How do you love if you feel you have no love in your life?

[osho]

This is a weird question, isn’t it? I suddenly thought that we live in a world in which some people think that they can buy love, happiness and peace with their money. But I see every day growing numbers of divorces and people incapable of loving and being loved. People can hardly believe each other and there is little ground for them to make sure that they are loved.

This is a bitter reality and this bitter reality should not be ignored.

I just put forth it for discussion

[JuniperWoolf]

Your question is a bit backwards. First you find someone that you like, then if they repeatedly display attributes that you admire you might fall in love with them. It's not complicated.

[Cunninglinguist]

This is a weird question, isn’t it? I suddenly thought that we live in a world in which some people think that they can buy love, happiness and peace with their money. But I see every day growing numbers of divorces and people incapable of loving and being loved. People can hardly believe each other and there is little ground for them to make sure that they are loved.

I see the deterioration of deep connection and trust between people as ultimately stemming out of an abuse of conventional symbols -- especially sex and, to a lesser extent, marriage. Sex signifies nothing now; where it used to show the utmost degree of commitment, promiscuous celebrities and garden-variety philanderers have rendered it dubious. It is capitalized on and suggested by nearly every facet of the media; it is advertised as a status symbol, and is regarded by many young adults as the principal measure of their respective gender. For marriage, Hollywood has, on the one hand, portrayed it as an endless sexual honeymoon, and, on the other, as only meant to endure a few month's time. In short, we are, as a culture, losing the ability to communicate our intents to each other through these conventional symbols. I do not believe that divorce is usually intended (except perhaps by "serial monogamists"), but that relationships are dissolving in skepticism, because sex and marriage do not mean what they used to.

So, indeed, one can purchase the act but can never buy its significance -- and what is the significance supposed but love itself? And one can perpetrate but never realize a deeper meaning. At any rate, with the number of people doing either, I'm not very surprised by the divorce rates today.

[YesNo]

This is a weird question, isn’t it? I suddenly thought that we live in a world in which some people think that they can buy love, happiness and peace with their money. But I see every day growing numbers of divorces and people incapable of loving and being loved. People can hardly believe each other and there is little ground for them to make sure that they are loved.

This is a bitter reality and this bitter reality should not be ignored.

There is no need to make sure that you are loved. It doesn't matter even though you might like to be loved and like to be assured of that love.

Loving someone else is not that difficult but it tends to get in the way of doing what one likes to do rather than what the other person likes to do. That is probably why it seems difficult, but it is still good practice for the mind and will: putting one's own likes or dislikes aside because of someone else.

[Stanislaw]

I think it is more important to open oneself up to loving others regardless of the return, and to try and live a peaceful life. It's better to share love and to show it, even if it is not returned than to not have any love (of the three definitions) in your life.

[Vonny]

I see the deterioration of deep connection and trust between people as ultimately stemming out of an abuse of conventional symbols -- especially sex and, to a lesser extent, marriage. Sex signifies nothing now; where it used to show the utmost degree of commitment, promiscuous celebrities and garden-variety philanderers have rendered it dubious. It is capitalized on and suggested by nearly every facet of the media; it is advertised as a status symbol, and is regarded by many young adults as the principal measure of their respective gender. For marriage, Hollywood has, on the one hand, portrayed it as an endless sexual honeymoon, and, on the other, as only meant to endure a few month's time. In short, we are, as a culture, losing the ability to communicate our intents to each other through these conventional symbols. I do not believe that divorce is usually intended (except perhaps by "serial monogamists"), but that relationships are dissolving in skepticism, because sex and marriage do not mean what they used to.

So, indeed, one can purchase the act but can never buy its significance -- and what is the significance supposed but love itself? And one can perpetrate but never realize a deeper meaning. At any rate, with the number of people doing either, I'm not very surprised by the divorce rates today.


Wow, amazingly well said.

This is kind of what I think a lot, but have been unable to articulate.

I agree YesNo, Stanislaw and Juniper, also

[stlukesguild]

I see the deterioration of deep connection and trust between people as ultimately stemming out of an abuse of conventional symbols -- especially sex and, to a lesser extent, marriage. Sex signifies nothing now; where it used to show the utmost degree of commitment...

I'm not certain I agree. If you delve deeper into the history of social relationships you find first of all that our modern notions of "romantic love" is rather new. Among virtually all classes there were many considerations far more important than "love" for another individual that determined one's mate. In many cases, one's mate was something negotiated between parents and involved political and financial considerations more than anything else.

Among tradesmen and the skilled laborers, marriage was something postponed until the individual had moved from apprentice and journeyman status to the rank of "master" at which time an individual might be able to support a wife and children. In many cases, a talented individual tradesman might need to wait for years until there was an opening for a new master in a given position in a given town (something strictly controlled by the guilds). The same reality faced young scholars and those starting their own businesses.

