The title for today’s inspirational message sounds a bit like the romance novel you might pick up at the drugstore. But alas, there is nothing comparable to that kind of true love and the kind of true love I would like to give focus. And I found my inspiration while reading one of my favorite Buddhist authors.
Thich Nhat Hanh is an aging Vietnamese Buddhist monk living in France. His teachings and writings are strikingly simple, but so challenging. When I read him, I am quick to agree with his sentiments. And then when I try to put them into practice, I realize the immediate difficulty of trying to live spiritually in a secular culture like mine.
I think it is safe to say I did not turn to Hanh to figure out what true love is. Rather, it jumped off the page at me when I was reading him for an altogether different purpose. It comes in his book, Going Home, a book I use in one of my classes. The subtitle of the book reveals a great deal: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers. To me that is a good way to see how spiritual people of all stripes should seek to understand their various spiritual traditions…as brothers and sisters. No doubt, true love would facilitate this process as well as be the fruit of the process.
I begin with one of those sentences which leads me to think I know what Hanh is saying and also leaves me wondering, do I know at all what he is saying? Hanh claims that “in Buddhism, we speak of the mind of love…” I can well imagine that both Jesus and the Buddha possessed the “mind of love.” The mind of love is surely not just an idea or concept.
The mind of love would be an attitude, a mindset. In fact, for those two spiritual giants, the mind of love would be a way of life. No doubt, they could not have looked at the world and their fellow human beings in any other way.
This is where Hanh takes the next step by talking not only about love, but also about true love. And he takes that in a direction I would not have guessed. Hanh says that “true love is made of understanding…” It makes sense. Clearly, the Buddha and Jesus would have understood both whom they loved and what they loved. They would have understood the breadth and depth of love needed to transform and transcend sin and suffering and bring peace and joy to this world.
Hanh helps me see the building blocks of this kind of broad and deep love. The first block was knowing that true love is made of understanding. And then he adds other blocks. “Out of understanding there will be kindness, there will be compassion, there will be an offering of joy.” I am sure it is not a straight line. But the line that goes from love to joy is clear for Hanh. The line goes from love to understanding to kindness to compassion to the offering of joy.
That enables me to see what true love issues forth in an offering of joy. This kind of love offered by the Buddha and by Jesus would be self-sacrificial. It is the type of love passed through understanding, kindness, and compassion. There is no self-interest that leads to selfishness.
Thich Nhat Hanh says it clearly when he avows, “there will also be a lot of space, because true love is a love without possessiveness.” This is a good word because I suspect many of us, like I do, imagine true love to collapse the space between the lovers. But again, that image is probably too much influenced by the drugstore romance novels. However, they are not selling true love---spiritual love.
To the contrary, true love provides space. True love is not conditional love. True love does not depend---depend on anything. I want to be a disciple---a learner of this true love.
Thich Nhat Hanh is an aging Vietnamese Buddhist monk living in France. His teachings and writings are strikingly simple, but so challenging. When I read him, I am quick to agree with his sentiments. And then when I try to put them into practice, I realize the immediate difficulty of trying to live spiritually in a secular culture like mine.
I think it is safe to say I did not turn to Hanh to figure out what true love is. Rather, it jumped off the page at me when I was reading him for an altogether different purpose. It comes in his book, Going Home, a book I use in one of my classes. The subtitle of the book reveals a great deal: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers. To me that is a good way to see how spiritual people of all stripes should seek to understand their various spiritual traditions…as brothers and sisters. No doubt, true love would facilitate this process as well as be the fruit of the process.
I begin with one of those sentences which leads me to think I know what Hanh is saying and also leaves me wondering, do I know at all what he is saying? Hanh claims that “in Buddhism, we speak of the mind of love…” I can well imagine that both Jesus and the Buddha possessed the “mind of love.” The mind of love is surely not just an idea or concept.
The mind of love would be an attitude, a mindset. In fact, for those two spiritual giants, the mind of love would be a way of life. No doubt, they could not have looked at the world and their fellow human beings in any other way.
This is where Hanh takes the next step by talking not only about love, but also about true love. And he takes that in a direction I would not have guessed. Hanh says that “true love is made of understanding…” It makes sense. Clearly, the Buddha and Jesus would have understood both whom they loved and what they loved. They would have understood the breadth and depth of love needed to transform and transcend sin and suffering and bring peace and joy to this world.
Hanh helps me see the building blocks of this kind of broad and deep love. The first block was knowing that true love is made of understanding. And then he adds other blocks. “Out of understanding there will be kindness, there will be compassion, there will be an offering of joy.” I am sure it is not a straight line. But the line that goes from love to joy is clear for Hanh. The line goes from love to understanding to kindness to compassion to the offering of joy.
That enables me to see what true love issues forth in an offering of joy. This kind of love offered by the Buddha and by Jesus would be self-sacrificial. It is the type of love passed through understanding, kindness, and compassion. There is no self-interest that leads to selfishness.
Thich Nhat Hanh says it clearly when he avows, “there will also be a lot of space, because true love is a love without possessiveness.” This is a good word because I suspect many of us, like I do, imagine true love to collapse the space between the lovers. But again, that image is probably too much influenced by the drugstore romance novels. However, they are not selling true love---spiritual love.
To the contrary, true love provides space. True love is not conditional love. True love does not depend---depend on anything. I want to be a disciple---a learner of this true love.
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