Love Isn’t a Transaction. It’s a Way of Being.
When questions dissolve into love
Sadhguru: Usually, wherever I go, people have many questions. But during a recent program, someone suddenly shouted, “We are in love, Sadhguru! No question. We have no questions!” and everyone echoed the same. At last, no questions – in love.
Probably one of the most sought-after things in life is love. One of the most misunderstood and misused things in the world is love. Being in love is very different from “I love you – you love me.” That is a marketplace transaction. Once there is a transaction, there is an expectation of profit. Love is not profitable. It is a conscious loss-making venture. You may lose everything you have – and yourself too. This is for fools who are wise.
Love is not profitable. It is a conscious loss-making venture.
Love is about you being in love, not loving someone. If you love someone, you expect them to love you back. Once you have expectations, you want fairness in the give-and-take. “Do you love me as much as I love you?” Let me tell you a story.
The nature of transactional love
This happened between husband and wife. One morning, the husband lovingly took out his golf kit and polished each club nicely. He took a brand-new ball, checked it for any flaws, and carefully wiped it with a wet tissue. His wife observed him preparing like this and said, “The tenderness with which you’re handling this golf kit obviously shows you love golf more than me.”
He thought of saying the usual things like, “No, baby, I love you more than anything in the world.” But he did not want the golf kit to hear that. What if it misbehaves on the course? Then he said, “Mary, I have to admit, I love golf more than you. But I must tell you at the same time, I love you more than tennis, football, hockey, basketball, you name it. I love you more than all those things.”
Once you make what should be a profound experience of your life transactional, you have lost something very valuable.
Moving beyond the transactional mindset
Love is not a transaction. Love is not something that you do – it is something you become. If you become loving, what do you get? Nothing. “What will I get” is only important for someone who feels constantly unfulfilled.
Love is not something that you do – it is something you become.
If the fulfillment of love is within you, you do not have to get anything. Only those who do not know the fulfillment of being in love always think, “What will I get?” You will get nothing. One day you will die without having the effulgence of love within you. If you do not invest in turning inward and creating the necessary conditions to touch the core of who you are, everything is a transaction.
There is nothing wrong with transactions in the marketplace. But there are no transactions when it comes to life. You came with nothing, and you will go with nothing. What is there to give or take? There is nothing that is yours; there is nothing that you can actually possess. It is a psychological ailment to think that something or someone truly belongs to you. What belongs to you?
The essence of true love
The very nature of life is like this: What you call love, joy, or ecstasy is not a matter of give and take. Either you are overwhelmed by it, or you are not. When you are in survival mode, these things will never touch you.
If two people need the same thing, they will act like they love each other very much. The moment the need is over, they are different people. I am not trying to belittle everything that is happening in the world. But what I would say is this: if at any moment in your life, you feel love within you for whatever reason – you see a man, a woman, a tree, a dog – just stay there.
It is not about something or someone. When that love begins to sprout within you, you must stay in it. It does not matter how it happened. But you try to transact. “I will love you. Will you love me too, to the same extent?” You destroy it with calculations. “But Sadhguru, you know what he did . . .” I know all those things. What haven’t they done to me? What they do is not the point. It is about you, not them.
Love as a transformative force
For this life that you are to become beautiful, for just being here to become worthwhile, in terms of emotion, you must be in love. There is simply no other way. “I will love you one day when you are really the way I want you.” That day will never come, because it cannot come from outside. You have to create the necessary ambiance for it to sprout.
If you are in love, your eyes will see everything in love. If you say, “No, I see only this person in my love,” it does not work like that. If you are in love, when you look at a tree, it looks fantastic. You look at a mountain, it looks fantastic. You look at the empty sky, it looks fantastic. Even a grasshopper looks fantastic. You will love it because love is not an action. Love is not something that you do. It is something that you can become. If you do not become that, you live a very poor life.
What could be a profound dimension of you will not work with calculations.
It is a bloody brief life. In this, how many calculations do you make? If you are playing the marketplace or the stock market, calculate as much as you want, and better than anyone else. But what could be a profound dimension of you will not work with calculations. You can make this whole process of life – just sitting here and breathing – a beautiful process or an arduous task. The choice is yours.
Leaving calculations behind
When you make everything into a give-and-take, the calculations you have to run in your head will not allow you to blossom. “What did I say? What did she say? What did he do? Did I do more work than him? Is he getting more reward?” These calculations will go on endlessly about anything and everything.
So, to become love, what do you need? You do not need anything for that. You only need enough intelligence to understand that if you make yourself unpleasant and you get a hundred billion dollars, it means nothing.
When you make everything into a give-and-take, the calculations you have to run in your head will not allow you to blossom.
If you sit here overflowing with love and bliss, whatever you may or may not have, other things will do something according to your need or capacity. When you make transactions the paramount aspect of your life, your mind is a marketplace. In a marketplace, you have to make a killing – otherwise, you are not considered smart. If you go to the marketplace, I also want you to be smart.
If you know how to do your transactions and keep them from entering you, outside activity should not determine who you are. Who you are should determine what you do. This is what love means. If you are in love, who you are and how you are will determine what you do. Otherwise, what you do will determine who you are.
