east west

Original Question:

Whenever you speak of our failings, you usually mention anger, sex and jealousy. Anger and sex seem fairly straightforward, but there’s some confusion about exactly what jealousy is, and it’s harder to get to the core. Would you tell us about jealousy?

* * *
Yes, I make more mention of anger, sex, and less of jealousy, because jealousy is not a primary thing. It is secondary, it is a secondary part of sex.

Whenever you have a sexual urge in your mind, a sexual happening in your being, whenever you feel sexually attracted and related to somebody, jealousy enters because you are not in love. If you are in love, jealousy never enters.

Try to understand the whole thing. Whenever you are sexually related you are afraid, because sex is really not a relationship, it is an exploitation. If you are attached to a woman or man sexually, you are always afraid that this woman may go to somebody else, this man may move to somebody else. There is no relationship really, it is just mutual exploitation. You are exploiting each other, but you don't love and you know it, so you are afraid.

This fear becomes jealousy so you may not allow things, you will guard; you'll make every security arrangement so this man cannot look at another woman.Even looking will be a danger signal. This man should not talk to another woman because talking.... and you feel afraid he may leave. So you will close all the paths, all the ways of this man going to another woman, of this woman going to another man; you will close all the ways, all the doors.

But then a problem arises. When all the doors are closed, the man becomes like, the woman becomes dead, a prisoner, a slave, and you cannot love a dead thing. You cannot love one who is not free because love is beautiful only when it is given freely, when it is not taken and demanded and forced.

First you make security arrangements, then the person becomes dead, becomes like an object. A beloved may be a person, a wife becomes an object; a beloved may be a person, a husband becomes an object to be guarded, possessed,controlled. But the more you control, the more you are killing, because freedom is lost. And the other person may be there for other reasons, but not for love,because how can you love a person who possesses you? He looks like an enemy.

Sex creates jealousy but it is a secondary thing. So it is not a question of how to drop jealousy; you cannot drop it because you cannot drop sex. The question is how to transform sex into love, then jealousy disappears.

If you love a person, the very love is enough guarantee, the very love is enough security. If you love a person, you know he cannot go to anybody else.And if he goes, he goes; nothing can be done. What can you do? You can kill the person, but a dead person will not be of much use.

When you love a person you trust that he cannot go to anybody. If he goes,there is no love and nothing can be done. Love brings this understanding. There is no jealousy.

So if jealousy is there, know well there is no love. You are playing a game,you are hiding sex behind love. Love is just a painted word, the reality is sex.

In India, because love is not allowed much, not allowed at all -- marriage is arranged -- tremendous jealousy exists. A husband is always afraid. He has never loved so he knows -- and the wife is always afraid because she has never loved, so she knows -- that this has been an arrangement. The parents arranged, astrologers arranged, society arranged; the wife and husband were never asked.In many cases they never knew each other, they had never seen each other. So fear exists. The wife is afraid, the husband is afraid, and both are spying on each other. The very possibility is lost.

How can love grow in fear? They can live together, but that living together is also not living together; they only tolerate together, they some how carry on together. It is just utilitarian, and out of utility you may manage, but ecstasy is not possible. You cannot celebrate it, it cannot become festive; it will be a burden some affair.

So a husband is dead before death, and a wife is dead before death. It is two dead persons taking revenge on each other, because each thinks that one has killed the other. Taking revenge, angry, jealous -- the whole sourly becomes sourly.

But in the West a different type of phenomenon is happening which is the same on the other extreme. They dropped arranged marriage and it is good, that institution is not worth keeping, but by dropping it, love has not arisen, only sex has become free. And when sex is free you are always afraid because it is always a temporary arrangement. You are with this girl to she will tomorrow she will be with somebody else, and yesterday she was with Yesterday these. Yesterday the girl was with somebody else, tomorrow she will again be with somebody else; only tonight she is with you.

How can this be very intimate and deep? It can only be a meeting of the surfaces. You cannot penetrate each other because penetration needs seasoning,it needs time, it needs depth, intimacy, living together, being together. A longtime is needed then depth opens -- depths talking to each other....

This is just acquaintance. It may not even be acquaintance -- in the West you can meet a woman on the train and make love, and at midnight you drop her at some station. She never bothers that she may never know you again; she may not even have asked your name.

