Aug 5, 2004
Love is a total phenomenon. ‘Total’ any way you look at it.
‘Total’ in what you love. ‘Total’ in reach of what or whom you love.
You don’t love one and hate another. You can’t hate yourself
if you are in true love. Distinctions denote deficiency in love and
detract from the totality of its delight. It is this capacity to love
which we need to perfect. The struggle for and in life ends and
the state of ananda is attained when we muster such wonderful capacity.
Love
The word ‘love’ is generic, but is used for romantic love often. Many people take ‘Love thy neighbour’ also in that sense! In Samskritam, we have distinctive words to describe the various types of attachment.
Love of mother (or father) for child is वात्सल्यं (वत्स: is child).
(In Tamizh we use the word पाशं which means a chord in Samskritam, which is a binder).
Love for a peer is स्नेहः (more strongly in popular and vernacular use).
Love for god is भक्तिः (देशभक्ति, मातृभक्ति, पितृभक्ति, etc. also may be noted.)
Love for a weaker one or supplicant one is करुणा
Romantic love is शृङ्गार
Sexual love is काम or in literature, शृङ्गार.
Love for lesser ones is दया. (भूतदया compassion.)
I do not know whether you would love, or at least like, this!
Now let us turn to Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Love
And the first condition is, that we must leave a too close and lingering adherence to facts, and study the sentiment as it appeared in hope and not in history.
Each man sees over his own experience a certain stain of error, whilst that of other men looks fair and ideal.
And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance, or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers.
.. men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under any other circumstances.
(We have stories how some ordinary, even handicapped, persons poured out poetry after an inspiration.)
We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. .. But we are often made to feel that our affections are but tents of a night. Though slowly and with pain, the objects of the affections change, as the objects of thought do. There are moments when the affections rule and absorb the man, and make his happiness dependent on a person or persons. But in health the mind is presently seen again,--its overarching vault, bright with galaxies of immutable lights, and the warm loves and fears that swept over us as clouds, must lose their finite character and blend with God, to attain their own perfection. But we need not fear that we can lose anything by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations must be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so on for ever.
http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/…/emerson/essays/l…
4/6/2000
You are the sun and the star
You shine bright near and far
Your smile goes many a mile
And brightens one and all, so smile.
8.4.2004
Smiles are a tonic. Smiles brighten a face. Smiles flashing not just from the lips, but from radiant eyes are an elixir. They bestow bliss. There is no greater joy than witnessing, nay experiencing, such smiles. Smiling spontaneously shows a pure mind and selfless goodwill.
Jul 25, 2005
There is lustre in the eyes, in love and disappointment.
There is sparkle in the laughter, which rhymes with the glitter in the eyes.
There is injured innocence, a native elegance that transcends human frailties and fickleness, the heartlessness and treachery.
The pitch is gone, the rhythm gone long back.
The music is just cacophony.
There is no willing listener, only the passersby.
Was there ever passable music, that is the question.
There is beauty in the sunset but not if the sky is covered with clouds. Only a clear day ends in delightful sunset.
2009?
Coincidents produce a thrill. They sound auspicious to a believing mind.
Time and distance do not diminish genuine feelings. It is the physical world that separates yearning souls. The yearning itself is partly spiritual and partly an extension of sensual awareness mistaken often for reality itself.
May 29, 2005
Marriage is choice of dependence, not loss of independence. It is doubtful whether we have independence if single. It is also open to question whether independence is preferable to dependence.
Freedom and independence are not synonymous. We are free to the extent we have no expectations. Dependence may lead to loss of freedom if it is on a contractual expectation.
August 16, 2014
Marriage bond
Mahabharata:
"Limited are the gifts of the father, of the brother, and of the son to a woman. The gifts that her husband makes to her are alone unlimited."
In Ramayana, Sita tells the same thing to Atri's wife in the forest.
In my view, the most sacred of relationships is between husband and wife, let scriptures say what they do, let jokes on wife be legion, and let several individual relationships be bizarre. What husband gives is not material wealth only, and what wife gives is not to be equated with stree-dhan. MB and Ramayana state not a wish, but an expression of genuine bond that develops naturally between husband and wife, fostered through children. While in Ramayana, it is expressed through Sita, in MB a bird says it.
10/9/2000
To repose faith in marriage to relieve a person of his/her idiosyncracies or depression is like alcoholism. A person ought to be in the right frame of mind to choose a partner and fuse an alliance. The success of marriage depends on this principle whether it is arranged marriage or love marriage.
Marriage as social convenience, economic convenience or satisfaction of carnal desires and procreative proclivities seems debased and unprincipled.
26/8/2000
Love from a worthless person is like the promissory note executed by a bankrupt. True love in its totality is a real thing even if the object of its adoration is not genuine like the devotion of a devotee is real unlike the stone on which it is manifested
A letter of mine to my children on Family and Dependence:
(2009)
When I was in Kolkata afflicted with stomach pain, the doctor who
attended on me called on me in the Taj hotel and informed me, "Our
worst fears have come true. You have pancreatitis. You need to be
hospitalised as you cannot eat or drink anything. The pancreas is
sensitive and is stimulated to secrete the digestive enzymes the
moment you gulp something. As its outlet is clogged by the stone from the gall bladder, it starts to digest the walls of the pancreas." A
vivid and sombre desription of my ailment, intended to goad me into
admission to a local hospital, scaring no less. I flouted the well
meaning advice of doctors and colleagues and wanted to return home. I was fifty-six and was not looking forward to long life. The prospect that I might succumb to pancreatitis did not quite unbalance me. Nevertheless, I wanted to be near the ones who would more sincerely wish me well. The part of emotion in illness is greater than that of treatment. The doctor saw that I was of one mind and said, "You do not appear totally down. You may travel, but must go immediately and get into a hospital on arrival at Bangalore." The Bank arranged for my passage and I reached Bangalore.
