Prem Sushila. It means love virtue... and love is the only virtue. Other virtues are needed only when love is missing. They are substitutes and very poor substitutes at that. Love is the only commandment. If love is missing then the ten commandments are needed, and even those ten cannot fulfill the need because all will be formal, imposed. Only love arises from within. Law is always imposed from the outside, and that which is imposed from the outside cripples, paralyses; it makes you a slave.
That which brings bondage cannot be virtue. Virtue has to bring freedom, virtue has to be freedom. Love brings freedom because it knows no imposition. And it is not that love is against law. It is only against it when law is against love, otherwise not.
And whenever law is against love it is not lawful, it is not just. Law is lawful only when it is in harmony with love. Love is the criterion, even the criterion of law. It is the decisive factor and to me it has the highest value. There is no higher religion than love. And all religions and all paths are nothing but approaches to love in different ways.
So that's why I have given you the name. Let love be your only virtue. Forget everything else! Meditate on love, live through love, live as love and miracles happen. The greatest miracle is that love gives you intensity in life, makes your life aflame and yet deep at the very core you remain cool.
When passion and coolness meet they become compassion. When there is only the heat of passion and there is no coolness within, then it is lust, it is not love. Then it is tiring, exhausting. Yes, it does give a certain occupation to the mind and the body, and a certain release too, but it is a vicious circle. One goes on moving in the same rut again and again; it is repetitive. Lust is repetitive, love is non-repetitive. Love is non-mechanical: it is always new. You don't go on moving in the same rut; it is always surprising.
My teaching is: live as passionately as possible. Live a little hot, and yet deep down in the innermost core remain cool. These are paradoxical but then you have the full expanse of your being: coolness and heat. Then negative and positive meet, yin and yang meet. And whenever there is a meeting of yin and yang, the positive and the negative, the hot and the cool, the dark and the light, the summer and winter, there is great joy. There is rejoicing, celebration.
Celebration comes only out of the meeting of the paradox, the opposites. When the paradox is bridged there is joy. When the paradox is not bridged there is division and misery. So let love be your virtue. Let that be your passion and your meditation, your heat and your coolness. Live intensely and yet silently....
- Osho, "The Open Secret, #2"