Question 1

WHY AM I ALWAYS INTERESTED IN MARRIED WOMEN?

There is nothing special about it, it is a very common disease which exists in almost epidemic proportions. But there are reasons to it.

Millions of people, both men and women, are more interested in the married person. First, the unmarried person shows that nobody has yet desired him or her; the married person shows that somebody has desired him. And you are so imitative that you cannot even love on your own. You are such a slave that when somebody else is loving somebody, only then can you follow. But if the person is alone and nobody is in love with them, then you are suspicious. Maybe the person is not of worth, otherwise why should he or she wait for you?

The married person has great attraction for the imitator.

Secondly, people love less -- people, in fact, don't know what love is -- they compete more. The married man... and you become interested. Or the married woman... and you become interested -- because now there is a possibility to compete. The triangular fight is possible. The woman is not easily available. There is going to be struggle.

In fact, you are not interested in the woman, you are interested in the struggle. Now the woman is almost a commodity. You can fight for her and you can prove your mettle. You can displace the husband, and you will feel very good -- an ego trip; it is not a love trip. But remember, once you succeed in disposing of the husband, you will not be interested in the woman any more. You want to prove yourself against the man. 'Look, I have taken interest in the unmarried woman now? Again you will start looking for some fight somewhere: you will always make it a triangle. This is not love.

In the name of love there is jealousy, there is competition, there is aggression, there is violence. You want to prove yourself. You want to prove yourself against the man: 'Look, I have taken away your woman.' Once you have taken away the woman, you will not be interested in the woman at all, because she was not the desired thing; the desired thing was a sort of victory.

I have heard...

A certain prominent businessman lost his wife, and the funeral became a public occasion. All the dignitaries of the town attended. and almost all were known to the bereaved. There was, however, a stranger, and he seemed more upset than anyone. Before the funeral was over, he broke down completely.

The widower-husband asked 'Who was this weeping stranger?'

'Ah' whispered someone 'didn't you know? He was your late wife's lover.'

The bereaved moved across to the sobbing man, patted him on the back, and said 'Cheer up, old boy, cheer up. I shall probably marry again.'

Beware. To fall in love with a married woman or a married man is a disease. Look for reasons. It is not love. There is something else working behind your mind, in your unconscious.

Another thing: the married woman is not easily available. That too creates desire. Easy availability kills desire. The more unapproachable, the more inaccessible the woman is, the more the desire; you can dream about her. And, in fact, there is not much possibility that it will ever become an actuality. There is every opportunity to be romantic about a married woman: you can play with your fantasy. It is not easy to make her available to you. You are not interested in unmarried women because they will not leave much chance for romance. If you are interested, they are ready. There is no space left. There is not that long, long waiting.

Many people are interested not in love but in waiting; they say that waiting is far more beautiful than love. In a way it is so, because while you are waiting you are simply projecting, you are dreaming. Of course, your dream is your dream and you can make it as beautiful as you want.

The real woman is going to shatter all your dreams. People are afraid of the real woman. And a married woman becomes more unreal than real.

The same is the case with a married man: he is far away. There is not much possibility that he will really enter into a love-relationship with you.

I have heard...

A young man went to a very wise old man, and the young man said 'I am lovesick, sir. Can you help me?'

The wise man thought, and he said 'There is only one cure for love, and that is marriage. And if marriage cannot cure it, nothing can cure it! If you get married, you will be cured. Never again will you think about love!'

Yes, marriage cures it so certainly, so absolutely, that if marriage cannot cure love, then nothing can cure it. Then you are incurable. It is good to fall in love with a married woman because then there is no possibility of cure; you remain lovesick.

There are people who enjoy their lovesickness tremendously: weeping. crying, waiting, fantasizing, poeticising, reading, writing poetry, painting, making music -- all substitutes. The real woman is dangerous. The real woman only looks musical from far away. Come close, and she is a REAL woman. She is not a fairy, not a fiction. Her reality will have to be reckoned with. And when a woman comes close to you, not only is she real, but she brings you down from your ivory towers to the earth.

In all the cultures of the world, woman is represented as the earth and man as the sky. The woman is very earth-bound; she gravitates towards the earth. She is more earthly than man, more practical, more pragmatic than man. That's why you don't find great women poets, you don't find great women painters, or great women composers, no. They don't fly in the sky so much. They grip the earth, they penetrate the earth with their roots and stand there like strong trees.

Man is more like a bird. When man becomes married, the woman brings him also to the earth. to the practical world. Poets don't like to be married. They always want to remain in love, they don't want to cure that sickness.

People fall in love with a married woman -- this is a halfway house, it is a trick. They can believe that they are in love and they can avoid it also.

Love creates great fear because love is a challenge, a great challenge. You will have to grow. You cannot remain juvenile and immature. You will have to grapple with the realities of life. Your so-called great poets are almost always very childish immature people still living in the fairyland of childhood. They don't know what reality is; they don't allow the reality to penetrate into their dreams.

