When love is truly alive, you keep meeting each other fresh; when it’s missing or scary, people lock it into rules and call it a relationship.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Is relationship there because love is not?
Mukti Gandha, yes. Love is not a relationship. Love relates, but it is not a relationship. A relationship is something finished. A relationship is a noun; the full stop has come, the honeymoon is over. Now there is no joy, no enthusiasm, now all is finished. You can carry it on, just to keep your promises. You can carry it on because it is comfortable, convenient, cozy. You can carry it on because there is nothing else to do. You can carry it on because if you disrupt it, it is going to create much trouble for you. Relationship means something complete, finished, closed. Love is never a relationship; love is relating. It is always a river, flowing, unending. Love knows no full stop; the honeymoon begins but never ends. It is not like a novel that starts at a certain point and ends at a certain point. It is…Read the full discourse →
Beloved Osho, I heard you say the other day that you want no part of any relationship we might imagine we have with you -- certainly not our hate, but not even our love. And I can't say I blame you. Nevertheless, when you stand before us, dancing, I feel like a fountain that leaps into life at the sight of you, and tumbles to your feet as if it knows that is where it belongs. I know my love is riddled with all sorts of undesirable things; but it rushes towards you without even stopping to ask my permission. Osho, please excuse the mess, but I can't help it.
And, just as when they were imagining love, they were appreciating me, not knowing me at all, now they are condemning me. And to condemn me they are creating lies -- and perhaps in absolute unawareness. Just as they believed their imagination before, the same game continues; still they go on believing in their lies. I have been asked to refute them. That is not possible. I have loved them; they have been my disciples. It is below me to criticize their lies or to expose their lies. That's why I want you to remember: don't have any expectations. Love because love is your own inner growth. Being loving, you are calling your spring closer. Your love will help you to grow towards more light, towards more truth, towards more freedom. But don't create a relationship. "Nevertheless, when you stand before us, dancing, I feel like a fountain that leaps…Read the full discourse →
The love I am talking about has nothing to do with our so-called relationships. Our relationships are arbitrary. The love which is eternal relates but it never creates relationships. It relates -- it relate-q to trees, to the sun, to the moon, to the wind, to people, to the animals, to the earth, to the rocks -- it is a twenty-four-hour-a-day relating, but it does not create any relationship. Relating is like a rivers it is a flow, it is a movement, it is dynamic, alive, it is a dance. Relationship is something stagnant, something that has gone stale, something that has stopped growing, something stunted. And whenever there is something which has stopped growing you start feeling bored, you start feeling sad. A despair surrounds you and a great anguish arises in you because you start losing contact with life.Read the full discourse →
Osho, thank you so much for your teachings. I am very grateful. I came here very hungry and you are feeding me. My question is: I have been raised to believe that commitment is absolutely necessary if a relationship is to work. How can two people be committed to each other? How does a relationship work? I am afraid of commitment, so I avoid relationships. What is really necessary in a loving relationship?
The moment you become meditative you stop reducing the other to a thing. Then you are no longer a husband and the wife is no longer a wife, you are just two friends. There iS no legal bond. You live together out of freedom, out of joy. You want to share, that's why you live together. And if that sharing stops you simply say goodbye to each other with great respect, gratitude, because whatsoever the other has done one has to be grateful for; there is no sourness about it. Consciousness works both ways: if you live together it iS a friendship, and friendship gives you freedom. You can be friendly with many people; there is no possessiveness in it. When love becomes friendliness there is no possessiveness in it, there is no exclusiveness in it, there is no jealousy in it. And when there is no jealousy, no possessiveness,…Read the full discourse →
But Osho, since we live in society, we must live in certain relationships. What measures do you suggest so that we can live in society yet remain whole—as you recommend—in love, in the state of love?
Certainly, if we are to live in society, we will have to live in relationships. But let relationships not be there to fill some psychological lack or some spiritual absence in us. Let us be whole within ourselves first, and then let there be relationships. If we are complete within ourselves and then we relate, those relationships will never determine any spiritual slavery for ourselves or for the other; they will be flowers blossoming in freedom. Two flowers bloom side by side; they too are related. Each receives the fragrance of the other, yet neither depends on the other, neither is bound, and neither makes demands. In the sky so many stars shine at night. All the stars pour out light. Their lights meet and relate, but no star is bound by another’s light. Each has its own light. Becoming related in this way does not diminish their individuality. In…Read the full discourse →