breeze

“Love is just like a spring breeze; it comes, and when it comes it brings tremendous fragrance, beauty — but it goes. When it comes it gives you the feeling that it is going to remain forever. And the feeling is so strong that you cannot doubt it, there is no way to doubt it. Under that intense, doubtless certainty, you give promises, the beloved gives promises, not knowing at all that it is a spring breeze. It comes when it comes, it goes when it goes. It is not within your hands. You cannot capture it in your fist. You can feel it when your hand is open, its coolness, but the moment your fist is closed there is no breeze there, there is no coolness there, no fragrance there.” 

What is love?

What is Love? : There are as many loves as there are people. Love is a hierarchy, from the lowest rung to the highest, from sex to superconsciousness. There are many many layers, many planes of love. It all depends on you. If you are existing on the lowest rung, you will have a totally different idea of love than the person who is existing on the highest rung. Adolf Hitler will have one idea of love, Gautam Buddha another; and they will be diametrically opposite, because they are at two extremes.

At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political. And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics -- the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is politics, the whole thing is political: you want to dominate the other, you enjoy domination. And love is nothing but politics sugar-coated, a bitter pill sugar-coated.

You talk about love but the deep desire is to exploit the other. And I am not saying that you are doing it deliberately or consciously. People are falling in love with horses, dogs, animals, machines, things. Why? Because to be in love with human beings has become an utter hell, a continuous conflict -- nagging, always at each other's throats. This is the lowest form of love. Nothing is wrong with it if you can use it as a steppingstone , if you can use it as a meditation.

If you can watch it, if you try to understand it, in that very understanding you will reach another rung, you will start moving upwards. Only at the highest peak, when love is not a relationship any more, when love becomes a state of your being, the lotus opens totally and great perfume is released -- but only at the highest peak. At its lowest, love is just a political relationship. At its highest, love is a religious state of consciousness. I love you too, Buddha loves, Jesus loves, but their love demands nothing in return.

Their love is given for the sheer joy of giving it; it is not a bargain. Hence the radiant beauty of it, hence the transcendental beauty of it. It surpasses all the joys that you have known. When I talk about love, I am talking about love as a state. It is unaddressed: you don't love this person or that person, you simply love. You are love. Rather than saying that you love somebody, it will be better to say you are love. So whosoever is capable of
partaking, can partake.

Whosoever is capable of drinking out of your infinite sources of being, you are available -- you are available unconditionally. That is possible only if love becomes more and more meditative. `Medicine' and `meditation' come from the same root. Love as you know it is a kind of disease: it needs the medicine of meditation. If it passes through meditation, it is purified. And the more purified it is, the more ecstatic.

Nancy was having coffee with Helen.
Nancy asked, "How do you know your husband loves you?"
"He takes out the garbage every morning."
"That's not love. That's good housekeeping."
"My husband gives me all the spending money I need."
"That's not love. That's generosity."
"My husband never looks at other women."
"That's not love. That's poor vision."
"John always opens the door for me."
"That's not love. That's good manners."
"John kisses me even when I've eaten garlic and I have curlers in my hair."
"Now, that's love."

Everybody has their own idea of love. And only when you come to the state where all ideas about love have disappeared, where love is no more an idea but simply your being, then only will you know its freedom. Then love is God. Then love is the ultimate truth. Let your love move through the process of meditation. Watch it: watch the cunning ways of your mind, watch your power-politics. And nothing else except continuous watching and observing is going to help.

When you say something to your woman or your man, look at it: what is the unconscious motive? Why are you saying it? Is there some motive? Then what is it? Be conscious of that motive, bring it to consciousness -- because this is one of the secret keys for transforming your life: anything that becomes conscious disappears. Your motives remain unconscious, that's why you remain in their grip. Make them conscious, bring them to light, and they will disappear.

It is as if you pull up a tree and bring the roots to the sunlight: they will die, they can exist only in the darkness of the soil. Your motives also exist only in the darkness of your unconsciousness. So the only way to transform your love is to bring all the motivations from the unconscious into the conscious. Slowly slowly, those motives will die. And when love is unmotivated, then love is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anybody. Then love is something of the ultimate, of the beyond.

