ABOUT LOVE

ABOUT LOVE If your love is not the ordinary, biological instinctive love, if it is not part of your ego, if it is not a power trip to dominate someone; if your love is just a pure joy, rejoicing in the being of the other for no reason at all, a sheer joy, awareness will follow this pure love just like a shadow. You need not worry about awareness. There are only two ways: either you become aware, then love follows as a shadow; or you become so loving that awareness comes on its own accord. They are two sides of the same coin. You need not bother about the other side; just keep one side, the other side cannot escape. The other side is bound to come. And the path of love is easier, rosier, innocent, simple. The path of awareness is a little arduous. Those who cannot love, for them I suggest the path of awareness. There are people who cannot love -- their hearts have become stones. Their upbringing, their culture, their society has killed the very capacity to love -- because this whole world is not run by love, it is run by cunningness. To succeed in this world you don't need love, you need a hard heart and a sharp mind. In fact, you don't need the heart at all. I have heard about one great politician who was in the hospital and who had some great complications with his heart. So they put him on a plastic heart and took out his real heart, because it was going to take hours to clean it. And certainly a politician's heart -- even if you can clean it in hours, it is too soon. The surgeons were working in the other room -- it was a disgusting job -- and the politician was lying down. A man came into the room and shook the politician; he opened his eyes and the man said, "What are you doing here? You have been chosen the prime minister of the country." He jumped out of the bed. The doctors looked from the other room, "What is happening?" The politician was going out. They said, "Wait! Your heart, we are cleaning it." The politician said, "Now, at least for five years I won't need it. You can clean it as much as you want. Take your time. What does a prime minister need a heart for? But keep it safe in case something goes wrong; then I will come back. But if things go well, I may perhaps never need it." In this world the heart is not needed. The people of the heart are crushed, exploited, oppressed. This world is run by the cunning, by the clever, by the heartless and the cruel. So the whole society is managed in such a way that every child starts losing his heart, and his energy starts moving directly towards the head. The heart is ignored. I have heard an ancient parable from Tibet, that in the beginning of time the heart used to be exactly in the middle part of the body. But because of continuously being pushed aside, out of the way, now it is no more in the middle of the body. The poor fellow waits by the side of the road: "If some day you need, I am here" -- but it gets no nourishment, no encouragement. It gets all kinds of condemnation. If you do something and you say, "I did it because I felt like doing it," everybody is going to laugh: "Felt? Have you lost your head? Give your reason, logic. Feeling is no logic." Even if you fall in love, you have to find reasons why you have fallen in love -- because the woman's nose is very beautiful, her eyes have such depth, her body is so proportionate. These are not the reasons. You have never calculated all these reasons on your calculator and then found that this woman seems to be worthy of falling in love with: "Fall in love with this woman -- exactly the right length of nose, the right kind of hair, the right color, the right proportion of the body. What more do you want?" But this is not the way that anybody ever falls in love. You fall in love. Then just to satisfy the idiots around you that you are not a fool, you have calculated everything and only then you have taken the step. It is a reasonable, rational, logical step. Nobody hears the heart. And the mind is so chattering, so continuously chattering -- yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak -- that even if the heart sometimes says something, it never reaches to you. It cannot reach. The bazaar in your head is buzzing so much that it is impossible, absolutely impossible for the heart. Slowly slowly, the heart stops saying anything. Not heard again and again, ignored again and again, it falls silent. The head runs the show in the society; otherwise, we would have lived in a totally different world -- more loving, less hate, less war, no possibility of nuclear weapons. The heart will never give support for any destructive methods to be evolved. The heart will never be in the service of death. It is life -- it throbs for life, it beats for life. Because of the whole conditioning of the society, the method of awareness has to be chosen, because awareness appears to be very logical, rational. But if you can love, then there is no need to go on a long, arduous route unnecessarily. Love is the most shortcut way, the most natural -- so easy that it is possible even for a small child. It needs no training. You are born with the quality of it, if it is not corrupted by others. But love should be pure. It should not be impure. You will be surprised to know that the English word `love' comes from a very ugly root in Sanskrit. It comes from lobh. Lobh means greed. And as far as ordinary love is concerned, it is a kind of greed. That's why there are people who love money, there are people who love houses, there are people who love this, who love that. Even if they love a woman or a man, it is simply their greed; they want to possess everything beautiful. It is a power trip. Hence, you will find lovers continuously fighting, fighting about such trivia that they both feel ashamed, "About what things we go on fighting!" In their silent moments when they are