Quotes from The Koan of Relationships

Osho Quote on Sadness and How To Relax Into It, Change Its Form, and Look Deeper Into It

“Whenever you feel sad, sit by the side of a tree, by the side of the river, by the side of a rock, and just relax into your sadness without any fear. The more you relax, the more you will become acquainted with the beauties of sadness. Then sadness will start changing its form; it will become a silent joy, uncaused by anybody outside you. That will not be shallow happiness, which can be taken away very easily. And getting deeper into your aloneness, one day you will find not only joy – joy is only midway. Happiness is very superficial, depends on others; joy is in the middles, does not depend on anyone. But going deeper you will come to the state of bliss – that’s what I call enlightenment.”
Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

Beyond the Quote (93/365)

Whenever you are feeling a deep emotion—sit with it. Do not rush to do anything else. Do not turn on the TV; do not turn on a podcast; do not log into your social media accounts; do not pour a glass of wine; do not conduct busywork; do not go shopping; do not experiment with drugs; do not call your ex. Just, sit with it.

Love, Freedom, Aloneness - The Koan of Relationships

By: Osho

From this Book: 23 Quotes

Book Overview: In today’s world, freedom is our basic condition, and until we learn to live with that freedom, and learn to live by ourselves and with ourselves, we are denying ourselves the possibility of finding love and happiness with someone else. Love can only happen through freedom and in conjunction with a deep respect for ourselves and the other. Is it possible to be alone and not lonely? Where are the boundaries that define “lust” versus “love”…and can lust ever grow into love? In Love, Freedom, Aloneness you will find unique, radical, and intelligent perspectives on these and other essential questions. In our post-ideological world, where old moralities are out of date, we have a golden opportunity to redefine and revitalize the very foundations of our lives. We have the chance to start afresh with ourselves, our relationships to others, and to find fulfillment and success for the individual and for society as a whole.

Buy from Amazon! Not on Audible…

Not enough time to read entire books? Check out Blinkist and get the key insights from popular nonfiction books in a fraction of the time. ‘Busy’ isn’t an excuse.

Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

“People should be taught that nobody can love twenty-four hours a day; rest periods are needed. And nobody can love on order. Love is a spontaneous phenomenon. Whenever it happens, it happens, and whenever it doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen. Nothing can be done about it. If you do anything, you will create a pseudo phenomenon, an acting. Real lovers, intelligent lovers, will make each other alert to the phenomenon: ‘When I want to be alone that does not mean that I am rejecting you. In fact, it is because of your love that you have made it possible for me to be alone.’ And if your woman wants to be left alone for one night, for a few days, you will not feel hurt. You will not say that you have been rejected, that your love has not been received and welcomed. You will respect her decision to be alone for a few days. In fact, you will be happy! Your love was so much that she is feeling empty; now she needs rest to become full again. This is intelligence.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“In Latin there is a dictum: agere sequitur esse – to do follows to be; action follows being. It is tremendously beautiful. Don’t try to change your action – try to find out your being, and action will follow. The action is secondary; being is primary. Action is something that you do; being is something that you are. Action comes out of you, but action is just a fragment. Even if all of your actions are collected together they will not be equal to your being because all actions collected together will be your past. What about your future? Your being contains your past, your future, your present; your being contains your eternity. Your actions, even if all collected, will just be of the past. Past is limited, future is unlimited. That which has happened is limited; it can be defined, it has already happened. That which has not happened is unlimited, indefinable. Your being contains eternity, your actions contain only your past.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“Unless you know yourself as eternal beings, part of the whole, you will remain afraid of death. The fear of death is simply because you are not aware of your eternal source of life. Once the eternity of your being is realized, death becomes the greatest lie in existence. Death has never happened, never happens, never will happen, because that which is, remains always – in different forms, on different levels, but there is no discontinuity. Eternity in the past and eternity in the future both belong to you. And the present moment becomes a meeting point of two eternities: one going toward the past, one going toward the future.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“The very idea of bringing up children is nonsense. You can help at the most, you cannot ‘bring them up.’ The very idea of building up children is nonsense – not only nonsense, very harmful, immensely harmful. You cannot build… A child is not a thing, not like a building. A child is like a tree. Yes, you can help. You can prepare soil, you can put in fertilizers, you can water, you can watch whether sun reaches the plant or not – that’s all. But it is not that you are building up the plant, it is coming up on its own. You can help, but you cannot bring it up and you cannot build it up.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

