived with money, I have lived without money, and I have one confession to make: it is always better to live with money than without. Money is useful. One should not be used buy it, that’s all. I’m not against money; it should be used – it is a good, utilitarian invention. It helps. It is tremendously useful; but use it, don’t be used by it.

                  …This is my whole teaching: not to carry the past and just remain true to the moment. Then there will be no contradictions. There is none—the contradictions appear only because you are trained too logically, an I am an illogical person. My whole logic is that of illogic. I am an irrationalist.

Excerpts from “The Path of Love”

On the Songs on the Indian Mystic Kabir.

I SING THE GLORY OF FORMS

…When you are seeking in the scriptures you are seeking theories and not truth – and truth is original, has to be original. The truth has to be born in you, it cannot be borrowed.

…Sometimes look into somebody’s eyes and don’t call them any names – man, woman, yours, friend, enemy, young, old, beautiful, ugly – don’t bring names in. just look into the eyes, try to avoid verbalization, and suddenly you will come to a leap, a quantum leap, where you will be surprised to see that the observer has become the observed, that the observed becomes observer. Then you don’t know who is “I” and who is “thou.” These are moments from where God enters you; his first foot step are heard.

At least for one hour, drop out of language. And to drop out of language is to drop out of society; to drop out of language is to drop out of religion; to drop out of language is to drop out of all that is man-created. Have you seen? – language is very, very significant. Animals are silent, trees are silent; they don’t argue, they don’t have any scriptures. A tree is neither Christian nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan; it is simply there in its beauty, with no name. It does not know even its own name; those names are given by human beings. Your society is created through language, your knowledge is created through language. Just think, if suddenly a miracle happened and language disappeared from the world, what would be the difference between man and animal? What would be the difference between a Hindu and a Mohammedan? There would be no difference. All distinctions are language created.

… If you fight with a word you will need another word to fight it with, remember. You cannot fight a word without words.

…You can fight only with words. To fight with words you will need more words, and you will get into the whole rut again. No, need; let the words pass, let them float, it’s ok. You be indifferent, you be neutral. They will buzz around for a few days, and then by and by they will feel they are neglected; by and by they will feel you are no longer interested; by and by they will feel they are not welcome. And when words start feeling they are not welcome, they start disappearing. You are no longer host to them.

…you have to drop language before God can speak his language. You have to be utterly silent before he can convey his message.

But we have a very wrong notion: we think if we have to pray, we have to talk to God. No, prayerfulness is ore listening than talking; better listen than talk. You cannot improve upon God. Whatsoever you say is meaningless, whatsoever you say is ridiculous. He knows it already. So what is the point? Keep quiet, remain in silence. Rather, try to hear. Be sensitive; don’t use the tongue. The prayer that comes out of the tongue is foolish, meaningless. You are advising God: you are saying, “Do it this way. Whatsoever you are doing is going wrong.” You say, “My wife is ill; make her well again. And I am getting old; give me more strength and a longer life” – and so on and so forth. All your prayers are your advice to God about how things should be.

…Jus the other day somebody asked, “what is the meaning of surrender”? This is the meaning of surrender: drop your otherness. Don’t think of yourself as the other, put aside your separateness. Don’t say, “I am”; let him be, and let him be so totally that you are drowned in that totality, absorbed, lost. Be a wave in the ocean, but don’t claim you are separate from the ocean – that I the meaning of surrender.

…there can be no cause to God, God is the ultimate cause. That is what we mean by “God’: the ultimate cause, the uncaused, which has always been, which will always be. There is none before it and none after it. God has no past and no future, God has only the present. God is eternal.

Excerpts from “The Path of Love”

On the Songs on the Indian Mystic Kabir.

RELIGION IS AN INDIVIDUAL FLOWERING

…That’s why I say that courage is needed, and only the courageous can love. Love is the greatest courage in the world because it cannot depend on anything else. It has t depend on a hunch, it has to depend on intuition; it cannot depend on intellect. There is no proof. Love asks for no other proof, and love cannot produce any proof.

 …Remember, it is always wisdom which is crucified on the cross, because the knowledgeable people cannot tolerate it. It offends, it is offensive.

Excerpts from “The Path of Love”

On the Songs on the Indian Mystic Kabir.

SO FAR , SO GOOD

…Man has committed suicide, he has destroyed himself. Knowledge without love is dangerous, because poison is in its very root. Love keeps balance, never allow knowledge to go too far, so it never becomes destructive. Science is knowledge without love – that is the danger. But it is one of the valid approaches: the object, the material, can be known without love, there is no need for love.

