Osho examines the nature of compassion from a radically different perspective.
“What is that fundamental wrong? Where do things go wrong? Caring has conditions in it: ‘Do this! Be that!’ Have you ever loved anybody with no conditions? Have you ever loved anybody as he or she is? You don’t want to improve, you don’t want to change; your acceptance is total, utter. Then you know what care is. You will be fulfilled through that care, and the other will be helped immensely.
“And remember, if your care has no business in it, no ambitions in it, the person you cared about will love you forever. But if your care has some ideas in it, then the person you cared about will never be able to forgive you. That’s why children are incapable of forgiving their parents. You go and ask the psychiatrists, the psychoanalysts – all the cases that come to them are the cases of children whose parents cared too much. But their care was businesslike; it was cold, it was calculated. They wanted some of their ambitions to be fulfilled through the child.
“Love has to be a free gift. The moment there is a price tag on it, it is no longer love.”