A woman is a sure destroyer of fictions. She is not fictitious, she is a fact, a truth. So if you want to believe that you are in love and you still want to avoid love, it is good, safe, to fall in love with a married woman or a married man. This is very tricky, this is a deception, a self-deception.

Women are also afraid to fall in love with a free man, because with the free man or free woman there is involvement -- a twenty-four hour involvement. With a married woman the involvement is not that big. You can have a few stolen kisses, you can meet her somewhere in a dark corner -- always afraid that the husband may be coming, somebody may see. It is always half-hearted, it is always in a hurry, and you don't come to know the woman as she is in her twenty-four hour life. You come to know only her painted face, you come to know only her performance, not her truth.

When a woman comes out of her house ready to go shopping, she is not the same woman. She is almost a different person. Now she is a managed woman, now she is a performer. Women are great actresses. In the house they don't look so beautiful. Out of the house they suddenly become tremendously beautiful, joyful, cheerful. delighted. They again become small, giggling girls in love with life. Their faces are different, radiant. Their eyes are different; their make-up, their performance.

Seeing a woman on the beach, or in the shopping centre, you are seeing a totally different kind of reality. To live with a woman twenty-four hours a day is very mundane -- it has to be. But if you really love a woman, you would like to know her reality not her fiction, because love can exist only with reality. And love is capable enough of knowing the reality and yet being able to love her, of knowing all the defects and yet being able to love her. Love is a tremendous strength.

When you are with a person twenty-four hours a day man or woman -- you come to know all the defects: all that is good, and all that is bad too; all that is beautiful, and all that is ugly too; all that is like light-rays, and all that is like dark night. You come to know the whole person. Love is strong enough to love the other, knowing all the defects, limitations, frailties that a human being is prone to.

But this fictitious love is not strong enough. It can only love a woman on the movie screen. It can only love a woman in a novel. It can only love a woman in poetry. It can only love the woman as a faraway, distant star. It can only love a woman who is not real.

Love is a totally different dimension. It is falling in love with reality. Yes, reality has defects, but those defects are challenges to growth. Each defect is a challenge to transcend it. And when two persons are really in love, they help each other to grow. They look into each other; they become mirrors to each other: they reflect each other. They help each other; they hold each other. In good times, in bad times, in moments of happiness, in moments of sadness they are together, they are involved -- that's what involvement is all about.

If I am only with you when you are happy and I am not with you when you are unhappy this is not involvement, this is exploitation. If I am only with you when you are flowing, and I am not with you when you are not flowing -- then I am not with you at all. Then I don't love you, I love only myself and I love only my pleasure. 'When you are pleasurable, good; when you become painful I will throw you away.' This is not love, this is not involvement, this is not commitment. This is not respect for the other person.

It is easy to love somebody else's wife because he has to suffer the reality and you enjoy the fiction. It is a very good division of labour. But this is inhuman. Human love is a great encounter. And love is only if growth happens out of it, otherwise what type of love is it?

Lovers are enhanced by each other -- in every way. Lovers reach to higher peaks of happiness when they are together, and they also reach to the deeper depths of sadness when they are together. Their range of happiness and sadness becomes vast -- that's what love is. Alone, if you cry and weep, your tears don't have much depth. Have you watched it? Alone, they are shallow. When you weep together with somebody then there is a depth, a new dimension to your tears. Alone you can laugh, but your laughter will be shallow. In fact it will be something insane -- only mad people laugh alone. When you laugh with somebody there is a depth in it, there is sanity in it. Alone, you can laugh, but the laughter will not go very deep, cannot go. Together, it goes to the very core of your being.

Two persons together, together in all the climates -- day and night, summer and winter -- in all the moods, grow. The tree needs all the climates and all the seasons. Yes, it needs the burning-hot summer and it needs the ice-cold winter. It needs the daylight, the sun showering on it, and it needs the silence of night so it can close into itself and go into deep sleep. It needs silent, cheerful, joyful days; it needs gloomy, cloudy days too. It grows through all these dialectics.

Love is a dialectic. Alone, you cannot grow. Remember always that if you are in love then don't avoid commitment, don't avoid involvement. Then go totally into it. Then don't just stand on the periphery ready to escape if things get too troublesome.

And love is a sacrifice too. You have to sacrifice much... your ego. You have to sacrifice your ambition, you have to sacrifice your privacy, you have to sacrifice your secrets; you have to sacrifice many things. So just to be in a romantic love needs no sacrifice. But when there is no sacrifice there is no growth.

Love changes you almost utterly: it is a new birth. You are never the same person again as you were before you loved a woman or a man. You have passed through fire, you are purified. But courage is needed.

You ask: WHY AM I ALWAYS INTERESTED IN MARRIED WOMEN?