Truer words were never spoken..
YOU SAID THAT LOVE CAN MAKE YOU FREE.
BUT ORDINARILY WE SEE THAT LOVE BECOMES ATTACHMENT, AND INSTEAD OF FREEING US IT MAKES US MORE
BOUND. SO TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT ATTACHMENT AND FREEDOM.
Love becomes attachment because there is no love. You were just playing, deceiving yourself. The attachment is the reality; the love was just a foreplay. So whenever you fall in love, sooner or later you discover you have become an instrument - and then the whole misery begins. What is the mechanism? Why does it happen?
Just a few days ago a man came to me and he was feeling very guilty. He said, "I loved a woman. I loved her very much. The day she died I was weeping and crying, but suddenly I became aware of a certain freedom within me, as if some burden had left me. I felt a deep breath, as if I had become free."
That moment he became aware of a second layer of his feeling. Outwardly he was weeping and crying and saying, "I cannot live without her. Now it will be impossible, or the life will be just like death. But deep down," he said, "I became aware that I am feeling very good, that now I am free."
A third layer began to feel guilt. It said to him, "What are you doing?" And the dead body was lying there just before him, he said to me, and he began to feel a great deal of guilt. He said to me, "Help me. What has happened to my mind? Have I betrayed her so soon?"
Nothing has happened; no one has betrayed. When love becomes attachment, it becomes a burden, a bondage. But why does love become an attachment? The first thing to be understood is that if love becomes an attachment, you were just in an illusion that it was love. You were just playing with yourself and thinking that this was love. Really, you were in need of attachment. And if you go still deeper, you will find that you were also in need of becoming a slave.
There is a subtle fear of freedom, and everyone wants to be a slave. Everyone, of course, talks about freedom, but no one has the courage to be really free, because when you are really free you are alone. If you have the courage to be alone, then only can you be free.
But no one is courageous enough to be alone. You need someone. Why do you need someone? You are afraid of your own loneliness. You become bored with yourself. And really, when you are lonely, nothing seems meaningful. With someone you are occupied, and you create artificial meanings around you.
You cannot live for yourself, so you start to live for someone else. And the same is the case with the someone else also: he, or she, cannot live alone, so he is in search to find someone. Two persons who are afraid of their own loneliness come together and they start a play - a play of love. But deep down they are searching for attachment, commitment, bondage.
So sooner or later, whatsoever you desire happens. This is one of the most unfortunate things in this world. Whatsoever you desire comes to happen. You will get it sooner or later and the foreplay will disappear. When its function is done, it will disappear. When you have become a wife and husband, slaves to each other, when marriage has happened, love will disappear because love was just an illusion in which two persons could become slaves to each other.
Directly you cannot ask for slavery; it is too humiliating. And directly you cannot say to someone, "Become my slave."He will revolt. Nor can you say, "I want to become a slave to you," so you say, "I cannot live without you." But the meaning is there; it is the same. And when this - the real desire - is fulfilled, love disappears. Then you feel bondage, slavery, and then you start struggling to become free.
Remember this. It is one of the paradoxes of the mind: whatsoever you get you will get bored with, and whatsoever you do not get you will long for. When you are alone, you will long for some slavery, some bondage. When you are in bondage, you will begin to long for freedom. Really, only slaves long for freedom, and free people try again to be slaves. The mind goes on like a pendulum, moving from one extreme to the other.
Love doesn't become attachment. Attachment was the need; love was just a bait. You were in search of a fish named attachment: love was just a bait to catch the fish. When the fish is caught, the bait is thrown. Remember this, and whenever you are doing something, go deep within yourself to find out the basic cause.
If there is real love, it will never become attachment. What is the mechanism for love to become attachment? The moment you say to your lover or beloved, "Love only me," you have started possessing. And the moment you possess someone you have insulted him deeply, because you have made him into a thing.
When I possess you, you are not a person then, but just one more item amongst my furniture - a thing. Then I use you, and you are my thing, my possession, so I won't allow anyone else to use you. It is a bargain in which I am possessed by you, and you make me a thing. It is the bargain that now no one else can use you. Both partners feel bound and enslaved. I make a slave of you, then you in return make a slave of me.
