Love

How wonderful is the path of Love, when the headless one is exalted. Hafiz

Love is not a need. To love is a feeling of being in totality with anything. To see things as they are is the only thing. Nothing more. If we see everything as it is, what else is there? Dhiravamsa

'I am' itself is God. The seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither body nor mind, but the love of the self in you for the self in all. The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love. Nisargadatta

According to Buddhism, ultimate and unconditioned love can only be achieved through a realization of Voidness (sunyata). Because there are no sentient beings to be pitied, Buddha has the greatest pity; because from the very beginning no sentient beings ever existed, Buddha 'came down' to earth to save sentient beings. Chang Chen-chi

The love of the saints is a unifying and vivifying force, which triumphs over the impenetrability of beings one to another. Maritian

He who loves with not only a part of himself, but the whole, transforms himself into the thing beloved. Angela of Foligno

Unlike the lower forms of love, (charity) is not an emotion. It begins as an act of the will and is consummated as a purely spiritual awareness, a unitive love-knowledge of the essence of its object. Aldous Huxley

Love (the sensible love of the emotions) does not unify. True, it unites in act; but it does not unite in essence. Meister Eckhart

When God loves, He only desires to be loved, knowing that love will render all those who love Him happy. St. Bernard

The love which grows out of sensuality ends in sensuality; that which is of the spirit ends in the Spirit of God, and makes it grow. St. John of the Cross

The highest degree, which the mystics call transformation or essential and immediate union with God, is the reality of pure love in which there is no self-interest. Fenelon

It must also be remembered that this Bridegroom is not only loving, but is Love itself. St. Bernard

The worth of love does not consist in high feelings, but in detachment: in patience under trials for the sake of God whom we love. St. John of the Cross

Therefore let us all love the One singly, that all maybe singly loved by the One, for no other beside that One is fit to be singly loved by all, That love is single but not private; alone, yet not solitary; shared, but not divided, sweet in experience, eternal in fruit, full of mirth, refreshing and satisfying, and never cloying. Hugh of St. Victor

Love is infallible; it has no errors, for all errors are the want of love. William Law

While she (thy soul) lacks union she has never really loved God, for actual love lies in union, if thou lovest God as God, as spirit, as Person or as image, that must all go. "Then how shall I love him?" Love him as he is: a not-God, a not-spirit, a not-Person, a not-image; as sheer, pure, limpid unity, alien from all duality. And in this one let us sink down eternally from nothingness to nothingness. Meister Eckhart

Do not pretend you love others as yourself. Unless you have realized them as one with yourself, you cannot love them. Don't pretend to be what you are not, don't refuse to be what you are. True love of others is the result of self-knowledge, not its cause. Without self-realization, no virtue is genuine. When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection. But when you look at anything as separate from you, you cannot love it for you are afraid of it. Alienation causes fear, and fear deepens alienation. It is a vicious circle. Only self-realization can break it. Go for it resolutely. Nisargadatta

Emptiness equals compassion. Buddhist saying

Eye has not seen nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man to conceive what God has prepared for those who love him. 1 Corinthians

Man, if thou something love,
True love thou dost not know;
God is not this or that,
So let the something go. Angelus Silesius

Having realized that I am one with and yet beyond the world, I became free from all desire and fear. Spontaneity became a way of life, the real became natural and the natural became real. And, above all, infinite affection, love, dark and quiet, radiating in all directions, embracing all, making all interesting and beautiful, significant and auspicious. Nisargadatta

In my world love is the only law. I do not ask for love, I give it. Such is my nature. Nisargadatta

Those who speak ill of me are really my good friends. When, being slandered, I cherish neither enmity nor preference, there grows within me the power of love and humility, which is of the Unborn. Kung-chia Ta-shih

It is only in beholding and loving God that we can learn forgetfulness of self, measure duly the nothingness which has dazzled us, and accustom ourselves thankfully to decrease beneath that great Majesty which absorbs all things. Love God and you will be humble; love God and you will throw off the love of self; love God and you will love all that He gives you to love for love of Him. Fenelon

I will have nothing to do with a love which would be for God or in God. This is a love which pure love cannot abide; for pure love is God Himself. St. Catherine of Genoa

I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at, and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, love; you may give it any name you like. Love says "I am everything". Wisdom says "I am nothing". Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both. Nisargadatta

Turn the man loose who has found the living Guide within him, and then let him neglect the outward if he can! John Everard

The soul lives by that which it loves rather than in the body which it animates. For it has not its life in the body, but rather gives it to the body and lives in that which it loves. St. John of the Cross

Love is the way to this surrender, Divine action cares only for a willing heart. Jean Pierre de Caussade

The Bodhisattva can never feel that he is condescending or that his liberation, his knowledge that the world is play, makes him superior to others. That he works for their liberation at all is only because of his compassion for them in the agony they feel when the game is unconscious. Alan Watts

O peaceful and pleasant war! Where the supreme love stands on both sides, where, as in a mysterious love-sport, or a divine love-play, it fights with itself. Peter Sterry

(A person who truly loves) is concerned with participating in existence as a beneficial presence. Such love is neither personal, nor interpersonal, it is transpersonal. Thomas Hora

The timeless realm of absolute unity is the realm where no distinction made apparent in time is lost. And here alone are fulfilled the conditions of love. Love demands that the loved one shall be himself and free; and love demands union. In the world of time these requirements are incompatible, and love is always working its own undoing. But in the timeless world they are realized together and the perfection of independence and of oneness do not cancel out, but reinforce each other. In Hell I am bent on finding myself in myself, but time destroys me; in Heaven I am bent on losing myself in Another, but Eternity preserves me. D.E. Harding

God loved us before he made us; and his love has never diminished and never shall. Julian of Norwich.

Truth sees God, and wisdom contemplates God, and from these two comes a third, a holy and wonderful delight in God, who is love. Julian of Norwich. 

The goodness of God is the highest object of prayer and it reaches down to our lowest need. Julian of Norwich. 

Mystic Silence

From each, Love demands a mystic silence.
What do all seek so earnestly? 'Tis Love.
Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts,
In Love no longer "Thou" and "I" exist,
For self has passed away in the Beloved.
Now will I draw aside the veil from Love,
And in the temple of mine inmost soul
Behold the Friend, Incomparable Love.
He who would know the secret of both worlds
Will find that the secret of them both is Love.  Attar
from Essential Sufism, by James Fadiman & Robert Frage. Quoted from PoetSeers 

Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice. Erich Fromm 

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. Erich Fromm 

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