A Valentine to Love
By Lissa Coffey
Valentine’s Day has us all thinking about love. We can’t escape the ads, the
decorations in the stores, the promises of chocolates and roses at every point
of purchase. We get caught up in
the celebration and romance of this holiday. And yet, we know that there is much more to love than cards
and candy.
Love is all there is.
Really. There’s
nothing else. It’s what we’re made
of. It’s what we live for. It’s who we are.
Love is at the source of all creation. It’s something we all strive to understand,
and that we all have in common.
It’s what connects us.
Love is our greatest teacher. It is so big, so all-encompassing, that individually we
could study it throughout our entire lifetime, and as a society we have studied
it throughout the ages. We can
learn about love, we can learn from love, we can learn to love.
Bhakti Yoga is the Path of Love. Bhakti Yoga teaches us to love everything, and everyone,
because all of it is divine. Each
small thing is a part of the greater whole, and that whole is divine. So when we practice Bhakti we experience
the feeling of love in the recognition of divinity, with everything we come
across.
We experience love the most profoundly through our
relationships. Although there is
only one love, love is expressed in many different ways. There have been
sonnets and songs written about love throughout the ages, yet it is still
difficult for us to define because it is so vast. The Indian sages have come up with terms to help us
understand some of the many aspects of love.
-Santa: Santa is peaceful, calm, and slow. This is a love we
might feel for ourselves. It is
gentle, steady, and natural.
-Dasya: Dasya is the love that we might feel towards a
teacher, a mentor, someone we respect and want to serve.
-Sakhya: Sakhya
is the love we feel for a dear friend.
In friendship there is a kind of equality, a give and take, an exchange
of feelings, a sharing of our selves.
-Vatsalya: Vatsalya is the love that a parent feels for a
child. A baby is so innocent and
we can’t help but to want to give love to that child, without demands or
expectations for anything in return.
Children are pure, and completely lovable. We recognize this without hesitation.
-Madhura: Madhura is the love of our beloved. This is the “in love” feeling when we
are swept off our feet, blissful, devoted, and intense.
Bhakti Yoga continually reminds us to “Love the
Highest.” When we find ourselves
infatuated with our jobs, our cars, any material thing, Bhakti tells us that we
are misguided. When all of our
human desire for what is new, fun, novel or beautiful is instead directed
towards love, we then experience the greatest delight.
In our human experience, love is not all hearts and flowers. Sometimes it’s messy, it can be
complicated, and it can hurt. Love
itself is pure, simple, and perfect – but we tend to muddy it up with our
humanity. We question, we expect,
we desire, we need. And in
our attempts to understand we come up with definitions, we analyze, we discuss
and then we filter all of this through our past experiences to come up with
what we think love should be, would be, could be. And every one of us is doing the same thing, with oftentimes
very different results. Jealousy, temptation,
broken hearts and bitter break-ups are the inspiration for many songs and
screenplays.
But the basic truth is that love is. It just is. Love is beyond definition, beyond space and time, beyond any
relationship. Love is a true
constant in this world. It does
not need to be created, it is always here, it has always been here, and it
always will be here. We have only
to know this to notice it. Eyes
open, mind open, heart open, love is available to us in all of its myriad
forms, essential simplicity and spectacular glory.
“Namaste” is a Sanskrit greeting that means: “The Divine in
me recognizes and honors the Divine in you.” That recognition of the Divine is Bhakti, or love. On Valentine’s Day, and every day,
let’s try to practice Bhakti a little more often. Not just with our Valentines, but also with everyone we
meet. Let’s love the highest,
starting with our selves. This is
where we start. This is where the
seed is planted, where love can grow, and thrive, and blossom within each one of
us into a delightful bounty that can be shared. We can feed our souls on this banquet of love. No one need go hungry.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Namaste!
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