If sex becomes such a trivial thing -- just a bodily affair where surfaces meet and separate -- your depth remains untouched. You are again missing something -- something great, something very mysterious -- because you become aware of your own depth only when somebody else touches it. Only through the other do you become aware of your inner being; only in deep relationship does somebody's love resound in you and bring your depth into being. Only through somebody else do you discover yourself.

There are two ways of discovery. One is meditation -- without the other you search for the depth; another is love -- with the other you search for the depth. He becomes a root to reach to yourself. The other creates a circle, and both lovers help each other. The deeper love goes, the deeper they feel they are; their inner-beings are revealed. But then there is no jealousy. Love cannot be jealous, it is impossible. Love is always trusting, and if something happens that breaks your trust you have to accept it; nothing can be done about it because whatsoever you do will destroy the other.

Trust cannot be forced; jealousy tries to force it. Jealousy tries, makes you make every effort so that trust can be maintained, but trust is not something to be maintained. It is there, or it is not there, and I say that nothing can be done about it. If it is there, you go through it; if it is not there, better separate.

But don't fight for it because you are wasting time, life. If you love someone and your depth speaks to the other's depth -- you have a meeting in being -- it is okay, beautiful; if it is not happening, separate. But don't create any conflict, struggle or fight for it, because it cannot be achieved through fight, and time is lost -- and not only time, your capacity will be damaged. You may start again with another person repeating the whole pattern.

If there is no trust, separate -- the sooner, the better -- so you are not destroyed, so you are not damaged, so your capacity to love remains fresh and you can love somebody else. This is not the place, this is not the man, this is not the woman for you. Move, but don't destroy each other.

Life is very short and capacities are very delicate. They can be destroyed,and once damaged there is no possibility of repairing them.

I have heard that once it happened that Winston Churchill was invited to speak in a small club of friends. Everybody knew that Churchill was a drunkard and loved alcohol very much, and the man who introduced him, the president of the club, said, "Sir Winston has drunk so much wine up to now, that if we pour all the wine into this hall the level will come up to my head." It was a big hall, and he was just joking.

Winston Churchill stood, looked at the imaginary line, looked at the ceiling-- the ceiling was high -- became very sad, and he said, "So much still to be done, and so little time left to do it."

As far as love is concerned, so much is to be done for everyone and so little time is left to do it. Don't waste your energy in fighting, jealousy,conflict; move, and move in a friendly way.

Search somewhere else for the person who exists who will love you. Don't get fixed with someone who is wrong, not for you. Don't be angry, there is no point in it, and don't try to force trust; nobody can force it, it never happens. You will miss the time, you will miss the energy, and you may only become aware when nothing can be done. Move. Either trust or move.

Love always trusts, or if it finds that the trust is not possible it simply moves in a friendly way; there is no conflict and fight. Sex creates jealousy; find, discover love. Don't make sex the basic thing -- it is not.

India missed with arranged marriage; the West is missing with free love.

India missed love because parents were too calculating and cunning. They would not allow falling in love: that is dangerous, nobody knows where it will lead. They were too clever, and through cleverness India missed all possibility of love.

In the West they are too rebellious, too young; not clever -- too young, too childish. They have made sex a free thing, available everywhere: no need to go so deep to discover love, enjoy sex and be finished.

Through sex, the West is missing: through marriage, the East has missed. But if you are alert you need not be Eastern, you need not be Western. Love is neither Eastern nor Western.

Go on discovering love within you. And if you love, sooner or later the person will happen to you, because a loving heart, sooner or later, comes to a loving heart -- it always happens. You will find the right person. But if you are jealous you will not find, if you are simply for sex you will not find, if you live only for security you will not find.

Love is a dangerous path and only those who have courage can travel it. And I say to you it is the same, just like meditation -- only for those who are courageous. And there are only two ways to reach the divine: either meditation or love. Find out which is your way, which can be your destiny.

---Osho, A Bird on the Wing, #6

Smoking

NB: This is from one of the darshan diaries, Osho's personal interaction with individuals, and as far as i have heard, Osho later asked that they don't be published. Read it if u want, but I feel this info is required..... Osho also answered a question on smoking in "Beyond Psychology , #2"

[A sannyasin has had a problem with smoking -- since he dropped sucking his thumb, at sixteen.]

Mm mm. Sucking the thumb is better than smoking.

You can try it again. And it will be easier to drop smoking. This is one of the things to be understood: if you were sucking and then you stopped that, you have chosen smoking as a substitute. Smoking is not your problem. You cannot do anything with it. Howsoever hard you try, you will never succeed, because it is not in the first place a problem -- the problem was something else. You have changed the problem. The real problem has been dropped, and a false problem has been put there instead. You cannot change it!