As a result, it was not uncommon for men to marry older... for young girls to be married off to older established men (as in the Miller's Tale in Chaucer). Those in power recognized that a situation in which only the older and/or established could afford wives would lead to frustration (sexual and otherwise) among the younger men and as a result you would find that prostitution was not only rampant... but even encouraged. In many municipalities and city-states prostitutes were provided even with protection and various benefits. Venice, for example, provided for the care of illegitimate children of the "courtesans" through the Ospidale degli innocenti.

Sex, quite often, was something far removed from notions of romantic love, which really began primarily among aristocratic classes... and more in literature and poetry than in reality. The masses often lived in the most squalid conditions without any of our access to privacy. Grandparents, parents, and children might all live in the same single-room home and would all have been exposed from the earliest to the bodily functions... sexual and otherwise. They would also have been exposed to such realities in regard to the animals kept on the farms.

As late as the 19th century we come across literary examples (Mme. Bovary immediately comes to mind) exploring the issue of sexual frustration in which men regularly visited prostitutes because sex with wives was something reserved for procreation... and the virtuous wife was not expected to enjoy it at that. At the same time, it shouldn't be surprising, women regularly treated by medical doctors for what was termed "hysteria"... but was in reality sexual frustration. The "pelvic massage" was especially common in the treatment of female hysteria during the Victorian Era, as the point of such manipulation was to cause "hysterical paroxysm" (orgasm) in the patient. However, not only did they regard the "vulvular stimulation" required as having nothing to do with sex, but reportedly found it time-consuming and hard work.
This led to the development of the powered vibrator which was heralded as some relief for the doctors who found themselves suffering from fatigued wrists and hands. The American company Hamilton Beach patented the first electric vibrator available for retail sale, making the vibrator the fifth domestic appliance to be electrified, after the sewing machine, fan, tea kettle, and toaster, and about a decade before the vacuum cleaner and electric iron.
The home versions soon became extremely popular, with advertisements in periodicals such as Needlecraft, Woman's Home Companion, Modern Priscilla, and the Sears, Roebuck catalog:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6086/6161166637_213cd9ebd3_z.jpg

Such use of "sex-toys" was not limited to the 19th century, but use of and reference to the "dildo" can be found in Thomas Nashe, Ben Jonson, Samuel Pepys, William Shakespeare, etc...

Our notion of the perfect sexual/romantic/marriage partnership ala Leave it to Beaver is something that was long more fantasy than fact. The fact that divorce was rare owed more to the social and religious stigma associated with divorce and the fact that access to other partners through mistresses and prostitutes was quite common... if largely unspoken.

promiscuous celebrities and garden-variety philanderers have rendered it dubious.

It is questionable whether promiscuity is more common now than among celebrities and aristocrats of the past. If anything... it is merely more open, as opposed to being hidden in layers of hypocrisy.

It is capitalized on and suggested by nearly every facet of the media; it is advertised as a status symbol, and is regarded by many young adults as the principal measure of their respective gender.

This was long true of the upper-classes whose "worth" was based upon attractiveness and wealth... much as it is with today's "aristocrats": the wealthy and the celebrities. Perhaps the only real difference is that such life-styles are marketed through the media at the masses.

In short, we are, as a culture, losing the ability to communicate our intents to each other through these conventional symbols. I do not believe that divorce is usually intended (except perhaps by "serial monogamists"), but that relationships are dissolving in skepticism, because sex and marriage do not mean what they used to.

Again... I'm not certain that marriage and sexual relationships ever used to be this ideal state. Our Puritan for-bearers may have taken the marriage partnership seriously and stuck together through whatever challenges they faced... then again, these relationships were often quite far from being founded upon anything approaching our modern notions of romantic love... and texts such as The Scarlet Letter suggest that even they were not without flaw.

As for divorce rates... it may do well to consider that Spain, Italy, Portugal and the Republic of Ireland all only legalized divorce within the last 30 years. Prior to the late 1960s, nearly all countries which permitted divorce also required proof by one party that the other party had committed an act incompatible to the marriage. This was termed "grounds" for divorce. Most jurisdictions around the world still require such proof of fault. There appear to be links with education, those with higher degrees having marriages that end in divorce at a far lower rate than the general public. There are also links with age, race, and even politics. Until the 20th century, divorce was strictly controlled and largely prohibited by the church... that also controlled marriage. Although divorce, as known today, was generally prohibited after the tenth century, separation of husband and wife and the annulment of marriage were well-known. What is today referred to as “separate maintenance” (or "legal separation") was termed “divorce a mensa et thoro” (“divorce from bed-and-board”). The husband and wife physically separated and were forbidden to live or cohabit together; but their marital relationship did not fully terminate. Civil courts had no power over marriage or divorce. The grounds for annulment were determined by Church authority and applied in ecclesiastical courts.

Having said this... I think the success or failure of sexual/romantic relationships... as with any other relationships... is dependent upon the individuals involved... their commitment to each other... their willingness to work through difficulties and accept the other person as they are... flaws and all... or not.

