The Four Elements Of True Love: According To The Teaching Of The Buddha

What is love? What is ‘true’ love? Can it even be defined? Our idea of what true love is today most likely comes from a fairytale, movie, or reality TV show, and the definition has likely changed many times. But we all have certain conditions attached to our idea of what love is, or some sort of criteria drawn up for what our ‘perfect match’ would look like. The right partner is required to have certain things, be a certain way, and like certain activities – and that’s okay.

But perhaps true love is simpler than popular culture would have us believe. As Thich Nhat Hanh (a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk) explains below, if there is love/kindness, compassion, joy, and inclusiveness, according to Buddhist teaching, you are experiencing true love. It’s pretty simple. True love doesn’t necessarily have to be something magical that sprung out of a fairy tale.

Main points taken from the video:

  • Love and kindness have the power to create happiness. When you are able to develop  feelings of joy and happiness in yourself, that’s true love, offered to yourself. If you can generate these feelings, and help the other person generate these feelings, that’s true love. So, if you are a source of joy and happiness for another, that is true love.
  • True love is the capacity to make yourself suffer less, and help the other person suffer less. “There is an art of suffering. If you know how to suffer, you suffer much, much less.”
  • Practice compassion and it will grow.
  • If love does not generate joy, it’s not love. If love makes the other person cry every day, it’s not love.

“True love is capable of generating joy for yourself and for the other person.”

What do you think ‘true love’ is? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

What does Budhissm have to with science?

“Broadly speaking, although there are some differences, I think Buddhist philosophy and Quantum Mechanics can shake hands on their view of the world. We can see in these great examples the fruits of human thinking. Regardless of the admiration we feel for these great thinkers, we should not lose sight of the fact that they were human beings just as we are.” (source)

– the Dalai Lama

Love, compassion, consciousness, and non materialism is at the core of understanding science, and the true nature of our reality. This is why Nikola Tesla said that man would make great advancements when they begin to start studying the non-physical.

That’s a page like this will be posting things like this from time to time.

 

The Cosmic Scientist inspires people to open their minds up to a broader view of reality. Examination of information and news both on and off planet Earth is the focus of study here, and this is done by creating awareness and shedding light on a number of different topics. The Cosmic Scientist encourages and inspires all beings to follow their heart, and make positive changes in their own life and on their home planet.