Osho

Prem Amrito,
WE LIVE according to the past: our lives are rooted in the dead past, we are conditioned by the past. The past is very powerful, that's why you go on living in a certain pattern; even if it stinks, you will go on repeating it. You don't know what else to do; you have become conditioned to it. It is a mechanical phenomenon. And this is not only so with you, Amrito, it is so with almost every human being -- unless he becomes a Buddha.
To become a Buddha means to get rid of the past and to live in the present. The past is immense, very huge, enormous, of millions of lives. You have lived in a certain way. Now, being here, you may have become aware that your love stinks, but that awareness is also not very deep, it is very superficial. If it becomes really deep, if it penetrates to the very core of your being, you will immediately jump out of it.
It is like if your house is on fire you will not ask anybody how to get out of it. You will not consult the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, and you will not wait for some wise man to come and tell you, and you will not consider whether it is appropriate to jump out of the window or not -- you won't bother about anything. Even if you are taking a bath naked you will jump naked out of the window; you won't even bother about clothes. When the house is on fire, your life is at risk; now everything else is secondary.

If your love stinks -- this has become your experience -- then you will come out of it. You will not simply ask a question, you will jump out of it.
But I think that it is just an intellectual idea, because each time you are in love, some misery arises. Each time there is some conflict, some struggle, some fight, some jealousy, some possessiveness. So you have started taking an intellectual standpoint: "My love stinks, so why do I cling to the smell?" Because it is not yet really an existential experience for you.
And it is your own smell. One becomes accustomed to one's own smell. That's why when people are alone they don't experience that smell, they experience it only when they are together with somebody.
When you are in love, then you start showing your real face. Love is a mirror. The other starts functioning a mirror. Every relationship becomes a mirror. Alone, you don't experience your own smell -- you cannot; one becomes immune to it. You have lived with it so long, how can you smell it? It is only with the other that you start feeling that he stinks and he starts feeling that you stink. And the fight starts.... That is the story of all the couples all over the world.

"Where are you going with that goat, Juan?" asked the policeman.
"I'm taking him home to keep as a pet!" replied Juan.
"In the house?"
"Sure thing."
"But what about the smell?"
"So what? He ain't gonna mind the smell!"

Your own smell is not disturbing to you. In fact, if it suddenly disappears you will feel a little jolted, you will feel a little uprooted, you will not feel your natural self; you will feel something has gone wrong.
If you love and there is no jealousy you will start wondering whether you love or not. What kind of love is this? There seems to be no jealousy! You love a man, and if the man goes with another woman once in a while, you don't make much fuss about it. You take it for granted -- it is perfectly good for a change. And if your man is happy, why not let him be happy? You love him. If you really love him you will respect his happiness too. And he is not going forever.
In fact, if once in a while couples are allowed a little freedom, they will not separate; the divorce rate will drop in the world. Divorce exists only because marriage is too tight. Let marriage be a little more relaxed and divorce will disappear. Divorce is only a by-product of marriage. The tighter the marriage system, the more divorce becomes an absolute need. And if divorce is not allowed, then you have double lives: one to show to the society and one to live.
It is because of marriage that prostitution exists in the world. The whole blame goes to the marriage system. If people are a little more loving and less jealous and if they understand human nature, it is simple.
You eat the same food every day; you get fed up with it and once in a while you would like to go to the hotel. And the hotel food may be worse than what you get in your home, but even that is good -- at least that makes your home food look better. And when you come back the next day you feel so relieved that you are back home, and you are so happy to have the same food again!
The more man's mind is understood, the more and more marriage will have to be relaxed. It is perfectly okay to give a few days off in marriage. The woman should be allowed to have her boyfriends and the man should be allowed to have his girlfriends -- at least, just as you have Sunday religion, a Sunday marriage! And you will be surprised that your own wife looks far better. Again a honeymoon starts -- a mini-honeymoon. You again start from ABC.
And being with many women and with many men does not destroy marriage -- no, not at all. It is a very nonsensical idea that has prevailed over humanity: that it is destructive to marriage and family. It is not so -- it is very supportive. It will help the family to be more joyous, less quarrelsome. Otherwise, the woman is constantly spying on the husband and the husband is constantly spying on the woman. And what love can exist between two persons who are constantly at each other's throats?
Yes, your love stinks, as everybody else's love stinks, but you feel it only when you are in relationship. You have not yet felt that it really has something to do with you. Deep down you still feel it must be something wrong with the other. That's how the mind functions: it throws the responsibility on the other. It accepts itself and it is always finding faults in others.

