Stop Calling It Love

Questioner: My question is, what is love? Is it the same for, say, a partner, my family, my friends? Is it binary, or is there anything such as love other than the self-love that we have?

Acharya Prashant: Start from where we stand. What is not love? Right? Man looking at woman because she's pretty. Obviously, that's not love. A woman looking at a man because he's handsome. Both engaging with each other after looking at each other's bank account. No. Obviously, that's not love. Ensuring that the parents agree and the caste equation too agrees. Obviously, that's not love.

Or the mother and the kid. The mother saying, "This is my particular kid, so I'll take care of it." Or a dog lover saying, "Oh, my dogs have to be taken care of, and I'll feed chicken to them." Obviously, that's not love.

Have you seen people walking their dogs? Some of those exotic species. They keep a cane with them. One hand, the leash; the other hand, the cane. What's the cane for? To beat up the stray dogs. "This is my dog. This is my baby. I love it so much. I am the mama. The pet mother." That's the love between the mother and the kid. "My baby, I love it so much. And if needed, I'll beat up the other ones."

That's obviously not love.

What's love then? Nothing in particular. Nothing at all.

Be free of this mischievous thing, and then you have natural relationships. If you prefer, call it love.

It's nothing extraordinary, nothing special. Doesn't glow. Doesn't shout. No gloss. No glitter. Something very simple. I like to say: like the wind blows, like the grass grows, love, simple, pure, ordinary. Not the scintillating kind. Not the glamorous kind. Not the special kind.

"My somebody special. The prince of my dreams. The princess of my dreams." Wet dreams. Nothing. Simple. The ego stands surrendered. Now your relationship with everything can be called love. Everything. Now it's not a special object you are loving towards. You are just loving. Just loving, irrespective of the object. Doesn't matter whether my baby or somebody else's baby. Doesn't matter whether a baby at all. It's a particular quality in a relationship. A quality free of self-interest, a quality free of ignorance and exploitation.

It is not peculiar. It is not specific. It is not unidirectional. It's a radiation, general, universal. Like the light of the sun. Doesn't choose. Like a large cloud raining. Doesn't choose. Won't say, "Ah, this special droplet is only for my wife, because the wife will get angry and jealous and envious and beat me up if I offer it to the neighbor's wife."

Do you get this?

You have romanticized love. You have turned it into something very sensational, and therefore very vulgar.

The wind kisses the leaf. That's love. Nobody says a special event just occurred, because there is nothing special in it. Nobody wants to celebrate an anniversary, because there is nothing special in it. The soil gave birth to a blade of grass. That's love. Nothing special in it. You don't throw a party.

And in such love, there is no breakup. Because your hookups are special events; so are your breakups. And you remember both the anniversaries. If you are listening without care for consequence, without trying to conclude, without projecting a future, how is that not love? Are you listening? If you are listening without caring for consequences, that is love.

Questioner: There's some marriage or relationships that we have with people, friends or families. Those are just for their partnership, and we love everyone in the same way. Is it that, or how do we form relationships with people?

Acharya Prashant: Must we justify nonsense? How is that a responsibility?

Simply call trash as trash. Why do you need to glorify it?

Don't you know what is meant by marriage? You aren't from some other universe, right? You know what it entails. You know how it happens. You know what it means. You know the entire process. Why even associate love with marriage?

Questioner: Thank you, sir.

Acharya Prashant: It's getting dangerous? I want to stop it?

Questioner: Like, if someone decides to marry someone, I used to think maybe it is like, obviously, they should love them. So why not marry someone else? Why someone? Like, you're choosing someone, right?

Acharya Prashant: If nobody told you that between a man and a woman, or between a man and a man, or whatever combination, there can be something called marriage, would you still marry?

Questioner: Like, we decide to live with someone, or...

Acharya Prashant: So, that's fine. Right now you're asking me a question. In the evening you're roaming around with someone. That's called companionship. That's fine. Why must you tie the other to a pole by your name?

You understand companionship? I am free, and so are you. And we have chosen to walk together without any vision for the future. Because we love. And in love one doesn't have the space to worry about the future.

I won't say, "Ah, but I need to get her under legal obligation and religious obligation and social obligation. The priests must be there. The entire world will see. Else she will run away."

Is that love?

Companionship is beautiful. But what is this urge to own and possess the other and say, "You are mine"? The other is not an object. How can you belong to somebody?

Questioner: But why do we decide to walk with someone? Is it like we don't decide, it just happens?

Acharya Prashant: How did you decide to talk to me? Because it's worth it. Yeah? Half the planet is women. A lot of them are worth it.

Questioner: Yes.

Acharya Prashant: There is this ego thing within. And for its own sake, it enters into all kinds of relationships, right? With the workplace, with the mic, with the shoes, with the house, with the politician, with the priest, with the shopkeeper, right? All these are relationships, right? And what are all these relationships for? To serve my interests, because I am the ego, and that's all that I can do.

The ego is an insecure trader. First of all, insecure. Secondly, holding the belief that by trading something it can get completeness.

So, it's all the time busy bartering. "I'll give you this, you give me that." That's what the ego is continuously doing, right? And it has relationships with everything. Even the handkerchief in your pocket, there is a relationship that you have, right?

Similarly, you have relationships with people in your life. Same center. Exactly the same center. Like you buy a bike for your own sake. You take care of the bike, don't you? You take care of your loved ones as well. One day you discard the bike. One day you discard those around you. The same thing. Not a moral lecture, the inevitable consequence of operating from the ego center. There is nothing else that it can do. It has to trade. It is so insecure. It suffers so much. It has nothing else to offer.