Learn not to fall in love, but learn to rise in love. Love happens when one is sensitive, not sentimental. To fall in love is to be caught in your dogma of what you want from love. If you can learn to give rather than want something from love, then you will rise in love. Being a lover means being a ‘lover of life’, not a lover of ‘this’ or ‘that’.
This or that is included in love but not entrapped by it. ‘I love a person, but I set my love free from what I want or expect from that person; otherwise, my love is conditioned and entrapped by my want’. This quality of living is an inner art. There is an outer art too, where one sees external beauty. But if one does not explore this inner art, they live a gross life.
Relationships are messy because love is not free from one’s prejudices, conclusions, dogmas and expectations. For me, when I love someone, that person is contained within life. The room exists in the space, even though space is contained within the room, but is not limited by it.
My love for the other is ‘on life’, and my beloved resides in the ‘ground of being of life’. When one has this acuity, this acumen, a person leaving or parting from you is simply a movement in the space of love. A person may destroy the room, but they do not destroy the space, even though the room’s space is destroyed.
In such a space of love, true art is born. This is meditative love, not maddening love, which leads to suffering. When one has this love, and out of it, a statue of Buddha, Krishna or Jesus is created, it possesses a different lustre. When you look at the lives of such eminent people, something settles within you. Silence descends simply by seeing them. From such a space, a temple is created.