172° BEING IN Love child is so helpless that all that he can do is pretend. What else can he do? He can smile, he can give a kiss, and he knows that it is all pretension: he does not mean it, itis all phony, It is not coming from him. But because you are his daddy, you are his mommy, you are this, you are that. They are spoiling one of the most precious experiences of life. Then wives are telling husbands, “You have to love me, I am your wife.” Strange. Husbands are saying, “You have to love me. I am your husband, it is my birthright.” Love cannot be demanded. If it comes your way, be thankful; if it does not come, wait, Even in you're waiting, there should be no complaint, because you don't have any right. Love is nobody's right, no constitution can give you the right to experience love. But they are all destroying every- thing, then wives are smiling, husbands are hugging. One of America’s most famous authors, Dale Carnegie, writes that every husband should tell his wife at least three times a day, “I love you, darling.” Are you insane? But he means it, and it works; and many people, millions of people, are practicing Dale Carnegie followers. “When you come home, bring ice cream, flow- €F8, roses, to show that you love your wife,” as if love needs to be shown, proved materially, pragmatically, linguistically, verbal- ized again and again so that nobody forgets it. If you don't tell your wife for a few days that “I love you" she will count how many days have passed, and she will become more and more suspicious that you must be saying it to somebody else, because her quota is being cut. Love is a quantity. “If he is not bringing ice cream any- more, that ice cream must be going somewhere else, and this can= not be tolerated.” We have created a society which believes only in “doings,” while the spiritual part of our being remains starved because it needs something which is not done but happens. Not that you man- age to say “Tlove you,” but that suddenly you find yourself saying that you love. You yourself are surprised by what you are saying.LOVE AND THE ART OF NON-DOING = 173 You have not rehearsed it in your mind first and then repeated it, no; it is spontaneous. ‘And in fact, the real moments of love remain unspoken. When you are really feeling love, that very feeling creates around you a certain radiance that says everything that you cannot say, that can never be said. But instead we manage everything, we turn everything into a “doing” and the ultimate result is that slowly hypocrisy becomes our very characteristic. We forget completely that it is hypocrisy. ‘And in the mind, in the being of a person who is a hypocrite, any- thing of the world of non-doing is impossible. You can go on doing more and more; you will become almost a robot. So whenever you have suddenly an experience of happening, take it as a gift from existence and make that moment the herald of a new lifestyle. Just allow a few moments in twenty-four hours when you are not doing anything, just allowing existence to do something to you. And windows will start opening in you, win- dows that will connect you with the universal, the immortal. It feels to me that much of my own “doing” is to avoid boredom. Can you talk about the nature of the experiences we call boredom and restlessness? poredom and restlessness are deeply related. Whenever you feel boredom, then you feel restlessness. Restlessness is a by-product of boredom. ‘ry to understand the mechanism. Whenever you feel bored you want to move away from that situation. If somebody is saying something and you are getting bored, you start becoming fidgety. This is a eubtle indication that you want to move away from this place, from this person, from this nonsense talk, Your body starts moving, Of course, out of politeness you suppress it, but the body