When you like a flower, you just pluck it.
But when you love the flower, you water it every day.”
This beautifully perceptive description of the true meaning of love was originally offered by His Holiness Gautama Buddha (The Buddha), the founder of one of the foremost Eastern religions, Buddhism, during the 4th century BCE. The concept of love was such an integral part of its teachings, that Buddhism quickly came to be recognized as the Religion of Love. They considered love to be one of the most important pathways to achieving full spiritual freedom, and the main path to continued personal liberation. The Buddha further elaborated that love was never meant to be plucked and smothered, but rather to be shared, encouraged, kept free, and allowed to grow and to blossom. To the Buddhist, true love can only exist when it is given and received freely from the heart, and not from any situation that involved conditions of limitation or bondage, such as fear, anxiety, dependence, need or lust. His teachings have continued to grow in strength over the succeeding centuries, and the Dalai Lama, his current successor, was much more definitive when he declared:
“The more you are motivated by love,
the more free and more fearless your action will be.”
The definition of love is completely subjective, and therefore vague and always imprecise. It involves a wide range of positive emotional responses spread across the whole spectrum of physical and emotional attractions. It is essentially a natural, uncontrolled force of positive sentiments, feelings of attraction or affection, or of pleasure and satisfaction. Psychologists generally view the expression of love as essentially a spontaneous, cognitive response that appears to have developed evolutionally as a survival tool to ensure both parenteral and group security. They argued that showing and reciprocating love will go a long way to securing acceptance within the group, and therefore gain protection against common enemies. Hate on the other hand, is therefore not simply the absence of love, but the opposite of love.
The mechanism of love is far more complex and more difficult to explain than it often appears. Although heredity does tend to play a significant role, the expression of love also involves such other factors as personality, attitudes and past experience. And although people are continually trying to modify its usage and its application, true love has no equal and no equivalent. Perhaps the finest description of the unique virtues of true love ever recorded, can be found in the Holy Bible, in 1 Corinthian 13:4-7:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrongs. Love des not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
More than 3000 years ago, the ancient Greek philosophers viewed the expression of love as the pathway to true living and that without this, deeply embedded in their psyche, there can be no meaningful relationship exchanges. They initially identified six fundamentally separate and different forms of love, each based on their underlying relationship, and although these have undergone extensive reviews and modifications over the succeeding centuries, they continue to this day, to be an acceptable classification. They are:
Storg: Love of Family
Philia: Platonic and deep friendship love
Eros: Sexual, passionate Love
Agape: Divine, selfless Love
Xenia: Friendship, playful Love
Mania: Obsessive, selfish Love
But irrespective of etiology and ultimate classification, love, like all other deeply embedded emotional responses, will only survive and grow after its acceptance by the ego, and unless the individual is able to truly love himself deeply, he cannot hope to show love to anyone or anything. It will not be possible to find the compassion or the caring he needed to show others without first finding them within himself. And without this, any expression of love will only be purely self-seeking and manipulative.
Behavioral psychologists generally agree that the expression of love is a complex interplay of three essential emotional components, connection, intimacy and passion, and each one of the different types will show strength in a predictable direction; the sexually motivated love will be high in passion and intimacy, the family and friendship love will show more intimacy and connection, and the others will be predominantly motivated by various degrees of passion and connection. This explains why the expression of love by each individual is not only predictable and constant, but also different from that of any other person.
Human beings, by their very nature, are social beings and as such, are naturally wired to search out and form relationships. Love is nature’s yardstick used to measure and express this need, and to find answers for satisfying them. The primary purpose for the expression of love therefore, is the fulfillment of a subconscious need to find happiness and satisfaction. Since no happiness can survive in the presence of suspicion and distrust, then in the absence of love, the opportunity to share and to care is removed, and with it, the opportunity to be able to show and feel happy. For love to be genuine and lasting however, it must never be as a result of some special need or attribute of the other, but always begin with personal need.
True love therefore must always begin by being “selfish”, for without the initial urge to satisfy the ego, it would be impossible to find the drive needed to share oneself with anything else. Love therefore can only be meaningful and prosper, if it is anchored by an inner feeling for caring and compassion and will only survive if this feeling is likewise reciprocated. This therefore is the real reason for love. It will only survive when there exists both a mutual attraction, and an opportunity to fulfill the deepest needs of the individual’s ego. This I believe what the Dalai Lama was alluding to when he stated:
“By nature, every human being loves himself. But by sharing with another, you build your own happiness.”
When this principle is clearly understood, it will become easier to appreciate why love appears to be so difficult to understand and to predict. Physical attraction actually plays a minor, mainly introductory role, but the main stimulus for a successful outcome will always be found buried in the individual’s ego. Perhaps the great ancient Chinese philosopher, Confucius, would have been more correct had he more accurately observed that:
“Love is only in the eye of the beholder.”
-For unless the beholder is sufficiently moved, he will have little opportunity to set in motion the appropriate actions needed to convert need into love.
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