[osho]

Your question is a bit backwards. First you find someone that you like, then if they repeatedly display attributes that you admire you might fall in love with them. It's not complicated.

I understand it is not that complicated. Yet it is not uncomplicated either. In fact we live in a world of complications. Do not you feel so? In every walk of life there is a problem. Most of our novels or stories are love –based or try to unravel love-centric hurdles. I have been reading Anna Karenna written a century or more ago and now I am reading the Great Gatsby all I came across is love related crises. All want love and though one is rich or poor or doing well off want someone to love or be loved. Most of our great stories are loved based or the saga of love and romance and tragedy. People have multi-relations. If one is a husband, he is a lover to a mistress outside the matrimonial relationship and of someone is a wife she is unhappy about her sex life or feels unloved in a while after their marriage. Or people want change and keep on fancying something their married lives cannot offer them and choose to weave a world of their own based on a romantic novel or be an ideologue.

If we are brutally honest we belong somewhere here though ethically or consciously we choose not to disclose this nature of ours. If you ponder a bit this over you will understand the essence of my thread. It is not as simple as you take it to be.


I see the deterioration of deep connection and trust between people as ultimately stemming out of an abuse of conventional symbols -- especially sex and, to a lesser extent, marriage. Sex signifies nothing now; where it used to show the utmost degree of commitment, promiscuous celebrities and garden-variety philanderers have rendered it dubious. It is capitalized on and suggested by nearly every facet of the media; it is advertised as a status symbol, and is regarded by many young adults as the principal measure of their respective gender. For marriage, Hollywood has, on the one hand, portrayed it as an endless sexual honeymoon, and, on the other, as only meant to endure a few month's time. In short, we are, as a culture, losing the ability to communicate our intents to each other through these conventional symbols. I do not believe that divorce is usually intended (except perhaps by "serial monogamists"), but that relationships are dissolving in skepticism, because sex and marriage do not mean what they used to.

So, indeed, one can purchase the act but can never buy its significance -- and what is the significance supposed but love itself? And one can perpetrate but never realize a deeper meaning. At any rate, with the number of people doing either, I'm not very surprised by the divorce rates today.


I want to disagree here. You choose to put on a pedestal good old days and those good old days are not necessarily that good. If you think of the Victorian era you need to dissect the inner realities that shaped and sustained that era. They had certain values, ethical and social standards. They could not transcend those edges since they had no courage to be out of the clique for a variety of reasons. They could not imperil the kind of sanctuary and warmth they enjoyed inside the herd. Women were mostly housekeepers and their roles were like of the women we read in Ibsen's dramas, beautiful dolls. They could not fantasize having affair with their romantic heroes outside their family-lines. Men were somewhat freer and yet not as freer as they are today to have polimorous relations.

All I want to say is people aspirations and desires were bottled up in those days and today the bottle is broken and they are out and these forces have to fight a lot with the age-old values to assert their presence even today. Love is always complex though it was tyrannically made uncomplicated a little while ago.


There is no need to make sure that you are loved. It doesn't matter even though you might like to be loved and like to be assured of that love.

Loving someone else is not that difficult but it tends to get in the way of doing what one likes to do rather than what the other person likes to do. That is probably why it seems difficult, but it is still good practice for the mind and will: putting one's own likes or dislikes aside because of someone else.

Your reply is short of significance. My question is there is crisis in love today. Today' s literature, of course yesterdays' as well, is reflective of this fact. People become sexually promiscuous (promiscuity from our defined ethical and social paradigm). This crisis is one that is leading to the kind and number of divorces we come across everyday resulting in a disintegrated family or social structure. This results many abandoned families and children. Whether you agree or disagree this is the reality.

My question is how can we live if we are skeptical about our love –relation.


I think it is more important to open oneself up to loving others regardless of the return, and to try and live a peaceful life. It's better to share love and to show it, even if it is not returned than to not have any love (of the three definitions) in your life.

This is an old ideal that comforts us and that simply quietens you and yet this does turn up as a panacea we all are seeking in this world of crisis in love


I see the deterioration of deep connection and trust between people as ultimately stemming out of an abuse of conventional symbols -- especially sex and, to a lesser extent, marriage. Sex signifies nothing now; where it used to show the utmost degree of commitment...

I'm not certain I agree. If you delve deeper into the history of social relationships you find first of all that our modern notions of "romantic love" is rather new. Among virtually all classes there were many considerations far more important than "love" for another individual that determined one's mate. In many cases, one's mate was something negotiated between parents and involved political and financial considerations more than anything else.

Among tradesmen and the skilled laborers, marriage was something postponed until the individual had moved from apprentice and journeyman status to the rank of "master" at which time an individual might be able to support a wife and children. In many cases, a talented individual tradesman might need to wait for years until there was an opening for a new master in a given position in a given town (something strictly controlled by the guilds). The same reality faced young scholars and those starting their own businesses.

