Love, Freedom, and Aloneness: On Relationships, Sex, Meditation, and Silence

Children are immense mysteries. The moment you start building them up, the moment you start creating patterns and characters around them, you are imprisoning them. They will never be able to forgive you. But this is the only way they will learn, and they will do the same thing to their children, and so on. Each generation goes on giving its neurosi

Almost ninety-nine percent of people in the monasteries are doing that, just reconditioning their minds and bodies. But consciousness has nothing to do with it. Consciousness is not a new habit; consciousness is to live a life with awareness, not confined to any habit, not possessed by any mechanism—above the mechanism.

agree totally with Dr. Thomas Gordon, who says, “I think all parents are potential child-abusers, because the basic way of raising children is through power and authority. I think it is destructive when many parents have the idea: ‘It is my kid, I can do what I want to do with my kid.’ It is violent, it is destructive.” A child is not a thing, it i

Why hasn’t the whole of humanity chosen to reach the same state of bliss as Buddha, the same state of love as Christ, the same state of celebration as Krishna? Why?—for the simple reason that it is dangerous even to aspire to those heights. It is better not to think about it, and the best way not to think about it is to accept that there is no free

That’s the problem that lovers go on trying to solve, and cannot solve. What they are saying again and again is this: “I am such a beautiful person, but you make me look so ugly.” Nobody is making you look ugly—you are ugly. Sorry, but that’s how it is. Be thankful to the other, be grateful to the other, because he helps you to see your face. Don’t

The unknown was the attraction, the unfamiliar was the attraction. Now both know each other well. They have made love to each other many times and now it has become almost a repetition—at the most it is a habit, a relaxation, but the romance is gone. Then they feel bored. The man becomes a habit, the woman becomes a habit. They cannot live without

Gautama Buddha emphasized one single word continually for forty-two years, morning and evening; the word is sammasati—it means “right remembering.” You remember many things—you can become an Encyclopedia Britannica; your mind is capable of remembering all the libraries of the world—but that is not the right remembering. There is only one right reme

Love is the undercurrent of your being. It is already flowing, but there are many rocks, many layers of earth to be removed. That’s what I mean when I say learn the art of love. It is really not learning love but unlearning the ways of unlove.

Nobody is tempting you. It is simply nature, not the devil. And nature is not against you, it is all for you.