. . . what love is . . .

120814 11:30 what love is

For some, time is a pustule of boredom hanging from our face to be despised endlessly; a shame.

For others, too few, it is not enough, a trillion lifetimes, to love the universe trackless save for those who through love expressed as music, dance, poetry or any other form of creativity -- even if only writing suicide notes -- plumb the height, width, breadth and depth of love.

Blessing or curse, M once said "you can heal," an oft repeated theme of ours seldom spoken of but the pulse of our friendship. Only once since that utterance did I ask for clarification, she said simply, "you will." And i, once mere dust upon the floor of the dust bin, did she heal with tears unshed moistening my dust into a clay vessel which in time became a chalice spun upon her potter's wheel.

Do I love my maker?

Of course I do.

What is the meaning and consequence of love? How do we define what by needs must be mutual agreement except by negotiation. And thus far conjugal chaste visitation is best for us; we M&m.

Upper & lower case since I for one will always be her creation with, now, too little time for more. Then too by her leave no jealousy between us since we love all mankind equally seeking tolerance before union which of needs must come if life as we know it is to survive. Neither of us attend any particular worshiping body since each day is Sabbath days of rest in the Love Of God blessed.

And held within each infinity of days are all the rites of passage: birth, life, death, resurrection cycling back to birth renewed . . . no so much spoken or enacted but part of the endless cycle of prayer sung.

Each of us singly married to God who at times is our child at play in the sandbox of eternity; the teacher taught what it is that we will for all. All ground of being becomes holy eventually . . . alone or apart never alone for God is always with/within us all.

Coleman Barks, poet and chief translator of Rumi, once said of God, "too freighted with . . . " to speak -- a man unable to articulate the weight of none sense spoken about God. Who knows God through Rumi better than what?

What follows is an incomplete collection of wisdom defining love by others who speak with divinity. I sense now my near leaving of this mortal coil and welcome each moment as another chance to enable a better understand of The All, THE LOVE.

© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

FRIENDSHIP & LOVE

A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have a friend, one human soul whom we can trust utterly, who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults. 
--Charles Kingsley
“A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself.” --James Boswell 
A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same. --Elbert Hubbard 
A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires. --Hedy Lamarr
A loving heart is the truest wisdom. --Charles Dickens
A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out. --Walter Winchell
Absence from those we love is self from self - a deadly banishment. --William Shakespeare
Accept everything about yourself--I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end--no apologies, no regrets. --Clark Moustakas
“All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.”
--James Russell Lowell
All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt. --Charles Schulz
“Be glad of life, because it gives you the chance to love, to work, to play, and to look up at the stars.” --Henry Van Dyke
Because of you I found my inner strength. Because of you I have become inspired to do bigger things . . . Because of you I've become complete. --Anonymous
Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities. --C. S. Lewis
Flirtation, attention without intention. - Max O'Neil 
"Friendships are discovered rather than made." --Harriet Beecher Stowe
Friends are helpful not only because they will listen to us, but because they will laugh at us; Through them we learn a little objectivity, a little modesty, a little courtesy; We learn the rules of life and become better players of the game. --Will Durant born on November 5, 1885
Friends are like melons. Shall I tell you why? To find one good, you must a hundred try. 
--Claude Mermet
"Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight is said to be the only truth" --Herman Melville
Friendship is love minus sex and plus reason. Love is friendship plus sex and minus reason.
- Mason Cooley
Friendship's a noble name, 'tis love refined. --Susannah Centlivre
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one. --C. S. Lewis
Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace. --Buddha
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival. --C. S. Lewis
Friendship Never explain -- your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe it anyway. A real friend never gets in your way, unless you happen to be on the way down. A friend is someone you can do nothing with and enjoy it. However much we guard ourselves against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us. It is not so much the example of others we imitate, as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words. --Eric Hoffer
He wants you all to Himself to put His loving, divine arms around you. --Charles Stanley
Hurried and worried until we're buried, and there's no curtain call, Life's a very funny proposition, after all. --George M. Cohan
I feel the need of relations and friendship, of affection, of friendly intercourse. ... I cannot miss these things without feeling, as does any other intelligent man, a void and a deep need.  --Vincent Van Gogh
I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. --Vincent Van Gogh
I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship. --Pietro Aretino
I love mankind; it's people I can't stand. --Charles Schulz
I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don’t believe I deserved my friends. --Walt Whitman
I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try. --Nikki Giovanni
If you your lips would keep from slips, Five things observe with care; To whom you speak, of whom you speak, And how, and when, and where. --W. E. Norris
If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness. --Alexander Smith
In the book of life, the answers aren’t’ in the back. --Charlie Brown
It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them. --Francois de La Rochefoucauld
It is not who you attend school with but who controls the school you attend. --Nikki Giovanni
Jealousy is not a barometer by which the depth of love can be read. It merely records the degree of the lover's insecurity. --Margaret Mead
Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed. --Corita Kent
Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use. --Charles Schulz
“Love can sometimes be magic. But magic can sometimes... just be an illusion.” --Javan
Love cannot accept what it is. Everywhere on earth it cries out against kindness, compassion, intelligence, everything that leads to compromise. Love demands the impossible, the absolute, the sky on fire, inexhaustible springtime, life after death, and death itself transfigured into eternal life. --Albert Camus
Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new. --Ursula K. LeGuin
Love has no errors, for all errors are the want for love. --William Law
Love is an action, a difference we try to make in the world. --Chris Hedges
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. --Robert Frost
Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition. --Alexander Smith
Love is a friendship set to music. --E. Joseph Cossman
Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart. --Washington Irving 
Love is not only something you feel, it is something you do. --David Wilkerson
Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love. --Charles Peguy
. . . love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave . . .  --Song of Solomon 8.5<
Love is the ultimate expression of the will to live. --Tom Wolfe
Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. --Zora Neale Hurston
Love sought is good, but given unsought is better. --William Shakespeare
Man loves little and often, woman much and rarely. --Anonymous
May you live every day of your life. --Jonathan Swift
Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, but falling in love with you was beyond my control. --Anonymous
Men say of women what pleases them! women do with men what pleases them. --De Segur
My friends are my estate. --Emily Dickinson
No, there's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream. --Thomas Moore
Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship. --Epictetus
One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved. --Romain Rolland
Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family — but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything. --Willa Cather
Parenting, at its best, comes as naturally as laughter. It is automatic, involuntary, unconditional love. - Sally James
Remember only this of our hopeless love
That never till Time is done
Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one. --Edith Sitwell
Some days you tame the tiger. And some days the tiger has you for lunch. --Tug McGraw
The best rule of friendship is to keep your heart a little softer than your head. --Alphonse de Lamartine

