- One word with so many applications can be difficult to define. Were I writing a
to the practice of Yoga.
The branch of Yoga that deals with love is called bhakti. There is another branch of Yoga
called tantra. I don't know much about tantric yoga except that it has to do with sexual
intercourse and meditation enhanced by delayed orgasm. I'm thinking that love is a different
subject. It is possible to have sex without love, and it is also possible to have love without sex.
Love, as it relates to Raja Yoga, would fall under the five observances, specifically,
attentiveness to God. This is also part of the Yoga of Daily Life, along with body-conditioning
and self-study.
The word "attentive" may be defined as:
- paying attention: listening or watching carefully and with concentration
- considerate or responsive: behaving toward somebody in a way that shows special regard or
affection
Meanwhile, Jesus spoke of two great commandments:
- Love God;
- Love thy neighbor.
It is not clear whether these were meant to replace the ten commandments or merely to
supplant them. Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the Doors, took this a step further with these
words from "The Soft Parade":
"There's only four ways to get unraveled
One is to sleep and the other is travel, da da
One is a bandit up in the hills
One is to love your neighbor 'till
His wife gets home..."
I used to listen to this song a lot when I was young, and I always wondered what the last two
lines of the selection meant. Are we supposed to stop loving our neighbor when his wife arrives,
or are we merely being advised to add her to the list of our loved ones?
But I digress. Returning to the idea of attentiveness to God, the two definitions above also
raise questions:
- How do we concentrate on listening or carefully watching someone or something like God,
whom we can neither hear nor see? - What kind of behavior would show regard or affection for this Deity?
Think of someone whom you know well, your friend or your lover, your sibling or your
parent. Do you see them when you look, or do you just see the light waves that have bounced
from their hair, their skin, their clothing and their eyes?
Do you hear them when they speak, or are you only receiving and interpreting vibrations in the
air?
But yes, of course, you do hear them and see them, don't you? If I were to claim that you did
not, you would dismiss me as, perhaps, a raving maniac, an ignorant lout, or a psycho-babbler. I
would readily confess to any or all of these charges, but the fact remains that we do see and hear
people, even though to do so we are dependent on waves of light and sound that originated in the
past.
"In the past?" you might ask. How long in the past? It seems like right now, when I hear my
lover's words, or I see my friend's face.
Not long, I would reply. At 186,000 miles per second, the light that bounced from the features
of one standing ten feet away only took about 10 nanoseconds to reach your eyes. But a lot can
happen in ten billionths of a second, at the subatomic level. An electron circling the nucleus of an
atom has made uncountable repetitions during that time. Yet we perceive it as happening now.
We perceive it as an instant.
It's the same with sound. Traveling at more than 1,000 feet per second, the voice of your friend
takes less than 1/100th of a second to span the ten foot gap. During that relatively long period of
time there is no end to the contortions that the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen have gone
through while the wave was passing. Yet, again, we hear the words spoken now.
So, the way I see it, if we can announce our presence to one another via waves of light and
sound, so can God. Whoever or whatever the Deity might be, maybe His or Her ripples are right
there in front of our eyes, to detect, to pay attention to, maybe even to understand.
Certainly there is no requirement to understand. A being so vast as we sometimes imagine God
to be would probably be well beyond our little minds' abilities to grasp. He may be too large, or
maybe he's too small. It doesn't matter. For now we are trapped at this level, trapped by our
own choice to live, to be human, to exist. Not too big and not too small, we find ourselves at just
the right place at just the right time to see, hear, feel, smell and taste the world. We are scouts for
the Divinity, searching out not just what is, but what will be, what might be, what can be and what
we would like to be.
We understand what we need to; we understand what we can. But we also are able to love it all,
the sky, the earth, the universe, the atoms, color, sensation, beauty in every form. In doing so,
are we not loving God as well as our neighbor?
Returning to the question about regard or affection for God brings us back to the title of this
page, "What is love?" The word is used as both a verb and a noun: one can love another, or one
can be in love with another. The haiku on the previous page imagines love to be the same as
gravity. This may well be a stupid analogy, but the two subjects do have a lot in common.
Perhaps this similarity is best summed up as mutual attraction. Two objects roaming in outer
space exert a pull on one another. If things go right (wrong) these lumps of matter get closer and
the effect of gravity gets stronger. If it gets strong enough the two are drawn into orbit about one
another. They may even collide and destroy each other, or the one may become merely a part of
the other.
Each of these possibilities is analogous to what we see happening in love. Attraction, orbits,
consumption and mutual destruction are the stuff of stories and tragedies. Would Romeo and
Juliet have been better off if they had never encountered one another? At least they would have
had longer lives.
