Love in Scriptures

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Love

Love is considered as a great human emotional state. It subsumes several other sentiments like respect, devotion, brotherhood, friendship, kindness, tenderness, caring of children, compassion, and others. Now, the term in circulation is self-love, caring for self, along with all others.

Why one loves

Why one loves others? It is difficult to answer. Normally our love towards parents, teachers, brothers, and family members is because of their relation with us. Similarly, it is with our spouse because of the arranged marriage. All these love relations were considered permanent, and no one deviated from the love relations in earlier times.

But, except for the friendship from childhoods, we find very fluctuating relations with new and old friends. Similarly, relations through love marriage also depends upon selection. So, when our choice matters, what is the reason of our love?

Even if we are able to find one suitable for love, why the relationships do not continue for long? Relations in modern times are much more short-lived than in yester-years. What matters for our decision of love and hate?

Love as per Upanishad

Maitreyi Brahm Vidya

Maitreyi Brahm Vidya is a very interesting wisdom from Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

The Maitreyi Vidya is explained in second Chapter, Fourth Brahmana of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. It is resulting from very interesting discussion on the Absolute Self between the Sage Yajnavalkya and his consort Maitreyi.

Decision to enter Vanaprastha Ashram

The great scholar Yajnavalkya informs Maitreyi, “I plan to retire from the life of a householder soon. Therefore, I desire to arrange the division of property between both of my consorts, you and Katayani before taking to the life of renunciation.”

The intention of the sage was to leave his consorts in a state of satisfaction and immense comfort. But the idea of property immediately stirred up a brainwave in the mind of the wise Maitreyi, who was herself a great scholar.

A wonderful Question

She asked, “You speak of entering the fourth order of life, embracing a new perspective of living altogether, and therefore you propose to divide the property between the two of us here, so that we may be comfortable and happy.”

“Is it possible for us to be happy, ultimately, through property? Is it possible to be perpetually happy by possession of material comfort and property. If I am the owner of the entire earth along with the wealth of the whole world, will I be perpetually happy?”

“No,” replies Yajnavalkya, ” The wealth cannot make you happy, but it will make your life very comfortable. You will live like other well-placed wealthy people in society. You would be in the same state in other respects. Immortality is not possible through such possessions. It is a different status altogether. There is no hope of immortality through wealth.

 Maitreyi told, “Then, what is the good of all this wealth? If despite having these, death is to swallow me up some day, and these, themselves, are transient. What good can accrue to me from this?” “What am I to do with such thing which is not going to make me perpetually happy, immortal, satisfied? Whatever you know in this context, O Lord, tell me that.”

 Very wonderful question!

Yagyavalkya replies

He answered, “I never expected that you, my dear, will ask this when I am leaving you immense property, bestowing upon you a lot of wealth. So, now I shall explain to you the secret of all such things.” 

 “Listen to me with rapt attention. I am going to narrate this great secret, the difficulty in the efforts to become permanently happy, which is not possible by possession of any wealth.”

The idea of possession itself is a peculiar notion in the mind. The ownership of a property is an idea accepted and agreed by all as logically valid. However, the property remains in its own place despite several rounds of purchase and sales based on man-made law of the land.

Man-made law is temporal law. So, the idea of ownership is fully artificial. If the idea is not accepted, then the ownership goes. This being the case, how can that bring us permanent satisfaction?

If a thing can be permanently possessed, we cannot be dispossessed of it. And, what you call permanent happiness is unconditional existence independent of temporal relationship.

Immortality is not dependent upon possession or connection with goods of external values. It is a state of being as such. To inculcate the meaning of this great passage, Yajnavalkya expands the concept further to love.

Why one loves anybody or anything

Yajnavalkya says, ” The husband is dear to the wife not for his sake, but for her own sake. Similarly, the wife is dear to the husband not for her sake, but for his own sake. He or She becomes dear for the sake of your own soul, to attain a condition which your soul imagines to be available through that relation with your husband or wife.”

