“In contrast to their contemporaries in the West, Indians usually don't expect heaven on earth from the romantic love between a man and a woman.”
Sunita saw one more disadvantage of the Western model of love marriage: “I would be constantly stressed that someone should fall in love with me. I would always have to show my best side. What terrible stress!”
A friend from South India suffered from this stress. She was pretty, and always neatly dressed. Her family was Christian, where the Western way of life is more likely to be copied, and her father had told her: “Find yourself a husband.” My friend was disappointed, and not at all happy about his ‘modern’ attitude. She felt her father was shirking his responsibility, and wanted to save the dowry money. She was already 26 and had an MA degree. She had had a boyfriend once. When she brought up the question of marriage, he said that he had left it to his parents to search for a bride.
Then a German came along. He fell in love with her, and asked her to come to Germany and marry him. He went ahead, and she was to follow him. I met her on the evening before she took the flight. She was excited, and proudly showed me a photo of him. When she reached Germany, she was drastically and painfully introduced to the Western lifestyle: the young man whom she considered to be her future husband had just fallen in love with another woman. Marriage was out of question.
Was it really love that he had felt for her in India? Probably he would have given it on oath when he wanted to marry her. I am not so sure whether she would have called what she felt for him love. She wanted a husband and children, and she liked him. She was ready to build a family with him.
Realisation of love
I asked myself in my little mud house in Nepal, whether our Western attitude towards love is really the pinnacle of wisdom – an attitude, where the love between man and woman is considered the highest of all possible feelings. ‘Love for the neighbour’ is delegated to charity organisations, and love for God doesn’t even count as love. I did not doubt that we sincerely search for love and also sincerely want to give love. But I felt that we are lacking in wisdom. In India, people have not yet completely thrown out their ancient tradition and the wisdom contained in it, even though many are eagerly doing it. Yet many Indians are still well rooted in life. They still know where they have to look for happiness and love – in themselves…
Here it was again – the central theme of Indian wisdom: only in myself can I find what I really long for. I have all the love of the world inside me, but – I don’t feel it as long as I look for it ‘outside’. Unfortunately, this eager ‘outside search’ is the natural tendency of the mind, which keeps one trapped in the illusion that one is a separate, independent wave, blocking the realisation of one’s union with the ocean.
The sages advise us to be aware of this tendency – to be aware in general of what happens inside and outside of oneself. They call it witnessing consciousness. This witnessing consciousness creates a certain distance to the wave, and breaks identification with it. It broadens and deepens it, as it were, into the ocean. In this way, the truth becomes more familiar, more intimate – and with it comes true love.
For those who find witnessing difficult, or consider it too abstract, the sages advice them to direct feelings and thoughts to God – a personal God, a ‘you’. The sages advise you to imagine that God is with you, around you, in you, that he is your best friend. We get caught in the illusion that the multiplicity of the world is real through thinking, and through thinking, we can disentangle ourselves to a certain extent – through a thinking which is closer to the truth.
Because in reality, somebody who sees the one God everywhere and in everything, also in himself, is far more realistic than someone who sees trees, animals, human beings, and God as separate from himself – even if the eyes and the common sense judge differently.
During my studies at Hamburg University I had written in my diary, “The love I want I get only from God.” When I read this passage much later, I was surprised, because at the time of my studies, ‘God’ had hardly figured in my vocabulary.
Here in India I learnt that the dream of eternal love is not foolish or unrealistic. In fact, love is so close, so real, that it is quite amazing that I don’t feel it. It is not outside, but deep inside, intimately connected with my own being. I just need to be quiet, at least sometimes. Instead of putting all my stakes into thinking, I need to give being a chance. Difficult though it is to free myself of the addictive thinking habit, the more I let go of it, the more strongly will I feel love
Sunita saw one more disadvantage of the Western model of love marriage: “I would be constantly stressed that someone should fall in love with me. I would always have to show my best side. What terrible stress!”
A friend from South India suffered from this stress. She was pretty, and always neatly dressed. Her family was Christian, where the Western way of life is more likely to be copied, and her father had told her: “Find yourself a husband.” My friend was disappointed, and not at all happy about his ‘modern’ attitude. She felt her father was shirking his responsibility, and wanted to save the dowry money. She was already 26 and had an MA degree. She had had a boyfriend once. When she brought up the question of marriage, he said that he had left it to his parents to search for a bride.
Then a German came along. He fell in love with her, and asked her to come to Germany and marry him. He went ahead, and she was to follow him. I met her on the evening before she took the flight. She was excited, and proudly showed me a photo of him. When she reached Germany, she was drastically and painfully introduced to the Western lifestyle: the young man whom she considered to be her future husband had just fallen in love with another woman. Marriage was out of question.
Was it really love that he had felt for her in India? Probably he would have given it on oath when he wanted to marry her. I am not so sure whether she would have called what she felt for him love. She wanted a husband and children, and she liked him. She was ready to build a family with him.
Realisation of love
I asked myself in my little mud house in Nepal, whether our Western attitude towards love is really the pinnacle of wisdom – an attitude, where the love between man and woman is considered the highest of all possible feelings. ‘Love for the neighbour’ is delegated to charity organisations, and love for God doesn’t even count as love. I did not doubt that we sincerely search for love and also sincerely want to give love. But I felt that we are lacking in wisdom. In India, people have not yet completely thrown out their ancient tradition and the wisdom contained in it, even though many are eagerly doing it. Yet many Indians are still well rooted in life. They still know where they have to look for happiness and love – in themselves…
Here it was again – the central theme of Indian wisdom: only in myself can I find what I really long for. I have all the love of the world inside me, but – I don’t feel it as long as I look for it ‘outside’. Unfortunately, this eager ‘outside search’ is the natural tendency of the mind, which keeps one trapped in the illusion that one is a separate, independent wave, blocking the realisation of one’s union with the ocean.
The sages advise us to be aware of this tendency – to be aware in general of what happens inside and outside of oneself. They call it witnessing consciousness. This witnessing consciousness creates a certain distance to the wave, and breaks identification with it. It broadens and deepens it, as it were, into the ocean. In this way, the truth becomes more familiar, more intimate – and with it comes true love.
For those who find witnessing difficult, or consider it too abstract, the sages advice them to direct feelings and thoughts to God – a personal God, a ‘you’. The sages advise you to imagine that God is with you, around you, in you, that he is your best friend. We get caught in the illusion that the multiplicity of the world is real through thinking, and through thinking, we can disentangle ourselves to a certain extent – through a thinking which is closer to the truth.
Because in reality, somebody who sees the one God everywhere and in everything, also in himself, is far more realistic than someone who sees trees, animals, human beings, and God as separate from himself – even if the eyes and the common sense judge differently.
During my studies at Hamburg University I had written in my diary, “The love I want I get only from God.” When I read this passage much later, I was surprised, because at the time of my studies, ‘God’ had hardly figured in my vocabulary.
Here in India I learnt that the dream of eternal love is not foolish or unrealistic. In fact, love is so close, so real, that it is quite amazing that I don’t feel it. It is not outside, but deep inside, intimately connected with my own being. I just need to be quiet, at least sometimes. Instead of putting all my stakes into thinking, I need to give being a chance. Difficult though it is to free myself of the addictive thinking habit, the more I let go of it, the more strongly will I feel love
No comments:
Post a Comment