Wholesome Junction: What is Love?

Love

Teachings from Osho and Thich Nhat Hanh

My whole life I’ve fantasized about falling in love and being carried away by this all-consuming passionate romance they play out in fairytales. I was convinced that love is something that just happens, no work required. I’ve waited and waited for that special moment spending countless nights cursing the Universe, cursing God asking why he has forgotten me, pleading for him to make me worthy of love. Until one day I woke up…and while I still believe that love is something that happens, that we have no control over who we fall in love with, what woke up to was the truth that I had been chasing a false love. It hit me: Love is everywhere. I had been walking around with love in my heart all along, I just never knew where to find it. I hadn't a clue what real love was because the idea and fantasy of what I was taught, through fairytales and storybooks, was merely an illusion. What I know now through countless hours of research, hundreds of books and years of soul searching later is that love is something so magnificent and so powerful it cannot be described with such things as limiting as words. I believe that there are many types of love, many different layers to love and they all flow together like the sound of the ocean waves rolling over sandy beaches or the crisp fall breeze dancing through the treetops.

“Love should be like breathing. It should be just a quality in you – wherever you are, with whomsoever you are, or even if you are alone, love goes on overflowing from you. Tis not a question of being in love with someone – it is a question of BEING love”

- Osho

It is a gift. Love is a gift that we take with us in every moment. A state of mind that is forever present if and when we allow it to surface. Love is a constant flow and there is nowhere it is not. Rather than being a single thing imprisoned in a brief moment in time it is existing within all that we can feel and experience. Time itself is an illusion and with that so is our misconception of love. For most of my life I thought that love will show up in the form of a person, a place, or a thing and I believed that once I obtained it - through a boyfriend, a great job in New York City, an expensive pair of Jimmy Choo Italian leather boots or a rock hard physique - I would be set free of all my misery and I would finally be happy. But that never happened. It didn't matter what job I had, what city I lived in, how many designer shoes I owned or friends I had, I wasn't happy - these things were supposed to make me feel loved, weren't they? Imagine my surprise - I worked so hard and the love never showed up.

I spent my entire life up until now full speed ahead, searching high and low, working my ass off to find love. So sure that I would find it and once I find it I could live happily ever after. As a society we buy into this false idea of love. We find comfort in the illusion of love being outside of ourselves so that we don't have to carry the responsibility of having love to share with others and (gasp!) to love ourselves - how selfish! We play the victim, making excuses as to why we don't like someone or why it's okay for us to be rude or ignore the homeless man on the side of the road. We say things like "If I can't have love no one can have love," or "They were rude first!" You see, our belief and teachings about conditional love is what is destroying us. Love has no conditions, it does not pick and choose who get's it based on good or bad behavior. Love is unconditional and need not any rules or regulations to be had and felt. Love is within everyone, love is everywhere and it will never give up. It never loses patience, it is always kind and compassionate and illuminates the path to ensure we can see our way through the darkness. Love is always by our side ready to catch us when we fall. Love understands and respects us and our choices, giving us freedom to be who we are without judgment, interference or fear of punishment.

“Love can never possess. Love is giving Freedom to the other. Love is an unconditional gift, it is not a bargain.”

-Osho

“You must Love in such a way that the person you love feels free”

– Thich Nhat Hanh

For so long love has been misunderstood and it’s multi-dimensional beauty has been shoved into a single category. We tell ourselves "Love is a luxury we can’t afford and don’t deserve". We buy into this idea that it’s so unattainable and because of this we live our lives feeling unworthy and worthless. Love has been held captive behind so many rules and regulations we have no choice but to given up on it. Instead we settle for less than love, we suffer and think that is the path to love. We actually believe that we are undeserving and unlovable beings who are damned to eternal hell. Let me tell you that, it is not the presence of evil that is making it so hard to be happy, it’s the lack of love. Anything that is hateful and uncomfortable is a result from the lack of love.

Let us remind each other of the beauty and peace of love. Let us see with our beautiful eyes how love can transform even the ugliest of times. Let us live with compassion and understanding of others and remember who we are and what we are given: LOVE.

Love is everywhere, within everyone – it surrounds us! We just have to look for it. Even the most resentful, hateful person is capable of love, in fact they are the ones who need it the most. Those who are negative and treat people badly have forgotten about love. Their love has been lost somewhere within their story. Help them remember who they are. Love is not a thing or object in which we can obtain, it’s a state of mind, a constant flow of beauty and abundance.

