COMPASSION IS THERAPEUTIC. COULD YOU COMMENT ON THE WORD COMPASSION, COMPASSION FOR ONESELF AND COMPASSION FOR THE OTHER ?
Yes, you have to understand that to be compassionate one has to have compassion for oneself in the first place. If you don't love yourself you will never be able to love anybody else. If you are not kind to yourself you cannot be kind to anybody else. Your so-called saints who are so very hard on themselves are just pretenders that they are kind to others. It is not possible. Psychologically it is impossible. If you cannot be kind to yourself, how can you be kind to others?
Whatsoever you are with yourself you are with others. Let that be a basic dictum. If you hate yourself you will hate others — and you have been taught to hate yourself. Nobody has ever said to you, "Love yourself!" The very idea seems absurd — loving oneself? The very idea makes no sense — loving oneself? We always think that to love one needs somebody else. But if you don't learn it with yourself you will not be able to practise it with others.
You have been told, constantly conditioned, that you are not of any worth. From every direction you have been shown, you have been told, that you are unworthy, that you are not what you should be, that you are not accepted as you are. There are many shoulds hanging over your head — and those shoulds are almost impossible to fulfill. And when you cannot fulfill them, when you fall short, you feel condemned. A deep hatred arises in you about yourself.
How can you love others? Where are you going to find love? So you only pretend, you only show that you are in love. Deep down you are not in love with anybody — you cannot be. Those pretensions are good for a few days, then the color disappears, then reality asserts itself.
Every love-affair is on the rocks. Sooner or later, every love-affair becomes very poisoned. And how does it become so poisoned? Both pretend that they are loving, both go on saying that they love. The father says he loves the child; the child says he loves the father.
The mother says she loves her daughter, and the daughter goes on saying the same thing. Brothers say they love each other. The whole world talks about love, sings about love — and can you find any other place so loveless? Not an iota of love exists — and mountains of talk! Himalayas of poetry about love.
It seems all these poetries are just compensations. Because we cannot love, we have somehow to believe through poetry, singing, that we love. What we miss in life we put in poetry. What we go on missing in life, we put in the film, in the novel. Love is absolutely absent, because the first step has not been taken yet.
The first step is: accept yourself as you are; drop all shoulds. Don't carry any ought on your heart! You are not to be somebody else; you are not expected to do something which doesn't belong to you — you are just to be yourself. Relax! and just be yourself. Be respectful to your individuality. and have the courage to sign your own signature. Don't go on copying others signatures.
You are not expected to become a Jesus or a Buddha or a Ramakrishna — you are simply expected to become yourself. It was good that Ramakrishna never tried to become somebody else, so he became Ramakrishna. It was good that Jesus never tried to become like Abraham or Moses, so he became Jesus. It is good that Buddha never tried to become a Patanjali or Krishna — that's why he became a Buddha.
When you are not trying to become anybody else, then you simply relax — then a grace arises. Then you are full of grandeur, splendor, harmony — because then there is no conflict! nowhere to go, nothing to fight for; nothing to force, enforce upon yourself violently. You become innocent.
In that innocence you will feel compassion and love for yourself. You will feel so happy with yourself that even if God comes and knocks at your door and says, "Would you like to become somebody else?" you will say, "Have you gone mad?! I am perfect! Thank-you, but never try anything like that — I am perfect as I am."
The moment you can say to God, "I am perfect as I am, I am happy as I am, "this is what in the East we call shraddha — trust; then you have accepted yourself and in accepting yourself you have accepted your creator. Denying yourself you deny your creator.
If you go and see a painting of Picasso's and you say, "This is wrong and that is wrong, and this color should have been this way," you are denying Picasso. The moment you say, "I should be like this," you are trying to improve upon God. You are saying, "You committed blunders — I should have been like this, and you have made me like this?" You are trying to improve upon God. It is not possible. Your struggle is in vain — you are doomed to failure.