As a result, it was not uncommon for men to marry older... for young girls to be married off to older established men (as in the Miller's Tale in Chaucer). Those in power recognized that a situation in which only the older and/or established could afford wives would lead to frustration (sexual and otherwise) among the younger men and as a result you would find that prostitution was not only rampant... but even encouraged. In many municipalities and city-states prostitutes were provided even with protection and various benefits. Venice, for example, provided for the care of illegitimate children of the "courtesans" through the Ospidale degli innocenti.

Sex, quite often, was something far removed from notions of romantic love, which really began primarily among aristocratic classes... and more in literature and poetry than in reality. The masses often lived in the most squalid conditions without any of our access to privacy. Grandparents, parents, and children might all live in the same single-room home and would all have been exposed from the earliest to the bodily functions... sexual and otherwise. They would also have been exposed to such realities in regard to the animals kept on the farms.

As late as the 19th century we come across literary examples (Mme. Bovary immediately comes to mind) exploring the issue of sexual frustration in which men regularly visited prostitutes because sex with wives was something reserved for procreation... and the virtuous wife was not expected to enjoy it at that. At the same time, it shouldn't be surprising, women regularly treated by medical doctors for what was termed "hysteria"... but was in reality sexual frustration. The "pelvic massage" was especially common in the treatment of female hysteria during the Victorian Era, as the point of such manipulation was to cause "hysterical paroxysm" (orgasm) in the patient. However, not only did they regard the "vulvular stimulation" required as having nothing to do with sex, but reportedly found it time-consuming and hard work.
This led to the development of the powered vibrator which was heralded as some relief for the doctors who found themselves suffering from fatigued wrists and hands. The American company Hamilton Beach patented the first electric vibrator available for retail sale, making the vibrator the fifth domestic appliance to be electrified, after the sewing machine, fan, tea kettle, and toaster, and about a decade before the vacuum cleaner and electric iron.
The home versions soon became extremely popular, with advertisements in periodicals such as Needlecraft, Woman's Home Companion, Modern Priscilla, and the Sears, Roebuck catalog:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6086/6161166637_213cd9ebd3_z.jpg

Such use of "sex-toys" was not limited to the 19th century, but use of and reference to the "dildo" can be found in Thomas Nashe, Ben Jonson, Samuel Pepys, William Shakespeare, etc...

Our notion of the perfect sexual/romantic/marriage partnership ala Leave it to Beaver is something that was long more fantasy than fact. The fact that divorce was rare owed more to the social and religious stigma associated with divorce and the fact that access to other partners through mistresses and prostitutes was quite common... if largely unspoken.

promiscuous celebrities and garden-variety philanderers have rendered it dubious.

It is questionable whether promiscuity is more common now than among celebrities and aristocrats of the past. If anything... it is merely more open, as opposed to being hidden in layers of hypocrisy.

It is capitalized on and suggested by nearly every facet of the media; it is advertised as a status symbol, and is regarded by many young adults as the principal measure of their respective gender.

This was long true of the upper-classes whose "worth" was based upon attractiveness and wealth... much as it is with today's "aristocrats": the wealthy and the celebrities. Perhaps the only real difference is that such life-styles are marketed through the media at the masses.

In short, we are, as a culture, losing the ability to communicate our intents to each other through these conventional symbols. I do not believe that divorce is usually intended (except perhaps by "serial monogamists"), but that relationships are dissolving in skepticism, because sex and marriage do not mean what they used to.

Again... I'm not certain that marriage and sexual relationships ever used to be this ideal state. Our Puritan for-bearers may have taken the marriage partnership seriously and stuck together through whatever challenges they faced... then again, these relationships were often quite far from being founded upon anything approaching our modern notions of romantic love... and texts such as The Scarlet Letter suggest that even they were not without flaw.

As for divorce rates... it may do well to consider that Spain, Italy, Portugal and the Republic of Ireland all only legalized divorce within the last 30 years. Prior to the late 1960s, nearly all countries which permitted divorce also required proof by one party that the other party had committed an act incompatible to the marriage. This was termed "grounds" for divorce. Most jurisdictions around the world still require such proof of fault. There appear to be links with education, those with higher degrees having marriages that end in divorce at a far lower rate than the general public. There are also links with age, race, and even politics. Until the 20th century, divorce was strictly controlled and largely prohibited by the church... that also controlled marriage. Although divorce, as known today, was generally prohibited after the tenth century, separation of husband and wife and the annulment of marriage were well-known. What is today referred to as “separate maintenance” (or "legal separation") was termed “divorce a mensa et thoro” (“divorce from bed-and-board”). The husband and wife physically separated and were forbidden to live or cohabit together; but their marital relationship did not fully terminate. Civil courts had no power over marriage or divorce. The grounds for annulment were determined by Church authority and applied in ecclesiastical courts.

