Today is Valentine’s Day and I want to use this opportunity to write a few words about love. When you look at the world and listen to what people say and what messages you get bombarded with, you could believe, that love is what is most common in the world. The world has become obsessed with this word. And it seams that everybody knows what it really means. But when it comes to love, the majority of all human beings are not more mature than little children. They have learnt from the blind (normally their parents) und are creating new blind ones (their children) by passing over a false belief from one generation to the next. What do I mean by using such harsh words? Love is a great concept, it is the greatest and most wonderful concept that has ever been brought out of the universe. The real love is what has been taught by great masters of metaphysics like Jesus or Buddha, but ever since then there have been single people who understood und who have practised it to make it visible in the world.
We normally misuse the world love. For example: when we say: “I love to go to the movies” or “I like steak and French Fries” and the like. We have to be more careful by using our language properly, that we don’t soil the holiness of some word. We have to heal the idea of love again. I don’t go into more details what I mean by deconsecrate love, for everybody can make his own judgement by reading the real criteria for love.
So what are they? First of all, love must cover all that is. Love is not something personal, for when you recognize the world as a whole, there is no “You” and no “Me” and it is impossible to say: “I love you”, by not also meaning “I love everything there is”. Real love is never something exclusive, given to a special person; it always must include everybody and everything. The second point to mention is, that real love is unconditional; it does not depend on something or anybody. If you love a person, because he looks good, it is not real love. If you love a person, because he is doing something for you or gives you something, it is not love at all. Love even includes the enemy. Real love is always also love to the people who hurt you, even the ones who would like to kill you. You only owe love to other people, not sympathy. Of course you do not think that a person, who harms you, is someone you have sympathy for. But that does not mean you cannot love him.
But this is not all that is. Love contains four further characteristics. The first one is friendship. The second one is compassion. The third one is Joy. And the fourth one is equanimity. What ever you do, if love is joy for one party but not for the other, it is not love. It is also no real love, when you want to do good things, but you harm another person, because you did not have the rightful understanding. If you give a present to someone for whom the present has no value, because he cannot use it or does not like it, it is not real love. For real love always has to consider both, the heart and the mind. Giving without understanding is not rightful giving, is not rightful understanding. The last one, equanimity, is the one that many people don’t understand. Equanimity is the wisdom of equality. You understand that there is no higher and no lower in the universe, you see that all people and all beings are one. Pride is a sign of not understanding the fundamental truths and one of the many causes of suffering in the world. People who are proud, create a blueprint in their minds, which will let them suffer in the future. So what is pride? Pride is to think you are better or superior to someone else. Pride is also to think you are less or inferior, than someone else (even modern psychology knows that). But pride is also to think you are equal to others. So what is not pride: To see that there are no others.
“I am not better than the others,
I am not worse than the others,
I am not equal to the others,
I am the others!”
If we do not have equanimity in our mind, love is in danger to become a struggle, a struggle over power. One partner tries to “own” the other one, like a piece property, in the worst scenario of course. But more often we see the tendency in relationships and especially in marriages, to limit the freedom of the spouse, to “bind” him or her. That behaviour is not love, it is possessing. We have to see, that if we really love, nobody loses his or her freedom, relationship does not mean to have less freedom than a single person. If it is so, than there is definitely something wrong. And both partners should meditation and contemplate deeply about their real feelings and the mental attachments that are their, that have nothing to do with love, but mimicry themselves are part of love.
If we practise more mindfulness in our lives and especially in our relationships, we can help ourselves and our loved ones to cultivate the fruitful seeds in our mind and not the unfruitful ones. Whenever we see someone getting angry, we should instead of supporting his anger, help him so that the unfruitful seeds, which are about to come up, can disappear fall back into the depths of the mind, where they came from. And we also have to watch ourselves not to cultivate the seed of anger that is within us. It is very ease to be infected by anger of others and getting angry ourselves. Mindfulness is the guardian, which recognizes the danger before it can arise.
A happy Valentine’s Day to everybody!!!
