Buddha eternal law

Buddha’s eternal law

"Buddha repeats this again and again - what is this eternal law? Only love dispels hate, only light dispels darkness. Why?" - Osho

“Look how he abused me and beat me, how he threw me down and robbed me.” Live with such thoughts and you live in hate. “Look how he abused me and beat me, how he threw me down and robbed me.” Abandon such thoughts, and live in love.

Love creates love just as hate creates hate. In this world hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible.

Something of profound importance: hate exists with the past and the future—love needs no past, no future. Love exists in the present. Hate has a reference in the past: somebody abused you yesterday and you are carrying it like a wound, a hangover. Or you are afraid that somebody is going to abuse you tomorrow—a fear, a shadow of the fear. And you are already getting ready, you are getting prepared to encounter it.

Hate exists in the past and the future. You cannot hate in the present—try, and you will be utterly impotent. Try it today: sit silently and hate somebody in the present, with no reference to the past or the future… You cannot do it. It cannot be done; in the very nature of things, it is impossible. Hate can exist only if you remember the past: this man did something to you yesterday—then hate is possible. Or this man is going to do something to you tomorrow—then too hate is possible. But if you don’t have any reference to the past or the future—this man has not done anything to you and he is not going to do anything to you, this man is just sitting there—how can you hate? But you can love.

Love needs no reference—that’s the beauty of love and the freedom of love. Hate is bondage. Hate is imprisonment—imposed by you upon yourself. And hate creates hate, hate provokes hate. If you hate somebody you are creating hate in that person’s heart for yourself. And the whole world exists in hate, in destructiveness, in violence, in jealousy, in competitiveness. People are at each other’s throats either in reality, actuality, in action, or at least in their minds; in their thoughts, everybody is murdering, killing. That’s why we have created a hell out of this beautiful earth—which could have become a paradise.

Love and the earth becomes a paradise again. And the immense beauty of love is that it has no reference. Love comes from you for no reason at all. It is your outpouring bliss; it is your sharing of your heart. It is the sharing of the song of your being. And sharing is so joyful—hence one shares. Sharing for sharing’s sake, for no other motive.

If you want to do anything to the darkness you will have to do something with light.

But the love you have known in the past is not the love Buddha is talking about or I am talking about. Your love is nothing but the other side of hate. Hence, your love has reference: somebody has been beautiful to you yesterday, he was so nice that you feel great love for him. This is not love; this is the other side of hate—the reference proves it. Or somebody is going to be nice to you tomorrow: the way he smiled at you, the way he talked to you, the way he invited you to his house tomorrow—he is going to be loving to you. And great love arises.

This is not the love Buddhas talk about. This is hate disguised as love—that’s why your love can turn into hate at any moment. Scratch a person just a little bit, and the love disappears and hate arises. It is not even skin-deep. Even so-called great lovers are continuously fighting, continuously at each other’s throats—nagging, destructive. And people think this is love…

What is the law? That hate never dispels hate—darkness cannot dispel darkness—that only love dispels hate. Only light can dispel darkness: love is light, the light of your being, and hate is the darkness of your being. If you are dark inside, you go on throwing hate all around you. If you are light within, luminous, then you go on radiating light around you. A sannyasin has to be a radiant love, a radiant light.

Aes dhammo sanantano. Buddha repeats this again and again—what is this eternal law? Only love dispels hate, only light dispels darkness. Why? Because the darkness in itself is only a negative state; it has no positive existence of its own. It does not really exist—how can you dispel it? You cannot do anything directly to darkness. If you want to do anything to the darkness you will have to do something with light. Bring light in and darkness is gone, take the light out and the darkness comes in. But you cannot bring darkness in or out directly—you cannot do anything with darkness. Remember, you cannot do anything with hate either.

Try to hate somebody consciously and you will find it impossible. Either consciousness disappears, then you can hate; or if you are conscious, hate disappears. They can’t exist together. There is no coexistence possible: light and darkness cannot exist together—because the darkness is nothing but the absence of light.

The true masters teach you how to attain to godliness; they never say renounce the world. Renunciation is negative. They don’t tell you to escape from the world, they teach you to escape into godliness. They teach you to attain to truth, not to fight with lies. And lies are millions. If you go on fighting it will take millions of lives, and still, nothing will be attained. And the truth is one; hence truth can be attained.

Abridged from The Dhammapada: The Way of the Budha by Osho

Osho is known for his revolutionary contribution to the science of inner transformation, with an approach to meditation that acknowledges the accelerated pace of contemporary life.

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