To love well, we need to understand what we mean when we talk about love, and what love means to us all individually on the deepest, subconscious level, in the part of ourselves that began to be constructed in our earliest lives. This is the premise feminist scholar and cultural critic bell hooks establishes at… Continue reading What is Love? Love is a Verb – bell hooks
For activist and writer James Baldwin, falling in love was, ‘Not merely the key to my life, but to life itself.’ In this excerpt he talks about falling in love, a powerful event that shaped him and how he interacted with the world.
Robert Frost’s ‘Mending Wall‘ is at once a humorous take on rural living as well as a more pointed meditation on isolation and the barriers we choose to build, or are obliged to put up. The walls, he seems to say, have a tendency to come down by themselves, but we will come and repair… Continue reading Something There is That Doesn’t Love a Wall
Tria Chang’s poem, I Was Once in Love, talks about the possibilities and pitfalls of relationships and how things can so easily slip out of balance.
If birth is a shock that whisks us out of another existence, a life that is whole and not lacking, then we can spend our whole lives in a state of longing for something we can’t quite remember, that we can’t quite articulate. In his poem about this kind of division and separation, ‘Cleave‘, David… Continue reading David Whyte on Love and Separation
Sheila Heti’s novel ‘How Should a Person Be?’ asks that candid and naive question with honesty, humor and sincerity. During the course of the book, she especially looks at love and all its difficulties, and in this passage she talks about the kind of obsessive sexual love that pushes us over cliffs and into the death drive, that longs for ‘annihilation, comfort and death’.
Friendship transcends mere companionship to reach a more elevated goal – that of a shared vision or a common question.
DT Suzuki was a Japanese philosopher whose work helped to introduce Zen and Buddhism to the West in the time before it became a popular practice outside of Asia. One of Suzuki’s enduring interests as far as Western spiritual philosophy was concerned were the writings of Christian mystic Meister Eckhart. He frequently referred to Eckhart… Continue reading DT Suzuki on Eckhart, God’s Love and Prajña
What are the most basic elements of love and how can we manifest them in our lives and our relationships? This is the question that Thich Nhat Hanh tackles in his short book, ‘True Love’. Looking at human love through the lens of Buddhist teaching, he breaks it down into four aspects: loving-kindness, compassion, joy… Continue reading Thich Nhat Hanh on the Elements of True Love
In order to really love, Thich Nhat Hanh proposes, we need to consider the elements of true love: benevolence, compassion, joy and freedom. But what about the more fundamental problem of selfishness? Can we ever love wholeheartedly in a way that puts the wellbeing of the other person – our beloved or a stranger –… Continue reading Molly Peacock – What If, When We Said I Love You, There Were A You To Love?
