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four elements of true love.
The first is maitri, which can be translated as loving-kindness or benevolence.
ability to bring joy and happiness to the person you love, because even if your intention is to love this person, your love might make him or her suffer.
you must practice deep looking directed toward the person you love. Because if you do not understand this person, you cannot love properly.
If a husband, for example, does not understand his wife’s deepest troubles, her
deepest aspirations, if he does not understand her suffering, he will not be able to love her in the right way. Without understanding, love is an impossible thing.
The second element of true
love is compassion,
not only the desire to ease the pain of another person, but t...
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Knowledge and understanding are always at the root of the practice.
The third element of true love is joy,
If you are suffering all the time, if you cry all the time, and if you make the person you love cry, this is not really love—it is even the opposite. If there is no joy in your love, you can be sure that it is not true love.
The fourth el...
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equanimity or ...
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When you love, you bring freedom to the p...
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“Dear one, do you have enough space in your heart and all around you?” This is an intelligent question for testing out whether your love is something real.
The most precious gift you can give to the one you love is your true presence.
Maybe you are lost in regrets about the past, maybe in worries about the future, or else you are preoccupied with your plans, with anger or with jealousy. And so your mind is not really there with your body.
Perhaps your intention is not to ignore this person, but the way you act, look, and speak does not manifest the desire to recognize the presence of the other.
Practice an inbreath and an outbreath three times, five times, seven times; then you approach this person, you look at him or her mindfully, with a smile, and you begin to say the second mantra: “Dear one, I know that you are here, and it makes me very happy.”
The Buddha told us this: “The past is no longer there, the future is not here yet; there is only one moment in which life is available and that is the present moment.”
“Dear one, I know that you are there and it makes me very happy.” This is real meditation. In this particular meditation, all at once there is love, compassion, joy, and freedom—the four constituents of the true love of which the Buddha speaks.
“Dear one, I know that you are suffering, that is why I am here for you.”
If we are suffering and the man or woman we love ignores us, then we suffer more.
THE FOURTH MANTRA IS MORE DIFFICULT to practice. It has to do with a situation in which you are suffering yourself and you think that your suffering has been created by the person you love most in the world.
in this case, it
is the person I love most in the world who said that to me, who did that to me, and I am suffering more.
I feel like going to my room, closing the door, staying by ...
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According to the teaching of the Buddha, in true love there is no place for pride.
If you are suffering, every time you are suffering you must go to the
person in question and ask for his or her help. T...
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“Dear one, I am suffering, please help.” This is very simple, but very hard to do.
story
A misperception is something that can destroy an entire family.
Every time you think it is somebody else who is causing the suffering, you must remember this story. You must always check things out by going to the person in question and asking for his or her help: “Dear one, I am suffering so much, help me please.”
four mantras for the practice of true love.
You should learn them by heart, and you must have the courage, the wisdom, and the joy to practice them.
What can you do if love has already caused too much suffering between the two of you?
For appearances, you behave so that others will think that you two are still living together and that you still find joy in living together, but in reality there is no more joy, there is no more happiness, there isn’t even communication anymore.
You have lost the capacity to listen ...
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If you are a
person who practices mindfulness, you will be aware that a knot has been formed in the person you love and you will know how to untie it.
A few words are all it takes to trigger anger in this person, who you are afraid to approach and who you are afraid to talk to
because he or she has become a bomb loaded with too much suffering.
You also have become a bomb, because you have lost the ability to speak the language of peace, of understanding. You have lost the ability to listen, and so all communication has become impossible.
In everyday life, deep listening, attentive listening, is a meditation.
The other suffers as long as he is in need of someone to listen to him; and you—you are the person who can do it.
By listening with calm and understanding, we can ease the suffering of another person.
We must learn to speak with love again.
Meditation is the practice of looking deeply into the nature of your suffering and your joy.