That is the meaning when Jesus says, "God is love." I say to you: Love is God. God can be forgotten, but don't forget love -- because it is the purification of love that will bring you to God. If you forget about God completely, nothing is lost. But don't forget love, because love is the bridge. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.

Perfectionist-------- A few thoughts!!

Off late I have heard the word perfectionist way too many times. I open the television and there is some actor claiming to a 'perfectionist', you try to watch an interview with an industrialist and realize that again he is another self proclaimed 'perfectionist' !!! You are inundated with these perfectionists to an extent that you begin to feel that the only people who are worthy of achieving anything in this world are the 'perfectionists'. This set me thinking and researching, now what does a perfectionist mean? The dictionary meaning of the word 'perfectionist' turned out to be "a person who adheres to or believes in perfectionism,

a person who demands perfection of himself, herself, or others" .Perfectionism,is a belief that perfection can and should be attained.Perfectionism is a belief that work or output that is anything less than perfect is unacceptable. Something did not quite fit here and I analyse point by point as to what such people may actually be facing in their lives.

Let me begin by identifying the characteristics of perfectionists as I see them:

one, they must be having a great need for approval that is why they want to do everything perfectly so that they get accepted by others

second, they must be having a terrible fear of failure to the extent that it affects their functioning on a daily basis

third, a low self acceptance and self esteem. Since they can't accept themselves as they are they have difficulty in accepting others too.

fourth, defensiveness often disguised in over aggression

fifth, they are always under pressure to achieve and often dissatisfied and unhappy.

There could be many more characteristics but I suppose you get the idea.

(I will continue in next blog since there is so much to write on this topic that it cannot fit in one blog, till then you mull if you are kind of perfectionist)

My thoughts on me.

I am me.

I am unique. There's not another human being in the whole world like me -- I have my very own fingerprints and I have my very own thoughts. I was not stamped out of a mold like a Coca-Cola top to be the duplicate of another.

I own all of me -- my body, and I can do with it what I choose; my mind, and all of its thoughts and ideas; my feelings, whether joyful or painful.

I own my ideals,my values, my dreams, my hopes, my fantasies, my fears.

I reserve the right to think and feel differently from others and will grant to others their right to thoughts and feelings not identical with my own.

I own all my triumphs and successes. I own also all my failures and mistakes. I am the cause of what I do and am responsible for my own behavior. I will permit myself to be imperfect. When I make mistakes or fail, I will know that I am not the failure -- I am still me -- and I will discard some parts of my behaviour that needed change and growth and will try new ways.

I will laugh freely and loudly at myself -- a healthy self-affirmation.

I will have fun living inside my skin.

I will remember that the door to everybody's life needs this sign:

Honor Thyself
I have value and worth.
I am me, and I am love me.

My favorite Osho piece.

I reproduce below the thoughts of Osho which I feel strongly about..............

LOVE IS NOT A RELATIONSHIP. Love relates, but it is not a relationship. A relationship is something finished. A relationship is a noun; the full stop has come, the honeymoon is over. Now there is no joy, no enthusiasm, now all is finished. You can carry it on, just to keep your promises. You can carry it on because it is comfortable, convenient, cozy. You can carry it on because there is nothing else to do. You can carry it on because if you disrupt it, it is going to create much trouble for you… Relationship means something complete, finished, closed.

Love is never a relationship; love is relating. It is always a river, flowing, unending. Love knows no full stop; the honeymoon begins but never ends. It is not like a novel that starts at a certain point and ends at a certain point. It is an ongoing phenomenon. Lovers end, love continues– it is a continuum. It is a verb, not a noun.