                  But life is not only matter; life is suffused with something tremendously transcendental. That transcendental is missed. And then science, by and by, automatically turns into a technology, it becomes mechanical. More and more it becomes a mean to exploit nature, to manipulate nature. From the very beginning, science has been with that idea: how to conquer nature. That’s a foolish idea.

                  We are not separate from nature, how can we conquer it? We are nature, so who is going to conquer whom? – it is absurd. With that absurdity, science has destroyed much: the whole of nature is destroyed. The climate is poisoned, the air, the water, the seas, everything polluted. The whole harmony is dying the ecology is being continuously destroyed. Please remember – this is enough, more than enough.

                  Don’t turn science inward. If the application of scientific methodology has been so devastating for the outer nature, it is going to be more devastating to the inner nature – because you are moving towards the more subtle. Even for the outside nature a different kind of knowledge is needed, which is rooted in love; but for the innermost core of your being, the subtlest, the transcendental, knowledge is not needed at all. Innocence is needed, innocence with love – then you will know the inside, then you will know the interior of your being, the subjectivity.

…If you understand, nothing is needed. Just being silent and just being yourself, not moving in any direction, not moving at all, and you will se the benediction, the meditation, when this meditation has become such a spontaneous flow that you need not even sit in a certain posture for it. That you need not  find a small corner in the house where nobody disturbs you; when it is also there in the market place, talking, walking, doing, eating, it is there; when it is always there, even, when you are asleep it is there – you go on feeling it, it goes on like breathing, or the beating of the heart – that’s what Kabir calls shaj samadhi spontaneous ecstasy. It needs no technique; it needs only spontaneity, it needs only naturalness, it needs only simplicity.

                  …”Can curious, suspicious persons not become a good followers?” A curious person, a suspicious person, cannot even become a follower. “A good follower” is far away because to follow, you need to be in trust. To go with somebody into the unknown, at least you will have  to have a little trust. And this man know no trust. He is suspicious, but he knows no trust.

                  Doubt can lead you into the inner journey. Doubt is good in science, science depend on doubt. Doubt is a method in the world science. If you trust, you will not move into science at all; you have to distrust. Science is an inimical method; it depends on antagonism. Religion, mysticism are totally different, dramatically opposite. Trust is the method there, not doubt.  If you trust me, you can come with me. There is no other way.

Excerpts from “The Path of Love”

On the Songs on the Indian Mystic Kabir.

Love Is The Master Key

Truth is not attained by following somebody, truth is attained by understanding your life. Truth is not in any Creed, in any argument; truth is hidden as love in the deepest core of your being. Truth is not logic; it is not a syllogism, it is an explosion of love.

                  And whenever truth explodes in you, you attain to a totally different vision of life, of godliness, of religion. Your eyes have a different quality, a different  transparency, clarity. When your mind is clouded with thoughts borrowed from others, whatsoever you call religion is not religion, it is just dreaming.

…That is why Tantra says: in making love, when your orgasm is total, when your whole being is involved in it, every fiber of your being is throbbing and pulsating, and every cell in your body is alive, totally alive; when you have become just an ocean and you are completely lost and you don’t know where you are, all  boundaries have merged; in that moment of your orgasm you have your first glimpse of godliness, your first glimpse of satori, samadhi, nirvana. But, in any situation, if you can come to the peak, you will attain a glimpse of godliness.

…And Kabir is tremendously in love with natural ecstasy. He says thee is two types of ecstasy. One, practiced, forced; the yogis do that – the posture, the breathing. They train themselves for it. It is a trained thing, with great effort. And Kabir says something trained is bound to be false. It is a performance.

                  He says: santo,  sahaj samdhi bhali. Oh monks, oh disciples, the spontaneous ecstasy is the best. You should not practice it. By practicing you poison it. You should not make any dramatic effort for it. You should remain relaxed and by and by, slowly slowly, disappeared into it

…My neo-sannyasin are total – they have renounced, and yet they have not escaped. They live in love and they will not cling to love – that is their renunciation. They will live in the world and they will not be possessive – that is their renunciation.

                  They will live in love but they will not be jealous – that is their renunciation. They will use things but they will not be used by things – that is their renunciation. They will find the creator in the creation. And they will not divide the creator and the creation; they will not tolerate any division. They will try to find harmony in the opposites.