And the more you fail, the more you hate. The more you fail, the more you feel condemned. The more you fail, the more you feel yourself impotent. And out of this hatred, impotency, how can compassion arise? Compassion arises when you are perfectly grounded in your being. You say, "Yes, this is the way I am." You have no ideals to fulfill. And immediately fulfillment starts happening!
The roses bloom so beautifully because they are not trying to become lotuses. And the lotuses bloom so beautifully because they have not heard the legends about other flowers. Everything in nature goes so beautifully in accord, because nobody is trying to compete with anybody, nobody is trying to become anybody else. Everything is the way it is.
Just see the point! Just be yourself and remember you cannot be anything else, whatsoever you do. All effort is futile. You have to be just yourself.
There are only two ways. One is: rejecting, you can remain the same; condemning. you can remain the same; or: accepting, surrendering, enjoying, delighting, you can be the same. Your attitude can be different, but you are going to remain the way you are, the person you are. Once you accept, compassion arises. And then you start accepting others!
Have you watched it? — it is very difficult to live with a saint, very difficult. You can live with a sinner; you cannot live with a saint — because a saint will be condemning you continuously: by his gesture, by his eyes, the way he will look at you, the way he will talk at you. A saint never talks with you — he talks at you. He never just looks at you; he has always some ideals in his eyes, clouding.
He never sees you. He has something far away and he goes on comparing you with it — and, of course, you always fall short. His very look makes you a sinner. It is very difficult to live with a saint — because he does not accept himself, how can he accept you? He has many things in him. jarring notes he feels. he has to go beyond. Of course, he sees the same things in you in a magnified way.
But to me only that person is a saint who has accepted himself, and in his acceptance has accepted the whole world. To me, that state of mind is what sainthood is: the state of total acceptance. And that is healing, therapeutic. Mm? — just being with somebody who accepts you totally is therapeutic. You will be healed.
As life is…. I divide it in three parts: breakfast, Lunch, supper. The childhood is the breakfast-time. And as it happens if you have not been given your breakfast today, you will feel very, very hungry, out of all proportion, at lunchtime. And if you have missed lunch also, then of course at supper you will be almost mad. Love is food — that's why I divide life in three: breakfast, lunch, supper.
Love is food: food for the soul. When a child sucks at his mother's breast for the first time, he is sucking two things, not only milk — milk is going into his body and love is going into his soul. Love is invisible, just as soul is invisible; milk is visible just as body is visible. If you have eyes to see, you can see two things together dripping into the child's being from the mother's breast. Milk is just the visible part of love; love is the invisible part of milk — the warmth, the love, the compassion, the blessing.
If the child has missed at his breakfast, then when he is young he will be too needy for love — and that creates trouble. Then he will be too impatient for love — that creates trouble. Then he will be in such a hurry for love — that creates trouble. Because love grows very slowly, it needs patience. And the more you are in a hurry, the more is the possibility that you will miss.
Have you watched it in yourself and in others? The people who are too much in need of love always suffer, because they always feel that nobody is going to fulfill them. In fact, nobody is going to be their mother again. In a mother-child relationship, nothing was expected from the child. What can a child do? — helpless. He cannot return anything. At the most he can smile — that's all — or follow with his eyes where the mother is going — that s all. Small, beautiful gestures — but nothing else can he do. The mother has to give, the child has to receive.
If at breakfast-time you have missed this, then you will be looking for a woman who can be your mother. Now, a woman is looking for a lover, not for a son — trouble is bound to be there. Unless by chance, by accident, you can find some woman who is looking for a son — then things will settle; then two illnesses will fit together.
It always happens: a pessimist always finds an optimist to fit; a sadist always finds a masochist to fit; a dominating person always finds one who is in need of being dominated, then they fit. You cannot find two masochists living together, never. I have watched thousands of couples: up to now I have not been able to come to a single couple in which both the partners are sadists or both the partners are masochists. It is impossible to live together — they have to fit. Only opposites fit, and people always fall in love with the opposite.
