Love Encompasses All Human Beings

By Category: Harmonious LivingTags:

Love and affection are infinitely valuable. There are various levels of love and affection that we can aspire to. Some people describe how people love this way: Young people love with their words, middle-aged people love with their actions, and elder people love with their hearts. 

This means that as we age, our love matures. Spiritual development also deepens and expands our love.

Love starts at home. We love our spouse, our children, and our siblings. From here, we extend our love to our relatives and friends. Further, our love encompasses all human beings and then all beings. From a possessive kind of love, love matures into a giving kind of love, and finally into the enlightened love that bodhisattvas and Buddhas have for everyone. This kind of love is the great compassion that is described by the saying: “I will not seek pleasure just for myself. I long for all sentient beings to be free of suffering.”

Love is like water. On the one hand, it can nurture our lives; on the other hand, it can drown us. Thus, if we do not know how to love properly, love can bring us many problems and ruin our lives. If we are ordinary and selective about whom we love, instead of embracing all beings, the vast dimensions of love are hardly actualized. How do we love properly? Let me offer the following four guidelines:

  • Love wisely—We should use our wisdom to purify our love.
  • Love compassionately—We should use our compassion to manifest our love.
  • Love in accordance with the Dharma—We should use the Dharma to guide our love.
  • Love morally—We should use morals and ethics to direct our love.

Love is such an important subject of our lives. How do we love selflessly and offer our love to all? How do we transform a possessive love to a giving love, to a love for the Dharma? How do we purify our love from one of discrimination to one of great compassion? How do we love in the spirit of this common saying: “Cultivate our loving-kindness without conditions, and ground our compassion on oneness”? How do we manifest the true potential of affinity? These are very important questions for us to ponder! When we seek to go beyond ourselves and offer our love and affection in service to the community, then our lives and the lives of others will be more rewarding and more joyful!

From Living Affinity, written by Venerable Master Hsing Yun.

Image from Pixabay.

More Featured Articles

The Role of Women in Buddhism
In the past, during the feudal period of Chinese history, men were respected while women were thought of as being rather contemptible. The birth of a son was compared to fashioning an ornament as precious as jade, which not only made everyone happy, but also raised the status of his mother. Read more
Friendship
In the Buddha's teachings, there are four kinds of friends: friends who treat you like a flower, friends who act like a balance, friends who are like the mountains, and friends who are like the earth.Friends who treat you like a flowerWe all enjoy flowers, especially when they are fresh. We put them in vases to decorate our homes, we give them to our loved Read more
Make Buddha Images in This Very Mind
Why should people create Buddha images? Did the Buddha really want everyone to make images of him and worship his body?In truth, the purpose of creating the Buddha images is not to create symbols for worship. Buddha images are reminders that “the mind is the Buddha,” and that everyone has Buddha nature. Buddha images also remind us to frequently recollect the virtues of the Buddha Read more
Transformed by the Precepts
The Buddhist precepts are here to protect us from wrongdoing, lead us away from what is bad, and towards what is good. Vinaya Master Daoxuan of the Tang dynasty composed the Simplified and Amended Handbook of the Four-Part Vinaya [Sifenlü Shanfan Buque Xingshi Chao], in which he analyzed the precepts in terms of their “rules,” “essence,” “practice,” and “characteristics.” When one puts the actual rules Read more
The Relationship between Environmental and Spiritual Preservation
Humans are “masters of the myriad creations of this earth” but are also the creators of problems. The arising of all problems in this world is related to humans, including today’s problems concerning environmental preservation. They also arise because of humanity’s selfishness, ignorance, and interruption of the harmony and natural cycles of the world, to the point where there are continuous natural calamities and changes. Read more
The Mind is the Source of Unwholesomeness
The Buddha often explained emptiness and impermanence by getting people to think about how phenomena arise, change, and decline. Read more
Patience and Persistence
Being patient is an art, and being persistent is a kind of hope. Influenced by today’s instant culture, modern people tend to expect instant results in anything they do. Practitioners want to have attainment in this life, scholars want to become instant laureates in their fields, and entrepreneurs want to gain a huge fortune overnight. As the saying goes, “A flower picked before its time Read more
Repentance
It is only through loving-kindness and compassion that we can find room in our hearts to forgive others. It is only through our willingness to let go of resentment that we can find a way to magnanimity.  Read more
Sitting Meditation
Though sitting meditation was given to us from the ancient past it is a way for modern people to lead happy lives. Sitting meditation allows us to dispel the pressures of daily life that come from the mind’s confusion and a mistaken understanding of phenomena. Practicing sitting meditation quiets the mind and stills our thoughts so that we can recover our intrinsic nature. Sitting meditation Read more
Have Respect for Life
Life is the most precious thing in the world, so it is imperative that we respect it in all its forms. Not only must we have regard for human life, we must also respect animal life and the life of any organism in our ecosystem. The worst offense a person can ever commit is to violate the life of others, or even to cause harm Read more
Wealth in the Present and Happiness in the Future
Everyone in this world wants to have wealth and live a carefree life. They also want a good rebirth. Richness in this life and pleasure in the next are the hallmarks of a successful life.In the Sumati Sutra, the Buddha defined a "successful life" to be wealth in this life and happiness in the next life. Having wealth in the present life includes an elegant, proper appearance, Read more
Purify the Mind
In Buddhism, the root cause of human suffering and other problems are identified as the mind. It thus proposes to tap into this invaluable resource by transforming any unwholesomeness into wholesomeness. Buddhism instructs sentient beings on how to recognize the mind, calm the mind, and handle the mind. The Buddha taught for forty-nine years during his lifetime. Whether his teachings were about the four noble Read more