The Four Aspects of True Love

Love is one of the most confusing of feelings. What some people call “love” may be possessiveness, or simple desire, or some other lesser emotion.

According to Buddhism, there are four elements of true love. Read what this wise teacher has to say, and find out if what you feel is true love, here: 

Here are the four aspects of true love. 

1. Loving-kindness. Loving-kindness is not only the desire to make someone happy, to bring joy to a beloved person, it is the ability to bring joy and happiness to the person you love, because even if your intention is to love this person, your love might make him or her suffer. To be able to give happiness and joy, you must practice deep looking toward the person you love. Because if you do not understand this person, you cannot love properly. 

2. Compassion. This is not only the desire to ease the pain of another person, but the ability to do so. You must practice deep looking in order to gain a good understanding of the nature of the suffering of this person, in order to be able to help him or her to change. 

3. Joy If there is no joy in love, it is not true love. If you are suffering all the time, if you cry all the time, and if you make the person you love cry, this is not really love–it is even the opposite. If there is no joy in your love, you can be sure that it is not true love. 

4. Freedom. In true love, you attain freedom. When you love, you bring freedom to the person you love. If the opposite is true, it is not true love. You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free, not only outside but also inside. “Dear one, do you have enough space in your heart and all around you?” This is an intelligent question for testing whether your love is something real. --Adapted from True Love, by Thich Nhat Hanh (Shambhala, 1997).

The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose. --Hada Bejar
“The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.” --Homer
"The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money." --Thomas Jefferson
" The language of friendship is not words, but meanings. " --Henry David Thoreau
The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. --William Hazlitt
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. --Carl Jung
“The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this”--Henry David Thoreau
The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship. --Francis Bacon
There's a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker. --Charles Schulz
To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides. --David Viscott
To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.
--Alphonse de Lamartine
“Too slow for those who wait, Too swift for those who fear, Too long for those who grieve, Too short for those who rejoice. But for those who love, time is not.” --Henry Van Dyke
The love we give away is the only love we keep. --Elbert Hubbard
We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or noble moments that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
We love because it's the only true adventure. --Nikki Giovanni
We love our enemy when we love his or her ultimate meaning,” professor Adams told us. We "may have to struggle against what the enemy stands for; we may not feel a personal affinity or passion for him. Yet we are commanded for this person’s sake and for our own and for the sake of the destiny of creation, to love that which should unite us." 
--Chris Hedges
"We must be our own before we can be another's." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend." --Oliver Wendell Holmes

What Love Is–A Buddhist Master’s Wisdom
--Adapted from Living Affinity, by Hsing Yun (Lantern Books, 2004).

Love certainly can be confusing: some kinds of love are “healthy,” others are “unhealthy;” some are “giving,” others are “possessive.” Love has its pluses and minuses.

Sometimes we could all use a little clarity around the whole issue of love. Find out what this wise Buddhist master has to say about it, and then pass it on to someone you love. 

From the perspective of its minuses– 

Love is like a piece of rope: it can be binding and restrictive. 

Love is like a lock: it can shackle us and make us restless. 

Love can be blinding: it can keep us in the dark without any awareness that we have compromised our principles and standards. 

Love is like the honey on a sharp blade: it can entice us to lick the blade, even at the risk of cutting our tongues and risking our lives. 

