On Love
1.
Bitterness imprisons life;
Love releases
it.
~Henry Emerson Fosdick,
2.
Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits -
and then re-mould it
nearer to the Heart's
Desire!
~Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
3.
Love is patient;
Love is kind and envies no one.
There is nothing love cannot face;
There is no limit to its faith, hope and its endurance.
Love will never come to an
end.
~I Corinthians 13:4-8
4.
One has to find out for oneself what it means to die; then there is no
fear;
therefore every day is a new day — and I really mean this, one can do this
—
so that your mind and your eyes see life as something totally new. That is
eternity.
That is the quality of the mind that has come upon this timeless
state,
because it has known what it means to die every day to everything it
has collected during the day.
Surely, in that there is love. Love is something totally new every day,
but pleasure is not, pleasure has continuity.
Love is always new and therefore it is its own
eternity.
~J.Krishnamurti
5.
As a mother with her life will guard her child, her only child,
let my follower extend unboundedly his heart to every living being.
With love for all the world, let him extend unboundedly
his heart, above, below, around, unchecked, with no ill-will or hate.
Whether he stands, or sits, or walks, or rests,
may my follower always pursue this
mindfulness.
~Budha [From the Sutta Nipata I.8]
6.
Don’t shut love out of your life by saying it’s impossible to find.
The quickest way to receive love is to give;
the fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly;
and the best way to keep love is to give it
wings.
~Bryan Dyson
7.
A man born with an element of Siva becomes a Gnyani;
his mind is always inclined to the feeling
that the world is unreal and Brahman alone is real.
But when a man is born with an element of Vishnu,
he develops ecstatic love of God.
That love can never be destroyed.
It may wane a little now and then
when he indulges in philosophical reasoning,
but it ultimately returns to him increased a
thousand-fold.
~RamakrishnaParamahamsa
8.
Never again say struggle. Life is an Act of Faith! --Struggle is
optional!
Your saving grace is the disappearance of urgency; it causes wrinkles and fat!
Be gentle with yourself. Be patient with yourself.
Begin your search for love and life
within.
~Iyanla Vanzant
9.
To have inward beauty, there must be complete abandonment;
the sense of not being held, of no restraint, no defense, no resistance;
but abandonment becomes chaotic if there is no austerity with it.
And do we know what it means to be austere, to be satisfied with little
and not to think in terms of 'more'?
There must be this abandonment with deep inward austerity --
the austerity that is extraordinarily simple
because the mind is not acquiring, gaining,
not thinking in terms of 'the more'.
It is the simplicity born of abandonment with austerity
that brings about the state of creative beauty.
But if there is no love, you cannot be simple, you cannot be austere.
You may talk about simplicity and austerity,
but without love they are merely a form of compulsion,
and therefore there is no abandonment. ~J Krishnamurti
How can Buddhism talk about compassion and love in one breath and non-attachment and all these qualities of renunciation in the other breath. But that's because we confuse love with clinging. We think that if we love somebody, the measure of our loving is that we want to hold on to them. But that's not love, that's just self-love, attachment. It's not genuinely loving the other person, wanting them to be well and happy that's wanting them to make us well and happy. This is very important, because we confuse it all the time.
When I was nineteen years old I told my mother, "I'm going to India" and she said, "Oh yes, when are you leaving?" She didn't say, "How can you leave me, your poor old mother, now you've got to the age when you're earning a living, how can you go and abandon me?" She just said, "Oh yes, when are you leaving?" It was not because she did not love me, it was because she did. And because she loved me more in a way than she loved herself, she wanted what was right for me, not what would make her happy. Do you understand? Her happiness came by making me happy.
That's love, and that is something which we all need very much to work on in our personal relationships. To hold people and possessions like this (hands outstretched to indicate holding something lightly in the palms) and not like this (fists clenched to indicate holding something very tightly). So that when we have them, we appreciate and rejoice in them, but if they go then we can let them go. Change and impermanence is the nature of everything.
You see, when we lose something we love, it's our attachment which is the problem, not the loss. That's what causes us grief. And that is why the Buddha taught that with attachment comes fear and grief. We have the fear of losing, and then we have the grief when we lose. Buddha never said that love causes grief.
Love is an opening of the heart. It's like the sun shining. The sun just naturally shines. It doesn't discriminate, shining on this person but not on that one. It just shines, because it's the nature of the sun to give warmth. Some people go inside and close the doors and windows; that's their problem. The sun is shining anyway. And it's that quality of heart which we have to develop. That quality of open, unconditional loving, no matter what.
--Tenzin Palmo
The kite-flier's attitude is a good illustration of loving-caring for the child.
The loving bond that does not bind is the thread; pulling and leaving, we succeed
in sending it higher in the free atmosphere. We still hold one end of the thread and
keep communicating with the kite, feeling the tightness/heaviness as the air keeps
pushing the kite up. We don't hold the kite restricted yet the kite flies free
-- an ideal relationship described by Khalil Gibran thus:
Your children are not your children.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and
He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.