Having said this... I think the success or failure of sexual/romantic relationships... as with any other relationships... is dependent upon the individuals involved... their commitment to each other... their willingness to work through difficulties and accept the other person as they are... flaws and all... or not.

This account is very historically evidential and mirrors certain realties I want to back up my ideas with. This rich historical tapestry really helps to corroborate the theme one wants to point up. Of course this is an antithesis to the view that our olden were golden days in a world of love and romance. Of course not. They were moderated, restrainedly shaped, tyrannically managed. Their feelings were kept in check, their urges bottled up.

Man has a void and he wants to replenish it with romance and love and today the loss of faith is more vivid and manifest as we read in post modern fictions.
My question is man has a pretext that he is loved to assert his existence and pronouncement in society and in reality he lives in a void. How does he reconcile his realities with his dreams in this world?

[JuniperWoolf]

I understand it is not that complicated. Yet it is not uncomplicated either. In fact we live in a world of complications. Do not you feel so? In every walk of life there is a problem. Most of our novels or stories are love –based or try to unravel love-centric hurdles. I have been reading Anna Karenna written a century or more ago and now I am reading the Great Gatsby all I came across is love related crises. All want love and though one is rich or poor or doing well off want someone to love or be loved. Most of our great stories are loved based or the saga of love and romance and tragedy. People have multi-relations. If one is a husband, he is a lover to a mistress outside the matrimonial relationship and of someone is a wife she is unhappy about her sex life or feels unloved in a while after their marriage. Or people want change and keep on fancying something their married lives cannot offer them and choose to weave a world of their own based on a romantic novel or be an ideologue.

If we are brutally honest we belong somewhere here though ethically or consciously we choose not to disclose this nature of ours. If you ponder a bit this over you will understand the essence of my thread. It is not as simple as you take it to be.

No, you are just making it overly complicated. Love freely despite social constraints or fear of rejection and never be a coward. It's that simple. Sometimes it's painful, but so what? Crash, and then recover. It's what people do.

[osho]

Sometimes it's painful, but so what? Your wife in the example gets a divorce or looks for someone else that she likes, your husband does likewise. No problem.

It does not create a problem? When people become depressed after separation. Some even commit suicides and feel beleaguered. Still there is no problem, no complication? Can you still live happily when your fiancé in a while kisses another person under your nose? Or you have heard that your spouse is going somewhere on a business trip with her or his boss and the rumor that they are one-night stand off too.

You try to hush up these surreal facts and still there is no problem. If this is not the problem, what else my friend?

[Vonny]

I see the deterioration of deep connection and trust between people as ultimately stemming out of an abuse of conventional symbols -- especially sex and, to a lesser extent, marriage. Sex signifies nothing now; where it used to show the utmost degree of commitment...

I'm not certain I agree. If you delve deeper into the history of social relationships you find first of all that our modern notions of "romantic love" is rather new. Among virtually all classes there were many considerations far more important than "love" for another individual that determined one's mate. In many cases, one's mate was something negotiated between parents and involved political and financial considerations more than anything else.

Among tradesmen and the skilled laborers, marriage was something postponed until the individual had moved from apprentice and journeyman status to the rank of "master" at which time an individual might be able to support a wife and children. In many cases, a talented individual tradesman might need to wait for years until there was an opening for a new master in a given position in a given town (something strictly controlled by the guilds). The same reality faced young scholars and those starting their own businesses.

As a result, it was not uncommon for men to marry older... for young girls to be married off to older established men (as in the Miller's Tale in Chaucer). Those in power recognized that a situation in which only the older and/or established could afford wives would lead to frustration (sexual and otherwise) among the younger men and as a result you would find that prostitution was not only rampant... but even encouraged. In many municipalities and city-states prostitutes were provided even with protection and various benefits. Venice, for example, provided for the care of illegitimate children of the "courtesans" through the Ospidale degli innocenti.

Sex, quite often, was something far removed from notions of romantic love, which really began primarily among aristocratic classes... and more in literature and poetry than in reality. The masses often lived in the most squalid conditions without any of our access to privacy. Grandparents, parents, and children might all live in the same single-room home and would all have been exposed from the earliest to the bodily functions... sexual and otherwise. They would also have been exposed to such realities in regard to the animals kept on the farms.