Consider the lone asteroid, traveling merrily through the universe, independent, and not a part
of any planet or star. Eventually, perhaps inevitably, our rambling rock finds herself drawn
toward another denizen of space. It might be just another wandering stone, or it might be larger
and locked already in orbit, a moon like ours, or a planet, or it might be a flaming monster, a
star, a sun.
Now the poor thing no longer is free. Bit by bit her trajectory begins to curve in the direction
of this other hunk of matter. Of course, she exerts her own attraction, but if the other is much
bigger and already involved in its own orbit, this slight pull does very little to change the course
of its motion. But as our girl gets closer the lure becomes stronger and stronger. What happens
next depends on her own velocity. If she is traveling fast enough she will just whiz right on by the
big boy (or girl) and back into the dark, vast reaches of freedom.
Depending on a multitude of factors, primarily size and velocity as well as all other sources of
gravity, this escape may not last forever. Instead, as she gets further from the attractor, she slows
down. She is drawn into a curve, a curve that eventually becomes an ellipse. Before she knows it
she is once again hurtling in the direction of the giant in the sky. This can go on for a long time.
Over and over the sequence of approach and retreat is acted out in the starry darkness.
If it goes on long enough with some regularity it becomes defined as an orbit. Whereas the
orbits of the planets like Earth approach circularity, there are comets and asteroids whose paths
are extreme ellipses. They travel far into the dark nothingness of space before the constant tug of
gravity pulls them back, and once again they begin to accelerate.
This too can go on for a long, long time. If the two objects are of similar size, this cosmic whirl
can be like a dance that lasts for eons. The two may be nothing more than grains of sand,
spinning about one another for ages until finally they join and become one larger particle. Or
they can be gigantic, they can be suns, what the astronomers call binary stars.
If one is much larger than the other, the system may develop into a relationship such as we, as
Earth, have with the Sun, a stable orbit with many fringe benefits. But there is another possible
fate in store for the smaller partner in this cosmic dance, and that is the doom that we know as
the fall.
Simply put, the third option for an object's response to the gravitational tug of another is to
collide. Rather than zooming right on by, and rather than finding a peaceful orbit, the two
objects slam into one another, often with a very destructive effect. When we see a shooting star,
the reality is that a meteor, perhaps no larger than a grain of sand, has just burned up from the
friction involved in its encounter with our atmosphere.
If such a hurtling chunk of matter is large enough, it doesn't burn away to nothing. Instead it
hits the water or the land. The result of this can range from a small hole in a roof or a dent in the
top of a car, to a crater, to a cataclysm.
We speak of falling in love, and perhaps that is well said. Love can destroy one's life. I didn't
say ruin, for with any destruction there also is creation. The sculptor destroys a boulder but
creates a statue. Love might destroy the free and laughing virgin, yet simultaneously create the
happy and fulfilled mother and wife. Love can put an end to the bachelor's carefree
independence while creating a father and a husband.
But still there is the fall. Often enough, ruin really is the appropriate word. Often enough, the
aftermath of love is desperation. Lonely, bitter, philandering, alcoholic, depressed, drug-addicted
leftovers can be what love leaves behind. Domestic violence, single mothers, poverty, court
orders, the slavery of child support and enforced visitation or denial are all features of the
romantic tragedy that has been with us forever.
None of this would appear to qualify as attentiveness to God. When Jesus announced the two
great commandments, love God, love thy neighbor, he wasn't coming up with anything new. Way
back in Finnegan's favorite scriptures we find echoes of the future:
Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one
Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your might.”
Leviticus 19:18 “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
It might be better not to think of observing attentiveness to God as a commandment, per se.
All of the abstinences and observances specified in the eight limbs of Raja Yoga are suggestions.
In particular, the three that we refer to as the Yoga of Daily Life are intended to weaken the
Sources of Trouble. There are no specific rewards or punishments for success or failure in
adhering to these tips.
I would be willing to say that love is its own reward. It is at once a form of pleasure and also
sacrifice. We give up everything for our beloved, and we do not rue the loss. God can be found
everywhere, in warm sunshine or cool water, in stars and rainbows, mountains and forests, deserts
and oceans, beautiful animals, babies and people of every description, and in works of art,
engineering, technology and science. When lightning flashes we can listen and hear the voice of
God. When wind blows or rain falls, we are comforted by his touch and her tears.
We cannot love as an act of obedience. We recognize love in our perception of beauty. We
have only to open ourselves to this beauty, for indeed it is everywhere, and love will blossom from
the depths of our being.
| Cougar Press PO Box 894 Meadview AZ 86444 |
| What is Love? |
| Don't you love it? |
| Yoga for Carnivores by Jay Dyck |