My suggestion is: forget about fighting with your smoking -- you start sucking the thumb (she giggles a little self-consciously). And don't be worried -- it is beautiful, it is just beautiful. There is nothing wrong in it, because it is not harmful. Start sucking the thumb, and once you start sucking the thumb, smoking will disappear. When smoking disappears, we are on the right track. Then for a few months go on sucking the thumb so this long habit of so many years -- smoking -- drops. For six or nine months suck the thumb, and don't be ashamed of it -- because there is nothing wrong with it.

Smoking basically is somehow concerned either with the sucking of the thumb or with inadequate breast-feeding. When a child is taken away from the breast and he was not ready to, and he wanted to continue -- then he starts sucking the thumb. It is a substitute. What else can he do?

Later on sucking the thumb looks so ugly and so childish that one starts finding some substitutes for it: chewing gum or smoking, or chewing pan; one finds something. And of course when you find smoking, smoking fits better than the sucking of the thumb. It is more similar to the breast than the thumb, because when you drink the milk from the breast, it is warm. The smoke is warm, and it gives you again the same feeling of warmth . The thumb cannot give that. So once the child has discovered that smoking is more suitable, then the thumb is dropped -- but the thumb was innocent.

So first drop the smoking and instead start sucking your thumb go back regress back. After six, nine months, when smoking has completely disappeared and again the thumb-sucking is replaced, then start to drink milk every night, from an artificial bottle that you use for children... every night. Enjoy it like a breast, mm?

and don't be shy about it. Enjoy it every night -- fifteen minutes regularly -- and it will give you very very deep sleep. And then go to sleep -- just Lying down with the bottle. In the morning also when you open your eyes, again you can find the bottle and suck a little warm milk. In the day also -- two, three times. Not much -- just a little milk.

So first the cigarette has to be dropped, then you come to the thumb; then the thumb has to be dropped. Then you come back to the breast -- this time artificially -- and from that, things will disappear. Just after a few days you will see that now there is no need. First you will be drinking four, five, six times a day, then three times, then two times, then one. And then one day you will suddenly feel that there is no need... but this is how it has to disappear.

If you fight with smoking, you will never succeed. Millions of people are fighting and they never succeed, because they never follow the whole procedure. You have to go about it in a very scientific way. You have to come to the root cause. The root cause is -- you missed your mother's breast. You could not get as much as you wanted. That desire is lingering, that desire has not gone. And with that desire, something of the unsatisfied child will always remain in you. So it is not really smoking that is the problem: that unsatisfied child will be there.

And once this whole problem is tackled rightly, you will find that for the first time you have become grown-up. Once that child disappears, and the desire to suck the mother's breast disappears, you will suddenly feel an upsurge of energy -- something caged has been freed. You will become grown-up.

A person who smokes is not a grown-up, and he is never going to become a grown-up.

But smoking is not the problem, so I never say to not smoke -- that is not the problem. Mm? you have substituted many problems before it. It is a shadow of the shadow of the shadow.

Go to the root, to the original problem. There things can be settled, nowhere else. And not only about smoking -- about every problem, always go to the root; always find out where the root is. Once you know the root, it can be cut. But without knowing the root, you can go on fighting with the shadow. With shadows, you will be defeated; you can never be victorious.

So you make it a one year program, mm?

And it will be a better world if everybody -- these smokers -- are sucking their thumbs, sitting in the train, in the bus, moving around. It will be a better world! It will be more innocent, harmless. It is your thumb! You are not sucking anybody else's. Or if two persons decide to suck each other's thumb, that is their business -- they can do it! (laughter) Nothing wrong in it! It will be a loving gesture.

But smoking is patent foolishness. It is not a sin -- it is simply stupidity. But move slowly, and don't be in a hurry in dropping the smoking. First start sucking. The moment you are really into sucking, smoking will disappear. You will simply feel uninterested. Even if somebody offers you a cigarette, you will not feel any interest. For six, nine months you continue sucking; then move to a false breast. And in a one year program it will disappear.

And not only this will disappear -- you will be transformed through it. Something very basic in you -- which is holding you back -- will disappear. Your body will become more healthy, your mind will become more sharp and intelligent. In every way you will become more grown up. You are tethered to this small problem. Something in the past is holding you back, so you cannot move smoothly into the future.

