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| CONTENTS | INVOCATION | INTRODUCTION | PROLOGUE | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
CHAPTER 3, THE PURPOSE OF LIFE FOR THE INDIVIDUAL TRUE LOVE When the individual realizes Truth and fulfills God's purpose for his life, he comes to embody universal love. He delights in the well-being of others and selflessly works for their benefit. Love or Compassion, being the core of Ultimate Reality, is expressed in the love of the saint who can rise above self-centered attachments and desires. It is true love, love that is totally committed to the welfare of the other. It is love that is universal, overcoming the ordinary tendency to self-centeredness or favoritism for one's own. The ideal of love described in this section is rare in the world. Such love requires the foundation of integrity, truthfulness, and unity with the Absolute as described in the previous section on Perfection. Other passages which describe love as an ethic can be found under Loving Kindness, pp. 826-30. This section opens with several well-known passages that describe human love as grounded in divine love: 1 John 4 and 1 Corinthians 13 of the Christian Bible, from the Bhagavad Gita, and the Buddhist Metta Sutta. The following passages describe divine love as universal, flowing impartially to all beings, insentient to likes and dislikes. The last three passages discuss true love from the standpoint of love in the family. On the one hand, as love for children and love for spouse are the most intense of human loves, such love is the standard that should be universally applied to all. Thus a Buddhist sutra states that the bodhisattva loves everyone as though they were a loved only child. On the other hand, even love of family often succumbs to partiality; as the Confucian passage from the Doctrine of the Mean cautions, it is not true love if the personal foundation is not right.
No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. 1. Christianity. Bible, 1 John 4.7-8, 12-13, 18-20
I am ever present into those who have realized Me in every creature. Seeing all life as My manifestation, they are never separated from Me. They worship Me in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from Me. Wherever they may live, they abide in Me. When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union. 2. Hinduism. Bhagavad Gita 6.28-32
Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 3. Christianity. Bible, 1 Corinthians 13
[He should always hold this thought,] "May all beings be happy and secure, may their hearts be wholesome! Whatever living beings there be: feeble or strong, tall, stout or medium, short, small or large, without exception; seen or unseen, those dwelling far or near, those who are born or those yet unborn--may all beings be happy!" Let none deceive another, nor despise any person whatsoever in any place. Let him not wish any harm to another out of anger or ill-will. Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, even so, let him cultivate a boundless heart towards all beings. Let his thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world: above, below, and across without any obstruction, without any hatred, without any enmity. Whether he stands, walks, sits or lies down, as long as he is awake, he should develop this mindfulness. This, they say, is the noblest living here. 4. Buddhism. Sutta Nipata 143-151, Metta Sutta
5. Sikhism. Adi Granth, Kanara, M.5, p. 1299
6. Buddhism. Nagarjuna, Precious Garland 437
7. Hinduism. Bhagavad Gita 12.13
8. Buddhism. Dhammapada 134
9. Islam. Hadith of Bukhari
10. Sikhism. Adi Granth, Wadhans, M.1, p. 557
11. Zoroastrianism. Avesta, Yasna 35.3
12. Judaism. Mishnah, Abot 1:12
13. Jainism. Tattvarthasutra 7.11
14. Confucianism. Analects 4.3-4
15. Hinduism. Yajur Veda 36.18
16. Buddhism. Digha Nikaya xiii.76-77, Tevigga Sutta
Freedom is the same. You cannot experience freedom alone; it can only be achieved through love and within love. You don't feel tired in the place of true love. No matter how exhausted you are, if you are intoxicated with love and you burst into tears out of love then your tiredness will suddenly disappear. When you feel true love you don't feel hungry or tired. Also you do not feel afraid of death. 17. Unification Church. Sun Myung Moon, 4-25-81
18. Confucianism. Great Learning 8
19. Taoism. Chuang Tzu 23
For example, the father and mother are worried at heart as they see their son ill. Commiseration poisons their heart; the mind cannot part with the illness. So it is with the bodhisattva, the great being, who abides in this stage. As he sees beings bound up in the illness of illusion, his heart aches. He is worried as in the case of an only son. Blood comes out from all pores of the skin. That is why we call this stage as that of an only son. A child picks up earth, dirty things, tiles, stones, old bones, pieces of wood and puts them into his mouth, at which the father and mother, apprehensive of the harms that might arise thereby, take the child with the left hand and with the right take these out. The same goes with the bodhisattva: he sees that all beings are not grown up to the stage of law body and that non-good is done in body, speech, and mind. The bodhisattva sees, and with the hand of wisdom has it extracted. He does not wish that man should repeat birth and death, receiving thereby sorrow and worry. When a father and mother part with their beloved son as the son dies, their hearts so ache that they feel that they themselves should die together with him. The same is the case with the bodhisattva: as he sees a benighted person fall into hell, he himself desires to be born there, too. [He thinks,] "Perhaps the man, as he experiences the pain, may gain a moment of repentance where I can speak to him of the Law in various ways and enable him to gain a thought of good." For the father and mother of an only son, in sleep or while awake, or while walking, standing, sitting, or reclining, their minds always think of the son. If he does wrong, they give kindly advice and lead the boy that he does not do evil any more. The same is the case of the bodhisattva: as he sees beings fall into the realms of hell, hungry ghosts and animals, or sees them doing good and evil in the world of man and in heaven, his mind is ever upon them and not apart from them. He may see them doing all evil, yet he does not become angry or punish with evil intent. 20. Buddhism. Mahaparinirvana Sutra 470-71
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