Oh, really! This question I am repeatedly asking myself after being disillusioned by the benefits of love; some of them include emotional support, physical gratification, someone to talk to when you are feeling down, financial support at times, someone to look forward to and to dream about spending your life together and someone who understand who you are, your goals, your priorities and is still there to support you and hold your hand to tell you ‘Aall iz well’. These benefits are the results of love in action. However, the fundamental question is – Is love permanent? Is it going to stay forever?
More often than not, I have found myself in a situation to leave someone (or being left by someone) due to difference in attitudes, different life principles, character inconsistencies, different life priorities or at times you are simply replaced by someone else. What more, even if these so-called differences are not present, illness or death may play its due part and separates one partner from another. Sometime back, I underwent past life regression and was able to regress to three of my past lives (for those, who do not believe in past lives, please continue to believe the same) and surprisingly found out, that at least four different women, whom I know in this birth had connection with me from previous births. It was bit surprising and at the same time reinforcing the believe that ‘Karma does exist’ and clearly, I could see the reason of why these women are behaving in a certain manner. The level of commitment of those women varied from extreme betrayal to extreme loyalty. I was attracted to each one of them during certain period of my present life and that attraction faded or increased as relationship progressed.
The question here is, not how I fell in love and came out and fell in love again, the question is what is the common string, which remained same throughout? Well, the answer is not love because my love for those women kept on changing and as soon I was through with them, the love was over and I moved on to fall in love again. So, love – our definite constant is a subject dependent emotion, which came and gone just like waves, which rise and fall. Just like body vibrations (if you do Vipassana, you will know what I mean) – pleasant and unpleasant, which come and go, like feeling of pain and relaxation, which are temporary in nature and are present in the body as long as there is an external stimulus or internal emotional attachment to certain thoughts.
Does it mean that love, the most beautiful and strongest emotion known to mankind is also impermanent and keeps on changing as we change our partners or may change when we change our thoughts towards our partner? The answer is YES. Love, the most beautiful and strongest emotion keeps on changing. It only comes to the surface when we are connected with our partner and are focused on him/her to supply our emotional, physical, mental, financial and spiritual needs. This is called expectation. Love ceases to exist when these expectations are not met and therefore, as a proactive beings we try to repair the relationship so that feelings of love can be restored. If our best efforts fail, we try to breakup and look for another partner to fulfill our aforesaid needs. In cases, where divorce/breakup happens after a long association, we often try to find answers what went wrong and often for the people who pass through these situations for the first time, the emotional journey through this phase may be compared to trauma. Anyhow, over a course of time we learn that love is a subject dependent thing and keeps on repeating itself when we find the right partner who can fulfill our aforesaid needs. But, does this make love permanent, something worth fighting for? Even, if I have to ask this and do some historical analysis of love, as put forward by some great men like Rumi, Guru Nanak, Kabir, Jesus and so forth, then I again start to get illusionary feelings from their sayings about love. Some of them are:
Rumi on Love
I cannot sleep in your presence.
In your absence, tears prevent me.
You watch me My Beloved
On each sleepless night and
Only You see the difference
Looking at my life
I see that only Love
Has been my soul’s companion
From deep inside
My soul cries out:
Do not wait, surrender
For the sake of Love.
If you can’t smell the fragrance
Don’t come into the garden of Love.
If you’re unwilling to undress
Don’t enter into the stream of Truth.
Stay where you are.
Don’t come our way.
All year round the lover is mad,
Unkempt, lovesick and in disgrace.
Without love there is nothing but grief.
In love… what else matters?
Love is our Mother and
The way of our Prophet.
Yet it is in our nature
To fight with Love.
We can’t see you, mother,
Hidden behind dark veils
Woven by ourselves.
Do you want to enter paradise?
To walk the path of Truth
You need the grace of God.
We all face death in the end.
But on the way, be careful
Never to hurt a human heart!
Do you know what the music is saying?
“Come follow me and you will find the way.
Your mistakes can also lead you to the Truth.
When you ask, the answer will be given.”
The Master who’s full of sweetness
Is so drunk with love, he’s oblivious.
“Will you give me
some of your sweetness?”
“I have none,” he says,
unaware of his richness.
You know what love is?
It is all kindness, generosity.
Disharmony prevails when
You confuse lust with love, while
The distance between the two
Is endless.
This Love is a King
But his banner is hidden.
The Koran speaks the Truth
But its miracle is concealed.
Love has pierced with its arrow
The heart of every lover.
Blood flows but the wound is invisible.
Ref: Rumi Quotes on Love
Kabir Quotes
The guest is inside you, and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.
The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.
