Guest guest Posted October 11, 2003 Report Share Posted October 11, 2003 The lover cannot feel superior, the lover cannot even think that he has obliged anybody. On the contrary, when somebody receives your love you feel obliged that your love was not rejected – it could have been rejected – that your love was respected, welcomed. You feel obliged, you feel thankful, you feel grateful. And you say: "...whereas compassion must be an integral part of loving." No, compassion is higher than love. Love is an integral part of compassion, but compassion is not an integral part of love. That's the difference between thinking and meditation. These three things are to be taken note of: the lowest love is sex – it is physical – and the highest refinement of love is compassion. Sex is below love, compassion is above love – love is exactly in the middle. Very few people know what love is. Ninety-nine percent of people, unfortunately, think sexuality is love – it is not. Sexuality is very animal; it certainly has the potential of growing into love, but it is not actual love, only a potential. A seed is not a flower. It can become a flower, but there is no certainty, no guarantee that it is going to become a flower – it may die as a seed. If you put it on a rock it will not sprout into a bush, into a flowering tree, it will die. If you throw it into fire it will die. Sex has the potential of love, but only the potential, remember; it is the seed. There is no need to deny it because if you throw away the seed, if you deny the seed, then love disappears. That's why in the so-called religious people you will not find love and its warmth, you will find them cold, dead, without love. Yes, they will have compassion, they will feel sorry for you, because you are hell-bound and they are going to heaven. Naturally they feel sorry for you: "Poor souls!" You will suffer hellfire and they will be enjoying the pleasures of heaven. There is no love at all, but they have compassion. And having compassion is a pseudo thing, it is not the true compassion. They have denied sex, and in denying sex they have denied love. Sex has to be used in the right perspective. It has not to be repressed, it has not to be denied, and you are not to remain confined to it either. No repression, no indulgence. The path is very subtle. Jesus says, "The path is straight but very narrow." It is a razor's edge. Sex either becomes indulgence, as it has become in the West, or it becomes repressed, as it has become in the East. On one side there is a well, on the other side there is a ditch, and you can fall in. You have to walk between the two. Certainly it is a razor's edge, tightrope walking; you have to remain very balanced. And the functioning of the mind is such that it moves from one pole to the other. It is exactly like the pendulum of an old clock: it goes from right to left, the extreme left, and from the extreme left again to the extreme right. And remember the law: as you see the pendulum moving towards the left it is gaining momentum to go to the right; while it is actually going towards the right it is gaining momentum to go to the left. So don't be deceived by what you see; something inside is growing which is just the opposite of what you are seeing. The repressed person is always ready to go into indulgence. All the repressed societies are boiling, ready to go into indulgence, and they find ways and means to go into indulgence. For example, this country has repressed sex for thousands of years, and the natural outcome has been a backdoor indulgence. In Indian temples prostitutes have existed. In the South still, even today in the twentieth century, temples have prostitutes. They are not called prostitutes – Indians are very clever at giving beautiful names to ugly things – they are called devadasis, "servants of God." And who are these gods? First the priest who initiates them into sexual indulgence and then the rich clients who come to the temple. These are the gods whom they serve! But they are supposed to serve the stone statue of the god inside the temple. That is just a facade. In India prostitution can now exist only in a religious garb – sex has been such a taboo that you have to find some way to make it religious. Temples like Khajuraho, Konarak, Puri have not existed anywhere in the West. There is no need, people are already indulging – they are indulging by the front door – so there is no need to go by the back door. Osho, "Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.