Warmth

 

 

There is no other prayer. If one can be lovingly warm the prayer has happened. To live a cold life is to live without prayer, and many people, millions of people, are living cold lives, frozen, ice cold. That's why there are so many lonely people in the world. They themselves are lonely and they create loneliness for others. And they could easily have been warm, because to remain warm is very natural to life. Life is warmth: death is cold. They have died before dying, they have not lived.

 

Warmth is the language of life. The more you allow warmth to flow from you towards others, the richer the life you have. And love is the secret of remaining warm, so love as deeply as possible and love as many people as possible. And not only people -- love existence as such. It is really very strange to see people passing through the trees without any warmth for them, looking at the stars with dead, cold, ice-cold eyes, talking to people with no warmth in their words and no warmth in their hearts, holding hands, but dead and dull. There is no wonder why they are in such suffering. And it is their decision.

 

The decision has a reason in it: there is a fear in being loving -- you may get involved, you may get caught, you may become committed. And people are afraid of getting involved, people are afraid of getting committed, so they are escaping from all commitments. But to live a life of no commitment is escapist. Then your life will never have any splendour to it; it needs the challenge of commitment, involvement. One needs to be involved in as many things as possible: in art, in poetry, in music, in people, in dance, in as many things as possible. The more you are involved, the more you are, the more being you have.

 

This century has more human beings on the earth than ever before, but less being. More humans and less being. Being has disappeared. Being comes only by being warm, being comes only by getting involved, committed... involved in something higher than you, bigger than you. People want to remain uncommitted, but then they remain cold.

 

Another fear is that if you love, you may be rejected; the other may not respond. The other is also thinking in the same terms: 'Who knows? If I extend my hand in welcome and the other does not respond, then it will be humiliating.' That fear cripples people and people become frozen ice cubes inside themselves -- always holding back, watching if the other will start. The same is the case with the other, so nobody ever starts the dialogue, nobody ever starts being warm. Slowly slowly these habits become settled, they become second nature.

 

There is no need to be afraid. Even if love is rejected, there is no humiliation. The real humiliation is not to give love when you could have. If somebody rejects it, that is his problem; that is not your problem. You had given your warm hand to him but he was so frozen that he became afraid. Feel pity for him, compassion for him, but don't feel any hurt. There is no hurt in it for you. Always remember: if love is rejected that simply shows that the other is afraid of love, and the one who is afraid of love is in a very poor state of health, spiritual health. He has simply said that he is a coward. He has insulted himself, he has not insulted you; there is no need to feel hurt.

 

Only if these two things are dropped -- the fear of rejection and the fear of commitment -- can one be so warm, so glowingly warm, that each moment of life becomes a prayer, a dialogue with god. And remember: all these people are nothing but different forms of god. You need not go to the temple -- god comes to you in so many forms. Just be loving, and slowly slowly you will attain to that eye which will make you capable of seeing god in everybody.

 

-Osho, "Hallelujah!, #13“