Love of a Buddha II

ATTACHMENT IS ONE OF THE MOST UGLIEST THINGS. And when I say ugliest, I don't mean only religiously -- I mean aesthetically also. When you are attached, you have lost your 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 THE SELF.

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 DON'T POSSESS, IF YOU DON'T 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." DON'T MAKE ANYONE A SLAVE, otherwise you will become a slave.

MASTERS -- SO-CALLED "MASTERS" -- ARE ALWAYS SLAVES OF THEIR OWN SLAVES. You cannot become a master of someone 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 of you.

To love freedom, to try to be free, means basically that you have come to a deep understanding of yourself. AND 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 dependence. If no one is there, I will be as happy, as blissful. If someone is there, that is also good, and I can share.

When you realize your inner consciousness, your center, only then love will not become an attachment. IF YOU DON'T 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 he said, "TEACH ME SOMETHING: HOW CAN I SERVE OTHERS?" Buddha laughed at him, and Buddha said to him, "First be! Forget others. First yourself be, 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... THEN YOU CAN SHARE YOUR BEING. And that sharing will be love. Before that, whatsoever you do will become attachment.

OSHO

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra

Vol 1, Ch #20: Ordinary love and the love of a Buddha

pm in Woodlands, Bombay

[part 3 of 4]

And lastly: IF YOU STRUGGLE 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 home, they leave their wives, they leave their children and possessions, and become beggars and escape to a forest, to the loneliness. But go and see and observe them -- they will become attached to their new surrounding.

I WAS VISITING A FRIEND, and he was a recluse living under a tree in a deep forest -- but there were other ascetics also. So one day it happened... I was staying with one recluse under his tree, and a new seeker came while my friend was absent. He has gone to the river to take a bath. Under his tree, the new sannyasin started meditating.

The man came back from the river, he pushed that new man away from the tree and said, "This is my tree. YOU GO AND FIND SOME OTHER TREE, somewhere else. No one can sit under my tree!" And this man has left his house, his wife, his children. NOW THE TREE HAS BECOME THE POSSESSION -- you cannot meditate under HIS tree.

YOU CANNOT ESCAPE SO EASILY FROM ATTACHMENT. It will take new form, new shapes. You will be deceived, but this will be there. So don't fight with attachment, just try to understand it, 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 with anything to cling, to feel safe. YOU ARE NOT ROOTED, SO YOU TRY TO MAKE ANYTHING YOUR ROOTS. When you are rooted in yourself, when you know who you are, what is this being which is in you, and what is this consciousness which is in you, then you will not cling to anyone.

THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU WILL NOT LOVE. Really, only then you can love. Because then a sharing is possible -- and with no conditions, with no expectations. You simply share because you have abundantly; because you have so much, it is overflowing.

THIS OVERFLOWING OF YOURSELF IS LOVE. And when this overflowing becomes a flood, and by your own overflowing the whole universe is filled, your love touches the stars. And in your love, the earth feels good; and in your love, the whole universe is bathed. It is devotion.

OSHO

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra

Vol 1, Ch #20: Ordinary love and the love of a Buddha

pm in Woodlands, Bombay

[part 4 of 4]