Then the struggle starts. I want to be a free person, and still I want you to be possessed by me; you want to retain your freedom and still possess me -- this is the struggle. If I possess you, I will be possessed by you. If I do not want to be possessed by you, I should not possess you.
Possession should not come in between. We must remain individuals and we must move as independent, free consciousnesses. We can come together, we can merge into each other, but no one possesses. Then there is no bondage and then there is no attachment.
Attachment is one of the ugliest things. And when I say ugliest, I do not mean only religiously, I mean aesthetically also. When you are attached, you have lost your loneliness, your aloneness: you have lost everything. Just to feel good that someone needs you and someone is with you, you have lost everything, you have lost yourself.
But the trick is that you try to be independent and you make the other the possession - and the other is doing the same. So do not possess if you do not want to be possessed.
Jesus said somewhere, "Judge ye not so that ye should not be judged." It is the same: "Possess not so that ye should not be possessed." Do not make anyone a slave; otherwise you will become a slave.
So-called masters are always slaves of their own slaves. You cannot become a master of some one without becoming a slave -- that is impossible.
You can only be a master when no one is a slave to you. This seems paradoxical, because when I say you can only be a master when no one is a slave to you, you will say, "Then what is the mastery? How am I a master when no one is a slave to me?" But I say only then are you a master. Then no one is a slave to you and no one will try to make a slave out of you.
To love freedom, to try to be free, means basically that you have come to a deep understanding of yourself. Now you know that you are enough unto yourself. You can share with someone, but you are not dependent. I can share myself with someone. I can share my love, I can share my happiness, I can share my bliss, my silence, with someone. But that is a sharing, not a dependence. If no one is there, I will be just as happy, just as blissful. If someone is there, that is also good and I can share.
When you realize your inner consciousness, your center, only then will love not become an attachment. If you do not know your inner center, love will become an attachment. If you know your inner center, love will become devotion. But you must first be there to love, and you are not.
Buddha was passing trough a village. One young man came to him and said, "Teach me something: how can I serve others?" Buddha laughed at him and said, "First be. Forget others. First be yourself and then everything will follow."
Right now you are not. When you say, "When I love someone it becomes an attachment," you are saying you are not, so whatsoever you do goes wrong because the doer is absent. The inner point of awareness is not there, so whatsoever you do goes wrong. First BE, and then you can share your being. And that sharing will be love. Before that, whatsoever you do will become an attachment.
And lastly: if you are struggling against attachment, you have taken a wrong turn. You can struggle. So many monks, recluses, sannyasins are doing that. They feel that they are attached to their house, to their property, to their wives, to their children, and they feel caged, imprisoned. They escape, they leave their homes, they leave their wives, they leave their children and possessions, and they become beggars and escape to a forest, to a loneliness. But go and observe them. They will become attached to their new surroundings.
I was visiting a friend who was a recluse living under a tree in a deep forest, but there were other ascetics also. One day it happened that I was staying with this recluse under his tree, and a new seeker came while my friend was absent. He had gone to the river to take a bath. Under his tree the new sannyasin started meditating.
The man came back from the river, and he pushed that new man away from the tree and said, "This is my tree. You go and find another, somewhere else. No one can sit under my tree." And this man had left his house, his wife, his children. Now the tree had become a possession -- you cannot meditate under his tree.
You cannot escape so easily from attachment. It will take new forms, new shapes. You will be deceived, but this will be there. So do not fight with attachment, just try to understand why it is there. And then know the deep cause: because you are not, this attachment is there.
Inside, you your own self is so much absent that you try to cling to anything in order to feel safe. You are not rooted, so you try to make anything your roots. When you are rooted in your self, when you know who you are, what this being is which is in you and what this consciousness is which is in you, then you will not cling to anyone.
That doesn't mean you will not love. Really, only then can you love because then sharing is possible - and with no conditions, with no expectations. You simply share because you have an abundance, because you have so much it is overflowing.
