Passion

 

Do not be afraid of that word `passion’.

Most religious books, most gurus, swamis, leaders,

and all the rest of them, say “Don’t have passion”.

But if you have no passion, how can you be sensitive to

the ugly, to the beautiful, to the whispering leaves, to the sunset,

to a smile, to a cry? How can you be sensitive without a sense of passion

in which there is abandonment? Sirs, please listen to me, and do not

ask how to acquire passion. I know you are all passionate enough in getting a

good job, or hating some poor chap, or being jealous of someone; but

I am talking of something entirely different: a passion that loves.

Love is a state in which there is no `me; love is a state in which

there is no condemnation, no saying that sex is right or wrong, that

this is good and something else is bad. Love is none of these

contradictory things. Contradiction does not exist in love. And how

can one love if one is not passionate? Without passion, how can one

be sensitive? To be sensitive is to feel your neighbor sitting next

to you; it is to see the ugliness of the town with its squalor, its

filth, its poverty, and to see the beauty of the river, the sea, the

sky. If you are not passionate, how can you be sensitive to all

that? How can you feel a smile, a tear? Love, I assure you, is

passion.