If through sex you fall into harmony, if through love you become relaxed – if love is not just throwing energy because you don’t know what to do with it, if it is not just a relief but a relaxation, if you relax into your woman and your woman relaxes into you – if for a few seconds, for a few moments or a few hours you forget who you are, and you are completely lost in oblivion, you will come out of it purer, more innocent, more virgin. And you will have a different type of being – at ease, centered, rooted.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“I say to you, you are absolutely free, unconditionally free. Don’t avoid the responsibility; avoiding is not going to help. The sooner you accept it the better, because immediately you can start creating yourself. And the moment you create yourself great joy arises, and when you have completed yourself, the way you wanted to, there is immense contentment, just as when a painter finishes his painting, the last touch, and a great contentment arises in his heart. A job well done brings great peace. One feels that one has participated with the whole.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“If you love a person and live the whole life with him or with her, a great intimacy will grow and love will have deeper and deeper revelations to make to you. It is not possible if you go on changing partners very often. It is as if you go on changing a tree from one place to another, then another; then it never grows roots anywhere. To grow roots, a tree needs to remain in one place. Then it goes deeper; then it becomes stronger. Intimacy is good, and to remain in one commitment is beautiful, but the basic necessity is love. If a tree is rooted in a place where there are only rocks and they are killing the tree, then it is better to remove it. Then don’t insist that it should remain in the one place. Remain true to life – remove the tree, because now it is going against life.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“When you say to a woman or a man, ‘I love you,’ you are simply saying, ‘I cannot be deceived by your body, I have seen you. Your body may become old but I have seen you, the bodiless you. I have seen your innermost core, the core that is divine.’ Liking is superficial. Love penetrates and goes to the very core of the person, touches the very soul of the person.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“Many times I say learn the art of love, but what I really mean is: Learn the art of removing all that hinders love. It is a negative process. It is like digging a well: You go on removing many layers of earth, stones, rocks, and then suddenly there is water. The water was always there; it was an undercurrent. Now you have removed all the barriers, the water is available. So is love: Love is the undercurrent of your being. It is already flowing, but there are many rocks, many layers of earth to be removed.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“When you don’t need a person at all, when you are totally sufficient unto yourself, when you can be alone and tremendously happy and ecstatic, then love is possible. But then, too, you cannot be certain whether the other’s love is real or not – you can be certain about only one thing: whether your love is real. How can you be certain about the other? But then there is no need. This continuous anxiety about whether the other’s love is real or not simply shows one thing: that your love is not real. Otherwise, who bothers? Why be worried about it? Enjoy it while it lasts, be together while you can be together! It is a fiction, but you need fiction.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“Unless meditation is achieved, love remains a misery. Once you have learned how to live alone, once you have learned how to enjoy your simple existence, for no reason at all, then there is a possibility of solving the second, more complicated problem of two persons being together. Only two meditators can live in love – and then love will not be a koan. But then it will not be a relationship, either, in the sense that you understand it. It will be simply a state of love, not a state of relationship.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“Remain continuously on a honeymoon. Go on searching and seeking each other, finding new ways of loving each other, finding new ways of being with each other. And each person is such an infinite mystery, inexhaustible, unfathomable, that it is not possible that you can ever say, ‘I have known her,’ or, ‘I have known him.’ At the most you can say, ‘I have tried my best, but the mystery remains a mystery.’ In fact the more you know, the more mysterious the other becomes. Then love is a constant adventure.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“Forget relationships and learn how to relate. Once you are in a relationship you start taking each other for granted – that’s what destroys all love affairs. The woman thinks she knows the man, the man thinks he knows the woman. Nobody knows either! It is impossible to know the other, the other remains a mystery. And to take the other for granted is insulting, disrespectful. To think that you know your wife is very, very ungrateful. How can you know the woman? How can you know the man? They are processes, they are not things. The woman that you knew yesterday is not there today. So much water has gone down the Ganges; she is somebody else, totally different. Relate again, start again, don’t take it for granted. And the man that you slept with last night, look at his face again in the morning. He is no more the same person, so much has changed. So much, incalculably much has changed. That is the difference between a thing and a person. The furniture in the room is the same, but the man and the woman, they are no more the same. Explore again, start again. That’s what I mean by relating.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

Love is a verb.

Picture Quote Text:

“Love is never a relationship; love is relating. It is always a river, flowing, unending. Love knows no full stop; the honeymoon begins but never ends. It is not like a novel that starts at a certain point and ends at a certain point. It is an ongoing phenomenon. Lovers end, love continues – it is a continuum. It is a verb, not a noun.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“First be full of love, then the sharing happens. And then the great surprise… that as you give, you start receiving from unknown sources, from unknown corners, from unknown people, from trees, from rivers, from mountains. From all nooks and corners of existence love starts showering on you. The more you give, the more you get. Life becomes a sheer dance of love.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“Have you ever seen a rose that is not perfect? What more do you want? Every rose in its uniqueness is perfect. Dancing in the wind, in the rain, in the sun… can’t you see the tremendous beauty, the absolute joy? A small ordinary rose radiates the hidden splendor of existence.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“Love is a ladder. It starts with one person, it ends with the totality. Love is the beginning, God is the end. To be afraid of love, to be afraid of the growing pains of love, is to remain enclosed in a dark cell. Modern man is living in a dark cell. It is narcissistic – narcissism is the greatest obsession of the modern mind. And then there are problems, which are meaningless. There are problems that are creative because they lead you to higher awareness. There are problems that lead you nowhere; they simply keep you tethered, they simply keep you in your old mess. Love creates problems. You can avoid those problems by avoiding love – but those are very essential problems! They have to be faced, encountered; they have to be lived and gone through and gone beyond. And to go beyond, the way is through. Love is the only real thing worth doing. All else is secondary. If it helps love, it is good. All else is just a means, love is the end. So whatsover the pain, go into love.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

“In real love there is no relationship, because there are not two persons to be related to. In real love there is only love, a flowering, a fragrance, a melting, a merging. Only in egoistic love are there two persons, the lover and the loved. And whenever there is the lover and the loved, love disappears. Whenever there is love, the lover and the beloved both disappear into love.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships

Quotes from The Koan of Relationships

Osho Quote on Sadness and How To Relax Into It, Change Its Form, and Look Deeper Into It

Beyond the Quote (93/365)

Love, Freedom, Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships [Book]

Love is a verb.

Our BEST Insights… Emailed Weekly.