OSHO - Compassion is the flowering of meditation

If meditation really happens, whatsoever the cause, compassion has to follow. Compassion is the flowering of meditation. If compassion is not coming, your meditation is, somewhere, wrong.

You cannot be in compassion because you have no energy. All your energy is divided, sometimes in sex, sometimes in anger, sometimes in greed. Compassion is not a form. Only when all your desires disappear does that energy become compassion, KARUNA. You cannot cultivate compassion. When you are desireless, compassion happens; your whole energy moves into compassion. And this movement is very different. Desire has a motivation in it, a goal; compassion is nonmotivated, there is no goal to it, it is simply overflowing energy.

Go deeper and deeper into meditation so you can go higher and higher in compassion. The deeper the roots of a tree reach the higher the peak. You can see the tree, you cannot see the roots, but they are always in proportion. If the tree is reaching to the sky the roots must be reaching to the very end of the earth. The proportion is the same. As deep as your meditation is, the same depth will be achieved in compassion. So compassion is the criterion. If you think you are meditative and there is no compassion, then you are deceiving yourself. Compassion must happen, because that is the flowering of the tree. Meditation is just a means towards compassion; compassion is the goal. Make yourself more and more alert. Call your name and answer, just to create more awareness. When you really become aware, you will feel a new upsurge of energy. Compassion will happen to you, and with compassion, bliss; with compassion, beatitude; with compassion, conviction.

Buddha says: Meditation is enough to solve your problems, but something is missing in it — compassion. If compassion is also there, then you can help others solve their problems. He says: Meditation is pure gold; it has a perfection of its own. But if there is compassion then the gold has a fragrance too — then a higher perfection, then a new kind of perfection, gold with fragrance. Gold is enough unto itself — very valuable — but with compassion, meditation has a fragrance.

That's why I say compassion is therapeutic. What is compassion? Compassion is the purest form of love. Sex is the lowest form of love, compassion the highest form of love. In sex the contact is basically physical; in compassion the contact is basically spiritual. In love, compassion and sex are both mixed, the physical and the spiritual are both mixed. Love is midway between sex and compassion. You can call compassion prayer also. You can call compassion meditation also. The highest form of energy is compassion. The word 'compassion' is beautiful: half of it is 'passion' -- somehow passion has become so refined that it is no more like passion. It has become compassion.

That’s why all the religions emphasize: God is compassionate — RAHIM, RAHMAN! — God is compassion. This is just to give you an alternative gestalt so you become focused on His compassion, not on your unworthiness. You may be unworthy — that is irrelevant — but God is compassionate. You may be a sinner — that is irrelevant — God is compassionate. He gives for no reason at all; He is simply a giver, He knows only giving. And He does not give conditionally, He gives unconditionally.

What is the quality of religiousness? 

The quality of religiousness is to be centered in your witnessing being.

Out of that witnessing a great awareness arises in you; the spring comes to your life and thousands of flowers of compassion, of love, of blissfulness. All around the fragrance of the ultimate surrounds you.

If you are meditating then it becomes more and more difficult to hate.

You cannot hate even your enemies; you will feel a deep compassion.

If love is authentic, if it is not just lust but a spiritual harmony, then certainly this passion is going to bring compassion in your life. And the transformation of passion into compassion is the whole evolution of man into a Gautam Buddha.

All passion is of the body — there is no passion of the heart. Yes, there is compassion of the heart and there is a tremendous difference between the two. Passion is lust and ugly; compassion is love, beautiful, spiritual. 

But people go on living in fallacies, they go on thinking their body lust is their love. Mind knows nothing of love, because it does not appear in the curriculum of any university. It is not part of mathematics or physics or chemistry or geography.

Love simply does not exist for the mind. Love exists in the heart.

Real love is not a preface. It is a fragrance. It is not before sex, but after. 

It is not a prologue but an epilogue.

If you have passed through sex and feel compassion for the other, then love develops.

And if you meditate, you will feel compassionate. If you meditate in the sex act, then your sexual partner will not be just an instrument for your physical pleasure. You will feel gratitude to him or her because you have both come to a deep meditation.

Man has lost compassion completely — at least about other men.

And I would like my people… their first duty is towards man, everything else comes next.

If you are not loving and compassionate towards man, !!!!!!! all your compassion for animals, dogs, is just stupid.!!!!!!!!!

If your meditation flowers into compassion you have become a Bodhisattva; then you help others and your ecstasy is being shared.

A sage is a holy man because a sage is whole. He does not deny his sexuality, he does not deny his anger, he does not deny anything at all. He accepts everything with deep understanding, gratitude, welcome. And in that very understanding, in that very welcoming attitude, things start changing. A great alchemical change happens. This miracle happens in a sage — anger becomes compassion. Anger plus understanding is equal to compassion, sex plus meditation is equal to samadhi.

Two things: first, one has to create a cloud of meditation in one’s being; and the second thing is compassion — one who works for others. Buddha insists on two things: meditation and compassion — PRAGYAN and KARUNA. He says that sometimes it happens that a meditator can become too much selfish; then, too, something goes sour. Meditate, delight, but share the delight, go on sharing it; don’t hoard it, because once you start hoarding, ego starts arising. Never hoard anything. The moment you get it, give it, and you will be getting more and more and more. The more you give, the more you get. Then everything becomes nectar. Everything is nectar — we just have to know how to turn it, we have to know the alchemy.

Compassion is releasing love from the clutches of possessiveness. Then love is just a soft glow, undirected, unaddressed. You simply shower it because you are so full of it, but it is not a question of just thinking. Passion has to go through the whole process of meditation to become compassion. Meditation will take away all possessiveness, ownership, jealousy, and will leave only the pure essence, the very perfume of love. Only a man deeply rooted in meditation can have compassion. So when I say change your passion into compassion, I am saying let your energy be purified through meditation from all that is garbage in it. Let it become simply a fragrance available to all. Then it does not destroy anybody’s freedom but enhances it, and the moment your love enhances somebody’s freedom love becomes spiritual.

Osho