OSHO SPEAKS

Friendship is a bond that has been widely cherished and valued. Many quotes and poems have been inspired by the uniqueness of friendship. Osho says “Friendship is something immensely valuable. Love tends to be possessive; friendship is non-possessive love. Friendship is all that is good in love minus that which is not good. Friendship is the very essential core of love. To rise to friendship is really a great spiritual growth.”
Sharing His insight on the essence of friendship, Osho says apart from human beings the whole existence can be befriended. Osho says “And if you can befriend existence, existence will befriend you a thousandfold. It returns to you in the same coin but multiplied. It echoes you. If you throw stones at existence you will be getting back many more stones. If you throw flowers, flowers will be coming back. Life is a mirror, it reflects your face. Be friendly, and all of life will reflect friendliness.”
Bringing out the difference between love and friendship, Osho says friendship is a rare, unique and beautiful phenomenon and it is the ultimate flowering of love. Read more……….


“Friendship is the ultimate flowering of love. Love has something earthly about it because love has something of passion in it. But friendship is pure fragrance; it is unearthly. If love moves in the right direction it becomes friendship. If it does not move in the right direction it becomes enmity. Love is a dilemma. If you love, then only two alternatives are possible: either you will turn into enemies or you will become friends. You cannot remain in between; one has to be either this or that.
Millions of lovers turn into enemies, the majority of lovers turn into enemies, because they don't know how to transform love into friendship. Enmity is easy -- it is falling down, and the fall is always easy. Friendship is rising high, soaring high, climbing high, and the climb is always hard. And friendship requires great transformation in your inner alchemy.
Jealousy has to be dropped, possessiveness has to be dropped; the very idea of dominating the other has to be dropped; clinging has to be dropped. All kinds of dependencies have to be dropped. Friendship demands great sacrifices, but if all these things are dropped love is purified and soon love remains just a fragrance. Then love brings not only friendship, it brings freedom.
Friendship is a spiritual phenomenon. In the world friendship is almost disappearing. There are acquaintances but not friends any more. In fact the modern man cannot understand the idea of friendship at all; it has become so unknown. We read the ancient stories about friendships, great friendships, but we think they are just stories. They cannot happen in fact, because those things are not happening at all in our lives. In our lives love is turning sour, love is turning bitter, love is turning poisonous. We have forgotten how to make nectar out of it.
My effort here is to help you to know how to love and how to purify love. Love contains the greatest treasure there is, but it has to be purified. If you don't purify it, it is dangerous; it will kill you. It kills many people.
If love does not become a flower it becomes a cancer. k is playing with fire, hence many people have decided not to move in the world of love at all. They are satisfied with having a sexual relationship, not a love relationship. They are afraid, and in a way they are right too, because out of one hundred, ninety-nine cases are just proof that love ultimately turns bitter and poisonous. The exception only proves the rule. It should not be so if the art of love is understood rightly; and sannyas is the art of love.
Love is the greatest object of meditation. Love has to be contemplated, meditated on. Love has to be experienced, watched, witnessed, so that we can sort it out, so that we can take the weeds out. Once the weeds are taken out, roses start blooming. Those roses are the roses of friendship.
In one sense you can call them friendship; in another sense they are the roses of prayer, because the person who knows what friendship is, is bound to know how to befriend the whole existence. If you can befriend one person, you know the art. The tacit understanding has happened; you can befriend the whole existence. That's what prayer is: feeling at home with existence.
And remember one fundamental law: whatsoever you are to existence, existence is to you a thousandfold. If you are a friend to existence, existence is a friend to you a thousandfold. If you are an enemy, existence is inimical to you a thousandfold. And because the modern mind has been conditioned to conquer nature and to fight nature and to be victorious over nature -- all rubbish, all nonsense -- we have destroyed nature, we have destroyed humanity. Now something has to be started again from abc, otherwise humanity is doomed.
Sannyas is just an effort to create a new man, to bring a new humanity, to give birth to a new idea of a human being... full of love, friendship, trust, prayer.”


Osho - The Shadow of the Bamboo