I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside "love" there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love.
How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies!
Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.
With the word "reason" you already feel miles away.
— Kabir (The Kabir book: Forty-four of the ecstatic poems of Kabir)
With all due respect to these great legends, I have to understand, what do they mean by LOVE. What’s their understanding of love? Had they have derived the same meaning of love, which I have come across, they would not have written about it and felt about the same to such a great extent.
Let me try to analyze their poems. First, obvious thing of immediate notice is they don’t talk about their partner anywhere. At the best, they talk about being immersed in love of God, but the question is who/what is God? This is a separate discussion altogether. For the sake of understanding, I may assume that God is the one running the complete show of birth, death, making people do what they want to do and what they don’t want to do. The place where god lives may be immaterial here, god may live inside us or outside us. The fundamental aspect is to understand love and its true nature.
Here is the analysis of Rumi’s poem (by per paragraph)
I am so engrossed in my beloved that I can’t sleep when beloved is here and I miss my beloved a lot that I cry when beloved is not here. Only you my beloved know the condition of my heart.
Love, and for love only I feel so deep that my soul gets deeply affected. I am not going to wait and for the sake of love alone, I am going to surrender.
Be warned, if you cannot feel the fragrance of love, don’t enter into love. If you are too afraid to be exposed, don’t come anywhere near the truth.
Even though lover’s condition is always in shambles, however, without love everything else is full of grief.
Love is divine, the everything of our life, yet we continue to fight with love with the formations inside our mind.
Death is inevitable, but don’t you want to see the absolute beauty of life, which can only come through divine blessings but be careful never to hurt someone.
What my heart is singing? Don’t be afraid of mistakes, they will lead you to the truth. Just ask and you will be shown the way.
The master full of immense love doesn’t even know how much love he has to give? He simply says, I have none.
The kindness, generosity is what constitutes love. Disharmony is the result of mistaking lust for love.
Love is invisible yet so powerful, who has entered the heart of every lover, you can’t see where it has impacted you but feel it strongly.
Following is the conclusion from Rumi’s Poem:
Love may impact you deeply (to your deepest emotion).
Love is not the formations inside our mind.
Love is shown through Kindness, Generosity.
Lust is not love.
You can feel, inside your heart (where deepest emotions reside)
———————————-
Now, it’s the turn for Kabir’s Poem:
To understand Love (God), leave away your arrogance and look inside. The seed for love is impregnated in you.
The daily failures are unimportant in the light of inside sun (love).
I hear sounds and feel more joy than what is known to an ordinary human being. There is a feeling of Joy, Light even though there seems to be no source for it.
Universe is full of love. It is the reason, the arrogance that separates us from love.
Following is the conclusion from Kabir’s Poem:
Love is impregnated inside us.
Daily failures hold no meaning in front of love.
The joy of Love is extra-ordinary (out of the world).
Our reasoning and arrogance keeps away love from us.
Again, one thing is clear, love is no where person dependent. Even if we are in love or out of love, then we are just associating the other person with the love which is already inside us.
Even the definition of love from Bible comes handy - it sets up the tone 
Love is always patient and kind,
it is never jealous,
love is never boastful nor conceited,
it is never rude or selfish,
it does not take offence neither it is resentful,
love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins,
but delights in the truth,
it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope
and to endure whatever comes.
One thing more here, even if the love is not inside other person, we may only realize the love when we act on the other one. E.g. if are angry over someone, does it constitute love – May be not. In case of mother being angry over a kid (it could be justified) but not in other cases. How can anger produce understanding, selflessness, trust, hope. What is produces is arrogance, selfishness and disturbed mind.
So, love is known these attributes
- Patience
- Kindness
- Selflessness
- Non-arrogance
- Non-reasoning
- Generosity
- No predefined mind patterns (or reasoning)
- Truthfulness
- Hope
- Endurance
- Non-resentful
- Polite
This list could also be extended, but even with these qualities of love, the point is very clear. The first thing is love is non-personal, it means that we cannot distinguish between person A and B to give love. Just the mere act of creating a distinction will create a mind-pattern. But, the other question is how we judge, if we don’t distinguish? Answer is, don’t judge if you have to love.
The question, which prompted this discussion, was – Is Love impermanent or not? So, far the conclusion is people whom we love are definitely impermanent, they keep on changing, their attitude, their behavior keeps on changing but not love. If we keep ourselves from creating mind patterns and follow the virtues of love (above), then we can be in a state of love. But, hey isn’t the goal of creating love a mind-pattern itself? Yes, it is – once you recognize that pattern, destroy it and enjoy pure love nothing else!
Enjoy mari! 