Understanding Emotions*

But I tell you that love is not focused on the outside: even if there is no one on the outside love can still happen within you. Love is intrinsic, friendliness is intrinsic. Hostility needs the other, it is related to the other. Hatred is triggered by the outside, love wells up inside. The spring of love flows from within, the reaction of hatred is provoked from without. Impure emotions are created on the outside, pure emotions flow from within.

Try to understand this difference between impure emotions and pure emotions. The emotions that are triggered by the outside are not pure; so your love, the passion that you call love, is not pure because it is triggered by the outside. Only the love that flows from within, that is not triggered by the outside, is pure. That’s why in the East we say there is a difference between love and passion: we separate passion from love.

Passion is triggered by the outside. Buddha or Mahavira have no passion in their hearts, they have love.

Jesus was passing through a town. It was noon and he was very tired. The sun was very hot so he stopped to rest in a garden under a tree. The house and garden belonged to a prostitute. She saw Jesus resting under the tree in her garden. No one like this had ever stopped to rest in her garden; she had never seen anyone like this before. She had seen many beautiful people, she had seen many powerful people, but this beauty was different, this wholeness was something not of this world. She was so pulled by her attraction to him that before she realized it she had already reached the tree.

When she went close to Jesus and began to look at him, his eyes opened and he got up to leave. He thanked her saying, “Thank you for the shade that your tree has given me. Now I’m going, I have a long way to go.”

But the prostitute said, “If you don’t come inside my house for a little while, I will feel offended. Please stay for a while. This is the first time that I am inviting someone into my house. People come to my door and I send them away. This is the first time in my life that I am inviting someone in.”

Jesus said, “Once you have invited me into your heart, I have already become your guest. But I have a long way to go so please allow me to leave. I have already received your hospitality.”

But the prostitute said, “This hurts me. Won’t you even show enough love to enter my house?”

Jesus told her, “Remember, I’m the only person who can love you. All the other men who come to your door don’t love you. I am the only person who can love you. The others who come to your door don’t love you because they don’t have love. They have come because of you. With me, my love is within me.”

Love is like the light of a lamp: if no one were here the light would still continue to fall on emptiness, and if someone were to pass it would fall on them. But passion and desire are not like light: when they are triggered by someone, these energies move towards them. That’s why passion is a tension. Love is not a tension. There is no tension in love, love is a state of absolute calmness.

Impure emotions are those which are influenced by the outside. The winds from the outside give rise to impure emotions within you. And pure emotions are those which come from within you; the winds from outside don’t influence them. We don’t think of Mahavira or Buddha in this way, that they loved – but I tell you that they were the only people who loved. But there is a difference between their love and yours. Your love is in relation to someone; their love is not a relationship, it is a state of being. It is not a relationship – their love is not in relation to someone else, it is their state of being. They are compelled to love because they have no other choice.

It is said about Mahavira that people insulted him, they threw stones at him, they put nails into his ear and he forgave everything. I say that this is not true: Mahavira didn’t forgive anyone because only people who get angry can forgive. And Mahavira did not have pity on them because only those who are cruel can have pity. And Mahavira didn’t think that he shouldn’t behave badly with these people because only people who behave badly think like that.

So what did Mahavira do? Mahavira was helpless, he had nothing to give except love. No matter what was done to him his only answer would be love. If you throw a stone at a tree full of fruit you will get only fruit as an answer, there is no other way. The tree is not doing anything, this is its helplessness. And if you drop any kind of bucket into a river full of water, whether the bucket is dirty or clean, made of gold or iron, the river has no choice but to give you water. There is nothing great about the river, it is helpless to do otherwise. So when love is a state of being it is a kind of choicelessness – one has to give, there is no other way.

So the emotions which come from within, which don’t pull you from outside, which cannot be pulled from the outside, are pure emotions. And the waves of emotion that the storms outside create within you are impure emotions. Emotions created by the outside will cause restlessness and worry inside you, and the ones that arise from within you will fill you with bliss.

So remember this first thing about pure and impure emotion: pure emotion is a state of being, impure emotion is a distortion of being, not a state. Impure emotion is the result of outside influence on being, pure emotion is an inner expansion of being. So think about this: do the emotions that move you come from within you, or do other people create them in you?

I am walking on the street and you insult me: if I get angry this is impure emotion because you have created it in me. I am walking on the street: you show me respect and I am pleased – this is impure emotion because you have created it in me. But if my inner state remains the same as it was before the insult or the praise, whether you swear at me or you praise me, this is pure emotion because you did not create it in me, it is my own. That which is my own is pure. That which is my own is pure and that which comes from the outside is impure. What comes from the outside is a reaction, an echo.

Recently I went to a place where you can hear echoes. If you make a sound there the mountains repeat it. I have said that most people only echo: if you say anything they will repeat it. They don’t have anything of their own to say, they are like echo chambers. If you scream they scream back – it is not theirs, you have created it. And what you gave was not yours, someone else created it in you. You are all echo chambers: you don’t have any sound of your own, any life of your own. You don’t have any feeling of your own. All your emotions are impure because they belong to others, they are borrowed.

So remember this first key: emotion should be your own. It should not be a reaction, it should be the state of your being.

  * - excerpt from OSHO. The Path of Meditation.

Updated on 26-11-2015