Chapter #13 The Sound Of One Hand Clapping #13

Date: 1981-03-13 (pm)
Place: Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Osho's Commentary

love and life are synonymous
in language they may have different meanings
but in existence
they are precisely the same phenomenon
no difference, no gap exists between the two

the really alive person is pure love
and if love is missing then life
is nothing but a vegetation
one can go on vegetating
without love life has not happened at all

one was born, one existed, one died
but life never happened

life happens only the moment love starts flowing
and the greater the love, the deeper life becomes

a sannyasin has to remember
not to put any limitations on his love
love should not become object-focussed
the moment you become object-focussed
you are getting trapped
for example, if you love one person
that means that the remaining whole existence
has been rejected
you have excluded it out of your love affair
your love has become very narrow
and a narrow love becomes an imprisonment
love should never become like a tunnel
it should remain open from all sides
one should love as many people
as many aspects of life
as many dimensions as possible
one should go on exploring

when love excludes nothing
then it reaches to its ultimate peak
that is the moment when one experiences life
that is the moment when life
becomes not just an ordinary existence
it takes a new flavour, it becomes godliness

love is not a duty
the moment you make a duty out of it
you have destroyed it
if there is a should in it, it is a corpse
you can carry it, you can decorate it
but there is no heartbeat in it
and that's how humanity has been conditioned
for thousands of years
love has been killed in such a subtle way
not directly but very indirectly
and the methodology used to kill, to murder love is
make love a duty
love your mother, it is your duty
love your father, it is your duty
love your wife, it is your duty
love your children, it is your duty
even love your neighbours, it is your duty
love your enemies

love is a spontaneous flowering of being
it cannot be reduced to a commandment
one cannot be ordered to love because then
whatsoever you do is only pretension
then you are going through empty gestures

remember it -- that i don't teach you any duty at all
duty is a four-letter-dirty-word

love for no reason at all
love for the sheer joy of loving

love because only by loving will you be able
to know what it is all about
this whole existence this life
this miraculous universe that surrounds you
love is the bridge between you and the whole
hence it has to be just a song of the heart
just as in the morning the sun is rising
and birds start singing, for no reason at all
the sheer joy of the sun rising
the night is finished
the sheer joy of seeing the sky again
and the vastness and the freedom of it
the sheer joy of seeing flowers again opening up
and all the colours and all the fragrance
and the bird cannot contain himself
he starts overflowing, he starts singing
that song is exactly what happens
when you drop the idea of duty
responsibility, virtue, morality
and you start enjoying whatsoever is available
in that very enjoyment something is triggered in you
the heart starts dancing, singing
and those moments of heartfelt joy
are the real moments, the only real moments
and once you have tasted them
there is no need to have any other kind of moments
then twenty-four hours a day the song can continue
underneath, just below your consciousness
it can become a constant presence
deep inside your being

to me
when love becomes your constant innermost core
god has happened
that's the only way god happens
there is no other way

love has a way of its own
it becomes victorious but in a very strange way
without conquering, without fighting
in fact without even desiring to be victorious
victory comes as a gift
as a reward from the beyond

love is ready to be defeated
love enjoys to be defeated
love is ready to surrender
love is never willing to fight
but this is one of the miracles of life
that love surrenders but in that very surrender
becomes victorious
without any desire, without any motive
victory comes on its own accord

the people who try to be victorious
are never victorious
they can force others into submission, into slavery
but they cannot win their hearts -- that's impossible
the body can be made a slave

it can be chained, imprisoned, killed, destroyed
but you cannot imprison the heart
and the heart is the real core of the person

love without any effort to conquer
reaches to the very core of the person
it is the only victory there is
all alexander the greats are failures
utter failures
only lovers have known the taste of victory
and it depends on us
if we want to remain beggars
go on struggling, fighting
if one wants to be the emperor
then surrender to existence, relax with existence
be in a state of loving let-go and suddenly
all is yours, the whole kingdom of god is yours