As late as the 19th century we come across literary examples (Mme. Bovary immediately comes to mind) exploring the issue of sexual frustration in which men regularly visited prostitutes because sex with wives was something reserved for procreation... and the virtuous wife was not expected to enjoy it at that. At the same time, it shouldn't be surprising, women regularly treated by medical doctors for what was termed "hysteria"... but was in reality sexual frustration. The "pelvic massage" was especially common in the treatment of female hysteria during the Victorian Era, as the point of such manipulation was to cause "hysterical paroxysm" (orgasm) in the patient. However, not only did they regard the "vulvular stimulation" required as having nothing to do with sex, but reportedly found it time-consuming and hard work.
This led to the development of the powered vibrator which was heralded as some relief for the doctors who found themselves suffering from fatigued wrists and hands. The American company Hamilton Beach patented the first electric vibrator available for retail sale, making the vibrator the fifth domestic appliance to be electrified, after the sewing machine, fan, tea kettle, and toaster, and about a decade before the vacuum cleaner and electric iron.
The home versions soon became extremely popular, with advertisements in periodicals such as Needlecraft, Woman's Home Companion, Modern Priscilla, and the Sears, Roebuck catalog:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6086/6161166637_213cd9ebd3_z.jpg

Such use of "sex-toys" was not limited to the 19th century, but use of and reference to the "dildo" can be found in Thomas Nashe, Ben Jonson, Samuel Pepys, William Shakespeare, etc...

Our notion of the perfect sexual/romantic/marriage partnership ala Leave it to Beaver is something that was long more fantasy than fact. The fact that divorce was rare owed more to the social and religious stigma associated with divorce and the fact that access to other partners through mistresses and prostitutes was quite common... if largely unspoken.

promiscuous celebrities and garden-variety philanderers have rendered it dubious.

It is questionable whether promiscuity is more common now than among celebrities and aristocrats of the past. If anything... it is merely more open, as opposed to being hidden in layers of hypocrisy.

It is capitalized on and suggested by nearly every facet of the media; it is advertised as a status symbol, and is regarded by many young adults as the principal measure of their respective gender.

This was long true of the upper-classes whose "worth" was based upon attractiveness and wealth... much as it is with today's "aristocrats": the wealthy and the celebrities. Perhaps the only real difference is that such life-styles are marketed through the media at the masses.

In short, we are, as a culture, losing the ability to communicate our intents to each other through these conventional symbols. I do not believe that divorce is usually intended (except perhaps by "serial monogamists"), but that relationships are dissolving in skepticism, because sex and marriage do not mean what they used to.

Again... I'm not certain that marriage and sexual relationships ever used to be this ideal state. Our Puritan for-bearers may have taken the marriage partnership seriously and stuck together through whatever challenges they faced... then again, these relationships were often quite far from being founded upon anything approaching our modern notions of romantic love... and texts such as The Scarlet Letter suggest that even they were not without flaw.

As for divorce rates... it may do well to consider that Spain, Italy, Portugal and the Republic of Ireland all only legalized divorce within the last 30 years. Prior to the late 1960s, nearly all countries which permitted divorce also required proof by one party that the other party had committed an act incompatible to the marriage. This was termed "grounds" for divorce. Most jurisdictions around the world still require such proof of fault. There appear to be links with education, those with higher degrees having marriages that end in divorce at a far lower rate than the general public. There are also links with age, race, and even politics. Until the 20th century, divorce was strictly controlled and largely prohibited by the church... that also controlled marriage. Although divorce, as known today, was generally prohibited after the tenth century, separation of husband and wife and the annulment of marriage were well-known. What is today referred to as “separate maintenance” (or "legal separation") was termed “divorce a mensa et thoro” (“divorce from bed-and-board”). The husband and wife physically separated and were forbidden to live or cohabit together; but their marital relationship did not fully terminate. Civil courts had no power over marriage or divorce. The grounds for annulment were determined by Church authority and applied in ecclesiastical courts.

Having said this... I think the success or failure of sexual/romantic relationships... as with any other relationships... is dependent upon the individuals involved... their commitment to each other... their willingness to work through difficulties and accept the other person as they are... flaws and all... or not.


Oh my gosh, Luke, leave it to you to give us that full education and dash all of our romantic notions!! But it does ring true what you say. It is another part of society's brainwashing that makes us want to believe in the Norman Rockwell version of life, but it never existed...

I was thinking, "Is there nothing we can believe in?" So I was relieved to get to that last paragraph. But then you're talking about commitment and work.

And yet, (I'm don't know how many people can relate to this, because it's not that TV show)... I keep thinking: Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almanzo - they were great companions, somehow. They were happy with their horrible farm life, and she didn't want to even go to visit her parents and leave him for a while. And in her mid-40s she was finally persuaded to visit her daughter in San Francisco, but Almanzo wouldn't go, and it was horrible on them being apart.

We always hear that people need to work at relationships, but I don't think so. If the right people are together, it shouldn't be work. If it requires commitment and work, something is wrong with it.

[JuniperWoolf]

It does not create a problem? When people become depressed after separation. Some even commit suicides and feel beleaguered. Still there is no problem, no complication? Can you still live happily when your fiancé in a while kisses another person under your nose? Or you have heard that your spouse is going somewhere on a business trip with her or his boss and the rumor that they are one-night stand off too.

You try to hush up these surreal facts and still there is no problem. If this is not the problem, what else my friend?

You reply too quickly.

