What is Love? That is the great, eternal question. Our world is flooded with images for love in songs, films, advertising and television that always seem to end in an effortless happily ever after. It’s a beautiful romantic and dreamy picture of love that our popular culture has painted for us. Inundated by unrealistic fantasies, who could blame us for expecting that love would be the answer to all our dreams, and that when we fall in love our ecstatic emotions would last forever?
Around the globe and across the ages, philosophers and poets have been considered experts on the subject and have written more about love than anyone else, yet they repeatedly contradict one another in hopelessly irreconcilable terms. Some call love “a sickness full of woes” and “a mighty pain” while others assure us that love is a “many splendored thing” and “the sweetest delight of earth”
Falling in love can certainly be a tremendous joy. From the Buddhist view, however, the blissful expectations and intense feelings of rapture we associate with love are not true love but the symptoms of love-mere illusions. And as with all illusions, they can vanish as quickly as they appear.
Our collective love affair with illusion plays itself out in the reality that 60 percent of marriages collapse, regardless of the dramatic and oft-spoken vow “till death do us part” include the number of other long term relationships that fail, such as common law and gay partnerships, and it’s enough to make us wonder what has happened, or hasn’t happened, to create such puzzling state of affairs in this thing called love.
So what causes the great number of breakups in love? Is it that we are unprepared to do the work love requires, or is it something else? Depending on whom you ask, you might hear any number of explanations, including media influence, genetic predisposition, or a shift in modern family values. To some extent, i’m sure every reason we can think of for the breakdowns in our own relationships probably holds some truth, especially when we talk about our partners. “He or she didn’t communicate, was immature, emotionally unavailable, afraid of commitment, untrustworthy”. According to Buddhism, however, the most fundamental source of difficulties in love is found not in our mates but in our own desires and behaviors, within our own thoughts, words and deeds. That is our karma.
Yep, that is right, your actions, your thoughts not those of your partners, are what determine your success in love as well as in all other areas of your life. That knowledge is powerfully freeing, for no longer are you reliant on others for your happiness. You alone direct the course of your love and life and attract happiness on your own terms.
Love with patience, gentleness, and truth gives birth to enlightenment.
Just as a song is a partnership of music and lyrics, partners in love are equal individuals who, at the same time, perform a melody of life together.
You may search the universe for someone more worthy of your love and affection than you are yourself, but such a person does not exist.
More valuable than treasures in a storehouse are treasures of the body, and the treasures of the heart are the most valuable of all.
Love is any of a number of emotions related to a sense of strong affection and attachment. The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure (“I loved that house”) to intense interpersonal attraction (“I love my kids”).
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16 Mar 2010
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