Osho Quotes on Relationship
Intimacy with one woman or one man is better than having many superficial relationships. Love is not a seasonal flower, it takes years to grow. And only when it grows does it go beyond biology, and start having something of the spiritual in it. Just being with many women or many men will keep you superficial — entertained maybe, but superficial; occupied certainly, but that occupation is not going to help in inward growth. But a one-to-one relationship, a sustained relationship so that you can understand each other more closely, is tremendously beneficial.
If you are having many relationships you will not be able to dive deep into the psyche of the woman. And that is the only thing that is needed: to know your own inner feminine part. Relationship becomes a mirror. The woman starts looking into you and starts finding her own masculine part; the man looks into the woman and starts discovering his own femininity. And the more you become aware of your feminine — the other pole — the more whole you can be, the more integrated you can be. When your inner man and your inner woman have disappeared into each other, have become dissolved into each other, when they are no longer separate, when they have become one integrated whole, you have become an individual.
Relationship is needed only because you can’t be alone, because you are not yet capable of meditation. Hence, meditation is a MUST before you can really love. One should be capable of being alone, utterly alone, and yet tremendously blissful. Then you can love. Then your love is no more a need but a sharing, no more a necessity. You will not become dependent on the people you love. You will share — and sharing is beautiful.
Relationship is a thing: you cling to it. Relating is a flow, a movement, a process. You meet a person, you are loving, because you have so much love to give — and the more you give, the more you have. Once you have understood this strange arithmetic of love: that the more you give, the more you have…. This is just against the economic laws that operate in the outside world. Once you have known that, if you want to have more love and more joy, you give and share, then you simply share. And whosoever allows you to share your joy with him or with her, you feel grateful to him or her. But it is not a relationship; it is a riverlike flow.
No relationship can satisfy, because every relationship begins with great hope, and that is not possible to be fulfilled. Yes, that hope can be fulfilled, but it can be fulfilled only when you have fallen in love with the whole. No part can fulfill it. When you have fallen in love with the total, when the merger happens with the total, only then will there be contentment. There will be nobody who is contented, there will be simply contentment. And then there is no end to it.
To be in relationship and become dependent is the sign of weakness. And to escape to the Himalayas or to some Catholic monastery because of the fear of becoming dependent is again the sign of weakness; it is cowardly. To live in relationship and yet remain independent, that is what courage is. The new man will be courageous.
That’s what happens in every relationship. Rather than giving you contentment, it gives you a tremendous discontentment. Each relationship fails in this world — and it is good that it fails; it would have been a curse if it was not so. It is a blessing that it fails. Because each relationship fails, that’s why you start searching for the ultimate relationship with God, with existence, with the cosmos. You see the futility again and again, that it is not going to be satisfied by any man, by any woman; that each experience ends in tremendous frustration, begins in great hope and leaves you in great hopelessness. It is always so, it comes with great romance and ends in a bitter taste. When it happens again and again, one has to learn something — that each relationship is only an experimentation to prepare you for the ultimate relationship, for the ultimate love affair.
If you move into a relationship when you are feeling lonely, then you will exploit the other. The other will become a means to satisfy you. You will use the other, and everybody resents being used because no man is here to become a means for anybody else.
Whenever you move in any relationship out of loneliness, the relationship is already on the rocks. Even before it has started, it is already on the rocks. Even before the birth, the child is dead. It is going to create more misery for you. And remember, when you move from your loneliness you will fall in relationship with somebody who is in the same plight, because no man who is really living his aloneness will be attracted towards you. You will be too below him. He can, at the most, sympathize, but cannot love you. One who is on his peak of aloneness can only be attracted towards somebody who is also alone. So whenever you move out of loneliness, you will find a man of the same type; you will find your own reflection somewhere. Two beggars will meet, two miserable people will meet. And remember, when two miserable people meet, it is not an ordinary addition, it is a multiplication. They create much more misery for each other than they could have created in their loneliness.
Out of your unhappiness you seek the other; then the relationship is going to be wrong. Seek the other out of happiness, and then the relationship will never be wrong. Seek out of happiness. First meditate, first feel your own being, first pray. First grow into love; otherwise what are you going to do when you have found the lover? Then you don’t know what to do.
Whenever you are sexually related you are afraid, because sex is really not a relationship, it is an exploitation. If you are attached to a woman or man sexually, you are always afraid that this woman may go to somebody else, this man may move to somebody else. There is no relationship really, it is just mutual exploitation. You are exploiting each other, but you don’t love and you know it, so you are afraid.
Have a sexual relationship only when you have a loving relationship, so love and sex become associated. And love is a greater centre, a higher centre. Once sex is hitched to love, it starts moving upwards. Once you feel that you are loving, then never go to pray in a temple or in a mosque or in a church — that is foolish. Then again do the same as you did in the first place: your first prayer has to happen with your beloved or with your lover. Either before you make love, let there be prayer; or, after you have made love, let there be prayer; or — and the third is the best — while you are making love, let there be prayer.
Walk in the marketplace like a Buddha. Live in the world… the world is very enriching, because relationship mirrors. All relationships are mirrorlike. You see your face in the mirror of the other’s being. It is very difficult to see your own face directly — you will need the other, the mirror, to see your own face. And where can you find a better mirror than the eyes of the other?
Relationship is a mirror. Wherever you are related with a person — a wife, a husband, a friend, a lover, an enemy — a mirror is there. The wife mirrors the husband. You can see yourself there, and if you see an ugly husband, don’t try to leave your wife — the ugliness is in you. Drop that ugliness! This mirror is beautiful, and be thankful to this mirror. But stupid and cowardly people always escape and renounce; brave and wise people always live in relationship, and use it as a mirror. Living with someone is a constant mirroring around you. Every moment the other reveals you, exposes you. The closer the relationship, the clearer is the mirror: the more distant the relationship, the mirror is not so clear.