If you are in a certain kind of suffering you will find many people sympathizing with you and if you look into their eyes you will be puzzled; they are saying one thing — they are very sympathetic towards you — but their eyes are showing something else; they are enjoying it. And there is a subtle mechanism in it. When you sympathize with somebody you are higher and the person you are sympathizing with is lower, and everybody enjoys feeling higher in some way.

So sympathy to me is ugly if it is not rooted in love. It is beautiful if it is rooted in love. So love to me is a revolutionary phenomenon; it changes sympathy into something totally different to what it is. Sympathy should not be because people are in sorrow, sympathy should be because you are too full of love and you want to share it. Then there will be a great difference, you will rejoice when they are happy and you will feel sad when they are unhappy. You will not feel happy when they are sad and you will not feel jealous

when they are happy; their happiness will be your happiness and their sadness will be your sadness.

Once Gautam the Buddha was asked, “What is more difficult? — to feel sad when somebody is sad or to feel happy when somebody is happy.” And Buddha said the second thing is more difficult; the first thing is not difficult. One can feel sad when others are sad because deep down one can enjoy it, but when others are happy, to celebrate, to really celebrate, is very difficult — it goes against our ego. Hence my emphasis is on love because love basically requires that you drop the ego. Love kills the ego, and when there is no ego then love can blossom in many flowers; sympathy is one of those flowers. But it is no more plastic then, it has its source in love.

Osho – Going All The Way (Sympathy)