In the immortal words of Haddaway, “What is love?”
Curiously, he never explains what love might be, other than it’s something that he expects to hurt him.
In almost every faith, religion and spiritual path, love is part of the path. Jesus invited us to love our neighbours as we do ourselves (toughie for those of us better at loving others than ourselves…), Buddha taught the Heart Sutra, and in Islam, love is said to be one of the names of Allah, and some Sufis speak of the Diamond heart. In my own Vedic and Yogic Himalayan tradition, there is a teaching on the Cave of the Heart.
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And yet, love remains this ephemeral, elusive quality that we know when we feel it, and somehow words defy humanity…unless of course, you’re a writer or a poet! Ask anyone to name a famous story about love, and we all struggle to find one that doesn’t also involve death. Shakespeare was particularly clinical in his dispatch of his star-crossed lovers, from Romeo and Juliet to poor Desdemona and Ophelia, and let’s not even get started on the delicious Lady Macbeth (shhh!). In Funeral Blues, Auden’s statement on love is that he thought it would last forever and he was wrong. Even Elizabeth Barrett Browning chimes in with Victorian gloom on loving thee better after death in Sonnet 43’s paen on “How do I love thee?”. Perhaps Jane Austen had it right, that we are all fools in love…because in my own Chinese culture, one of the most famous quotes from the ancient Book of Songs says that love is to hold someone’s hand and grow old with them! One particular favourite from the Song Dynasty is Qin Guan’s gem that questions why we must spend every moment together if love is destined to last forever. Somehow, I question the longevity of his relationships!
Photo by Erik Mclean
However, if there’s anything I can be sure of, is that the love that the spiritual paths refer to is not the romantic love of poets and the experts of prose. So we’re back where we started…what really is love?
Contemplate the word love – what does it mean to you?
How would you speak of love?
If we go back to the Greeks, and step somewhat lightly, given that Plato described love as a serious mental disease…we find that Ancient Greek culture classified eight different types of love.
Sex, Madness & Play
The three types of love that are closest to the Western idea of romantic love, are Eros, Mania and Ludus. Eros is romantic, passionate and physical love that the Greeks felt was a wild, firey and dangerous force that might result in a loss of control. Mania is the darker side of that love, an obsessive or possessive type of love marked by jealousy and desperation. Ludus correlates to the early stages of dating – playful, light-hearted and flirty love.
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Family, Responsibility & Loyalty
My Asian compatriots would resonate with Storge, familial love, protective family love that also includes close, long-term friendships. Philia is the type of deep, platonic love that was considered even stronger than Eros because it’s built on shared values, mutual respect, trust and loyalty rather than simple physical attraction. And the Greeks might have had some connection to the Ancient Chinese, because Pragma is practical, enduring love found in mature marriages and deep partnerships, that speaks of patience, compromise and mutual long-term effort.
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Unconditional Love & Compassion
The last two types of love begin to speak of the love of spiritual paths. Agape is universal love. This is selfless, unconditional love for all humanity, nature or the divine, including altruistic compassion. Philautia, on the other hand, relates to self-compassion, partnered with a healthy ego – neither self-effacing nor grandiose. The Greeks felt that a healthy self-love was a prerequisite to loving and caring for others. This is a learning that Western psychology did not rediscover until the late nineteenth century – that one must find wholeness in oneself through self-love and self-compassion, before one can truly offer love to anyone else. One cannot truly offer a quality such as love to another, unless one embodies that within itself. And falling in love or finding love within oneself is part of the spiritual path, because to discover our own self-love for our own soul, spirit or essence, is to discover the divine within us.
Photo by Rahmi Aksöz
To give Plato his due, he did also describe love as the pursuit of the whole, and that those touched by love do not walk in darkness. And perhaps, that is what love is – a feeling that lights up the darkness for us, in whichever way it shows up, whether in friendship, family, romance, of self, or others…an ineffable force we feel rather than describe.
Photo by Hassan OUAJBIR
May you walk a path blessed & touched by love.
May you find that bright light that shines in the dark.
May you walk the path of the heart.
Main -Photo by Johannes Plenio
About the Author: Winnie Man