The journey inward
All these problems occur only because people have not invested enough in turning inward and touching the core of who they are. The external transactional life occupies you so much that nothing deeper can happen. Once you start thinking in terms of profit and loss, it goes on endlessly – not just about money, but about all aspects of life. How silly is that.
In our tradition, there are stories of children born with shankha [1], chakra [2], gada [3], and everything. I do not know what all you came with. Did you come empty-handed? If you came with nothing, then everything is profit. Every additional breath is a tremendous profit. But all the time, there are calculations of, “What will I get? Did she get more than me? Why?”
Human life is a hard trek if you are not soaked in love and ecstasy.
What will you find in this life? Is there some way to prove whether someone is in love or not?
There is a possibility – if you nurture it, it will become an overflowing sense of pleasantness and wonder about what you are. Otherwise, life is a hard trek. Human life is a hard trek if you are not soaked in love and ecstasy.
[1] Sanskrit for conch shell. One of the sacred objects Krishna is said to have had from birth.
[2] Sanskrit for discus. One of the sacred weapons Krishna is said to have had from birth.
[3] Sanskrit word for mace. One of the sacred weapons Krishna is said to have had from birth.
The wisdom of being in love
Only a fool who believes they can accumulate things and take from this life can be fanatically enthusiastic about their life. If you have the intelligence to see that this will not go anywhere, but still you have to do all this, you will get frustrated and depressed. To float beyond these things, you must be soaked in love and ecstasy. Then, even though there is no purpose, you do everything you can do. What you cannot do, anyway you do not do. Some people will be thinking of their morning practice now: “What I cannot do, I do not do.” No, the morning practice is in the category of what you can do.
If you are soaked in love, you will do whatever is needed.
If you do not invest in turning yourself around and touching the deeper core of who you are, then either you have to get lost in transaction or find some perverted sense of pleasure in doing a little better or having a little more money or wealth than someone else. Otherwise, you cannot live a sane life. You come with nothing, and you go with nothing. If you are really conscious of that, does it make any sense to wonder every moment of your life if you are making profit or loss?
Is there sense or sanity in the context of most of the activities that human beings are doing on a daily basis? Every activity has its purpose – what matters is the context in which you do it.
If you are soaked in love, you will do whatever is needed. Is that not how the world should be? What is needed, we are willing to do joyfully. That is all there is. If you think, “No, I will do only this,” but no one needs that, that is a stupid way of living. This is what happens when your way of being is determined by what you do. The flexibility of doing what is needed today will allow you to be an outpouring of love. Activity is a fantastic way to express yourself.
Love beyond words
Love is not about sitting in front of each other and saying, “I love you. You love me.” This happened. Two people got married in the United States. There is a norm in that society that at least 21 times in a day, you must tell your wife or your husband, “I love you.” So initially, it was, “I love you, John.” “I love you, Mary,” and so on. But then, the husband got busy with work during the day, so in the evening, he was trying to catch up on the number of “I love yous.”
Love is not something that you do – it is most beautiful if you become love.
Slowly, it became “I love you.” “I love you too.” After six months, he sent a message on the phone: “I love you,” to which she replied, “Ditto.” For everything, there is a short form. After some time, both said “ditto, ditto,” and it was finished.
Love is not something that you do – it is most beautiful if you become love. If you try to do it because there are needs to fulfill, initially, it looks nice. But once that need is gone, it turns ugly in many ways. Needs can be physical, social, psychological, or emotional. To fulfill these needs, you keep saying these words. Do not make it frivolous.
It is very important that profound things in life remain sacred. Do not easily utter “I love it” just because you like your ice cream. You have to maintain some sanctity about what is of a profound nature. If you have some civilization in you, you will see what is appropriate and what is not. If you do not have any, then nothing is wrong with anything until it hits you in the face – and it will.
The architecture of being human
Ninety percent of being human is learned behavior; only ten percent is instinctive knowledge. Who we are today is not entirely ours. A million generations of people – we might not be consciously related to them, but in some way, everything they did, said, and wrote has percolated into us in a thousand different ways. Suppose we kept you isolated from all human societies from childhood into adulthood, would you behave like an animal? Absolutely, because ninety percent of what it means to be human is learned behavior.
What you learn is not the point – how you learn is the point. If you are in love, whatever you learn will benefit you and everyone else. If you are not in love, the same thing can be used in a thousand ways to harm everything on the planet.
The intelligence of love
The greatest possibilities will turn into a curse when you are not in love. This is the tragedy of human intelligence. Your intelligence is a potent force. Even if those around you think you are stupid, your intelligence remains a potent force compared to any other creature on the planet. But this intelligence is the most dangerous and tragic thing on the planet if you are not in love. If you are in love, this intelligence is a fantastic thing – so many things it can do.
The greatest possibilities will turn into a curse when you are not in love.
Unfortunately, many think only stupid people fall in love and intelligent people do transactions. This mindset has deeply permeated our society, and we are paying a price – now we have to mitigate a mental health pandemic. You think intelligence means being smart in transactions, and stupidity means falling in love, becoming a devotee, and similar things. When this is your context, you will naturally head toward a mental health pandemic. It is time to turn that around. It is time to be in love.