Several people are sitting in the front row of a movie theater. The show has already begun when suddenly there is a terrible smell.
One of the spectators turns to the man sitting beside him and asks, "Did you shit in your trousers?"
The man beside him answers, "Yes, why?"

People accept themselves totally! Whatsoever they are doing is right: "Why? What is wrong in it? They are his own trousers, so who are you to interfere? And freedom is everybody's birthright!"
Amrito, if your love stinks, then try to find out what exactly it is that stinks. It is not love, it is something else. Love itself has a fragrance; it can't stink, it is a lotus flower. Something else must be in it -- jealousy, possessiveness. But you have not mentioned jealousy and possessiveness. You are hiding them. Love never stinks, it cannot; that is not the nature of love. Please try to see exactly what it is that creates the trouble. And I am not saying to repress it. All that is needed is a clarity about it -- what it is.
If it is jealousy, then I would only suggest one thing: be more watchful of your jealousy. When it arises next time, rather than becoming mad, close your doors, sit silently, sit in meditation, watch your jealousy. See exactly what it is. It will surround you like smoke, dirty smoke. It will suffocate you. You would like to go out and do something. But don't do anything; just be in a state of non-doing, because anything done in a moment of jealousy is going to be destructive. Just watch. And I am not saying repress it, because that is again doing something.
People are either expressive or repressive, and both ways are wrong. If you express you become destructive to the other person. Whosoever is your victim suffers, and he is going to take revenge. He may not take revenge consciously, but unconsciously it is going to happen.
Just a few months ago, Krishna Bharti fell in love with a woman. Nothing extraordinary about it, but Deeksha got mad! Deeksha could not accept the idea. For centuries we have been told that if a man loves you or a woman loves you and the man or the woman goes to somebody else, that is a rejection of you.
That is utter nonsense. It is not rejection; in fact, it is just the opposite. If a man loves the woman and he enjoys the woman, he starts fantasizing how it will be with other women. It is really the joy that this woman has given him that triggers his fancy. It is not that he is rejecting this woman; it is really an indication that this woman has been such a nourishment that he would like to see and know how other women are. And if a little rope is given he is not going to go very far, he will come back, because with the other woman it may be novelty, it will be something new, but it can't be that nourishing because there will not be any intimacy. It will have something empty about it. It will be sex without love.
Love needs time to grow, it needs intimacy to grow. It needs a really long time. It is not a seasonal flower that is there within three, four weeks, but then within three, four weeks it is gone too. It is a long long process of intimacy. Slowly slowly, two persons melt and merge into each other; then it becomes nourishing. The other woman or the other man cannot be nourishing. It may be just an adventure, a thrill. But then suddenly the feeling will arise -- it is bound to arise -- that it is good as fun, but it is not nourishing. And the person will be back.
And Krishna Bharti would have been back, but Deeksha went mad. She behaved just like any other woman! But I was waiting... sooner or later she was going to take revenge. Now she is taking revenge. Krishna Bharti fell ill, he was in hospital, and Deeksha had a little freedom. She fell in love with her own handyman! He really proved handy! Now K.B. is in hell.
There is no need to be so worried about it. I have given K.B. a message: "Wait, don't be worried. Just let her take revenge. And it is good that unconscious burden is finished."
If we understand each other a little more, if we understand human nature a little more, there should be no jealousy. But it is a past heritage of centuries.
So, Amrito, I cannot say you can drop it right now. You will have to meditate over it. Whenever it possesses you, meditate over it. Slowly slowly, the meditation will create the distance between you and the jealousy. And the greater the distance, the less jealousy will arise. And one day, when there is no jealousy, your love releases such a fragrance that no flower can compete with it. All flowers are poor compared to the flowering of love.
But your love is crippled because of jealousy and possessiveness and anger.
It is not love that stinks, remember, because I have seen people who think it is love that stinks so they close up, they become closed, they stop loving.

That's what has happened to millions of monks and nuns down the ages: they became closed to love, they dropped the whole idea of love. Rather than dropping jealousy, which would have been a revolution, rather than dropping possessiveness, which would have been something of immense value, they dropped love. That is easy, that is not much; anybody can do that. To be a monk or a nun is very easy, but to love and not to be jealous, to love and not to be possessive, to love and let the other have the whole freedom is really a great achievement. Only then will you feel love and its fragrance.

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