The Dance Called Love

Tantra Guru OSHO speaks on what it means to Love in Osho, The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol. 1, Talk #2
I have never said that love is destroyed by marriage. How can marriage destroy love? Yes, it is destroyed in marriage but it is destroyed by you, not by marriage. It is destroyed by the partners. How can marriage destroy love? It is you who destroy it because you don’t know what love is. You simply pretend to know, you simply hope that you know; you dream that you know, but you don’t know what love is. Love has to be learnt; it is the greatest art there is.

If people are dancing and somebody asks you, “Come and dance,” you say, “I don’t know how to.” You don’t just jump up and start dancing and have everybody think that you are a great dancer. You will just prove yourself to be a buffoon. You will not prove yourself to be a dancer. It has to be learnt — the grace of it, the movement of it. You have to train the body for it.

You don’t just go and start painting just because the canvas is available and the brush is there and the color is there. You don’t start painting. You don’t say, “All the requirements are here, so I can paint.” You can paint but you will not be a painter that way.

You meet a woman — the canvas is there. You immediately become a lover; you start painting. And she starts painting on you. Of course you both prove to be foolish — painted fools — and sooner or later you understand what is happening. But you never thought that love is an art. You are not born with the art; it is nothing to do with your birth. You have to learn it. It is the most subtle art.

You are born only with a capacity. Of course, you are born with a body; you can be a dancer because you have the body. You can move your body and you can be a dancer but dancing has to be learnt. Much effort is needed to learn dancing. And dancing is not so difficult because you alone are involved in it.

Love is much more difficult. It is dancing with somebody else. The other is also needed to know what dancing is. To fit with somebody is a great art. To create a harmony between two people...two people mean two different worlds. When two worlds come close, clash is bound to be there if you don’t know how to harmonize. Love is harmony. And happiness, health, harmony, all happen out of love. Learn to love. Don’t be in a hurry for marriage, learn to love. First become a great lover.

And what is the requirement? The requirement is that a great lover is always ready to give love and is not bothered whether it is returned or not. It is always returned; it is in the very nature of things. It is just as if you go to the mountains and you sing a song, and the valleys respond. Have you seen an echo point in the mountains, in the hills? You shout and the valleys shout, or you sing and the valleys sing. Each heart is a valley. If you pour love into it, it will respond.

The first lesson of love is not to ask for love, but just to give. Become a giver.

People are doing just the opposite. Even when they give, they give only with the idea that love should come back. It is a bargain. They don’t share, they don’t share freely. They share with a condition. They go on watching out of the corner of their eye whether it is coming back or not. Very poor people...they don’t know the natural functioning of love. You simply pour, it will come.