Love Beyond Valentine's Day
Valentine’s Day celebrates love in one of its forms—romantic love. American Buddhist Rebel portrays a different type of love that stems from the deepest regions of the heart. American Buddhist Rebel is a love story, the love of a Buddhist teacher—Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz—for teaching and helping others to attain enlightenment.
As Rama pointed out, we can waste our energy thinking that romantic love is the only game in town. The excerpts selected below from American Buddhist Rebel remind us that there is so much more to the essence of love than romance and flowers. There is also an ecstatic love for life that fulfills our deepest yearning, empowers us, and elevates our spirit. The awareness of this love is kindled through meditation, inner stillness. American Buddhist Rebel is an iconoclastic, modern love story.
Rama spoke of love from different levels of ecstasy:
”When we love it takes us beyond our self, otherwise we're just absorbed with the preoccupations that we invent. But when we love someone, we can do something magnificent. We look beyond our own immediate needs and we become more concerned about the welfare of another.”
“In the process of the years of meditation and self-giving, self-analysis, I found that I no longer loved as I had formerly done. As I went on, the relationships got better and better. And they meant less. The relationships that I had became more and more impersonal, yet had more love in them. It's an odd incongruity. I loved more but I was less attached. In other words, my love was no longer bound by the body, it was a love of spirit.”
“I’m trying to tell you that life is so much better than you can imagine. That eternity is so complete, nirvana is so perfect and shining, but you’re just skimming it. You’re missing it. And that’s a part in the process. But if you just reach a little more, if you just extend your self-giving, your love, a little deeper, if you just try a little harder in your meditations, it’s endless, it’s perfect, it’s beyond anything that you can imagine. And I would like that for you.”
[Referencing meditation journeys to the desert, where he zoomed 30 yards across the sand without physically touching it]: “If I believed there was a physical, I could not do this. We walk upon the Grace of God. Nothing else exists except that. It’s like gliding. You walk just above the physical. You only walk or live this way if you have a terrific love for Existence. If you have total faith and love then that which you love will help you. Then you can walk on anything.
“When I find myself coming back to this world, I realize it's because of love. Love is the strongest force in the universe. You can travel to all the multifarious realities – infinite planes of awareness – merge with them and become them. Yet, if love is lacking, it will all remain flat. If love is lacking in your consciousness, your awareness will be dry. You will be empty. If you love enough, you can do anything.”
“About 75 to 95 percent of all attention in this world is devoted to romance. And it's such a waste, it's incredible, because you get almost no return on your investment – it’s power lost. I think you need to look at yourself a little bit and assess how much of your energy you're putting in that direction. I have no argument with romance or with love but if you're fixating on it too much, you'll find that you're losing a tremendous amount of energy.”
“You can store power through love. Whenever you love, you compress time. Time stops. The world stops and you step outside of it.”
“Love creates a bridge, a bridge between peoples, a bridge between nations. The absence of love is war, hate, enmity, fear.”
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You can use Valentine's Day or any other of the 364 days in the year to amp up your love. Close your eyes and meditate by trying to stop thought and focusing on the heart chakra in the center of your chest. Imagine love emanating from your heart center out to your home, your city, your nation, the globe. To help you, listen to some music that radiates love -- the band Zazen's "Ecstasy," which was created to help you stop thought and meditate.
Please also scroll down and see the blog from 12/22/14 titled "Men and Love."
This will give you new experiences and insights about love!