What is love?

Literally it is the attraction between a human, the only species that has this word, and other beings, matter and thoughts which include concepts, ideas and imagination.

But this word is so heavy in its impressions. It is the reason for much anguish, for so many conflicts and heartaches.

Attraction between two objects is at the heart of all creation. Gravity makes earth go around the sun, stars around black holes and galaxies in spirals. Gravitational attraction keeps the entire universe from flying apart at much faster speed and instantly vanish into the original void it apparently came from.

Attraction keeps particles bound in specific orbits that make the infinitesimal to macro; molecules, cells, rocks and trees.

This attraction is innate in all living beings. It's this attraction that makes all living things seek company of other living things. Even though a lion kills for food, he only takes what it needs. Only one animal actually hates as well as loves. And that is the homo sapiens.

Why?

Something happens in the evolution process when living organisms graduate into a thinking machine. The mind thus created, instead of being one with nature, instead of being one interconnected living matter starts to see itself as a separate being, a separate self, master of its own domain. By definition, a separate self sees all others as separate. The innate attraction which is seamless for all other species and inanimate matter takes on duality; me and you, good and bad, love and hate.

The birth of separate self changes entirely, the word love. From being innate attraction common to all things in the universe, it becomes a restricted emotion only known by us humans and a feeling that comes and goes along with thoughts typical of a separate self. Impermanence which is suffering as taught by Buddha is the chief characteristic of the separate self. Love becomes just one of the five aggregates that fade in and out.

The road back is deconstructing this separate self, in seeing for what it is, an illusion created by thought, impermanent as everything else created by thought. Then, love is the same for man as it is for mosquitoes or electrons entangled with each other, a stable innate property of the universe.

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