love

Love. Somehow we all know it’s an important thing, an important part of life; perhaps the most important. And yet, in matters of love, we seem so often to end up in great anguish. Why is this?

We confuse love. We confuse other emotions for love. Everything gets tangled up inside us and then, of course, with the rest of the outside world as well. In fact, sadly, very few of us know real love. There is a reason for this. The reason is, we are, deep down, trying to compensate for some feeling of inadequacy. Therefore we are approaching the world in a state of need. This neediness prohibits love from flowing within us. And the emotions we feel towards others, though we may use the word, the label, ‘love’, those emotions are not true love. They are merely an emotional aspect of sexual desire, and the feeling of happiness that comes when, temporarily, our feelings of inadequacy have disappeared, through our energy being focussed on another.

But perhaps I should explain what real love is, lest you have never felt it. Real love, the love of the buddhas, the love of the enlightened ones, is not a love for a particular person or thing. It’s an unconditional flowing of appreciative energy in relation to everything in the universe, the whole of existence, to everybody: man, woman, child, young, old, sexy, unsexy. Love is just an overflowing response to all that life is offering, in the moment.

This love is not asking for anything in return. This love is an indication that one is already full, full of life. One is already fed to the limit with the bounties of life. Then of course there is no need, no neediness. There is no deal to be struck. There is nothing wanted in return. Then love can flow and then only. And you will know it. You will know it when this feeling of love is flowing towards all beings.

Mothers talk of unconditional love for their children. And indeed, a mother’s love has few conditions but conditions are still there. The main condition is that the child is the mother’s child. Rarely does she feel the same unconditional love to all other people. So even the mother’s love is not truly unconditional.

And as for the love of lovers, beautiful though it is, it is invariably weighed down with conditions. How many lovers will feel the same way about their beloved when he or she is in another’s arms?

Unconditional love is a rare thing. It can only come into being when the ego is no longer there to attach itself to the beloved and to the relationship to the beloved, and suck energy therefrom. It is this need to define oneself, in terms of one’s relationships to others, that causes the trouble. Stand whole, complete within yourself, without reference to all else. From that completeness, in that wholeness, love will flow, without limit and without condition.

This is the love of the buddhas. And you can feel it. Looking into the eyes of an enlightened one, you will see the whole of space is there and it is filled with love; love flowing regardless of who you are, regardless of what you have done; just a love, an overflowing of joy and appreciation, of you, as you are, part of this beautiful existence, with not a single fault to be found.

This is love, my friends, all else is but a game of the ego. And games of the ego always end in tears, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but always. So do not worry about these lesser forms of love. Find your own sense of wholeness. Acknowledge your validity, as you are. And you will see: Without you doing anything, love will flow through you, unbounded. And the rest of existence will sigh with relief. This, my friends, is love.