Love yourself and watch—today, tomorrow, always.
When we begin with one of the most profound teachings of Gautama the Buddah:
Love Yourself.
Just the opposite has been taught to you by all traditions of the world—all the civilizations, all the cultures, all the churches. They say love others, don’t love yourself. And there is a cunning strategy behind their teaching.
Love is the nourishment for the soul, just as food is to the body, so love is to the soul. Without food the body is weak, without love the soul is weak. And no state no church, no vested interest has ever wanted to have strong souls, because a person with spiritual energy is bound to be rebellious.
Love makes you rebellious, revolutionary. Love gives you wings to soar high. Love gives you insight into things, so that nobody can deceive you, exploit you, oppress you. And the priests and the politicians survive only on your blood; they survive only on exploitation.
All the priest and the politicians are parasites. To make you spiritually weak they have found a sure method, one hundred recent guaranteed, and that is to teach you not to love yourself. Because if man cannot love himself he cannot love anybody else, either. The teaching is very tricky—they say “love others”… because they know if you cannot love yourself you cannot love at all. But they go on saying, “love others, love humanity, love God. Love nature, love your wife, your husband, your children, your parents.” But don’t love yourself—because to love oneself is selfish according to them. They condemn self-love as they condemn nothing else.
And they have made their teachings look very logical. They say, “if you love yourself you will become an egoist; if you love yourself you will become narcissistic.” It is not true.
A man who loves himself finds that there is no ego in him. It is by loving others without loving yourself, trying to love others that the ego arises. The missionaries, the social reformers, the social servants have the greatest ego in the world—naturally, they think themselves to be superior human beings. They are not ordinary—ordinary people love themselves. They love others, they love great ideals, they love God.
All their love is false, because all the love is without roots.
A man who loves himself takes the first step towards real love. It is like throwing a pebble into a silent lake: The first circular pebble will arise around the pebble, very close to the pebble—naturally where else can they arise? And they will go on spreading; they will reach the farthest shore. If you stop those ripples arising close to the pebble, there will be no other ripples at all. Then you cannot hope to create ripples reaching to farthest shores; it is impossible.
And the priest and the politicians became aware of the phenomenon: Stop people from loving themselves and you have destroyed their capacity to love. Now whatsoever they think is love will only be pseudo. It may be duty, but not love—and duty is a dirty four-letter word. Parents are fulfilling their duties towards their children and then in return, children will fulfill their duties towards their parents. The wife is dutiful toward her husband and the husband is dutiful towards his wife. Where is love?
Love knows nothing of duty. Duty is a burden, a formality. Love is a joy, a sharing; love is informal. The lover feels that he has done enough; the lover feels that more is possible. The lover never feels “I am obliged to her.” On the contrary, he feels, “Because my love has been received, I am obliged.” The other obliged me by receiving my gift, by not rejecting it.
But for centuries your roots have been cut, poisoned. You have been of ever being in love with yourself—which is the first step of love, and the first experience. A man who loves himself respects himself. And a man who loves and respects himself respects others, too, because he knows: “ Just as I am, so are others. Just as I enjoy love, respect, dignity, so do others.” He becomes aware that we are not different as far as the fundamentals are concerned; we are one. We are under the same law. Buddha says we live under the same eternal law—aes dhammo sanantano. In the details we may be a little different from each other—that brings variety, that is beautiful—but in the foundations we are part of one nature.
The man who loves himself enjoys the love so much, becomes so blissful, that the love starts overflowing, it starts reaching others, it has to reach! If you live love, you have to share it. You cannot go on loving yourself forever, because one thing will become absolutely clear to you: that if loving one person, yourself, is so tremendously ecstatic and beautiful, how much more ecstasy is waiting for you if you start sharing your love to many, many people!
Slowly the ripples start reaching farther and farther. You love other people, then you start loving animals, birds, trees, rocks. You can fill the whole universe with your love, just as a single pebble can fill the whole lake with ripples—a small pebble.
Only Buddha can say Love yourself . No priest, no politician can agree with it, because this is destroying their whole edifice, their whole structure of exploitation. If a man is not allowed to love himself, his spirit, his soul, becomes weaker and weaker every day. His body may grow but he has no inner growth because he has no inner nourishment. He remains a body almost without a soul or without a potentiality, a possibility of a soul. The soul remains a seed—and it will remain a seed if you cannot find the right soil of love for it. And you will not find it if follow the stupid idea, “Do not love yourself.”
It also teaches you to love yourself first. It has nothing to do with ego. In fact, love is such a light that the darkness of the ego cannot exist in it all. If you love others, if your love is focused on others, you will live in darkness. Turn the light towards yourself first. Let the light dispel your inner darkness. Let the light dispel your inner darkness, your inner weakness. Let love make you a tremendous power, a spiritual force.
And once your soul is powerful, you know you are not going to die, you are immortal, you are eternal. Love gives you the first insight into eternity. Love is the only experience that transcends time—that’s why lovers are not afraid of death. Love knows no death. A single moment of love is more than the whole eternity.
But love has to begin from the very beginning. Love has to start with the firs Step. Love Your Self
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