Osho Zen Tarot THE LOVERS

You need to remember three things: the lowest form of love is sex, which is physical, and the highest vivification of love is compassion. Sex is below love, compassion is above love, and the love itself is exactly in the middle.

Very few people know what love is. Ninety-nine percent of people, unfortunately, think that our sexuality is love. However, it is not true. Our sexuality is a very base thing, it makes us closer to animals. It certainly has the ability to grow into love, but this is not true love, and only an opportunity.

If you become deliberate, alert, meditative, then sex can be turned into love. Also, if your meditation becomes complete, absolute, then love can turn into compassion. Sex is the seed, and love is the flower, while compassion is the aroma.

Buddha defined compassion as "love plus meditation." When your love is not just the desire of another, when it is not just a need, when your love is participation, when your love is not a beggar, but the emperor, when it is not asking for anything in return, but is only ready to give – to give for pure joy of giving – then add meditation to it, and you will get a pure aroma.This is what compassion is. Compassion is the highest phenomenon.

What we call love, in fact, is a whole range of relationships, extending from earth to heaven. On the earthly level, love is a sexual attraction. Many people getstuck on this because human predicament has burdened our sexuality with all sorts of expectations and suppressions. In reality, the most crucial “problem” with sexual love is that it always eventually goes away. Only if we accept this fact, then we can glorify it for what it is –welcome it when it happens, and say goodbye with gratitude when it passes.

Then, when we mature, we can begin to experience a love that lies beyond sexuality and respects the other person’s unique personality. We begin to realize that our partner often serves as a mirror that reflects the invisible aspects of our deepest true self and helps us become more wholesome.

This love is based on freedom, and not on expectations or need. Its wings take us higher and higher to universal love, which perceives everything as one.