There are so many ways in which we use the word “love” these days that many of us cannot explain what exactly the meaning of love is. We “love” just about anything – our wives or husbands, our children, the cat or dog, the car and the house, KFC, or McDonalds… and we also say we love God. In all this confusion we also do not know if love is an emotion or something else, but we think we can switch it on and off depending on our current mood.
Growing up there were two things I was taught – ‘love your
neighbour as yourself’ (for those who are reading carefully – the question here
is: what does that even mean?) and ‘God so loved the world that He gave His
only Son’. These two Biblical quotations were separate in my mind – on the one
hand I must love my neighbour somehow and on the other hand God always loves me
no matter what. This separation, I believe, is due to the illusion that we are
separate from each other and from God – because that is what our eyes tells us.
This is not true, because there is also the following thing that is taught – we
must become more like Jesus and Jesus lives in our hearts.
As a child I could not bring these points together and
plainly accepted it, but as an adult it bothered me. In Hinduism it is believed
that God is not separate from us and neither are we separate from each other –
the interconnectedness of all. God is a part of us, or we are a part of God,
and by default we are a part of each other. In Judaism this is called ‘the
Divine Spark in all of us’. If Jesus lives in our hearts, if God is a part of
all beings, then we cannot live as if we are separated from each other – we
need to love each other as if God Himself is standing in front of us.
Loving your neighbour (and to make this clear – neighbour
does not only mean the person next to you but all beings you meet including
enemies, animals, insects and so on) thus means loving your neighbour as God
loves you. And, from a purely Christian point of view, God loves you with
sacrifice. Now we can debate about how cruel it would be if we sacrificed our
children for others and that we do not like this idea of a God killing His own
Son. But to think like that is to miss the point entirely (no really, you
should not sacrifice your children). From where I stand it does not matter
whether the crucifixion happened or not (I am not saying it did not), what
matters is that if you have never loved someone (including your spouse) until
it hurts (not by actually hurting yourself or others but by giving things up
that means a lot to you) then you have not really loved yet.
So now we can return to the question asked earlier – what
does it even mean to love someone as you love yourself? In the simplest terms,
it means that if you love to eat a big healthy meal (or even unhealthy for that
matter) you would not give the homeless man in the street just dry bread and
milk. Because, if you were that homeless person, even if you would be glad to
receive the dry bread and milk, you would wish that someone would give you a
big healthy meal. (Again, it is beside the point whether the homeless person
should work or not – I will write about this in a later blog).
If you think that most of this is obvious then the question
is – why do more of us, especially those of us who see ourselves as spiritual
or religious, not do this? The answer is that it hurts, we do not like to make
such sacrifices and we do not believe that we are a part of God. Before any
fingers points at me – yes, I have tried it many times; I sort of got it right
once or twice, I failed multiple times. Continuous effort is the key. This is
one of many reasons why I write about it – to spread awareness and to encourage
not only others but also myself.
Love does not stop when you said you will pray for the other
person or when you gave the bare minimum, but I am also not saying that you
must give so much that you do not have anything left. That is also not loving
yourself, never mind the other. This is another point that needs to be
addressed. While reading a book on the essence of Buddhism the author made an
interesting point saying that it is all good and well that we should love our
neighbour as ourselves, but what if the person does not love himself? What if
the person is depressed? It will then mean that the depressed person, loving
the other as he “loves” himself, will wish depression on that person. He then
suggests compassion and loving-kindness as better terms. I both agree and
disagree with the author to a certain extent.
A depressed person, or one that hates him- or herself,
cannot love anyone, never mind talking about having compassion. At the same
time, that is exactly what such persons wish on others. If we understand what it
means to really love each other, including other beings, then it might not
matter which term we prefer. However, the word “love” does bring up the idea of
a deep emotional attachment. In this sense the word “compassion” is better as
we can then have sympathy and empathy as well as sacrificing without getting
attached to the person or being, which might lead to more suffering than
anything else. Yet, that will still be a misunderstanding of what it means to
really love, and this is where there needs to be a mind change.
Contrary to popular belief, love is not an emotion. Love is
rather something we do; in other words, it is a verb. True love is to give or
to do something without the expectation of return. Love is as simple as giving
a glass of water to whoever asks for it without getting irritated, to give R2
to the person begging at the stop street. Or it is to exceed that person’s
expectations and give him a big meal and R200. Love is an effort to reduce the
suffering we cause animals and nature by our selfish ways by living more
consciously. It is both within our means and outside our comfort zones.
May the One God with many Names and many Manifestations, bless you.
