Love of a Buddha

Beloved Master, 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.

//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 a slave -- and then the whole misery begins. What is the mechanism? And why it happens?

JUST A FEW DAYS BEFORE, one man came to me and he was feeling very guilty. He said, "I loved a woman, I loved her much. But the day she died, I was weeping, crying; and suddenly I became aware of a certain freedom within, as if some burden has left me. And I felt a deep breath, as if I have 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, that "What you are doing?" "And the dead body was lying there just before me," he said to me. "And I feel very much guilt." He said to me, "Help me! What has happened to my mind? Have I betrayed her so soon?"

No one has betrayed. BUT WHEN LOVE BECOMES ATTACHMENT, IT BECOMES A BURDEN, A BONDAGE.

But why love becomes 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 is 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 you can be free.

BUT NO ONE IS COURAGEOUS ENOUGH TO BE ALONE, you need someone. Why you need someone? You are afraid of your own loneliness, you become bored with yourself. And 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 attachment, commitment, bondage.
OSHO

Vigyan Bhairav TantraVol 1,
Ch #20: Ordinary love and the love of a Buddha
pm in Woodlands, Bombay
[part 1 of 4]

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 THE MARRIAGE HAS HAPPENED, LOVE WILL DISAPPEAR. Because love was just an illusion in which two persons can become slaves to each other.

DIRECTLY YOU CANNOT ASK FOR SLAVERY, that is too humiliating. And directly you cannot say to someone, "Become my slave." He will revolt. And you cannot 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, the 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 the bondage, you will start longing for freedom. So really, only slaves long for freedom, and free people try again to be slaves. And 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 the 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. Why? And what is the mechanism for love to become attachment? The moment you say to your lover or beloved that, "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. And this 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.

And then the struggle starts. I want to be a free person, and still I want you to be possessed by me; and 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 don't 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.
OSHO

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Vol 1,
Ch #20: Ordinary love and the love of a Buddha
pm in Woodlands, Bombay
[part 2 of 4]