And why do we reduce the beauty of relating to relationship? Why are we in such a hurry? Because to relate is insecure, and relationship is a security. Relationship has a certainty; relating is just a meeting of two strangers, maybe just an overnight stay and in the morning we say goodbye. Who knows what is going to happen tomorrow? And we are so afraid that we want to make it certain, we want to make it predictable. We would like tomorrow to be according to our ideas; we don't allow it freedom to have its own say. So we immediately reduce every verb to a noun.

In a better world, with more meditative people, with a little more enlightenment spread over the earth, people will love, love immensely, but their love will remain a relating not a relationship. And I am not saying that their love will be only momentary. There is every possibility their love may go deeper than your love, may have a higher quality of intimacy, may have something more of poetry and more of godliness in it. And there is every possibility their love may last longer than your so-called relationship ever lasts. But it will not be guaranteed by the law, by the court, by the policeman. The guarantee will be inner. It will be a commitment from the heart, it will be a silent communion.

If you enjoy being with somebody, you would like to enjoy it more and more. If you enjoy the intimacy, you would like to explore the intimacy more and more. And there are a few flowers of love which bloom only after long intimacies. There are seasonal flowers too; within six weeks they are there, in the sun, but within six weeks again they are gone forever. There are flowers that take years to come, and there are flowers that take many years to come. The longer it takes, the deeper it goes. But it has to be a commitment from one heart to another heart. It has not even to be verbalized, because to verbalize it is to profane it. It has to be a silent commitment; eye to eye, heart to heart, being to being. It has to be understood, not said.

Forget relationships and learn how to relate.

Once you are in a relationship you start taking each other for granted– that's what destroys all love affairs. The woman thinks she knows the man, the man thinks he knows the woman. Nobody knows either! It is impossible to know the other, the other remains a mystery. And to take the other for granted is insulting, disrespectful.


There is a difference between a thing and a person. The furniture in the room is the same, but the man and the woman, they are no more the same. Explore again, start again. That's what I mean by relating.

Relating means you are always starting, you are continuously trying to become acquainted. Again and again, you are introducing yourself to each other. You are trying to see the many facets of the other's personality. You are trying to penetrate deeper and deeper into his realm of inner feelings, into the deep recesses of his being. You are trying to unravel a mystery which cannot be unraveled. That is the joy of love: the exploration of consciousness.

And if you relate, and don't reduce it to a relationship, then the other will become a mirror to you. Exploring him, unawares you will be exploring yourself too. Getting deeper into the other, knowing his feelings, his thoughts, his deeper stirrings, you will be knowing your own deeper stirrings too. Lovers become mirrors to each other, and then love becomes a meditation. Relationship is ugly, relating is beautiful.

Hence I say relate. By saying relate, I mean remain continuously on a honeymoon. Go on searching and seeking each other, finding new ways of loving each other, finding new ways of being with each other. And each person is such an infinite mystery, inexhaustible, unfathomable, that it is not possible that you can ever say, "I have known her," or, "I have known him." At the most you can say, "I have tried my best, but the mystery remains a mystery."

In fact the more you know, the more mysterious the other becomes. Then love is a constant adventure. "

Reunion with Golu

I met him after a while, after his Lucknow trip. I truly missed him and realized this after seeing him again. And the way he ran towards me I felt his absence had only increased the pleasure of re-union!!

He is the cutest pie that can ever be, don't you agree? Here he is in Lucknow being naughty and playful.

A delightful Holi

Holi is always fun , there is something about being playful and wild which just makes your spirits soar. I think its a terrific way to just let go and be yourself. The weather was perfect too, bright and happy. While getting all colorful was great but what I enjoyed most was sitting in the garden still soaked in color and chatting with friends. Friends who have been part of at least half of your life if not more.

Once you start talking so much spills out. Those college days when everyday was a new opportunity for mischief!! And while we were remembering the old days we realized that our essential spirit has not changed and we still look to enjoy every day as much as we did then. And today we are what we always wanted to be!! Independent , capable, confident with joy in our hearts!! And that triggered another round of celebrations with wine this time.

As expected with all this revelry we hit the bed in afternoon only to get up late in evening. All in all a terrific day and a beautiful Holi.