According to Osho, love is service, but service is not love. When love flowers, helpful action flows naturally and egolessly, like fragrance from a flower; you scarcely know you are ‘serving.’ Duty-based service comes from the head, carries weight, feeds ego, and can humiliate the receiver. You cannot manufacture love by performing service; light the lamp of love and service appears by itself.
Real love helps without trying; just doing ‘service’ to be good or get something isn’t love.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Some friends have asked: yesterday I said that service is dangerous. So they ask: Is service not love?
“What kind of God? What kind of devil?” But the condition has become like that. The devil’s houses grow; God’s house shrinks. The devil learned the international language—understood human weakness. The true international language is not English; it is human weakness. The Englishman is weak in the same way as a Hindu; the German as an African. Human weaknesses are one. The devil learned that language—he sees all humanity through it. God has not yet understood the international language. And the people who “love God” have created local languages: “We are Hindus, Muslims, Christians”—creating fragments. Do you know how many sects the devil’s disciples have? None. Not a single one. Heaven is desolating. Hell is flourishing. God has thought, “If I move to hell, perhaps I’ll get some relief.” A man died. His wife asked a spirit-medium, “Can you call my husband’s soul?” He called it. She asked, “Where are…
The moment love starts becoming old, it is no more love. Love has disappeared; now you are only living in a memory, now it is nostalgia. But in fact it is no more there. If it is there, it is always young. And what do I mean by young? If love is there, you never think of the past; you never think of beautiful moments, love moments, of the past. One starts thinking of the past only when the present is pale compared to the past. When the present is no more so joyous, when the present is no more so alive, then one starts thinking of the past. To think of the past is to become old. Only old people think of the past. Children think of the future, old people think of the past.
It is not good to serve people out of a sense of duty?
It is related. No, not at all, it is ugly. When you do something only out of duty, without love, you are harming yourself and you are harming the other too. Because if you are not doing it out of love, you will feel that the other has to be grateful: you will feel that you have obliged the other. You will wait for a return; in fact, you will make a demand, gross or subtle, 'Now, you do something for me, I have done so much for you.' When you do something out of love, you do it without any idea of any return. It is not a bargain-you do it because you are happy doing it; the other is not obliged. Not that love is not returned -- love is returned a thousand-fold but only love is returned, never duty. In fact, if you are doing a duty…
Osho, as I feel, love has been very confusing. Personally, sir, I feel society has confused the term “love” with attachments. To me, attachment is the outcome or by-product of human need. May I ask you what love actually is?
Love liberates, makes the other free, allows the other to be a person. Attachment turns the other into an object and possesses so totally that it refuses to recognize that the other has a soul: If I say yes, then yes; if I say no, then no; if I say day, day; if I say night, night! Attachment says, “Only I am; you be erased.” Husbands have made wives into objects, wives have made husbands into objects. Lovers make each other into objects, and the moment an object shows a little movement, a little independence, attachment turns into enmity and pain. Love is a state of consciousness, not a relationship. Attachment is a relationship. And wherever there is relationship, there is need; we relate in order to fulfill a need. Love will, of course, relate—but it is not a relationship. As I said, the lamp’s light falls; if you pass…
Osho, it has been said that the english made the best servants in the world. When you gave me my name you translated it as 'in service of love'. I know now that it can also be translated as 'the servant of love'. I have wondered about this. Sometimes it seems that I am most in service of love when I am most myself and not intending to serve. Otherwise it seems more like subservience and that I am suffering from the english cultural disease of politeness, servility and helpfulness. Will you please comment?
The question is from Ma Prem Dasi. PREM DASI actually means 'the servant of love'. But, while giving sannyas to her, I had knowingly translated it as 'in service of love'. The exact translation is 'the servant of love'. I translated it as 'in service of love' for a certain reason. I would like you to become more and more serving, but I should not like you to become servants. Servants don't serve, only masters serve; servants do their duty. Duty is a four-letter, ugly word. They have to do it; there is no beauty in it, there is no joy in it. So be in service, but never be a servant -- that is one thing. The second thing: when you become a servant, you learn habits. Service is an on-going process. To become a servant is to attain to a character, a dead character. People know you are…