According to Osho, love is the constructive, positive form of nonviolence: not merely refraining from causing pain (ahimsa) but consciously offering joy. Yet this love must be non-aggressive; trying to 'make' others happy can become violence in disguise. True nonviolence flowers as sensitive, aware love that neither harms nor imposes, creating connection without control, joy without coercion.
Real nonviolence is kind love that brings joy without forcing your idea of happiness on anyone.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, what is the constructive, positive form of nonviolence? And why did Mahavira never offer anyone physical help?
From the very word ‘ahimsa’ comes the sense of the negative, the prohibitive, the “no.” It means: no violence. So the word itself is negative. Why did Mahavira choose that word? He could have chosen love. Love is a constructive, positive word. Ahimsa means: do not cause anyone pain. Love means: give someone happiness. Because ahimsa means “do not cause pain,” it is prohibitive. That is, if I simply do not hurt you, I become nonviolent. Love is an affirmative word: it means giving happiness. So if I merely refrain from hurting you, the matter is not complete; did I also give you joy? Only if I give joy is love fulfilled. Thus love is a constructive word. Jesus used love. Ahimsa is a negative word, and Mahavira used it. Therefore it needs to be understood very deeply. Why does Mahavira employ the formula “do not give pain to anyone”?…
I USED TO THINK A GREAT DEAL ABOUT NON-VIOLENCE, but everything I ever heard about it seemed so superficial. It touched my intellect but not my heart. And slowly I understood why. The non-violence everyone talked about was negative. The negative can never go deeper than the intellect; to touch life something positive is needed, If by non-violence one means nothing more than the renunciation of violence then it can never have any relation to real renunciation, something positive as well as something negative. It is the negative character of the term "non-violence" that has made it so deceptive. The word is negative, but the experience to which it refers is a positive one. Non-violence is an experience of pure love, of a love that is not attached to anything at all.
Should I take it, Osho, that an escapist cannot love and cannot be nonviolent?
Yes, an escapist can neither love nor be nonviolent. But an escapist may appear to love, and he can even put on the costume of nonviolence—and often he will do exactly that. The escapist cannot love because he has not yet been born; he is not yet there. Who will love? As I have said, it does not depend on the one who is loved; it depends on the one who loves. Only one whose individuality has dawned within, whose person has been born, can love. And the person is born out of struggle and challenge, by fighting every day—just as a sculptor chisels a stone. If the stone refuses to be cut and struck, no statue appears; it remains a rough rock. The struggles of life polish the statue within. If we refuse them, we remain stone. If individuality, soul, being, have not yet arisen within, who is there…
Osho, yesterday you said that jealousy is included in respect. I have immense respect for you, but the jealousy inherent in it keeps poisoning it, and I feel guilt and pain. Does reverence transcend this poison-laced respect?
It needs a little explaining—it's a delicate point. Whenever you respect someone, you do so because you see in that person something you do not have. You respect because you glimpse in the other something you would also like to possess. A beggar respects an emperor because he, too, longs to be an emperor. So on the one hand he respects, and inside he also envies. Because he is not yet an emperor but wants to be. You have attained what he wants to attain. He respects you as skillful, successful: “I stand far back in the line; you have gone ahead to where I should have been.” So you are powerful, clever, intelligent, strong—he respects you. But inside a fire of jealousy also burns—if he gets the chance, he would like to be in your place and push you aside. And if the beggar gets that chance, he will…
Love is positive — a creative relationship. Ahimsa is negative. Love means: I desire the welfare of the other, the blessing of the other; I become a joy in the other’s life; I lay flowers on the other’s path. Ahimsa means: I do not cause sorrow to the other, I do not give pain. If I do not hurt another, Ahimsa is fulfilled — but love is not. Love cannot rest until it gives joy to the other. Love lays flowers on the other’s way. Ahimsa only says: Do not scatter thorns. But if thorns are already strewn on the other’s path, Ahimsa has nothing to say whether you should pick them up or not. If the other’s path is empty and your hands full of flowers, Ahimsa says nothing about whether you should place them or not. Ahimsa is negative — enough that I do not harm.