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WHEN the announcement of the engagement of Prince Charles to Lady Diana was made in 1981, Charles came out with a ‘classic’ when asked “if they were in love?”
His answer hit the headlines of every newspaper around the world; it was “Whatever in love means”.
Now I think it would be fair to say that that wasn’t the best of starts and perhaps the omens were written from the beginning.
Yes, the word Love and indeed the emotion Love are very tricky subjects. It can be a very dangerous word to use in the wrong context and yet it is not a subject to be trivialised or played with.
It can or should be a very complex answer or maybe, just maybe, there is a simpler meaning to it all.
Ok, if we turn to ‘Google’ for a definition of the word ‘Love’ we get answers like, ‘a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection’.
I would suggest just for a moment we could try to explore elsewhere for an answer. The Buddha was once asked ‘what is happiness?’ and His answer was oh so simple – it was “Freedom from suffering”.
What kind of suffering was he talking about here – well the answer is the usual for human beings down through the centuries – worrying about the future or the past, anxiety about things to come and all the tensions that erupt in the body as a result of these unpleasantries.
These are most commonly referred to as psychological suffering or indeed are more often known as ‘Stress’. And it is a well-known fact that if we continuously live our lives in this state it can have a massive impact on our health and wellbeing.
Being psychological, we can safely say this this sort of stress is connected with our mind or more precisely with our thoughts, and the solution to this has to be in meditation (or mindfulness which is the buzz word of the moment).
Another reference to this is ‘Living in the Now’ or being Present.
So according to The Buddha – Happiness is achieved through deep meditation which results in freedom from suffering.
Now Jesus also gave us advice on love when he said – “Be still and know that I am God” and in a coded sort of way, He told us how to do it when He said; “I Am is the way the truth and the Life”.
Notice, He said; “I Am”, He didn’t say “I Was” Or “I Will Be” – What He was saying is that ‘Living in the space of ‘I Am’ or ‘The Now’ or ‘The Present’ Was the way that He lived His life and that was the advice that He was giving us if we wanted to live a stress free life and to enjoy the eternal peace that would be guaranteed to be achieved from living our lives in this way.
He refers to this when he says “Love one and other as I have love you”.
A key question here is, if you stress yourself (worry etc), are you loving yourself?
Answer no.
If you are not stressing yourself, are you loving yourself?
Answer yes.
His meaning of Love is to be present and He is telling us to live our lives in exactly the same way. The true meaning of love can get lost in translation down through the millenia but what Jesus meant by love (stress-free) is exactly the same as what the Buddha meant by ‘Happiness’ (stress-free) and both of these (tomato/tomatoe) can best be achieved through the practice of meditation.
Now a key aspect of meditation is to learn and practice deep acceptance of any given situation, in short we learn to become non- judgemental.
In the case of our partners (or family, or life situations) we can say that we truly ‘Love’ them, we want to be with them (attached) and we truly accept them in all circumstances.
That is why the phrase ‘For Better or For Worse’ is a significant part of any marriage ceremony.
• Next week I am going to write about; Non-Judgemental Attitude.
