The laws of nature and the universe neither divide anything, nor do they make a distinction between anything. They are unconditional. It is our thoughts that divide, categorize, and condition everything..
One day, the Storm and the Sun agree to make a bet. The Storm says to the Sun, “I’ll blow so strongly that I’ll force the coat off that man.” The Sun merely smiles on hearing this. The Storm then starts to blow and roar, but the stronger he blows, the tighter the man holds onto his coat. After the Storm gives up, the Sun shows its face. The air gets gradually warmer, and as it gets hotter, the man stops clinging tightly to his coat and takes it off instead.
In this story, is the Sun acting with love? Or is the Storm acting with anger? Of course not, because both the Sun and the Storm are simply acting according to their natures. Similarly, the man acts in line with his needs.
One Zen master says, “To love is to be brave enough to make yourself cry today if it will make you smile tomorrow.”
The word “love” is defined as an emotion that makes someone show a close interest in, and commitment to, someone or something. For instance, when we look at a flower, we like it so much that we want to pick it without hesitation. Similarly, we may want to adopt a cat because we like it so much. With our instinct to reproduce, which we call “love,” we may want to have a child. We could give many examples of this.
Well, could these thoughts, which we call “love,” be our virtual reality?
Could “love” be describing the satisfaction of our own needs and demands? On the other hand, could “hatred” be the emotion we experience when our needs and demands are not satisfied?
Love is a conditioned state produced and rooted on a social scale. It is an illusion created in people’s minds by emotions. This illusion, which is believed to take us toward goodness and kindness, is one of the most significant social mistakes, because there is no division in nature between love and hatred. Everything is as it should be.
This emotion, which we are taught to think of as “love,” is based on our senses, and it prevents us from improving, developing, and maturing. Love makes us dependent on others around us, so it creates a state of expectation that destroys us through this dependency. We keep on being satisfied by the expectations we have from spouses, children, lovers, women, men, friends, relatives, and so on. However, we don’t even think about questioning whether we love ourselves. So then, let’s ask these questions to ourselves now:
- Do we love ourselves?
- Can we look at ourselves from the outside in the way we should?
We are in a relationship and in touch with ourselves, our surroundings, nature, and matter. A man who cannot communicate with himself is unable to develop a relationship with anyone or anything. The relationship he presumes to develop under these conditions will be an external one. For a man unable to connect with his inner world, being superficial is inevitable. Therefore, a man unaware of his own soul and essence, and therefore unable to make use of them, will beg for fulfillment of his expectations, which he calls “love,” because he is incapable of discovering the treasure within himself.
If a mother tells her child that he will not be loved if he misbehaves, the child will grow up in fear of losing that love. The mother carrying her child’s school bag may say she is doing it for his good. Everyone, young or old, asks their beloved every minute whether or not they love them and how much. Neighbors, friends, and companions always talk about love. Love is considered the source of all beauty. If to love and be loved is that important, if it makes us happy and peaceful, why do we still live in a loveless and unhappy world? Why does love run away from us as we chase it?
Does “to love” mean to give or take? Or is it our sense of possession in a different form?
A mother embraces her children for the sake of her love. She tries to help her children with every difficulty they face, but these children could never be happy with this love. Even if a man and a woman questioned their mutual love, this love wouldn’t be satisfactory for them. Even if someone says he loves his country, it doesn’t solve his financial difficulties. The food and drinks we love can be bad for us and even cause premature death.
The conditioning that love will solve everything is a huge illusion. Tolerance and goodwill are in fact nothing but ways of postponing the inevitable. In reality, no one has tolerated anything. One last drop falling on what you have already accumulated will turn this love into an intense hatred.
What we call “love” is mostly nothing but the expectations of our selfish thoughts.
The word “love,” which has been imposed on us, has damaged honesty and been used as a way to threaten and blackmail others. It has sometimes shaken us, and in some cases, it has resulted in hatred and destruction.
Love and hatred are like the positive and negative poles of a magnet. Whether you call it love or hatred, it all comes from the same magnet.
We should keep in mind that hatred waits besides us when we see ourselves in love, and we will certainly experience the opposite when we try to stick to just one side. If we can associate these two with each other, it will take us to a new level of understanding and comprehension. This point will be neither love nor hatred—it will be itself, just as it’s supposed to be, and it will be called “Universal Love.”