Love can be like a sea of suffering: its turbulent waves can trap us in its depths. 

From the perspective of its pluses– 

Love gives us the strength to make sacrifices, to give, to encourage, to connect and to be compassionate. 

Love is like a road map: it gives our lives direction and we can see our destination with clear visibility. 

Love is like a blanket: it provides us with warmth and security. 

Love is like a box of chocolates: it is sweet and full of surprises. 

When we love properly, we expand our love for a few to compassion for all. This love can help all beings to live with happiness and freedom, and it is anything but small and powerless–it is the reason for our existence! –A Buddhist Master’s Wisdom

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."  --Henri Nouwen

"With you I should love to live, with you be ready to die." --Horace
Words of love, are works of love. --William R. Alger 
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.. --Mark Twain
You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection. --Buddha



--Jeanne Moreau
“Age does not protect you from love, but love to some extent protects you from age..”
--John Barrymore
"Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble."
--John O'Donohue
 “One of the deepest longings of the human soul is to be seen.” 
"This art of love discloses the special and sacred identity of the other person. Love is the only light that can truly read the secret signature of the other person's individuality and soul. Love alone is literate in the world of origin; it can decipher identity and destiny”   ―  Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom 
--Jonathan Swift
“May you live every day of your life.” 
--Joseph Campbell
“Love is a friendship set to music.”
--Joseph Conrad
“They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.”
--Joy J. Golliver
“The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away.”
--Judy Garland
"Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else"
"For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul."
--Karl A. Menninger
"One does not fall in love; one grows into love, and love grows in him."
"Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love." --Khalil Gibran
--Khalil Gibran
"Sadness is but a wall between two gardens." 
--Lao Tzu
"Because of a great love, one is courageous."
--Leon Edel 
"The answer to old age is to keep one's mind busy and to go on with one's life as if it were interminable. I always admired Chekhov for building a new house when he was dying of tuberculosis.."

--Love, A General Theory of
Psychologists Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon in A General Theory of Love:
    "An infant’s emotional scaffold provides for temperament and for innate abilities like reading facial expressions. Limbic contact with his parents hones that pluripotential structure into the template of emotional life — the neural core of emotional identity. Once this quintessence is firm, we say that a person exists, and we can know the individuated attributes of his emotional self. Ongoing experience gradually transforms his neural configuration, changing him from who he was into who he is, one synapse at a time. Emotional identity drifts over a lifetime — if fast and far enough, one might encounter a stranger’s heart where a friend’s or a lover’s once dwelt.”
--Lucy Maud Montgomery
“There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves.”
--Marc Chagall
"In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love."
--Margaret Hungerford
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
--Mark Twain
""Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.."
--Mary Gilmore, Dame 
"Youth troubles over eternity, age grasps at a day and is satisfied to have even the day."
--Mencius
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius
“Friendship is one mind in two bodies.”
--Naomi Shihab Nye
"Before you know what kindness really is, you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment... Only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say 'it is I you have been looking for' and then goes with you everywhere, like a shadow or a friend."
--Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.”
--Nikki Giovanni
"We love because it's the only true adventure."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend." 
--Oscar Hammerstein
A bell is not a bell 'til you ring it. 
A song is not a song 'til you sing it. 
Love in your heart is not put there to stay. 
Love is not love...'til you give it away.
One evening many years ago, just before Broadway star Mary Martin went on stage in South Pacific, she was handed a note. It was from Oscar Hammerstein, the famous lyricist. At this particular moment, he lay dying. The short note read:
--Oscar Wilde
"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring."
--Paul Eldridges
“Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits.”
--Plautus 
“Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend.”
--Pietro Aretino 
"I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship." 
--Plautus 
“Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend.”
--PROVERB
“It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.”  --Irish Proverb
"Love rules without rules." (Amore regge senza legge.) - Italian proverb
--Rainer Maria Rilke 
"This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."
"The condition which high friendship demands is the ability to do without it."
"We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or noble moments that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.."
"We must be our own before we can be another's."
--Robert Southey
"The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired."
--Romain Rolland
“One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.” 
--Saint Thomas Aquinas 
"There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship."
--Sarah Orne Jewett
“The growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.”
--Shirley MacLaine
"Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends."
--Shusha Guppy
The verb “to love” in Persian is “to have a friend.” “I love you” translated literally is “I have you as a friend,” and “I don’t like you” simply means “I don’t have you as a friend.”
--Sophocles
“The good befriend themselves.”
--Soren Kierkegaard  
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
"Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle"
- Spanish proverb
"Life without a friend is death without a witness." 
--Stendhal
"The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears."
--Stephen Fry
"I don't need you to remind me of my age. I have a bladder to do that for me."
--Sydney Smith
"Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence."
--Tennessee Williams
"Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose."
“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”
--Thomas Fuller
"A good friend is my nearest relation." 

After word:
Love is neither avocation or vocation -- it is a reason unto itself to life or die for -- my education continues in the arts and meaning of love . . . extending beyond my bodily death. Amen
4M