The Elements Of True Love

In the Buddhist teaching of love, there are four elements. The first is maitri – friendship, brotherhood, loving-kindness. And the second is karuna – capacity to understand the suffering and help remove and transform it – compassion. Mudita is the third element – joy – your joy is her joy, her joy is our joy. The last element is upeksha – nondiscrimination. This is a higher form of love. The four qualities have no limits – infinite love – these elements are also call the Four Unlimited Minds.

The bodhisattva of love is in you.

This is part two of a talk give on November 25, 2004 at Plum Village.

Transcript

In the Buddhist teaching of love,

We learned that there are four elements that can provide true love and happiness.

The first element is mighty.

Mighty means friendship,

Brotherhood.

Mighty comes from the root mitra.

Mitra means friend.

La mitri,

La fraternitri.

When you love someone,

You offer your friendship,

Your brotherhood.

And friendship and brotherhood does not deprive him or her of his or her freedom.

When you love,

You maintain your whole freedom and you help maintain the freedom of the person you love.

You don't deprive him or her of his or her freedom.

The offering of happiness.

Your relationship with the other person asks the question that whether you have mighty to offer him or her.

We are on an equal basis.

By loving you,

I retain my freedom.

And by loving you,

I respect your freedom.

And that is mighty.

And we translate it purely as loving kindness.

That should be a better word.

And a friend that does not understand a friend cannot really offer his brotherhood,

His friendship.

And that is why to cultivate mitri,

You have to cultivate understanding.

You spend your time with him or with her with mindfulness and you discover every day his need,

His difficulties,

His obstacles,

His deep aspiration.

And on that base of understanding,

You offer mitri,

Happiness.

And the second is karuna.

Karuna means the capacity to understand the suffering and help remove it,

Transform it.

The person you love has suffering in him or in her,

Has difficulties in him or in her.

So as someone who loves him or her,

You should be able to identify that suffering,

That difficulty,

And try to help remove it.

And the capacity of helping remove that suffering is called compassion.

Transforming suffering in the person you love,

Because you see the suffering in the person of your beloved one.

And if you are not able to help him or her remove that suffering,

You are not a real lover.

And we used to translate karuna as compassion.

The other person suffers and you suffer with her,

You share suffering.

That is the word compassion.

But in true love,

You don't have to suffer with him.

You understand only.

And your capacity of understanding helps the other person not to suffer anymore.

When a patient comes to a doctor,

The doctor is supposed to be able to see what is wrong within the patient.

What is the sickness and the root of the sickness in the person.

That is exactly karuna.

And the doctor,

After having identified the illness and the root of the illness,

Is capable of prescribing something for the removal of that illness.

And the doctor doesn't have to suffer together with the patient.

That is why the word compassion is not perfect in translating.

The Buddha also,

He sits there,

People come and cry with him,

And he doesn't have to cry with them.

He says,

Dear friends,

I understand your suffering,

But there is a way for you to go in order to.

.

.

If the Buddha spends his time crying with the people,

He doesn't have any time left in order to help with the transformation and healing.

So in your relationship,

Ask the question as whether you have the element of compassion in your love.

If you do,

Then you are being very helpful.

You are helping that person to suffer less.

Your presence already helps that person to feel better.

Your speech,

Your action,

Your capacity to listen deeply helps him or her transform and remove the suffering.

And that is the element called karuna.

And in our relationship,

We should be able to cultivate karuna every day.

And the third element is called mudita.

Joy,

The kind of joy that is shared by both.

If in your relationship there is only sadness,

You make him cry and he makes you cry.

That's not love.

True love should include joy.

And you are able to enjoy his own joy,

And he is able to enjoy your joy because you are no longer two separate entities.

You are one with the person you love.

That is why when you see that person happy,

You feel very happy.

And when you see that person unhappy,

You are able to do something in order to help.

You consider his happiness as yours.

You don't say,

That's your problem.

And true love,

There is no statement like that.

Sympathetic joy.

Your joy is his joy,

And his joy is your joy.

And you have to be able to offer joy.

The question is,

In your relationship,

Are you able to offer joy?

Or you make her cry all the time?

If you make him or her cry all the time,

That's not true love.

The willingness to love,

The willingness to make him or her happy,

Yes,

It may be there.

But the capacity to love,

To make him or her happy,

Is not yet there.

It is to be cultivated.

And the fourth element is upeksha.

And upeksha means non-discrimination.

And this is a higher form of love.

You love him,

It's not because that person belongs to the same race,

Having the same kind of skin color,

Or sharing the same kind of spiritual path.

It's not because of that.

You love that person because that person suffers and needs your love,

That's all.

Non-discrimination,

The path of non-discrimination.

Because you have four children,

And you realize that all of them are your children.

You don't want to prefer one over the three others.

You practice upeksha,

Equanimity.

You love Mr.

Carey because Mr.

Carey speaks for you,

But you don't love Mr.

Bush because Mr.

Bush is doing the thing that you don't like.

There is no equanimity in your love.

Even if John Carey has ideas that are close to you,

But you still love Mr.

Bush,

You say,

Well,

Mr.

Bush,

I have to help him also.

Because if I am able to help him,

I help the other half of the population.

I have to do something in order to offer him more understanding,

More compassion,

So that he will handle the problem in the Middle East,

In Iraq,

In a more compassionate way.

You have to love him.

So you love both of them.

And for American voters,

It's very difficult to persuade them to love both.

I have tried,

But I have not succeeded.

Because equanimity is inclusiveness.

When you love,

Your love should include everyone.

Whether he is black or white or brown or yellow,

Whether he is Catholic or Protestant or Jew or Buddhist or communist,

You have to love them all.

That is why equanimity reveals a higher,

Higher level of love.