This overflowing of yourself is love. And when this overflowing becomes a flood, when by your own overflowing the whole universe is filled and your love touches the stars, in your love the earth feels good and in your love the whole universe is bathed, then it is devotion. - Osho
Love becomes attachment because there is no love. You were just playing, deceiving yourself. The attachment is the reality; the love was just a foreplay. So whenever you fall in love, sooner or later you discover you have become an instrument - and then the whole misery begins. What is the mechanism? Why does it happen?
Just a few days ago a man came to me and he was feeling very guilty. He said, "I loved a woman. I loved her very much. The day she died I was weeping and crying, but suddenly I became aware of a certain freedom within me, as if some burden had left me. I felt a deep breath, as if I had become free."
That moment he became aware of a second layer of his feeling. Outwardly he was weeping and crying and saying, "I cannot live without her. Now it will be impossible, or the life will be just like death. But deep down," he said, "I became aware that I am feeling very good, that now I am free."
A third layer began to feel guilt. It said to him, "What are you doing?" And the dead body was lying there just before him, he said to me, and he began to feel a great deal of guilt. He said to me, "Help me. What has happened to my mind? Have I betrayed her so soon?"
Nothing has happened; no one has betrayed. When love becomes attachment, it becomes a burden, a bondage. But why does love become an attachment? The first thing to be understood is that if love becomes an attachment, you were just in an illusion that it was love. You were just playing with yourself and thinking that this was love. Really, you were in need of attachment. And if you go still deeper, you will find that you were also in need of becoming a slave.
There is a subtle fear of freedom, and everyone wants to be a slave. Everyone, of course, talks about freedom, but no one has the courage to be really free, because when you are really free you are alone. If you have the courage to be alone, then only can you be free.
But no one is courageous enough to be alone. You need someone. Why do you need someone? You are afraid of your own loneliness. You become bored with yourself. And really, when you are lonely, nothing seems meaningful. With someone you are occupied, and you create artificial meanings around you.
You cannot live for yourself, so you start to live for someone else. And the same is the case with the someone else also: he, or she, cannot live alone, so he is in search to find someone. Two persons who are afraid of their own loneliness come together and they start a play - a play of love. But deep down they are searching for attachment, commitment, bondage.
So sooner or later, whatsoever you desire happens. This is one of the most unfortunate things in this world. Whatsoever you desire comes to happen. You will get it sooner or later and the foreplay will disappear. When its function is done, it will disappear. When you have become a wife and husband, slaves to each other, when marriage has happened, love will disappear because love was just an illusion in which two persons could become slaves to each other.
Directly you cannot ask for slavery; it is too humiliating. And directly you cannot say to someone, "Become my slave."He will revolt. Nor can you say, "I want to become a slave to you," so you say, "I cannot live without you." But the meaning is there; it is the same. And when this - the real desire - is fulfilled, love disappears. Then you feel bondage, slavery, and then you start struggling to become free.
Remember this. It is one of the paradoxes of the mind: whatsoever you get you will get bored with, and whatsoever you do not get you will long for. When you are alone, you will long for some slavery, some bondage. When you are in bondage, you will begin to long for freedom. Really, only slaves long for freedom, and free people try again to be slaves. The mind goes on like a pendulum, moving from one extreme to the other.
Love doesn't become attachment. Attachment was the need; love was just a bait. You were in search of a fish named attachment: love was just a bait to catch the fish. When the fish is caught, the bait is thrown. Remember this, and whenever you are doing something, go deep within yourself to find out the basic cause.
If there is real love, it will never become attachment. What is the mechanism for love to become attachment? The moment you say to your lover or beloved, "Love only me," you have started possessing. And the moment you possess someone you have insulted him deeply, because you have made him into a thing.
When I possess you, you are not a person then, but just one more item amongst my furniture - a thing. Then I use you, and you are my thing, my possession, so I won't allow anyone else to use you. It is a bargain in which I am possessed by you, and you make me a thing. It is the bargain that now no one else can use you. Both partners feel bound and enslaved. I make a slave of you, then you in return make a slave of me.
