Love is where it's at. I'm not speaking of sexual love. I'm talking about where you love each other, want to do the best for each other and just just are happy you found each other.
Tell us again, for we forget, that work done without love is stillborn, mindless, and lost in the very hour of its deliverance.
If with love thy heart has burned; If thy love is unreturned; Hide thy grief within thy breast, Though it tear thee unexpressed.
Beauty brings its own fancy price, for all that a man hath will he give for his love.
The religious man, the mystic, tries to explore the mystery of death. In exploring the mystery of death, he inevitably comes to know what life is, what love is. Those are not his goals. His goal is to penetrate death, because there seems to be nothing more mysterious than death. Love has some mystery because of death, and life also has some mystery because of death.
We have forced everyone to go into marriage because of love. Because you cannot love outside it, so we have unnecessarily forced love and marriage to be together - unnecessarily. Marriage is for deeper things - even more deep: for intimacy, for a "co-inherence," to work on something which cannot be done alone, which can be done together, which needs a togetherness, a deep togetherness. Because of this love-starved society, we fall into marriage out of romantic love.
Love is ultimate, the highest health, because love makes one whole. When you love a master by and by you completely forgot about love.
So let it be a criterion if you follow the path of awareness, let love be the criterion. When your awareness suddenly blooms into love, know perfectly well that awareness has happened, SAMADHI has been achieved. If you follow the path of love, then let awareness function as a criterion, as a touchstone. When suddenly, from nowhere, at the very center of your love. a flame of awareness starts arising, know perfectly well... rejoice! You have come home.
Have you watched it? A man who is too greedy about money, by and by starts having the qualities of money. He becomes just money. He loses spirituality, he is no more a spirit. He is reduced to a thing. If you love money, you will become like money. If you love your house, by and by you will become material. Whatsoever you love, you become. Love is alchemical. Never love the wrong thing, because it will transform you. Nothing is so transforming as love. Love something which can raise you higher, to higher altitudes. Love something beyond you.
Love is the fire in which everything is reduced to ashes. Only God will be saved. Only God cannot burn.
Love is a wine; you have to taste it, you have to drink it, you have to become drunk with it, only then do you know what it is.
Love is not a higher quality than truth.
Love is an infinite sky!
Marriage is a formality, a legal bondage. Love is of the heart; marriage is of the mind. That's why I am never in favor of marriage.
Relationship may be just out of fear, may not have anything to do with love. Relationship may be just a kind of security - financial or something else. The relationship is needed only because love is not there. Relationship is a substitute.
So the first thing to be reminded of: love is never a relationship. Then something else is masquerading as love. Maybe you are searching for a husband or a wife - you are searching for some security, you are searching for some structure. A structured life is a murdered life.
Relationship and love are totally different things. Love is never a relationship, and relationship is never love. Love relates, but it is not a relationship. Relationship is a dead thing, a closed thing. Love is a flowing.
Love, and love as deeply as possible. And if love itself becomes the marriage, that is another thing, altogether different. If love itself becomes such an intimacy that it is unbreakable, that is another thing, that is not a legal sanction. Legal sanctions are needed only because you are afraid. You know that your love is not enough; you need the legal support for it. You know perfectly well that you can escape or the woman can escape, hence you need the policeman to keep you together. But this is ugly, to need a policeman to keep you together. That's what marriage is!
Real love makes you more of an individual. It does not efface your individuality, it gives you individuality. Real love is very respectful.
Love is not manageable, it is simply something that happens, and the moment you try to manage it everything misfire.
Be very cautious about your object of love because that is going to decide your destiny
I am not saying renounce sex, I am saying transform it. It need not remain just biological: bring some spirituality to it. While making love, meditate too. While making love, be prayerful. Love should not be just a physical act; pour your soul into it.
A split personality can never become non-greedy. It can try, but it can never become. A split personality can never go beyond anger. It can try, but it can never go beyond. A split personality can never go beyond sex. It can fight. So many monks in the monasteries are doing it. They don't go beyond sex; at the most their sexuality becomes perverted, their love becomes poisoned.
The whole existence is surrounded by a divine energy that protects you, cares for you, is always available. If you go on missing it, it is only because of you. If you keep your doors closed, the sun may be outside but you will live in darkness. Even if the doors are open and the sun is there, you can keep your eyes closed and you will still live in darkness. So is the case with god: his love is always there but our hearts are not open, our hearts are closed.
Love is the opposite of [lust]: respecting the other as an end unto himself or herself. When you love someone as an end unto himself, then there is no feeling of hurt; you become enriched through it. Love makes everybody rich.