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The word 'love' has been bandied around so much that when scrutinised it seems meaningless. Listen to the radio and you will hear people crooning about love. Religions all tell us to love. When we whisper sweet nothings into our partners' ears we enunciate softly the word love. I love you. I love this. I love that. Love thy neighbour. Love is all you need. I need somebody to love. Lovey dovey.
But what does love actually mean? U.G.Krishnamurti called it a 'dirty word', claiming that love was just a fancy word for lust. It's an interesting definition. It's not hard to perceive the meaning in this. The Spanish seem to have it down to a tee. They use the verb 'querer' for love in the romantic sense, which literally means 'to want'. In fact, in relationships this kind of love is almost entirely possessive. If it weren't the whole nexus of the relationship would fall apart. Think about it, what is a relationship if not an unofficial contract guaranteeing the mutual possession of two people?
What about spiritual, platonic love? This is often referred to as compassion and charity. This is the kind of non-conditional love you see bandied around by so-called spiritual types. 'Saints' like Mother Theresa and Gandhi professed this kind of love in their tender compassion for the poor and the unrepresented. How selfless is this love though? The Dalai Lama once said that compassion is totally self-rewarding at the end of the day. You help others because you enjoy the sensation of being helpful. Compassion is warming, fulfilling and highly rewarding. To feel you are a rock to others is undoubtedly a source of great warmth and pride at the end of the day. Afterall, when you feel pain for another is it not simply the pain in you that urges on your compassionate actions? Perhaps we could go so far to say, and rather cynically so I must admit, that compassion is the act of healing one's own inner pain (clothed in the garment of pity) by extending a hand to a suffering other. While a bit radical, this view is truthful in essence. Nothing ever occurs 'over there' in our experience of life. Everything occurs here, all sensations, all ideas, all emotions. Even compassion.
It would seem therefore that love as a term is rather ambiguous. In actual fact it seems that love, as it is known generally, i.e. as a bind in a relationship or the substance of compassion, is ultimately self-rewarding and totally selfish. In relationships it is an excuse for the banal gratification of possession. In acts of charity it is the glowing medal of pride and worthiness. Love is nothing less than self-interest, clothed in vague unchallenged concepts of virtue which when exposed are totally hollow and meaningless and no more sublime than the basic animal instincts.
This view is rather pessimistic to be sure. However, I am not discarding love. I am trying to discover what exactly love could be, if such a thing exists. In my own experience there is only one thing that approximates this lofty concept of 'love' as a virtue, as a total selfless communion with someone or something: awareness. If you look at your awareness of the world what do you observe?
(ponder this for a while before reading on)
Most likely you will have discovered that awareness, like the lofty idea of love we all cherish, is totally unconditional. Your awareness of life doesn't deny or discard anything. It openly communes with absolutely everything that arises in the most fresh and vibrant way imaginable. Right now for instance. Attend to your experience at this precise moment. What do you observe?
What is clear is a total, unconditional acceptance of what is. A lively communion with everything around you. Your awareness is like a new-born baby, totally amazed by the world. It greedily takes in all your experiences with a remarkable youthful lust. It is always reaching out to the world. It doesn't judge, criticise or scrutinise. It accepts everything totally as it is with a degree of presence that is truly remarkable. Awareness is quite literally in love with the world. Seeing this, it becomes clear that love is not this or that. It is not conditional on doing something or being something or fulfilling something. It is always here. Awareness is love. Awareness is the hungriest, most spontaneous and most unconditional love there is and what's beautiful is that is is always here, loving the world every second of every day, for no reason whatsoever, and as you are awareness, then logically, you are love.
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