Osho on Nice Qualities of Woman

Question: Are Women more courageous than Men?
Osho : They certainly are. These are men just feeling jealous... nothing courageous. The woman is more loving because she does not live by logic, by reason, but by pure emotion and heart. The way of the heart is beautiful but dangerous. The way of the mind is ordinary but safe. The man has chosen the safest and the most shortcut way of life. The woman has chosen the most beautiful, but the most mountainous, dangerous path of emotions, sentiments, moods. And because up to now the world has been ruled by man, woman has suffered immensely.

She has not been able to fit with the society that man has created because the society is created according to reason and logic. The woman wants a world of the heart. In the society created by man there is no place for heart. Man has to learn to be more heartful because reason has led the whole humanity towards a global suicide. Reason has destroyed the harmony of nature, the ecology. Reason has given beautiful machines, but it has destroyed the beautiful humanity. A little more heart is needed in everything.

As far as I am concerned, the way to your innermost being is closer from the heart than from the mind. Mind is a shortcut if you are going outward, and heart is a very long way. If you are going inward, the whole thing changes into its opposite -- heart is the shortcut to being, and mind is the longest way you can think of. That's why I am all for love, because from love it is very easy to take you to meditation, to take you to the eternity of your life, to take you to your godliness; it is very difficult from the head.

First the man has to come to the heart, and then only he can move towards the being. My emphasis on love has a basic spiritual reason. From the heart the woman can immediately move, and the man can move towards the heart without any difficulty. He has just been wrongly trained; it is only a conditioning. He has been told to be hard, to be strong, to be manly, and all this is nonsense. No man cries and lets his sadness or his joy flow through the tears because he has been told since he was a child that tears are for women, it is girlish. Men never cry and weep.

Looking to nature, the whole thing seems to be absurd. If it was so, if that was the intention of nature, then man's eyes would have been made in a different way, they would not have tear glands. They have tear glands just as women have. What is the purpose of those tears? They are needed; they are a tremendously significant language. There are moments when you cannot say, but your tears can show. You may be so full of joy, and tears come to your eyes.

Tears are always the symbol of overflowing experience. You may be so sad that words cannot contain it; tears help you. It is one of the reasons why women go less mad than men, because they are ready to weep and cry and throw things any moment; temporarily they can go mad every day. Man goes on accumulating, and then one day he explodes -- wholesale. Women go mad retail, and that is a wiser way, to be finished every day. Why collect? Men commit suicide more than women. This is very strange.

Women talk of committing suicide more than men, but they never commit it. Men never talk about committing suicide but commit more suicide; the quantity is double. Man goes on and on repressing, goes on and on keeping a certain face which is fake. And there is a limit to everything: a point comes where he cannot hold it anymore and everything falls apart. Man has to be taught to be more heartful because from the heart goes the way to being. You cannot bypass the heart. The woman is in a better position, she can go directly towards being from the heart.

But instead of recognizing this immense quality in women, man has been condemning women. Perhaps there is a reason; perhaps he was aware of some superiority in woman -- the superiority of love. No logic can be higher than love, and no mind can be higher than the heart. But the mind can be very murderous; the mind can be very violent, and that's what the mind has done for centuries. Man has been beating women, repressing women, condemning women.

And not knowing that condemning women, repressing women is making them inferior, half of humanity is deprived of raising its consciousness. And you are deprived, because you could also have learned the art of moving upwards from half of the universe. You could also have moved on the same way, on the same path; hence I always say, the liberation of women is also the liberation of man. It is more the liberation of man than the liberation of women.

Yes, women have more love, but they should also be made aware of the other side of the coin. Man has logic. The other side can be illogical. It is not dangerous, it is just a mistake; it can be corrected. That's why I said the way of the heart is beautiful but dangerous. The other side of love is hate; the other side of love is jealousy. So if a woman gets caught into hate and jealousy, all the beauty of love dies and she is left only with poisons in her hands. She will poison herself and she will poison everybody who is around.

To be loving one has to be more alert because you can fall into the ditch of hate which is just very close by. Every peak of love is very close; the dark valley of hate is surrounding the peak from everywhere -- you can slip very easily. Perhaps that is the reason many women decide not to love. Perhaps that is the reason man has decided to live in the head and forget all about the heart... because it is so sensitive, it feels hurt very easily, its moods change just like the climate changing.

One who really wants to learn the art of love has to remember all of these things, and has to save his love from falling into all these ditches of hatred, jealously; otherwise, going to the being will become impossible -- more impossible than it is from the head. The woman has to drop jealousy, she has to drop hatred. The man has to drop logic and be a little more loving. Logic can be used; it is utilitarian. In scientific work it is useful, but not in human relationships.

Man has to be careful that logic does not become his only way, that it remains just an instrument he uses and puts aside. The woman has to be aware that she does not fall into hatred, into jealousy, into anger, because they will destroy her most precious treasure of love. And both have to move deeper in love; the deeper they move in
love, the closer they will reach to the being. Being is not very far away; it is the deepest part of love, a love which is absolutely pure, unconditional.

A love which is absolutely alert, aware, conscious, immediately turns into a tremendous revolution; it opens the doors of the innermost shrine of being. To read to your very centre is to gain all that life can give to you, all the fragrance, all the beauty, all the joy, all the benediction...

Women are certainly more courageous. In all the cultures all over the world, it is the woman who leaves her family and goes to the family of the husband. She leaves her mother, her father, her friends, her town, everything that she has loved, she has grown up with; for love's sake she sacrifices all that. The man will not be able to do that. In fact, because the man has been pretending to be superior, he should have done it; he should have gone to the girl's house rather than bringing the woman to his own house.

But in no culture, in no society in the whole of history, has man taken that step -- to drop out of his family, out of his grounding, out of his atmosphere, to sacrifice everything and to become part of a totally new atmosphere, a new land, to be replanted in a new garden, in a new soil, and to blossom there. The woman has done it, and done it gracefully. She is certainly more courageous. In love, and in different phases... She loves as a mother, which no father can do; she loves as a wife, which no husband can do.

Even as a small child she loves as a daughter, which no boy can do. A woman's whole life is love. For the man, life is a big thing; love is only a small part in it. He can sacrifice love for money, for power, for prestige -- for anything he can sacrifice love. The woman cannot sacrifice love for anything; everything is below love. Everything can be sacrificed, but not love. Certainly she has courage, and man should learn much from women.

If we make our relationship a learning phenomenon of experiencing the other person -- not just a superficial sexual relationship, but something deep, intimate, learning of each other's mysteries -- then each relationship becomes a spiritual phenomenon. Both will be enriched by it and, as a result, the whole of society.