If your love stinks, then try to find out what exactly it is that stinks. It is not love, it is something else. Love itself has a fragrance; it can’t stink, it is a lotus flower. Something else must be in it — jealousy, possessiveness.
If it is jealousy, then I would only suggest one thing: be more watchful of your jealousy. When it arises next time, rather than becoming mad, close your doors, sit silently, sit in meditation, watch your jealousy. See exactly what it is. It will surround you like smoke, dirty smoke. It will suffocate you. You would like to go out and do something. But don’t do anything; just be in a state of non-doing, because anything done in a moment of jealousy is going to be destructive. Just watch. And I am not saying repress it, because that is again doing something.
Whenever it possesses you, meditate over it. Slowly slowly, the meditation will create the distance between you and the jealousy. And the greater the distance, the less jealousy will arise. And one day, when there is no jealousy, your love releases such a fragrance that no flower can compete with it. All flowers are poor compared to the flowering of love. But your love is crippled because of jealousy and possessiveness and anger.
Once man becomes aware of this phenomenon, that love is inexhaustible, that there is no scarcity, jealousy will disappear. Jealousy is part of the economy of scarcity.
The whole life is celebrating, millions of happinesses happening all over the universe, but if you have an attitude of jealousy, you will be miserable, you will be in a constant hell. And you will be in a hell precisely because all over there is heaven. You will create a hell for you – a private hell — because whole existence is celebrating.
Zarathustra is immensely in love with life and all that life provides. He is the only mystic with immense affirmation of life. There is no place for renouncing anything — life is a gift of existence. Learn to enjoy it! Relish in it! Dance with the trees, and dance with the stars. Love without jealousy. Live without competition. Accept everybody without judgment. And then there is no need for any God. And there is no need for any paradise.
People come to me and they say they would like to be happy, but they cannot drop their jealousy. If you can’t drop your jealousy, love will never grow — the weeds of jealousy will destroy the rose of love. And when love does not grow, you will not be happy. Because who can be happy without love growing? Unless that rose blooms in you, unless that fragrance is released, you cannot be happy.
We bring our children from the very beginning with it — jealousy, envy. We make them fight, struggle. Our whole idea of life is based on survival of the fittest, and the fittest means the strongest, the most cunning. So whatsoever the means, nobody cares about the means. You have to achieve some end, you have to prove your mettle. You have to show to the world that you are not an ordinary person.
Remember the real problem is not anger. The real problem is unawareness. So next time be more aware. Whether it is anger, hatred, jealousy, possessiveness, a thousand and one things are there… but the real disease is one — unawareness. These are all facets of the same thing. So if you try to change that — these problems — you will never be able to cope, because they are millions.
These problems — jealousy, possessiveness — are not really problems but symptoms, symptoms that you don’t yet know what love is. We take it for granted that we know what love is, and then the problem of jealousy arises. That is not right. The problem is arising because love is not yet there; it simply shows that love has not yet arrived, it simply shows the absence of love. So you cannot solve it.
My approach is: don’t be bothered about jealousy, otherwise you will be getting into such a trap that you will never be able to get out of. Forget about it! It is symptomatic, it is simply indicative. It is good that it indicates something; it is a signal that love has not yet happened. It is good! Learn something from it, take note of it and start moving into love. Enjoy love more and there will be less jealousy. Delight in love more and there will be still less jealousy. Let your love become a totality, a madness. Let it have an intensity, and in that intensity jealousy will be burned out. A real lover has never known what jealousy is.
Put more energy into love. Rather than putting energy into analysing jealousy and fighting with it, put more energy into love. Otherwise you will be distracted: you will start following jealousy, and that is a desert. You will never come to its end.
Competition and jealousy is the root cause of all misery. There is no good competition — all competition is bad.
When you become aware, you suddenly become aware that love cannot exist with jealousy — it is not possible. When love is there jealousy cannot exist. If jealousy exists then love cannot exist — they never go together. But whatsoever is called love is ninety-nine percent jealousy, possessiveness… more of an effort to dominate or sometimes even to be dominated — an effort to be dominated — but that’s not much difference. That too is a subtle trick of the same game. When love is there, there is no question of domination. Then it is not politics, and one is not ambitious.
So become very alert. Your alertness will destroy many things in you. All that is destructive will be destroyed: jealousy, possessiveness, anger — they will be destroyed. And when all these negative qualities are no more there, something blooms in you that you are not yet alert about… a totally new flower.
Remember, jealousy can be dropped. In fact why people don’t drop it is a miracle because they don’t get anything out of it except misery! Unless people are masochists there seems to be no reason why they continue with jealousy.
Drop the jealousy rather than dropping love. The fear comes because of jealousy. The fear comes because of the ego — the other may reject you: then drop the ego! Rather than throwing the bathwater, you are keeping the bathwater and throwing the baby! Drop ego, drop jealousy, and take the risk. Life is a risk — that’s why it is so beautiful, of value, because it is a risk. It is an adventure. Good!
