July 19, 2006
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What is love?
What is love? An enlightened person would tell us that ordinary love is just a masquerade. Ordinary love is a duty. It is conditional. It pretends too much. It brings frustration. It obliges. It expects. It demands. It attaches. It concerns. It exploits. It is shallow. It is at time syrupy, almost sickening and nauseating. It feeds the ego which is not the real you but the unreal you.
The same enlightened person would also tell us that real love is a totally different phenomenon. Real love is freedom. It is unconditional. It is sharing. It knows nothing of demand but joy and giving. It is non-pretentious. Real love is a nourishment to the soul. It brings fulfillment. It never wants to be rewarded, even to be thanked. It does not oblige, expect, and demand. It detaches. It knows compassion and considerate but has no concerns. At time, it can be hard, aloof, and very cold. It does not feed the ego. It would not fulfill any unreal need and any poisonous idea in the other.
If I ask the Hindus, they’d say that I love my husband not for my husband’s sake, but for my own sake because he gives me pleasures. But deep down, I love my own pleasure. They say that I love my daughter, my friends, and others not because of them, but because of me. Deep down my daughter makes me happy, my friends give me solace and this is what I am hankering for. So the Hindus say that I don’t really love others but love myself. Even if I say that I love others, truly it is just a long, roundabout way to love myself. For the Greeks, loving self would have been ridiculous. Love can only exist between two persons. For anything to be loved, the other is needed.
Love is an enigma. It is a paradox.
What is love to you?
Comments (15)
Welcome back, Sis. Are you back from vacation? How was it?
Love is a paradox. It’s hard to divorce love from what’s in it for me. Ultimately love is about acceptance. It is about staying the course no matter how much collective human dysfunction someone shows. After all, when you see your own dysfunction, you can’t help but have compassion and acceptance for the other.
baby don’t hurt me
Good grief. I do not know. I would say when I was about 100 year old, and somebody do not mind that I pee in my pan, have no teeth, wrinkle like linen, not knowing my way home, that would be love.
can love really be described?
some love is more conditional than others:)
Love is a smile that never goes away even in tears.
Thanks for saying hi. Did you enjoy your trip?
The answers to what Love is to us, it defines us I think. Great post Trimtab! Welcome back!
Love, probably the most misuderstood word in the english language. Love is unconditional by its spiritual definition anything less is not love. Love is God, God is love, we are love sometimes hidden way too well.
Lenn
The Hindu’s are partially correct; it starts with and can only be through self love that we “show” love. At our most basic level, self interest is all we really are. We show each other love to satisfy our many self interests. As long as the love is satisfying the self interest of all concerned, it lasts. When the semblance of love is gone, and duty holds us together, love is gone. Too many cultures have found a way to exploit this fact and force people into loveless relationships through dogma and duty. What on earth is worth a loveless life? Love is free and cannot be controlled. Love cannot be constantly analyzed, that would be like pulling a delicate house plant out of its dirt to see if the roots are growing. Love is a person that cannot be seen, but we all know where she is, and where she isn’t.
1Corinthians 13 -Love.
LOL! Watching what you want to talk about!
Love is a decision made daily to Love if you feel like it or not, and Love is also, giving someone what they need instead of what they want, telling them truth instead of what they wish to hear, valuing their well-being over there friendship. Valuing their best interest over your own discomfort.
It is both selfless and fulfillment. Like the yin/yang. It has two faces.
Love is xanga ….