LOVE

SEVEN ATTITUDES NECESSARY FOR REAL LOVE

We are often conditioned to think that placing emphasis on ourselves is selfish or self- centered. But by thoughtfully reflecting upon these areas, one realizes that we would be in a much better position to love and contribute to the lives of others. A strong relationship with yourself is a cornerstone of healthy relationships with others, and is the best preventative measure against living harmfully or recklessly.

My teacher Thich Nhat Hanh taught over and over, that if we do not learn to love ourselves, then we cannot truly love another. And until we take care of ourselves and practice self- care, then all our efforts to help others will be in vain. So if I wanted to be a true bodhisattva then I had to begin with myself.

Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you won’t do anything with it. Love is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.

The primary aim of Buddhist practice is to help us see beneath our protective layers and bring out our inherent basic goodness and our own buddha nature. And to see the inner nobility and beauty of all human beings. The Buddha believed that beauty and goodness are always there within each of us. This is the basic teachings of the Buddha. A true spiritual teacher is one who encourages us to look deeply in ourselves for the beauty and the love that we are seeking.

GIVE AWAY LOVE: ‘When we let someone be who they are without trying to change them; that is giving away love. When we trust that someone else can handle his or her life, and act accordingly, that is giving away love. When we let go and allow others to learn and grow without feeling that our existence is threatened; that is giving away love.

What we often define and perceive to be love really isn’t- it is being needy. Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence. The ability to give also depends on whether you think you count or not, so in that respect self-esteem is an essential element in the process. We must love and care for ourselves first and foremost.’ Erich Fromm : The Art of Loving

‘Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead and we shall still love you. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and your conscience that we shall also win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.’ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

ONE: If we are going to relate to others successfully, we need a sense of perspective and a clear idea about what is important in the long run. This often means that we have to let go of rigid ideas and fixed positions on a wide variety of things; especially our own values and perceptions.

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them

The Life of my Love is unburdened: the attainment thereof is the freedom of fulfillment. Love is its own divinity, if you shall follow it, putting aside the weary burden of a cunning mind, you will be free of the fear of anxious love.

TWO: Peace of mind is not the absence of conflict and heartbreak. Peace of mind is the acceptance of conflict and heartbreak. So, if you care, get on with your work of loving yourself and loving others. But you have to start with the inside first! Acceptance!

ERICH FROM: THE ‘ART’ OF LOVING

‘The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one’s narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one.

The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one’s desires and fears.

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one ‘object’ of love.

‘If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty.

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.’ Erich Fromm from ‘The Art of Loving

THREE: Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.

Love is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.

Look into the eye of your neighbor and find yourself with Life; there is immortality, life eternal, never changing. For him who is not in love with Life, there is the anxious burden of doubt and the lone fear of solitude; for him there is but death.

Love Life, and your love shall know of no corruption. Love Life and your judgement will uphold you. Love Life; you shall not wander away from the path of understanding.

FOUR: The principal form that the work of love takes is attention. When we love another we give him or her our attention; we attend to that person ‘s growth. When we love ourselves we attend to our own growth.

When we attend to someone, we are caring for that person. The act of attending requires that we set aside our existing preoccupations and actively shift our consciousness. Attention is an act of will, of work against the inertia of our own minds.

Love isn’t something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn’t a feeling, it is a practice. Love is not a feeling; it’s an ability, and if it’s an ability we can practice love and compassion.

FIVE: Everyone in our culture desires to some extent to be loving. But the desire to love is not in fact loving. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will - namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.

When we do actually exert ourselves in the cause of spiritual growth, it is because we have chosen to do so. Love is not a feeling. Love is an ability, and if it’s an ability we can strengthen it by practicing loving-kindness meditation and in a very real sense practicing kindness to everyone we meet.

SIX: Love is a strangely circular process. When we have successfully extended our limits, and let go of our self-preoccupation, we have then grown into a larger state of being. Thus the act of loving is an act of self-evolution even when the purpose of the act is someone else’s spiritual growth. It is through reaching toward evolution that we evolve.

‘Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it, because without it we become faint and weak. Without love our self-esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails.

Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world. Instead we turn inwardly and begin to feed upon our own personalities and little by little we destroy ourselves. You and I need the strength that comes from knowing that we are loved. With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice ourselves for others.’ Chief Dan George Salish Nations B.C. Canada

SEVEN : A unitary definition of love includes self-love with love for the other. Since I am human and you are human , to love means to myself as well as you. To be dedicated to human spiritual development is to be dedicated to the race of which we are a part, and this therefore means dedication to our own development as well as ‘theirs’

TEILHARD DE CHARDIN: PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE

‘To love is to discover and complete one’s self, an act impossible of general realization on Earth so long as each can see in the neighbor no more than a closed fragment following its own course through the world. It is precisely this state of isolation that will end if we begin to discover each other not merely the elements of one and the same thing, but of a single Spirit in search of itself. The existence of such a power becomes possible in the curvature of a world which is capable of creating something new.’ Teilhard De Chardin

Love alone can unite human beings so as to complete them and fulfill them; for it alone joins them by what is deepest In themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love, developing it until it embraces the totality of the people of the earth,

Theoretically, this transformation of love is quite possible. What paralyses life is a failure to believe and a failure to dare. The day will come, when after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of Love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world we shall have discovered fire! ‘ Teilhard de Chardin