love can reach to its ultimate peak
only when it becomes friendliness

these are the three possibilities for love
one is lust -- that is biological
nothing wrong about it
but it is the lowest form of energy
all the animals have it
nothing special about it if man has it
lust joins humanity with the animal kingdom

it is a reproductive force
it is nature's way to continue the species
to remain confined to lust
is to miss the real point
one should go a little higher, then there is love

love is not biological, it is psychological
it is a higher dimension
it is not reproductive, it is creative

the moment two persons are in deep love
all their creativity explodes
they may start things they had never done before
they may start painting, they may start music
they may start dancing
things they had never dreamt of
suddenly start arising in their being
love brings a new climate
and new flowers start growing
but very few people attain to love
ninety-nine point nine per cent of people
remain confined to the animal world, lust

love is freedom from being an animal
it is the birth of the human being
there is still a higher peak than love because love
although it is far more beautiful than lust
tremendously pregnant with creativity
has still some hangover of lust remaining with it
it has come out of lust

something of lust follows it like a shadow
it becomes a shadow but it is there
and it goes on affecting
that's why love is possessive, jealous, envious
these are ugly traits, they are hangovers of the past
they destroy the beauty of love
and as love starts settling
these things start raising their heads

so love is beautiful only when the honeymoon is on
and it is not long; it comes and goes so quickly
that when it goes then only you know it was there
and then there is something which is not love
the shadow starts possessing you

one can rise a little more
when love becomes just friendliness
i am not even calling it friendship
because that may give you the idea of relationship
i call it friendliness
when love becomes just a friendliness
no possessiveness, no jealousy
no desire to dominate
when love starts giving freedom to the other
total freedom, unconditional freedom
then it becomes friendliness
and that is the highest
human consciousness can reach
very few people have known friendliness
their names can be counted on the fingers

it is a sad thing that such a vast humanity
goes on missing their own intrinsic potential

my sannyasins have to transform lust into love,
love into friendliness
the moment you have reached
to the state of friendliness
you have arrived home

seriousness is like a desert
the desert has to be transformed into a garden

you need a green revolution
love can do that miracle
only love can do that miracle
love is the only beautiful experience
which is non-serious -- it is playful
hence all the religions have been denying love
for the simple reason that with love
cannot be serious and seriousness has become
the very characteristic of the saint
he has to be without juice
just like a dehydrated fruit
the more dehydrated, the more he looks like a saint
whenever you want to see a saint
you can just see a dehydrated prune
and that will give you the idea
of all the saints of all the religions
all the juice has gone out

love is juice
we in the east have defined god
as god has been defined nowhere else
i have never come across a better definition
and i don think there exists any
the upanishads say raso vai saha -- god is juice
this ii a very strange definition
sometimes i wonder
i may have written that upanishad
maybe in a past life
otherwise who would do it?
i cannot find anybody else doing it

love is non-serious, it is alive, it is playful
love makes life fun, a celebration
and my whole effort here is to create
for the first time in the whole history of humanity
a new kind of religious person
for whom laughter
is far more valuable than prayer
tor whom playfulness
is far more spiritual than seriousness
who should be closer to a poet
than to a philosopher
closer to music than to mathematics
closer to sensitivity rather than being dull
closed, walled from all sides, afraid of life
escapist, renouncing life -- no
that is not going to be my sannyasins' way

instead of renouncing life
my sannyasins have to rejoice in life
and the way to rejoice is to love

so drop all your seriousness
and it is only a question of seeing
that seriousness is a barrier
it makes you closed and hard
it does not allow you to be vulnerable and receptive
and one has to be so vulnerable
so available to existence
that the wind, the rain, the sun
they can all reach to your very heart

love makes one utterly contented
because love is always an experience in the present
you don't love tomorrow
love has nothing to do with
yesterdays and tomorrows
love knows only one time: now
and only one place: here
that's why mind feels it very difficult
to be in love
because mind is always concerned
with the future or with the past
those are the two constant references for the mind
it moves between past and future
it is a constant shuttling between past and future
it never stops in the middle
and love is exactly in the middle
love is without any nostalgia for the past
and without any desire in the future
hence the contentment

