My Thoughts About Love

I think, love is about giving, it's just another word for giving. We want to give everything to someone we really love. We find ourselves giving them most of our time - they always seem to be in our thoughts. We also want to share everything we find enjoyable or interesting with them, including our innermost secrets. This love, or giving, is really opening our hearts to someone we feel we can give to. Ideally our heart should be big enough to want to give to everyone because actually they all need it - this is what we really mean by blind love. If we are looking for someone special to favor with our love we must look for a person we know we can continue giving love too - someone compatible with us in much more than just one way. We should not go around seeking people to give a little to for a short time and then taking our love away again and breaking hearts. 

Like I said love is about giving not taking - we shouldn't be so interested all the time in what we will get out of it - true happiness comes out of giving not taking and this includes love. When we find that we are no longer able to give anything in a relationship, then and only then is it time to think about opting out of it.

Thus, when we give some money to a beggar we don't even know, this is love but it's not very much love. If we inquire about his health, give money continuously and include him in our practice this is greater, deeper love. Love must be cultivated, step-by-step - first loving those you are close to, then those you are neutral about and finally those you don't like or consider your enemies.

What are your thoughts about love?