It's not that young men is your son,

That you have to love him,

And you exclude the other young men.

You are a true lover,

You have to include the sons of other families.

And when you can love the sons and the daughters of other families,

You are in a position to be a politician,

To be a teacher.

And therefore,

All of us have to cultivate the quality of equanimity.

The king is supposed to love everyone in the country as his or her own sons and daughters.

And the king is supposed to practice equanimity.

In the tradition of Buddhism,

It is said that Maitri,

Karuna,

Mudita and Upeksha can be cultivated every day because these are four qualities that have no limits.

Infinite love.

And the four elements are called the four unlimited.

Because Maitri can become unlimited.

And this is the kind of love you may call love without frontiers.

And when you have developed your love to that level,

You are called a Buddha.

And there are Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in our midst,

In the world.

There is an organization of doctors who want to serve people everywhere.

Not only in France,

In Great Britain,

But also in Africa and Asia.

And they call themselves medicine sans frontiers.

Sans frontiers,

That is the word.

Love without limits,

Frontiers.

You can develop these four qualities because when your heart is able to embrace everyone,

Every living being,

It has no longer any frontier.

Your heart becomes immense.

And when the love in your heart is like that,

You don't suffer anymore.

You don't suffer anymore.

You can accept everything.

And the Buddha gave a very beautiful image.

He said suppose you have a bowl of water and you have a handful of salt and you pour all the salt in the water and you stir and the water becomes undrinkable.

It's too salty.

You cannot quench your thirst because that is a solution,

Salty.

And suppose with that handful of salt you throw it into a river.

And although the salt is diluted in the water,

People continue to drink the water.

They don't suffer at all.

Why?

Because the river is immense.

And that is why a handful of salt cannot make the river suffer.

Even if you throw a handful after handful,

One hundred,

Because the river is still immense,

The river still doesn't suffer.

So the technique is to enlarge your heart,

To make it into something unlimited.

And when your heart becomes immense,

You can accept everything.

The small things,

Like a handful of salt,

Does not make you suffer anymore.

And if your heart is small,

Small things can make you very unhappy.

But in the case you have a big heart that can include everyone,

Every living being,

You don't suffer anymore.

And that is the quality of equality,

All embracing.

And that is the quality of equality.

Once we have Karuna,

Maitri,

Mudita,

And Upeksha,

We have a tremendous amount of energy within us.

And the line of communication can be established very easily.

We can listen very deeply with compassion.

We can understand right away the other person.

What we say,

What we do,

Will not make him or her suffer anymore.

And everywhere we can establish that line,

That compassionate line between us and the other person.

The Bodhisattva of Love is in you.

Avallokiteshvara,

You are able to listen,

To understand,

And you are free.

And that is why in our relationship we should be able to establish a communication line.

The current that circulates in that line should be the current of Maitri,

Karuna,

Mudita,

And Upeksha.

And when the other listens to the voice of compassion,

Of loving kindness,

Of non-discrimination in us,

The suffering in him or her will vanish,

The idea to kill himself or to kill herself will vanish.

And that line will be able to save many people.

So if in your relationship with someone,

Whether that is your partner,

Or your mother,

Or your husband,

Your wife,

There are difficulties,

There are sufferings.

You should be able to set up that line of communication.

Work within yourself first before you set up the line.

And after the line is ready,

You can call him,

Call her,

Darling.

I know that there is a lot of suffering,

Uneasiness,

Difficulty in you.

I know.

In the past I have said things,

I have done things that have made the situation worse.

Now I already understand.

I don't want to continue like that.

So darling,

Please tell me about your suffering,

Your difficulties,

Your deepest aspiration.

I am free now.

I am able to listen to you.

And the line begins to work.

I know that I have not understood you enough.

Now my desire,

Deepest desire is to understand you deeply so that I will not make you suffer anymore like I have done in the past.

That is what we call loving speech,

Compassionate speech.

Thanks to the line we just established the compassionate line.

You may like to give a color to that line.

It should not be red.

Being rouge.

And thanks to that line of communication you will be able to help transform the other person and bring him,

Bring her happiness and freedom.

And when you speak through that line with compassion like that,

The other person will tell you and help you to understand him or her more.

I wish you good luck and good practice.

Reviews

Gratitude for all the beautiful teachings he left us with.

The wisdom shared in this short talk explains what is to love and to be unconditional love 💫💚 in gratitude 🙏

May we all follow this path with love ❤️ and loving kindness 🙏

A balm for my soul my current situation.
Grateful to have this come to me today. 💜

Your words full of wisdom always touch my heart deeply. Thank you 🙏🏽 very much

The progressive nature of our ability to Love. I’m in.

Thank you for helping me broaden my understanding of love💙☮️

So beautiful and perfect. This is really about true love.

Best teacher out there. Gratitude IMMENSE for his soul.

Thai is, and will always be my most cherished teacher 🙇🏻‍♀️💜

Wisdom on what love is - in great detail and it's profound

This was very beautiful. Thank you, if each one of can can cultivate this, the world will be a kinder place.

Wonderful hearing his voice again and so glad we have his recorded work

A beautiful and powerful teaching to love ourselves and others to create therefore a peaceful world 🌍🕊️thank you!

Some simple insightful techniques for cultivating deep relationships. Thank you.

One of my very favourite teachings from our wonderful teacher.

Helpful. But it is a pity that love in a relationstip - has so much to do with reminding of suffering… Karuna… In Buddism. In the west we say: - do not be the therapist of the other… can someone explain the difference?

Love without borders is a beautiful reminder of how passionate medical workers can be with their mission in life

Rest in peace. What a delight to find this treasure this morning.

We are so fortunate to continue to receive your infinite love and wisdom. Thank you 🌻