…You are born in a home; there is no possibility of being born without a home, home is your natural element. Be in the home. And remember the difference between a house and a home: a house is a place where you live without love; a home is a house where you live with love. When the house is infused with love, it becomes a home. All houses are not home. Many people live in houses  and they think they live in a home. Don’t be deceived: all houses are not home, although all homes are houses. A home  has something more than a house – a house is just a structure, it has no soul in it. When love thrives there, warmth, closeness, intimacy, openness, friendship; when there is love, then the house becomes a home, then the house becomes luminous.

…Waiting is one of the greatest religious qualities. More important than effort is waiting. Effort is the shadow of ego.

…Effort is of the ego, waiting is egolessness. Waiting is passive; one waits… that’s why all the great mystics have said  that to know the divine one has to become feminine. The male is aggressive. The male is effort, attack, will; the feminine is passive, receptive, welcoming. The feminine is a womb; when the divine comes, the passive mind, the waiting mind, becomes a womb, receives the divine, becomes pregnant with the divine.

… All contradictions are solved only when we have achieved God and never before – because mind creates contradictions. When you have attained to God, mind is no more, and with no mind, all contradictions are gone. Then day and night, both are one. And life and death too, both are one. Then whether you are or you disappear makes no difference. Then breathing in and breathing out are not two things, but one process.

… Contradictions are our creations, remember it. Because we cannot see the total, because we can only see the partial, hence contradiction. We can see only the aspect, never the whole, hence contradiction. Have you observed? – even if you are looking at the small pebble in your palm you cannot see the whole at one time. You see one part, the other part is hidden; when you see the other part, the first part goes into hiding. You cannot never see even a small pebble in its totality.

…When the mind is dropped and the meditation has arisen, then you see the total. Then you see the whole as it is, all the aspect together. Then summer and winter are not separate, then spring and fall are not separate. Then you will see that birth and death are two aspect of the same process. Then happiness and unhappiness are not opposites, they are joined together, like a valley and a mountain, they are together. And when you see this togetherness of life, choice stops. Then there is nothing to choose.

                  Have you seen it? When you choose happiness, you become the victim of unhappiness; whenever you want success, failure comes in; whenever you hope, frustration is waiting for you; whenever you cling to life, death comes and destroys. Have you not seen it happen everyday, every moment? These are not opposites, they are together. When one sees them together, then what is there to choose? There is nothing to choose? One becomes choiceless.

                  That is what Krishnamutri goes on saying: be choiceless, be in the state of choiceless awareness. But it cannot happen unless you see have seen the togetherness of things. Once you have realized that all things are together, then the choice becomes impossible. Then there is nothing to choose, because whatsoever you choose comes with the opposite. Then what is the point? – you choose love and hate comes; you choose friendship and the enemy comes; you choose anything, and immediately the opposite comes as a shadow. One stops choosing. One remains choiceless. And when one is choiceless, one has transcended all contradictions.

… My own observation is this: that whatever a person writes about poem about love, know well he missed. He has not known what love is. Otherwise, who bothers to write poetry about love? If you can love, you will love, rather than write poetry about it.

                   I have looked into poets and I have never seen that any poet knows what love is. Only mystics know. Love has nothing to do with all those things that have become associated with love. And how you misuse the word! You can go into a cafeteria and you can see people talking, and somebody says, “ I love ice cream!” somebody loves a Cadillac car, and somebody loves his dog, and somebody loves his cat, and somebody loves his woman… and people go on using the word love for anything.

Love knows no object, love is not addressed, love is only of God. When you love your woman, if you really love her, you will see that the woman has disappeared and God is standing there. If you love the tree, you will suddenly see the tree has disappeared and God is very green in it, blooming. Love is only of God. Love is never of the part. Love is only of the whole. Love is almost synonymous with prayerfulness. But we have not known love.

…love is not something that you can do. It happens, it is not a doing in your part. Love is something bigger than you, vaster than you. You cannot manage and manipulate it. Remember this and remain open. Don’t pretend. When it comes, feel grateful; when it disappears, wait again – but don’t pretend.

                  If you don’t pretend, one day you will see love has arisen, the flower has opened. And whenever love opens in your heart, the fragrance goes to the feet of God. It may take any route – it may go through your child, through your wife, through your husband, through your friend, through a tree, through a rock. It may go through anything, via anything – but it always reaches the divine.

                  Love is something addressed to the whole. Wait for it. And love is the secret key to open all the locks and all the blocks. And a block is nothing but a lock in your being.

                  Love is the secret key; it opens all the locks. The master 

 “The Path of Love” On the Songs on the Indian Mystic Kabir.