If you can meet a woman who is in search of a son… that too is ugly, that too is ill, because a woman naturally should be seeking a lover, not a child. And this is the problem, and the problem becomes more complicated: even if she is looking for a son, she is unaware of it; and even if you are looking for a mother, you are unaware of it. In fact, if a woman tries to mother you, you will feel hurt. You will say, "What are you doing? Am I a child?" And you are looking for a mother. Thousands, millions of people are looking for a mother.
That's why man seems so much interested in women's breasts — otherwise there is no need to be so much interested in women's breasts. The interest simply shows that in your childhood, at your breakfast-time, you have missed something. It continues, it hovers on your mind, it haunts you. Breasts are for breakfast time. Now why do you go on thinking and painting — mm?…
Just a few days before, a painter was here and he brought a few of his paintings; just breasts and breasts. He became a sannyasin so I said to him, "Now at least you start to grow a little. This is childish!" And he has won many prizes; he is a world famous painter. His paintings have been exhibited all over the world: in New York, in London, in Paris. in Berlin, and everywhere. And he has been appreciated very much. Of course, must have been appreciated by other children! There is no point in it.
So I told him, "Do something else — breakfast time is over! You are old enough to do something else."
He said, "I will try."
Now he sends a painting in which I am sitting in the middle — and breasts and breasts all around. So not I am also part! He has tried his best, but difficult to get out of it.
Watch deep down, because it is nothing of your responsibility, it is nothing to do with you — you cannot change your mother now. It happened as it happened — but you can become conscious. You can become conscious of all these things inside. And by becoming conscious a miracle happens. If you become conscious of these things, they start dropping. They can cling to you only in deep unconsciousness. A profound consciousness begins to be a transforming force.
So just become conscious! If you have some childish attitudes towards love, become conscious, find out, search deep. And just by becoming conscious, they drop. So nothing else is needed. Not that first you have to become conscious and then you have to ask "What to do now?" The moment you become conscious they disappear — because by becoming conscious you are becoming adult.
A child is not conscious. A child lives in a deep unconsciousness. By becoming conscious you are becoming adult, mature, so all that was clinging in your unconsciousness will disappear. Just as you bring light in a room and the darkness disappears; bring consciousness deep in your heart.
Then there are people who miss their lunch also. Then in their old age they become what you call 'dirty old people'. hen in their old age they continuously think of sex and nothing else. They may not talk about sex in a direct way — they may start talking against sex — but they will talk about sex. Their being against makes no difference.
You go and listen to the so-called saints in India, and you will always find them continuously talking against sex and praising brahmacharya. These people have even missed their lunch. Now suppertime has come — and they are mad. Now they know that death is coming any moment. And when death is approaching near, and time is disappearing from their hands, if they become neurotic it seems natural.
These neurotic people have stories in the old scriptures that when they meditate, apsaras — beautiful women from heaven — descend. Naked they dance around them. Why should they do such a thing? Who is bothered about an old man sitting in the Himalayas meditating — who is bothered? dead almost — who is bothered? Those apsaras from heaven, they can find better people.
In fact, so many people are chasing apsaras, how can they find time to chase rishis, these so-called saints? No, it has nothing to do with apsaras or with heaven or anything. It is just that these people have missed breakfast and lunch both. And by suppertime their imagination is playing tremendous games with them. It is their imagination, starved imagination.
You do one thing: you just go on a fast for three weeks, and then everywhere you will start seeing food — everywhere! Even you may see a full moon rushing into the sky and you will say it looks like bread, a chapati. That's how it will happen. You will start projecting, your imagination will be playing games with you.
If this happens, then compassion never arises. Move slowly, alert, watching, be loving. If you are sexual I don't say drop sex: I say make it more alert, make it more prayerful, make it more profound, so that it can become love. If you are loving, then make it even more grateful; bring deeper gratitude, joy, celebration, prayer to it, meditation to it, so that it can become compassion.
Unless compassion has happened to you, don't think that you have lived rightly or that you have lived at all. Compassion is the flowering. And when compassion happens to one person, millions are healed. Whosoever comes around him is healed. Compassion is therapeutic.
OSHO