these are the two discontents people live in
either they think of the past
all those trains that they have missed
now nothing can be done about it
it is simply utter stupidity
now there is no point in just going on
reading the timetable of the trains
about the trains that you have missed in the past
it cannot be changed, you cannot undo it
but mind is stupid, mind as such is stupid

i have never seen an intelligent mind
the heart is intelligent
and mind is always mediocre
or one starts planning for the future
and life is passing by every moment
hence mind has a condemnation for love
it thinks it is something crazy

all the languages of the world
have this expression falling in love
strange -- why do all the languages call it
falling in love -- why not rising in love?
it is mind's condemnation, mind is saying
you have fallen, you have gone cuckoo
you have lost your sanity
it is a way of condemning

mind lives in discontentment and condemns love
which is absolute contentment
mind always asks for more
that's how it creates discontentment

love is always thankful
for whatsoever is happening
love always feels that
i am getting more than i am worthy of
that i am getting from existence
things which i don't deserve at all
i have not earned them, they are coming as gifts
the moment you start seeing all the gifts

that existence goes on showering on you
how can one remain discontented?
and out of a contented heart thankfulness arises
that thankfulness is the very core of religion
of real religion
not of christianity, hinduism, mohammedanism
but of religiousness as such

if one can feel grateful to existence
then there is no need to believe
in any theology, any doctrine, any dogma
that thankfulness is enough

deep in the himalayas, from virgin peaks
where snow has never melted, the ganges starts
the point where ganges starts is called gangotri
it is a very small place
just a small face of a cow
somebody has sculpted a rock into the face of a cow
and from that face of the cow
the great river ganges starts
it starts as a small stream and then goes on
becoming bigger and bigger and bigger
finally it becomes the very ocean itself

that's also the way of love
it starts in a very small way
but one should not stop there

one should go on flowing, moving
love should never become static
it should remain dynamic
the moment it becomes static it starts stinking
the moment it becomes static it loses
the freshness of a river, the aliveness of a river
it becomes just a muddy pool
people call it marriage
it was just a muddy pool and such a small pool
and they go on round and round chasing each other
and creating more mud
and throwing mud at each other

love should be a river, always moving
from the known into the unknown
and from the unknown towards the unknowable
the beginning has to be small
but the end has to be the infinite, the oceanic

if one can remain aware of it
then love is all that there is to spirituality
except love, whatsoever goes on
in the name of spirituality is all bullshit
esoteric bullshit, occult bullshit

remember it -- because it is very easy
to fall into that bullshit
it has great attraction
it has great systems of thought and strange ideas
and all inventions of crafty people

life is very simple -- so is love
and if you can remember these three l's
like three r's: life, love, light
nothing else is needed to be remembered
live totally, live lovingly
and live not in a state of unconsciousness
live consciously -- that is living with light
just these three words are enough
and one need not bother about anything else

knowledge is of the mind, wisdom is of the heart
the way of knowledge is logic
the way of wisdom is love

initiation into sannyas simply means
getting out of your logical structure of the mind
and entering your own ignored world of love
the schools, colleges, universities
they exist precisely for one purpose
that is to force every child
towards the logical structure
they force every child to ignore the love energy
and once you get imprisoned
in the logical structure of the mind
you become almost like a machine, a biocomputer
and that's what the society needs the church needs,
the state needs: biocomputers
they don't need human beings
they are afraid of real, authentic individuals

because those individuals will be rebellious
they cannot be manipulated, dominated
they cannot be enslaved

