Friendliness

Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS REAL AUTHENTIC FRIENDLINESS? Anand Shantideva, the question you have asked is very complex. You will have to understand a few other things before you can understand what real authentic friendliness is. The first is friendship. Friendship is love without any biological tones to it. It is not the friendship that you understand ordinarily -- the boyfriend, the girlfriend. To use the word friend in any way associated with biology is sheer stupidity. It is infatuation and madness. You are being used by biology for reproduction purposes. If you think you are in love, you are wrong; it is just hormonal attraction. Your chemistry can be changed and your love will disappear. Just an injection of hormones and a man can become a woman and a woman can become a man. Friendship is love without any biological tones. It has become a rare phenomenon.

Compassion is the Soul and friendliness is its visible shape without the outward perceivable expression which friendliness gives to compassion, man would be giving only idle, useless, lip-sympathy. Compassion is like a verse silently taking shape in the mind of a poet. Friendliness gives expression to that verse. It is to be noted that friendliness and friendship are quite different. Friendship, like the conventional form of love is a relationship limited to two or very few individuals, laying no condition and given to the animate and the inanimate in equal measure. The sheer ecstasy of the experience is its own reward. True friendliness harbours no germs of enmity. It is an independent emotion, unrestricted in its nature and absolutely unaffected by the attitude and nature of the receiver. As friendliness gives no quarter to bitter thoughts, it evokes no hatred in another's mind.

Love is a paradox. It is the most fragile phenomenon in existence and yet the strongest. It is as fragile as a flower and as strong as a rock. Those who have tasted of love have tasted something of deathlessness. Those who have missed love have missed all: they may believe in god but they know nothing of god; they may pretend to be religious but they cannot be truly religious. God, truth, bliss -- all that is really valuable is born out of love. Hence love is the only shelter in this homeless world, love is the only home, the only protection, the only castle. Remember it and try to live it. It should not remain just an intellectual understanding, it should become your very being.

Beloved master, I have many friends, but the question: who is a real friend? Always arises in my mind. Will you say something about it?

Ask questions about yourself, don't ask about others. It is impossible to be certain of the other and there is no need either. How can you be certain of the other? The other is a flux. This moment the other person may be loving, and the next moment he may not be loving. There can be no promise. You can only be certain about yourself, and that too only for the moment. And there is no need to think of the whole future. Think in terms of the moment and the present. Live in the present. If this moment is full of friendship and the fragrance of friendship, why be worried about the next moment? The next moment will be born out of this moment. It is bound to be of a higher, deeper quality. It will bring the same fragrance to a higher altitude. There is no need to…