What is love, the creator of all these effects?
WHAT IS LOVE?
So many effects and impressions of love, but what is love then, the creator of all these effects?
What is this love, whose name we use so easily, and on which we base our lives? Where does this love come from? Is there a difference between my love and your love? Is love in limited supply? Is all love the same? Can it run out, fade and die? Could love ever be only a private affair?
We receive many impressions of love, through the ways our bodies, minds and hearts respond to it. But these impressions, these feelings of love, are not love. They are the effects of love.
Just as the sensory impressions of the wind, are not the wind, so the sensory effects of love are not love. Love is the cause of these feelings, not the effect.
Feelings of love are changing all the time, taking as many sentient forms as there are sentient forms.
The love we feel in this moment, is not the same as the love we feel in the next. Love can seem to be a rollercoaster leading to lifetime union. After a decade, it can seem to wane, the feeling can seem to be gone.
But even a hint of impermanence, such an accident or a reminder that death could come at any moment, has the power to awaken it again with full power of feeling.
Is love itself actually changing, or are the forms changing, breaking open and reforming through the caring intelligence of love? Was this love ever exclusive between two people, or is something else going on?
Just as the wind plays its melodies according to the forms through which it passes, so does love play its music for and through us. This music of love is the impression left by love on our senses. It is exquisite, heart rendering and transformative.
Yet the music is not the love, but the experience of love, the effect of love, the imprint of love.
So what is love?
