Replying to LO29698 --
Evoked by reading Andrew's contributions labeled LO29694 and LO29698, on
top of some other readings of the last few weeks:
Love is not _feeling_. It is not what we normally associate with "being
in love": the excitement, euphoria, and desire that we tend to think of as
the most desirable state of being possible, when we are at our happiest
and most alive. Desire is not love. Yearning is not love. Love knows no
attachment, no desire. It does not hope or grasp or strive. It is not
about action or will. It cannot be about striving for unity or wholeness.
As Krishnamurti explains in _Commentaries on Living_:
Love is not sensation; it is a flame without smoke. You will know love
whan you as the thinker are not. You cannot sacrifice yourself, the
thinker, for love. There can be no deliberate action for love, because
love is not of the mind. The discipline, the will to love, is the
thought of love; and the thought of love is sensation. Thought cannot
think about love, for love is beyond the reaches of the mind. Thought
is continuous, and love is inexhaustible. That which is inexhaustible
is ever new, and that which has continuance is ever in the fear of
ending. That which ends knows the eternal beginning of love.
Love is not a matter of choice, loving this but not that, loving what
gives us pleasure and hating that which gives us pain. Love is not a
state of conflict, where we are trying to bend life to meet our desires.
Desire is wanting things to be a certain way. That means a life of
conflict, and love is not a life of conflict.
... when I learn to love one person, I have embraced everyone. It is love
that is not about a particular relationship but is about the nature of all
relationships, the relationship we have with life where there is no bias,
where there is an unconditional acceptance of what life offers us. This
acceptance embraces both pain and joy. Love is wisdom and freedom from
the constraints of desire. It is about a falling away of self.
Love is not something "you" attain to. Love blows "you" away like a
candle in a cyclone. But in the same breath, in the place of who you
thought you were, it leaves the gifts of freedom, wisdom, and the fullness
of life.
-- Paul Rezendes, "The Wild Within"
... For true friends seek not to coerce us, even gently and reasonably,
into believing what we are unsure of. These friends are like midwives,
who draw forth what is waiting to be born. Their task is not to make
themselves indispensable but redundant.
These friends are our vital link to past and future. For they too were
nurtured through friendships, in many cases with those who are dead.
Dharma practice has survived through a series of friendships that
stretches back through history -- ultimately to Gautama himself. Through
friendships we are entrusted with a delicate thread that joins past with
future generations. These fragile, intimate moments are ones of
indebtedness and responsibility. Dharma practice flourishes only when
such friendships flourish. It has no other means of transmission.
And these friends are our vital links to a community that lives and
struggles today. Through them we belong to a culture of awakening, a
matrix of friendships, that expands in ever wider circles to embrace not
only "Buddhists" but all who are actually or potentially committed to the
values of dharma practice. ...
The self-creation of individuation and the world-creation of social
engagement cannot exist apart from each other. They are united within a
common culture, which configures them in a meaningful and purposeful
whole. At the same time, it is the creative tension between them that
constantly forms and shapes this culture. Individuation and social
engagement become the two poles of a culture of awakening. ...
However highly individuated, a culture of awakening can never be a private
affair. Such a culture is always an expression of a community. To
achieve maturity and depth it requires cultivation over generations.
Community is the living link between individuation and social engagement.
A culture of awakening simply cannot occur without being rooted in a
coherent and vital sense of community, for a matrix of friendships is the
very soil in which dharma practice is cultivated. How to create an
authentic community, which provides a sound basis for the emergence of a
culture while optimizing individual freedom, may be the single most
important question facing those practicing the dharma today.
-- Stephen Batchelor, "Buddhism Without Beliefs"
Learning more about love,
--Don Dwiggins d.l.dwiggins@computer.org There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for? And what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same: only love. -- From _Don Juan DeMarco_ (1995)
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