Question : I KNOW THAT I AM NOT MY BODY, BUT STILL I WANT TO LOVE AND BE LOVED. IS SPIRITUAL LOVE POSSIBLE IN THIS ROTTEN WORLD?

 Question : I KNOW THAT I AM NOT MY BODY, BUT STILL I WANT TO LOVE AND BE LOVED. IS SPIRITUAL LOVE POSSIBLE IN THIS ROTTEN WORLD?

Answer:

"THIS WORLD is NOT ROTTEN. This world is full of God - or, in Buddha's words: full of nothingness, which is the same. If anything is rotten, it is your mind. And, yes, it is very difficult with a rotten mind to find love.

And never think in terms of spiritual and material love - love is simply love. It is neither material nor spiritual. How can love be material or spiritual? Love is simply love. Love means the joy of sharing your life with somebody. Yes, your body can be shared, your being can be shared - but sharing is love, not what.you share. Sharing is love. So all love is simply love.

But I can see the problem must be coming from your upbringing: I KNOW THAT I AM NOT MY BODY... who told you? You are more your body than your mind. You are more your body than your so-called self. That's what Ikkyu is saying: that self is a false entity, rotten. And the mind is just a phenomenon conditioned by the society. Your body is truer than your mind and than your self; your body belongs to existence.

But you must have been contaminated by the priests that you are not the body. They have created a dichotomy in everybody that "You are the soul, and how can a soul fall so much as to love a body?"

And you will not find ghosts around here - you will find people who live in their bodies, who are their bodies.

That's why you cannot find somebody to love and by loved by - you are in search of a ghost. And I don't think if you really come across a ghost that you will like it. But that's what you are hankering for. You have been told to condemn your body; and if you condemn your body and if you don't like your body, do you think somebody else is going to like it? If even you don't like it, who is going to like it? By liking your body, by loving your body, you create a situation in which somebody else can also love your body. But you create that milieu, that climate.

A man or a woman who hates his own body... and that's how you hate deep down, because from the very beginning you have been told to hate the body - body is something ugly, body is something unspiritual. You have been taught that the body is the enemy. The body is the temple of God. In this body lives that nothingness Buddha talks about; in this body lives that seed of enlightenment I go on talking about. This body contains your greatest joy, this body contains God. Don't condemn it, otherwise it will be impossible.


You say: I KNOW THAT I AM NOT MY BODY, BUT STILL I WANT TO LOVE AND BE LOVED.

That desire is natural! - to love and to be loved. That is part of human consciousness, an intrinsic part of it, built in. The society can contaminate your ideas about the body, but it cannot destroy your desire to be loved and to love. So that desire continues. But now it becomes impossible because that desire can be fulfilled only through the body. So you ARE in a fix.

Either drop the idea of love... which you cannot do, which nobody can do, because we are made of the stuff called love. It is impossible to drop it. Just let me remind you again: a single glimpse of the real man, and you are in love. Even at the ultimate stage, love explodes, love remains; you really become totally loving.

So you cannot drop that. That is your destiny; that has to be fulfilled. But if you condemn your body, it is very difficult. You want to go to the other shore and you condemn the bridge. You want to go to the other shore and you condemn the boat. Now, how are you going to manage it? The bridge can take you to the other shore. The bridge can take you beyond the bridge. The boat can take you beyond the boat, but only the boat can take you.

Love your body. Accept yourself as your body. Receive it with gratitude, it is a gift. Otherwise it will be impossible. And even if somebody falls in love with you - the question is from a woman - if somebody falls in love with you, you will not allow him to love you. If he wants to hold your hand, you will shrink back. You will think, "Here comes a hedonist, a materialist. He wants to hold my hand!

He should only hold my ghost hand, spiritual hand, not my real hand. This is just the rotten body."

And he wants to hug you and you will escape because this is that same rotten lust. You won't allow anybody to approach you.

And, naturally, when a person wants to have communion with you, he would like to hold your hand. It is not that he wants just to hold your hand - it is through the hand that something else is contacted.

It is not necessarily so that it will be contacted, but there is no other way to contact it either. When he holds your hand, he is holding something of you - and there is no way to hold it without holding your hand. If he hugs you, he is hugging your soul; but the body is the visible part of the soul. It is through the body that you communicate.

Even if silence has to be communicated, words have to be used. Words are the body of the silence; silence is the soul. Even I have to use words, Buddha has to use words.

Drop that conditioning. And drop the idea that this world is rotten, because if it is rotten then nothing is going to happen in it. You have already become prejudiced.

Meditate over this anecdote:

Cuthbert married a very refined virgin from an impeccable background, and took her away to Tunis for their honeymoon.

On the first night in their hotel, Cuthbert quickly stripped off all his clothes and jumped into bed and then watched while his wife slowly removed all her garments.

But Cuthbert was rather surprised when she clambered into bed completely naked except for her white gloves.

"Why don't you take your gloves off?" he asked.

"Because mummy said that I might actually have to touch the beastly thing," she replied.

Now, this type of mind is not going to know what love is. This type of mind is closed, absolutely closed. And this type of mind is there in everybody, more or less. Drop this mind.

All is good and all is divine - body is included. The whole body is included. Never make any distinction between body of the lower and the higher - there is nothing lower and nothing higher.

The whole body is one, it is a unity. Accept it, welcome it, and you will start blooming, and you will start radiating love. And that radiating love will attract others towards you.

You must not be attracting; you must have become very very repulsive. The idea that this world is rotten, that "I am not my body," that "I want some spiritual kind of love," are all wrong ideas. They will poison your whole life.

And I know there is a love that goes far beyond the ordinary forms, but that love is not against the ordinary forms - it is based, rooted, in the ordinary forms. The tree goes very high in the sky and starts whispering with the stars, but it remains rooted in the earth. The tree blooms into beautiful flowers, but it remains rooted into the earth, in the dark earth, with a thousand and one roots, invisible.

God is rooted in matter, the spirit is rooted in matter. Never be against matter. Once you create this dichotomy - matter and spirit - you are forever going to remain a schizophrenic.

Bridge yourself. Come together! Become one piece. And out of becoming one piece, peace arises, love flows, life becomes a fragrance."

OSHO
(Take it Easy, Vol 1, chapter 8)