Then the struggle starts. I want to be a free person, and still I want you to be possessed by me; you want to retain your freedom and still possess me -- this is the struggle. If I possess you, I will be possessed by you. If I do not want to be possessed by you, I should not possess you.
Possession should not come in between. We must remain individuals and we must move as independent, free consciousnesses. We can come together, we can merge into each other, but no one possesses. Then there is no bondage and then there is no attachment.
Attachment is one of the ugliest things. And when I say ugliest, I do not mean only religiously, I mean aesthetically also. When you are attached, you have lost your loneliness, your aloneness: you have lost everything. Just to feel good that someone needs you and someone is with you, you have lost everything, you have lost yourself.
But the trick is that you try to be independent and you make the other the possession - and the other is doing the same. So do not possess if you do not want to be possessed.
Jesus said somewhere, "Judge ye not so that ye should not be judged." It is the same: "Possess not so that ye should not be possessed." Do not make anyone a slave; otherwise you will become a slave.
So-called masters are always slaves of their own slaves. You cannot become a master of some one without becoming a slave -- that is impossible.
You can only be a master when no one is a slave to you. This seems paradoxical, because when I say you can only be a master when no one is a slave to you, you will say, "Then what is the mastery? How am I a master when no one is a slave to me?" But I say only then are you a master. Then no one is a slave to you and no one will try to make a slave out of you.
To love freedom, to try to be free, means basically that you have come to a deep understanding of yourself. Now you know that you are enough unto yourself. You can share with someone, but you are not dependent. I can share myself with someone. I can share my love, I can share my happiness, I can share my bliss, my silence, with someone. But that is a sharing, not a dependence. If no one is there, I will be just as happy, just as blissful. If someone is there, that is also good and I can share.
When you realize your inner consciousness, your center, only then will love not become an attachment. If you do not know your inner center, love will become an attachment. If you know your inner center, love will become devotion. But you must first be there to love, and you are not.
Buddha was passing trough a village. One young man came to him and said, "Teach me something: how can I serve others?" Buddha laughed at him and said, "First be. Forget others. First be yourself and then everything will follow."
Right now you are not. When you say, "When I love someone it becomes an attachment," you are saying you are not, so whatsoever you do goes wrong because the doer is absent. The inner point of awareness is not there, so whatsoever you do goes wrong. First BE, and then you can share your being. And that sharing will be love. Before that, whatsoever you do will become an attachment.
And lastly: if you are struggling against attachment, you have taken a wrong turn. You can struggle. So many monks, recluses, sannyasins are doing that. They feel that they are attached to their house, to their property, to their wives, to their children, and they feel caged, imprisoned. They escape, they leave their homes, they leave their wives, they leave their children and possessions, and they become beggars and escape to a forest, to a loneliness. But go and observe them. They will become attached to their new surroundings.
I was visiting a friend who was a recluse living under a tree in a deep forest, but there were other ascetics also. One day it happened that I was staying with this recluse under his tree, and a new seeker came while my friend was absent. He had gone to the river to take a bath. Under his tree the new sannyasin started meditating.
The man came back from the river, and he pushed that new man away from the tree and said, "This is my tree. You go and find another, somewhere else. No one can sit under my tree." And this man had left his house, his wife, his children. Now the tree had become a possession -- you cannot meditate under his tree.
You cannot escape so easily from attachment. It will take new forms, new shapes. You will be deceived, but this will be there. So do not fight with attachment, just try to understand why it is there. And then know the deep cause: because you are not, this attachment is there.
Inside, you your own self is so much absent that you try to cling to anything in order to feel safe. You are not rooted, so you try to make anything your roots. When you are rooted in your self, when you know who you are, what this being is which is in you and what this consciousness is which is in you, then you will not cling to anyone.
That doesn't mean you will not love. Really, only then can you love because then sharing is possible - and with no conditions, with no expectations. You simply share because you have an abundance, because you have so much it is overflowing.
This overflowing of yourself is love. And when this overflowing becomes a flood, when by your own overflowing the whole universe is filled and your love touches the stars, in your love the earth feels good and in your love the whole universe is bathed, then it is devotion. - Osho