Suicide happens (killing yourself because someone doesn't like you seems insane, but to each her own, I guess). The woman who's husband is banging his boss divorces him, mopes for a while, then eventually falls in love with someone else (and has a real good time, too).

Love is fun and there's so much to admire about people. Some people are funny, smart, talented, interesting and mouth-wateringly attractive (I've met them). You can either cower in a cave and turn yourself into stone, or you can toughen up and take your lumps and allow yourself to experience something transcendant.

You're also thinking too permanently. People fall out of romantic love, you know. It's okay, your entire life is a very long time to be lashed to one person. Sometimes romantic love is replaced by companion love, and that's very nice too. The sex isn't as good though.

[osho]

You reply too quickly. Suicide happens (killing yourself over a person seems insane, but poetic I suppose- to each her own). The woman who's husband is banging his boss divorces him, mopes for a while, then eventually falls in love with someone else (and has a real good time, too).

Love is fun and there's so much to admire about people. Some people are funny, smart, talented, interesting and mouth-wateringly attractive (I've met them). You can either cower in a cave and turn yourself into stone, or you can toughen up and take your lumps and allow yourself to experience something transcendant.

You're also thinking too permanently. People fall out of love, you know.

I like your poetic and philosophical statement and maybe somewhere between that lies human situations. It is revealing and I have nothing to say.

However your assumed contort has little do with the issue I raised here, quite beside the point .

[Scheherazade]

I am sorry to be a party pooper but I am not sure what the discussion topic is here...

Are you saying that people do not know how to love anymore?

[osho]

I am sorry to be a party pooper but I am not sure what the discussion topic is here...

Are you saying that people do not know how to love anymore?

I apologize for all this if the message I want to put across is not clear. I simply want to discuss human situation pertaining to love in some fictional contexts. I have recently completed two books Anna Karenna and the Great Gatsby and got shocked by the moral issues of love. I just felt like discussing it in our context too. Maybe some discussion got overheated but there was no ill intent in that.

[Scheherazade]

I apologize for all this if the message I want to put across is not clear. I simply want to discuss human situation pertaining to love in some fictional contexts. I have recently completed two books Anna Karenna and the Great Gatsby and got shocked by the moral issues of love. I just felt like discussing it in our context too. Maybe some discussion got overheated but there was no ill intent in that.No need to apologize! I am just trying to understand what's being said.

What do you mean by "the moral issue of love"?

[MarkBastable]

...one-night stand off....



That's the title of a bestselling chick-lit novel, if ever I've heard one.

[Cunninglinguist]

I'm not certain I agree. If you delve deeper into the history of social relationships you find first of all that our modern notions of "romantic love" is rather new. Among virtually all classes there were many considerations far more important than "love" for another individual that determined one's mate. In many cases, one's mate was something negotiated between parents and involved political and financial considerations more than anything else.

I am generally regarding the social conventions, values, symbols, etc. of the last hundred to hundred and fifty years in the western world (especially america), and to a lesser degree, the last few hundred years in the western world. The current and past social practices of other cultures do not seem applicable to the question asked, nor does the far past of the western culture – but then again, the question isn’t exactly unambiguous. That said, of course the significance of marriage and sex are essentially human constructs. Here, I don’t mean to necessarily espouse a steriotypically conservative attitude – but, my general point is that we, in our culture, have no symbol(s) today that signify what sex and marriage used to do, and this is what is causing generally higher divorce rates.


Sex, quite often, was something far removed from notions of romantic love, which really began primarily among aristocratic classes... and more in literature and poetry than in reality. The masses often lived in the most squalid conditions without any of our access to privacy. Grandparents, parents, and children might all live in the same single-room home and would all have been exposed from the earliest to the bodily functions... sexual and otherwise. They would also have been exposed to such realities in regard to the animals kept on the farms.

Again, insofar as our culture at present and in recent years has been, sex used to enjoy a certain degree of sanctity which it has to a large extent lost for whatever reason.


As late as the 19th century we come across literary examples (Mme. Bovary immediately comes to mind) exploring the issue of sexual frustration in which men regularly visited prostitutes because sex with wives was something reserved for procreation... and the virtuous wife was not expected to enjoy it at that. At the same time, it shouldn't be surprising, women regularly treated by medical doctors for what was termed "hysteria"... but was in reality sexual frustration. The "pelvic massage" was especially common in the treatment of female hysteria during the Victorian Era, as the point of such manipulation was to cause "hysterical paroxysm" (orgasm) in the patient. However, not only did they regard the "vulvular stimulation" required as having nothing to do with sex, but reportedly found it time-consuming and hard work.

And of course there are always quite a few who except and transgress the general conventions. Incidentally, their proportions are easy to inflate. But we can also site examples endorsing the convention – though it seems more reliable in this case to simply use demographics as our assay.


Such use of "sex-toys" was not limited to the 19th century, but use of and reference to the "dildo" can be found in Thomas Nashe, Ben Jonson, Samuel Pepys, William Shakespeare, etc...

