Always On The Rocks
Go as deeply as possible in your relationships with women – don’t be worried. Soon you will see that there is a different kind of relationship that can exist only between polar opposites. Then go into a deep relationship with a man, because only by going deep in relationship with a man will you be able to know that all relationships fall short. Even the man/woman relationship falls short; it never brings you the contentment it promises.
And only by your own experience – not by what buddhas say, not by what I say – only by your own experience will you one day be able to go beyond all relationships. Then you can be happy alone. And the person who can be happy alone is really an individual. If your happiness depends on the other, you are a slave; you are not yet free, you are in bondage.
When you are happy alone, when you can live with yourself, there is no intrinsic necessity to be in relationship. That does not mean that you will not relate. But to relate is one thing, and to be in relationship is quite another. Relationship is a kind of bondage, relating is sharing. You will relate with many people, you will share your joy with many people, but you will not depend on anyone in particular and you will not allow anybody else to depend on you. You will not be dependent, and you will not allow anybody to be dependent on you. Then you live out of freedom, out of joy, out of love.
You say: “I am a little bothered about it.” Don’t be bothered about it at all, not even a little. Enjoy it. It is not your fault. You have been brought up by Christians, Jainas, Hindus, Buddhists – it is not your fault. What can you do? You come into a world which is already conditioned, and you come so innocent, so clean, unaware of what is going to happen to you. And your parents start writing on you, and the whole society starts writing things on you. It is not your fault, it is simply symptomatic of an ill society.
We have to transform the society. But the only way to transform it is to transform individuals; there is no other way, there is no shortcut. Enjoy it, it is good – not enough but still good. It will lead you into heterosexual relationship; that is a little better. Even that is not going to satisfy. Then that will lead you into meditativeness, into solitude, into that beauty, that benediction, which happens only when you are alone.
That’s what sannyas is all about: learning how to be alone and yet joyous.
Excerpted From Be Still And Know CH: 1