alone, they feel, "Do I become possessed by some evil spirit? -- such trivia, so meaningless." But it is not a question of trivia; it is a question of who has power, who is more dominant, whose voice is heard. Love cannot exist in such circumstances. I have heard a story.... In the life of one of the great emperors of India, Akbar, there is a small story. He was very much interested in all kinds of talented people, and from all over India he had collected nine people, the most talented geniuses, who were known as the "nine jewels of Akbar's court." One day, just gossiping with his vice-councillors, he said, "Last night I was discussing with my wife. She is very insistent that every husband is henpecked. I tried hard, but she says, `I know many families, but I have never found any husband who is not henpecked.' What do you think?" he asked the councillors. One of the councillors, Birbal said, "Perhaps she is right, because you could not prove it. You yourself are a henpecked husband; otherwise, you could have given her a good beating, then and there proving that, `Look, here is a husband!'" He said, "That I cannot do, because I have to live with her. It is easy to advise somebody else to beat his wife. Can you beat your wife?" Birbal said, "No, I cannot. I simply accept that I am a henpecked husband, and your wife is right." But Akbar said, "It has to be found.... In the capital there must be at least one husband who is not henpecked. There is no rule in the world which has no exception, and this is not a rule at all." So he said to Birbal, "You take my two beautiful Arabian horses" -- one was black, one was white -- "and go around the capital. And if you can find a man who is not henpecked, you can give him the choice: whichever horse he wants is a present from me." They were valuable. In those days horses were very valuable, and those were the most beautiful horses. Birbal said, "It is useless, but if you say, I will go." He went, and everybody was found to be henpecked. It was very ordinary: He would just call the person and call his wife, and ask, "Are you henpecked or not?" The man would look at the wife and say, "You should have asked when I was alone. This is not right. You will create unnecessary trouble. Just for a horse I am not going to destroy my life. You take your horses, I don't want any." But one man was sitting in front of his house and two persons were massaging him. He was a wrestler, a champion wrestler, a very strong man. Birbal thought, "Perhaps this man... he can kill anybody without any weapons. If he can hold your neck, you are finished!" Birbal said, "Can I ask you a question?" He said, "Question? What question?" Birbal said, "Are you henpecked?" That man said, "First, let us greet each other, a handshake." And he crushed Birbal's hand and said, "Unless you start crying and tears start coming from your eyes, I will not leave your hand. Your hand is finished. You dared to ask me such a question?" And Birbal was dying -- he was almost a man of steel -- and tears started coming, and he said, "Just leave me. You are not henpecked. I have just come to a wrong place. But where is your wife?" He said, "Look, she is there, cooking my breakfast." A very small woman was cooking his breakfast. The woman was so small and the man was so big that Birbal said, "There is a possibility that perhaps this man is not henpecked. He will kill this woman." So he said, "Now there is no need to go further into investigation. You can choose either horse from these two, black and white, a reward from the king for the one who is not henpecked. And at that time that small woman said, "Don't choose the black! Otherwise I will make your life a hell!" The man said, "No, no, I will choose the white. You just keep quiet." Birbal said, "You don't get either, neither white nor black. It is all finished, you lost the game. You are a henpecked husband." There is a continuous fight for domination. Love cannot blossom in such an atmosphere. The man is fighting in the world for all kinds of ambitions. The woman is fighting the man because she is afraid: he is out of the house the whole day -- "Who knows? He may be having affairs with other women." She is jealous, suspicious; she wants to be sure that this man remains controlled. So in the house he is fighting with the wife, in the outside he is fighting with the world. Where do you think the flower of love can blossom? Latifa, the flower of love can blossom only when there is no ego, when there is no effort to dominate, when one is humble, when one is trying not to be somebody but is ready to be nobody. Naturally, in the ordinary world it cannot happen, but with a master it is a possibility. The love for the master is not biological. Biology has nothing to do with masters and disciples. The love for the master has nothing to do with domination. The flower can blossom because love is pure of ego. You are simply rejoicing in the presence, in the fulfillment of the master, in the contentment of the master. You are rejoicing as if it is your contentment, it is your fulfillment. In the radiation of the master you are feeling it is your radiation. You are part of the master; you have become so harmonious with him that his heart and your heart are no more two. Awareness will come on its own accord, and this is the most beautiful way, the most innocent way -- a path full of flowers, a path that passes through beautiful lakes, rivers, groves, greenery. The path of awareness is the path that passes through a desert. It is only for those who cannot manage to get back into their hearts. If you can easily be heartful, forget all about awareness; it will come on its own accord. Each step of love will bring its own awareness. This love will not be falling in love; I call it rising in love.
k.jagadeesh 
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