our whole so-called civilisation
eastern, western -- both -- are just strategies
of destroying freedom, destroying the individual
destroying his love and forcing him
to be just an efficient machine
because doctors are needed, professors are needed
mechanics are needed scientists are needed
the society has no use for the lover
the state does not need any lover
the church has no utility for love
and up to now we have lived
in a very utilitarian way
and love is non-purposive, non-utilitarian
but it is love that brings insight
into the mystery of life
it is not a commodity
it cannot be part of the marketplace
but without it you can never be ecstatic
without it you can never be in tune with existence
it is fundamentally the need of the individual
not of the collective, the mob, the crowd, the society

so a shift is needed, one has to change the gears
from the head to the heart
and the moment your energy starts moving
into the heart

you will have such an experience of freedom
such a tremendous experience of expansiveness
that you will not be able to believe
that this was possible to me
it looks impossible
when it happens for the first time, unbelievable
because we have been told by these fools
for centuries
that it happens only to a christ
because he is the only begotten son of god
not to everybody
or it happens to gautam the buddha
because he is a reincarnation of god
not to everybody else

this is absolutely wrong
it is everybody's birthright
it can happen to everybody
just a simple shift, a change of the gestalt
from the head to the heart, from logic to love
and you become entitled
to all the miracles of existence

love can either be very noisy
as ordinarily it is
or it can be utterly silent
when love is noisy it creates more anxiety
more anguish than you had ever suffered before

one woman was saying to her lover
now that we are going to be married
you should be happy -- i will be there always
to share all your suffering, problems, anxiety
but the man said i don't have
any problems, anxieties, and suffering
the woman said i am not talking about now
i am talking about after marriage

the bachelors think the married people
are living a really happy life
if somebody thinks that married people
are living a happy life that simply shows
that he is a bachelor, nothing else
it is really a mystery why people get married
and there are a few people
who even get married twice
that is a bigger mistake
that is impossible to conceive
once one can understand, but twice
if one is a little intelligent
he will not commit the mistake even once
this is happening because love
the ordinary love -- is more like a fever
it is more like an infection, a contagious disease
in fact, vd, to be exact

unless love becomes meditative it remains a disease
only meditation takes the fever out of it
and makes it a cool phenomenon

not cold but cool
ordinarily it is hot, a very hot affair
but anything that is very hot
is bound to become cold sooner or later
even with central heating it is going to become cold
that's the nature of things
but there is a point between hot and cold
exactly in the middle
which is the point of coolness
meditation creates that coolness
and when meditation
has created a coolness inside you
and love starts coming through that coolness
it has a totally different flavour
a different perfume, a different quality
it is very liberating

but silence should be the source of love
not the noisy mind but a silent centre of your being
love should come from the innermost shrine
cool, silent, meditative, aware, alert, watchful
then love can give you
the most beautiful experiences of life
it can give you the master key that opens
all the locks of all the mysteries of existence
but silence is a must
without silence love simply drives people insane
and silence is very easy

love is a togetherness

silence simply means
entering into your aloneness
before you enter into somebody's being
into somebody's life
you have to be acquainted with your own aloneness
you have to be rooted in your aloneness
you have to know exactly what your aloneness is
only then can love blossom out of it

it is just like friedrich nietzsche says
if a tree wants to rise upwards
to touch the stars in the sky
then its roots have to go downwards
to the very rock-bottom of existence
unless the roots go deeper
the tree cannot go higher
the tree and the roots have to balance each other
in the same proportion they have to grow
one in depth, one in height

love is like a tree trying to reach to the stars
the longing for the stars
and meditation is growing roots inwards
deeper, to the very rock-bottom of your being
when the roots reach to your ultimate silence
the space where one hears

the Sound
of one hand
Clapping

then your tree can blossom into the sky
can have a dialogue with the stars

love has failed in the world
because meditation was not the source of it
love can succeed and love has to succeed
otherwise humanity is doomed

only with a meditative background

so my whole teaching here is to do two things
one, to help you to become meditative
to reach your absolute intimate and private being
and the second part is, to grow into love
when meditation blossoms into love
a man is no more a man
he has transcended humanity
you can only call him a god
a buddha, a jesus, a krishna