Everybody is trying to be perfect

The moment somebody starts trying to be perfect, he starts expecting everybody else to be perfect. He starts condemning people, he starts humiliating people. That’s what all your so-called saints have been doing down the ages. That’s what your religions have done to you—poisoned your being with an idea of perfection.

Because you cannot be perfect, you start feeling guilty, you lose respect for yourself. And the man who has lost respect for himself has lost all the dignity of being human. Your pride has been crushed, your humanity has been destroyed by beautiful words like perfection.

Man cannot be perfect. Yes, there is something that man can experience, but which is beyond the ordinary conception of man. Unless man also experiences something of the divine, he cannot know perfection.

Perfection is not something like a discipline; it is not something that you can practice. It is not something for which you have to go through rehearsals. But that is what is being taught to everybody, and the result is a world full of hypocrites, who know perfectly well that they are hollow and empty, but they go on pretending all kinds of qualities that are nothing but empty words.

When you say to someone, “I love you,” have you ever thought what you mean? Is it just biological infatuation between the two sexes? Then once you have satisfied your animal appetite all so-called love will disappear. It was just a hunger and you have fulfilled your hunger and you are finished.

The same woman who was looking the most beautiful in the world, the same man who was looking like Alexander the Great—you start thinking how to get rid of this fellow!

It will be very enlightening to understand this letter written by Paddy to his beloved Maureen:

My Darling Maureen,

I would climb the highest mountain for your sake, and swim the wildest

sea. I would endure any hardships to spend a moment by your side. Your ever-loving, Paddy.

P.S. I’ll be over to see you on Friday night if it is not raining.

The moment you say to someone “I love you,” you don’t know what you are saying. You don’t know that it is just lust hiding behind a beautiful word, love. It will disappear. It is very momentary.

Love is something eternal. It is the experience of the buddhas, not the unconscious people the whole world is full of. Only very few people have known what love is, and these same people are the most awakened, the most enlightened, the highest peaks of human consciousness.

If you really want to know love, forget about love and remember meditation. If you want to bring roses into your garden, forget about roses and take care of the rosebush. Give nourishment to it, water it, take care that it gets the right amount of sun, water. If everything is taken care of, in the right time the roses are destined to come. You cannot bring them earlier, you cannot force them to open up sooner. And you cannot ask a rose to be more perfect.

Love is a spiritual experience—nothing to do with sexes and nothing to do with bodies, but something to do with the innermost being. But you have not even entered into your own temple.

You don’t know at all who you are, and you are trying to find out how to love better. First, be thyself; first, know thyself, and love will come as a reward. It is a reward from the beyond. It showers on you like flowers . . . fills your being. And it goes on showering on you, and it brings with it a tremendous longing to share.