We might also talk about the birth control pill, which undoubtedly affected how people viewed sex, and which is also a much more recent phenomenon.


Our notion of the perfect sexual/romantic/marriage partnership ala Leave it to Beaver is something that was long more fantasy than fact. The fact that divorce was rare owed more to the social and religious stigma associated with divorce and the fact that access to other partners through mistresses and prostitutes was quite common... if largely unspoken.

Of course there were other factors, but I find it very difficult to believe that a different attitude towards sex (especially pre-birth control pill attitudes) did not have a notable impact on the pervading attitudes towards marriage and divorce, and by that token divorce rates.


It is questionable whether promiscuity is more common now than among celebrities and aristocrats of the past. If anything... it is merely more open, as opposed to being hidden in layers of hypocrisy.

And the closedness and openness do not reflect cultural norms, values, conventions, and symbols? There are always people who except and transgress – how they are or would be looked at is what counts here, I'd think. That is, we're chiefly concerned with moral attitudes.

As a side note, it might be useful to distinguish prescriptive norms vs descriptive norms; the former being what a society thinks should be the case and the latter being what people actually do. As a general rule, I’ve found that the values espoused by the mass media will reflect the prescriptive and that demographics will reflect the descriptive.


This was long true of the upper-classes whose "worth" was based upon attractiveness and wealth... much as it is with today's "aristocrats": the wealthy and the celebrities. Perhaps the only real difference is that such life-styles are marketed through the media at the masses.

Do not the masses principally determine the social values? What aristocrats do and have done is largely irrelavant to social values – on the other hand, what the masses do and have done bears a large degree of relevance. In short, the only difference that matters is “that such life-styles are marketed through the media at the masses.”


Again... I'm not certain that marriage and sexual relationships ever used to be this ideal state. Our Puritan for-bearers may have taken the marriage partnership seriously and stuck together through whatever challenges they faced... then again, these relationships were often quite far from being founded upon anything approaching our modern notions of romantic love... and texts such as The Scarlet Letter suggest that even they were not without flaw.

I’m not saying that marriage was ever ideal, or that perpetual romantic love in a marriage should even be expected in a marriage (personally, I do not expect perpetual romantic love), but that an hundred years ago it was more stable (this is quite well supported by statistical evidence) due, in large part, to a generally different understanding of and attitude towards marriage and sex. I find this idea only shy of incontestable, provided that we as a society have not genetically evolved significantly in the past 100 years. I can’t fathom that anything other than a change in these understandings would be responsible for the increase in divorce rates.



I want to disagree here. You choose to put on a pedestal good old days and those good old days are not necessarily that good. If you think of the Victorian era you need to dissect the inner realities that shaped and sustained that era. They had certain values, ethical and social standards. They could not transcend those edges since they had no courage to be out of the clique for a variety of reasons. They could not imperil the kind of sanctuary and warmth they enjoyed inside the herd. Women were mostly housekeepers and their roles were like of the women we read in Ibsen's dramas, beautiful dolls. They could not fantasize having affair with their romantic heroes outside their family-lines. Men were somewhat freer and yet not as freer as they are today to have polimorous relations.

All I want to say is people aspirations and desires were bottled up in those days and today the bottle is broken and they are out and these forces have to fight a lot with the age-old values to assert their presence even today. Love is always complex though it was tyrannically made uncomplicated a little while ago.

Again, I probably should have qualified my original post a bit more with what “past” I was referring to. In short, I do not long for the “good ol’ days” as they call it, but I do see that some of our values have changed for (in my opinion) the worse, and some for the better. Certainly we are “freer” today in many regards, but I question some of the prices.

[osho]

No need to apologize! I am just trying to understand what's being said.

What do you mean by "the moral issue of love"?

This is about moral responsibility when we are in love towards the person. Moral does not here has anything to do with Judeo-Christian morality at all. Something we feel innately, a human attribute that has integrated us into one organic unity. Despite all our human generated ills we are still moral beings. Imagine when a man marries a woman but he has a divided self, a little for the one he is with and a little for the other one he keeps secretly and both of them get deceived consequently. This is the moral issue of love.







Again, I probably should have qualified my original post a bit more with what “past” I was referring to. In short, I do not long for the “good ol’ days” as they call it, but I do see that some of our values have changed for (in my opinion) the worse, and some for the better. Certainly we are “freer” today in many regards, but I question some of the prices.

My friend, the joy of freedom is sweeter though you will have to pay the prices. Slavery is slavery no matter how much you are secured. That what the plight of many women in South Asia and of course in the Euro zone a century or a couple ago. Today they are not secured financially the way the Doll House sort women were. Today's women do not want to buy that kind of so called social, familial and financial security. They want to imperil their lives and stake their future for the freedom they very desperately crave. Do you still take a liking to that dark past?

[Cunninglinguist]

My friend, the joy of freedom is sweeter though you will have to pay the prices. