The Interplay of Love and Happiness
Love unites and hate divides. Love is the only saviour in this world. Society has witnessed a life based on likes and dislikes, greed and hate, and has therefore lived a loveless life. From the foundation of love, likes and dislikes become preferences, greed transforms into a commitment to excel, and hate is transformed into concern.
A wise man has to be creative with a new heart. A heart without love is on the path to destruction. A truly creative person brings love into every moment of his life. By love, I mean a sensitive heart, not a sentimental one. A sensitive heart experiences what is with awe; a sentimental person merely reacts to what is.
If your state of being is love, then your struggles will become sacred, or there will be no struggles. If you are a lover of dogs, then the pranks the dogs play are acts of joy. We talk of love, but we are not in a state of love. We go on pretending to be in love. Our pretensions go on becoming efficient and manipulative. A deceptive front thus starts building in us. A deceptive and pretentious self is noisy and restless. You try to eliminate this restlessness by wrong means, and then you throw the garbage of this restlessness on the other. This process makes relationships very messy.
When your state of being is love, there are no manipulative games. You are silent and restful. You shower this silence on your partner, and thus, more than physical intimacy, an exchange of silence occurs. This quality of the relationship is fulfilling.
So often, our love is not love but desire masquerading as love. Love has neither conditions nor demands. Because of conditions and demands, our relationships are like beggars begging from each other. If two beggars meet, beggary is bound to increase. In a state of love, you are not a beggar but a giver. Giving comes from love that has no conditions. The joy of giving is greater than our petty logic of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’.
When one is silent in the deepest core of one’s being, love arises as a fragrance. Such love is unconditional, like the fragrance of a flower. It does not create conditions regarding whom to give fragrance to and whom not to give it. In this space, you give love, and the other is not obliged. In fact, you feel grateful that there is someone who is receiving your love. The whole economics of love is that you become richer when you give.
When you are silent, you feel an overflowing energy of love. This energy itself is joy. In hate, one shrinks; in love, one expands. The word ‘tantra’ means to expand and comes from the Sanskrit root ‘tan’, which also means to expand.
When there is fear and hate, you shrink; when there is love, you expand, and hence you are happy. In such a state, you discover your inner sky of fullness. A tremendous sense of well-being arises, and you feel like blessing the whole of existence. Division disappears. Divisions limit you, and love breaks the walls of difference.
A monk was watching a football match between two groups. Every time one group took the ball to the other group’s court, he would jump out of joy and vice-versa. When asked, which group he is supporting, he said, “I am here just to enjoy the game”.
‘Be happy without a cause’, let this be your mantra.