There are many different kinds of Love.. love for Jesus or God or a Deity or a Religious Guru, Love for Country, Love for a Team, and more… here we will discuss only Love in the context of our daily life….
But to understand Love or what it means let’s first see the context in which we live right now and how we exist… it will be easier to understand if you have read my previous articles.
And the path which brought us here and locked in this cage is the path of wisdom, knowledge, and experience gained over a million years, maybe more…
We need to understand a few things to understand duality or conflict before we go in the actual question.
We speak of Non-Violence, Happiness etc…But how do we define the idea of Non-Violence, Happiness, Non-jealousy, Non-aggressiveness, Non-greediness, Pleasure, etc. ???
The thought of Non-Violence comes only from the thought of violence and similarly for others. Similarly the thought of Happiness and Pleasure comes from the thought of Sorrow, Pain, Loss and Greed. In more simple words..imagine if we had two or more suns ..then the thought of night or stars would have never surfaced… not impossible… so if there was never any violence..then the thought of non-violence would not have come…
If we can confront hate, anger, pain, aggression, violence directly to its very root cause then we might achieve something but if try to move from one state to the other say from pain to pleasure then we cannot achieve anything and we will continue to live in duality and conflict and the struggle with that…
Similarly if we approach the Question: What Love is - we need to approach it with a free mind - free from prejudice, romanticism, free of motive, free of sentiments, the million definition in books and elsewhere, and free of all our personal emotional equations with the word…
What is Love ?
The most common answer we receive…
Yes, I think I know what is Love ( with a smile)
And this is where we put a stop to ask ourselves what really love is…If we really want to know what is love we should ask it without prejudicing our mind with personal experiences, emotions and opinions as otherwise we will close the door of perception of knowing the real meaning
Though everyone has a different opinion we can do some generalization of majority opinion that Love is a feeling which provides pleasure to our senses ( at an adolescent level we can attach words like sharing, caring, and other feelings etc. again which results in pleasure)
To elaborate : Love is a combination of the thought of desire, the memory of some experiences which gave us pleasure and chasing that image of pleasure in our mind or trying to achieve that state.
(Click for a bigger image)
If we do not equate Love with pleasure then we can get rid of Fear, Anxiety and all the other things with it. If we can get out of the conflict of ?I am Loved? and ?I am not Loved? and chasing the memories and those images of pleasure and desire. As they will only result in conflict, sorrow, fear and frustration. Love is something beyond passion, desire and pleasure as love cannot survive in conflict.
Finally…. Love is Compassion in all sense….and in all its manifestation… without prejudice or judgment. We will not be able to appreciate the beauty of this word without freeing ourselves from attachment
Thanks for the nice review about my site. You have a great site, I like your posts. Well said, we must free ourselves from attachment to appreciate life and love.
Namaste’ J. Sparrow! I fall in love on a daily basis, I try to hold no attachments to it other than that I *care,and with anything I care for I allow it to grow with nurturing either up close and in person, or from afar, in my prayers, sent out into the ethers. Thus love has no boundaries to me.
I have questioned love many times over time, only because I do not want the influence of my general surroundings T.V, radio even other friends to dictate what it truly means. (Good reason why I dont watch much T.V or read newspapers)
I want to see beyond what one typically grows up with, and the notions implanted of just what that *word* *IS* or is not.
Like most anything there seems to be certain parameters placed around it.Thus how can it truly grow into the *essential*?
I cannot even really define that word when someone asks me what I think it is. I point to a rock, or a tree, or an old person hobbling down the street. What *words* can I possibly use to describe *that*?
metta.
sky
If you care for something or someone - just from the core of your heart - without the thought of possession (diff to express such a feeling - just like appreciating a drop of dew on a grass leaf - where we do not want to possess it but simply admire…) or attachment - then that feeling of love or realization is the greatest thing one can have…
You need not express it - anyone with a similar mind will easily make out and you will also know
Love.
The Sparrow