---Osho, Blessed are the ignorant

“If you are feeling miserable, let it become a meditation. Sit silently, close the doors. First feel the misery with as much intensity as possible. Feel the hurt. Somebody has insulted you: now, the best way to avoid the hurt is to go and insult him, so that you become occupied with him. That is not meditation.

If somebody has insulted you, feel thankful to him that he has given you an opportunity to feel a deep wound. He has opened a wound in you. The wound may be created by many many insults that you have suffered in your whole life; he may not be the cause of all the suffering, but he has triggered a process.

Just close your room, sit silently, with no anger for the person but with total awareness of the feeling that is arising in you — the hurt feeling that you have been rejected, that you have been insulted. And then you will be surprised that not only is this man there: all the men and all the women and all the people that have ever insulted you will start moving in your memory.

You will start not only remembering them, you will start reliving them. You will be going into a kind of primal. Feel the hurt, feel the pain, don’t avoid it. That’s why in many therapies the patient is told not to take any drugs before the therapy begins, for the simple reason that drugs are a way to escape from your inner misery. They don’t allow you to see your wounds, they repress them. They don’t allow you to go into your suffering and unless you go into your suffering, you cannot be released from the imprisonment of it.

It is perfectly scientific to drop all drugs before going into therapy — if possible even drugs like coffee, tea, smoking, because these are all ways to escape. Have you watched? Whenever you feel nervous you immediately start smoking. It is a way to avoid nervousness; you become occupied with smoking. Really it is a regression. Smoking makes you again feel like a child — unworried, non-responsible — because smoking is nothing but a symbolic breast. The hot smoke going in simply takes you back to the days when you were feeding on the mother’s breast and the warm milk was going in: the nipple has now become the cigarette. The cigarette is a symbolic nipple. Through regression you avoid the responsibilities and the pains of being adult. And that’s what goes on through many many drugs.

Modern man is drugged as never before, because Modern man is living in great suffering. Without drugs it will be impossible to live in so much suffering. Those drugs create a barrier; they keep you drugged they don’t allow you enough sensitivity to know your pain. The first thing to do is close your doors and stop any kind of occupation — looking at the TV, listening to the radio, reading a book.

Stop all occupation, because that too is a subtle drug. Just be silent, utterly alone. Don’t even pray, because that again is a drug, you are becoming occupied, you start talking to God, you start praying, you escape from yourself. Atisha is saying: Just be yourself. Whatsoever the pain of it and whatsoever the suffering of it, let it be so. First experience it in its total intensity. It will be difficult, it will be heart-rending: you may start crying like a child, you may start rolling on the ground in deep pain, your body may go through contortions. You may suddenly become aware that the pain is not only in the heart, it is all over the body — that it is aching all over, that it is painful all over, that your whole body is nothing but pain. If you can experience it — this is of tremendous importance — then start absorbing it.

Don’t throw it away. It is such a valuable energy, don’t throw it away. Absorb it, drink it, accept it, welcome it, feel grateful to it. And say to yourself “This time I’m not going to avoid it, this time I’m not going to reject it, this time I’m not going to throw it away. This time I will drink it and receive it like a guest. This time I will digest it.” It may take a few days for you to be able to digest it, but the day it happens, you have stumbled upon a door which will take you really far far away.

A new journey has started in your life, you are moving into a new kind of being — because immediately, the moment you accept the pain with no rejection anywhere, its energy and its quality changes. It is no longer pain. In fact one is simply surprised, one cannot believe it, it is so incredible. One cannot believe that suffering can be transformed into ecstasy, that pain can become joy. Whenever anything is total it turns into its opposite.

This is a great secret to be remembered. Whenever something is total it changes into its opposite, because there is no way to go any further; the cul-de-sac has arrived. Watch an old clock with a pendulum. It goes on and on: the pendulum goes to the left, to the extreme left, and then there is a point beyond which it cannot go, then it starts moving towards the right. Opposites are complementaries. If you can suffer your suffering in totality, in great intensity, you will be surprised…you will not be able to believe it when it happens for the first time, that your own suffering absorbed willingly, welcomingly, becomes a great blessing. The same energy that becomes hate becomes love, the same energy that becomes pain becomes pleasure, the same energy that becomes suffering becomes bliss.”

Osho, excerpted from The Book of Wisdom, Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Taken from a website, no no-editing guarantee :-)