In sex, you use the other, you reduce the other to a means, you reduce the other to a thing. That’s why in a sexual relationship you feel guilty. That guilt has nothing to do with religious teachings; that guilt is deeper than religious teachings. In a sexual relationship as such you feel guilty. You feel guilty because you are reducing a human being to a thing, to a commodity to be used and thrown away.
Watch out! Become more and more essential and less and less accidental. Always remember: Only that which is eternal is true; only that which is going to be forever and ever is true. That which is momentary is untrue. The momentary has to be watched and not to be identified with.
Renunciation means: wherever you are, there is no need to renounce the things because in the first place you never possessed them. It is foolish to talk about renunciation. It means as if you were the possessor and now you are renouncing. How can you renounce something which you never possessed? Renunciation means coming to know that you cannot possess anything. You can use, at the most, but you cannot possess.
When ambition enters, creativity disappears — because an ambitious man cannot be creative, because an ambitious man cannot love any activity for its own sake. While he is painting he is looking ahead; he is thinking, ‘When am I going to get a Nobel Prize?’ When he is writing a novel, he is looking ahead. He is always in the future — and a creative person is always in the present.
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.
A creative act enhances the beauty of the world; it gives something to the world, it never takes anything from it. A creative person comes into the world, enhances the beauty of the world — a song here, a painting there. He makes the world dance better, enjoy better, love better, meditate better. When he leaves this world, he leaves a better world behind him. Nobody may know him; somebody may know him — that is not the point. But he leaves the world a better world, tremendously fulfilled because his life has been of some intrinsic value.
Be an individual if you want to be happy. If you want to be happy, then start choosing on your own. There are many times when you will have to be disobedient — be! There are many times when you will have to be rebellious — be! There is no disrespect implied in it. Be respectful to your parents. But remember that your deepest responsibility is towards your own being.
Everybody is dragged and manipulated, so nobody knows what his destiny is. What you really always wanted to do you have forgotten. And how can you be happy? Somebody who could have been a poet is just a moneylender. Somebody who could have been a painter is a doctor. Somebody who could have been a doctor, a beautiful doctor, is a businessman. Everybody is displaced. Everybody is doing something that he never wanted to do — hence unhappiness.
Society wants you to efface your individuality completely; society does not like individuals. It likes you to become a member of the society, not an individual. It does not want you to become independent, it wants you to be a dependent link and it wants you to live the way others are living. The moment you assert your individuality, society comes in and puts you back into your place, it forces you to be just like others.
If jealousy is there, know well there is no love. You are playing a game, you are hiding sex behind love. Love is just a painted word, the reality is sex.
Eating too much is neurotic. Fasting is the opposite neurosis, but still neurotic. Have a balanced diet. Eat as much as is needed by the body; don’t go on stuffing your body.
Remember: life is a rhythm between day and night, summer and winter. It is a continuous rhythm. Never stop anywhere! Be moving! And the bigger the swing, the deeper your experience will be.
Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy. Then suddenly you will come to know: meditation follows you. If you love the work that you are doing, if you love the way you are living, then you are meditative. Then nothing distracts you. When things distract you, that simply shows that you are not really interested in those things.
Walk in the marketplace like a Buddha. Live in the world… the world is very enriching, because relationship mirrors. All relationships are mirror like. 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?
Remember, be alert that knowledge has not to be gathered, that you have to remain like a child — full of wonder, full of awe. Every nook and corner is mysterious, and you don’t know what it is. You cannot figure it out, what this life is. Enchanted you run in this direction and that direction.