When we are down in the dumps, it is emotional integrity and
reinforcement that pulls us up. Emotional company and mutual caring are the pillars on which family and society have been raised and civilisation founded. Tradition affords the much needed comfort no matter it may appear inviting and fostering servility and imply a
subdued intellect. A few dare and deviate from it. They blaze a trail
and earn the acclaim of the cognoscenti and the commoners as great, but they are a few. I suspect that there must have been scores of others who chose heresy and failed. To fail is no shame. But how they felt about their effort in the end will be worthwhile to know. Sadly, tales are not written about failures, the world being prone to woo success and weary of failure. The general trend is to fall in step with tradition, even after a successful attempt to turn it on its head. People settle back with the well worn custom rather than stay on with a novelty that has sparkled. They admire the change but do not follow it. Even the brilliant endorse this conformity in action. Sankara wrote devotional hymns after roaring of advaita which exalts the individual spirit to the pedestal of God.
Each individual is a chip of the old block and has a streak of
individuality. How far parents influence their wards cannot be said
with exactitude. To be cynical and aloof cannot carry us well in life. It is not realistic, it is practically unwise. We have to put faith in life,
ourselves, others and the promise of order and predictability. The bad appears to predominate and conquer, and failure looms. In a race where a multitude run, one is a winner and the losers a legion, but life is not a race and we do not run against others for the first place. With a paradigm shift, we can see life as rewarding and rejoicing.
We do return to our grain invariably, but to keep the ember hot, we have to keep rekindling it with hope even if it may be belied disconcertingly often. To be resigned will only aid the negative forces. We think with the brain but live with the heart. I hate such analysis and duality. We are one, we are not brain and heart in parts. But when we reduce ourselves to a machine we need to do a bit of lateral thinking to help us along on useful furrows. We need to feel the verve of life, a purpose that is unique to us, a stance that we are easy on.
Our health and feeling are intertwined and debates rage as to the priority between the two, but since the one impinges on the other, we can try to help where we can. To refine the feelings, channelling them on desired lines, can guide health to health and the feelings to joy. The two will start nurturing each other as in a chain reaction.
We need to feel happy in what we are, yes so many things are awry and the world is often treacherous, nevertheless being happy is Hobson's choice, a paradoxical phrasing, since the cliche is used pejoratively.
We need to look for peer level company and support for the long term, a relationship that is mutually comfortable. Just as we return home after work or outing, we need a shelter for our burdened mind and frayed feelings. A few lucky ones get a soul's companion, but that is rare.
We need to conform even as we are different. Difference is often
delusive. We need great strength to be different. The strength is as
great as required to pull an electron from an inner orbit. It is far
better to live in that incessant circling around the nucleus (family)
rather than look for an impossible escape. The escape will come at the choosing of God. Let us keep to the orbit of family and dependence.
October 13, 2015 ·
Wife
Jokes about marriage and wife abound. Someone wondered why there are not as many jokes about husband. But, husband is the biggest joke!
Very few, however, seriously believe in the jokes judging by the number of marriages, long lived marriage couples and exploding population. That gives balance and sanity to life.
When I was talking to my adolescent daughter, I said that it would be good if husband and wife could work in the same place. She thought aloud, ‘Appa, is it not a good idea if the two are away from each other for some time?’ I must admit I have learnt a thing or two from my children. That is compliment to me. I am willing to learn!
However, I know of an industrialist-couple who are together all the time amicably. There are couples that appear to be together in thought, word and deed. Nothing seems to be held back. Even what happens in office is intimately known to the spouse. In fact, the spouse flaunts her knowledge in social get-together. I heard that as things crossed a limit, one CGM had to remind his wife that he was the CGM!
But, the prevalence of the jokes certainly betrays some unease.
Husband and wife need independent space and growth. Discord results where this space is clogged.
When it is an acquaintance, differences are glossed over because it does not matter, unless we are petty and want to settle every issue. With life partners, we are less accommodating.
Often, we expect unreasonably what the other person should become. A poet wrote, ‘With all thy faults, I love thee still.’ But, the faults have caught the eye! In that case, they become irksome as the initial intensity of feeling sobers down. The faults are not self-correcting. And they may be faults only in the mind of one.
Marriages are made on earth, neither in heaven nor in hell. Friction is an important force on earth, but for which no break will work. So marriage imbedding friction is no surprise.
Marriage and Modern Man
It is a cliché that marriages are made in heaven. Its truth is suspect because virtually no one has seen it. If heaven is a happy destination and things happening in heaven are auspicious, then the fallacy of this trite saying is even more stark judging from the commonly bandied jokes about experience of married life.
How much is man different from, or above, animals? In the biological functions, man is essentially extension of animal and Darwin must have been guided by this similarity to probe into the origin of species. The animals choose their partners, and their ‘parents’, even if still alive and around, do not appear to have a say in the choice of a partner. There are animals, which are social and have pride in their spouse, lion for instance.
The point is animals mate at the prime of puberty. Arguably the conjugal satisfaction is fully derived at the start of adulthood or late adolescence. Marriage in humans postpones the event. In olden days child marriage was the rule and women, shall we say girls, delivering babies in the teens was commonplace. Late marriage was a later idea, prompted by science, social upheaval and population control. Do we do the right thing by delaying marriage and what is the right age for marriage?
In the Western society, marriage and mating are not connected events. Virginity at marriage may be an exception. Is this system desirable?
No religion appears to favour freedom in the matter of sex outside wedlock. But, to an appreciable degree there is transgression.