“I love, because my love is not dependent on the object of love. My love is dependent on my state of being. So whether the other person changes, becomes different, friend turns into a foe, does not matter, because my love was never dependent on the other person. My love is my state of being. I simply love.”

-Osho

Love is a God given right because we are alive – just as we don’t have to earn the right to breathe, we do not have to earn the right to be loved. We ARE love. Love is freedom, it is kind and it is patient, it is the very essence of who we are. It’s up to you to believe it. It’s up to you to understand the power that is within you to find love in everything you do and everyone you come across. Love is sitting in a coffee shop reading your favorite book; love is filling a strangers parking meter; love is walking through a field of grass without shoes; love is looking at the stars on a crystal clear night and it is dancing in the rain; love is saying I love you to someone special and laughing with a small child; Love is in the small things and in the grand gestures, it’s all around you and most importantly it is in within you.

As Dr. Wayne Dyer said “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change” – this is how you find love. Change the way you look at love. Take it out of the small cluttered category of restrictions and limitations and let it flow. Stop expecting love to be this grand moment and start looking for it in the simple things. Soon you will see that love has a way of turning all those simple moments into the most magnificent moments of your life.

In his book ‘How to Love,’ Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the Four Elements of True Love:

LOVING KINDNESS: “The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. You can be the sunshine for another person. You can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment. Then you have something to offer the other person.”
COMPASSION: “Compassion is the capacity to understand the suffering in oneself and in the other person. If you understand your own suffering, you can help him to understand his suffering. Understanding suffering brings compassion and relief. You can transform your own suffering and help transform the suffering of the other person with the practice of mindfulness and looking deeply.”
JOY: “The capacity to offer joy. When you know how to generate joy, it nourishes you and nourishes the other person. Your presence is an offering, like fresh air, or spring flowers, or the bright blue sky.”
EQUANIMITY: “We can also call it inclusiveness or nondiscrimination. In a deep relationship, there’s no longer a boundary between you and the other person. You are her and she is you. Your suffering is her suffering. Your understanding of your own suffering helps your loved one to suffer less. Suffering and happiness are no longer individual matters. What happens to your loved one happens to you. What happens to you happens to your loved one.”

I leave you with an excerpt from Osho’s book “Tantric Transformation: When Love Meets Meditation” – something to ponder:

“A mature person has the integrity to be alone. And when a mature person gives love, he gives without any strings attached to it: he simply gives. And when a mature person gives love, he feels grateful that you have accepted his love, not vice versa. He does not expect you to be thankful for it – no, not at all, he does not even need your thanks. He thanks you for accepting his love.
And when two mature persons are in love, one of the greatest paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone, they are together so much so that they are almost one. But their oneness does not destroy their individuality; in fact, it enhances it: they become more individual. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. How can you dominate the person you love? Just think over it.
Domination is a sort of hatred, anger, enmity. How can you even think of dominating a person you love? You would love to see the person totally free, independent; you will give him more individuality. That’s why I call it the greatest paradox: they are together so much so that they are almost one, but still in that oneness they are individuals. Their individualities are not effaced; they have become more enhanced. The other has enriched them as far as their freedom is concerned.
Immature people falling in love destroy each other’s freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.
Remember, freedom is a higher value than love. That’s why, in India, the ultimate we call moksha. Moksha means freedom. Freedom is a higher value than love. So if love is destroying freedom, it is not of worth. Love can be dropped, freedom has to be saved; freedom is a higher value. And without freedom you can never be happy, that is not possible. Freedom is the intrinsic desire of each man, each woman – utter freedom, absolute freedom.
So anything that becomes destructive to freedom, one starts hating it. Don’t you hate the man you love? Don’t you hate the woman you love? You hate; it is a necessary evil, you have to tolerate it. Because you cannot be alone you have to manage to be with somebody, and you have to adjust to the other’s demands. You have to tolerate, you have to bear them.
Love, to be really love, has to be being-love, gift-love. Being-love means a state of love. When you have arrived home, when you have known who you are, then a love arises in your being. Then the fragrance spreads and you can give it to others.
How can you give something, which you don’t have?
To give it, the first basic requirement is to have it.”