“Similarly, son or wealth or knowledge, etc. are not dear or lovable or desirable to you because of their sake. It is something else that your soul loves and desires to fulfil through its occupation. But you have a completely misconstrued belief that you love the object.”

“What you love is a concept of completeness of being which is conditioned on the closeness between yourself and the object concerned. What you love is only the condition that you imagine to be present in the state of the possession of the object, or that relationship.” 

, “Nothing external can give you eternal happiness, because it is not the thing alone that is the source of happiness but something else, a special condition, which is always missing due to a confusion of thought.”

“For the desire of the Self, anything appears to be desirable. For the sake of attaining the Supreme Absolute, Selfhood of all beings, you are unknowingly asking for ‘things’ external to you. It is a wild goose chase from birth to death, nothing coming forth, ultimately.”

“Today this goes, tomorrow that goes; and the history of humanity has told us repeatedly that you cannot lay trust upon anything. You have seen things coming and things going; today it is there, tomorrow it is not there. You cannot know what will happen tomorrow, and what will be the status and state of things at any moment of time.”

 “Everything shall desert a person if he is bereft of this knowledge. That which is not ‘you’ really, cannot be a property of yours and cannot be with you always. Therefore, it shall leave you. But why do you cry if anything goes away, and there is bereavement, loss, etc.? It is quite natural to lose them.”

 “If they become ‘you’ they cannot leave you, because you cannot be dispossessed of yourself. You are dispossessed of only those things which are not yours. This point, you must understand.”

The mind is internal; the object is external. A connection between these two is unthinkable, and so all emotions of the mind, positive or negative, are certain internal operations that occur within the mind and bear no real, vital relation to objects outside.

Maitreyi asks

But, why does it appear to have some such connection? What is the meaning of owning, possessing, enjoying, loving, etc.? Why is it that suddenly there is a surge of happiness when one feels presence or possession of desirable value?

Yagyavalkya answers

“This happiness arises on account of a confusion in the mind.” 

“This happiness is, tentatively, the outcome of a transformation that takes place in the mind, on account of an imagined intricate psychological connection of the mind with the object that is desired for and possessed.”

The desirability of the object is, arising from a perception of the mind in the contour of the object, of certain characters which are necessitated by the mind.

The mind is a pattern of consciousness. It is naturally finite. The finitude of the mind becomes a source of restlessness to the mind, which is a psychological limitation felt in the mind. So, the mind desires, tries to jump over its own skin, as it were, in trying to grab objects, persons which it imagines to have the characteristics which are the counterparts of what it feels it has lost.

It imagines, for certain reasons, that a particular object, person, or set of circumstances are having characters which are exactly the complement, or supplement, or the counterpart, or the correlative of its own finitude. So, it believes them capable of making good its own limitations. He is, therefore, attracted to them to attain satisfaction through a sense of fullness.

“When you feel incomplete in yourself, you are unhappy; when you feel complete, you are happy. When the mind says, ‘Here is the source of my fulfilment’, it wishes to make it a part of its being. The desire to get united with the object, person is result of this wish to become physically, psychologically whole in being.”

 

Conclusion

“The love that you feel in respect of an object is in fact the desire that you feel to attain your own perfection and completeness. It is not really a love for the object. As the object, person remains external, there is not such eternal satisfaction even after the fulfilment of a desire.”

“Moreover, one will be not be wanting the same thing throughout one’s life. The idea of finitude goes on changing as there are physical and psychological evolution. As the mind gets transformed gradually, day by day, stage by stage, the idea of object leading to fulfilment changes. This is why every day you desire different objects, different persons.”

“When there is a promise of the fulfilment that it seeks, there is a satisfaction even on the perception of that object; and there is an apparent satisfaction, just by the imagined possession of it together with the yearning for actual possession.”

“So, what is it that you are asking for? You are not asking for any object or thing; you are asking for a condition of completeness in your being.”

65 thoughts on “Love in Scriptures”

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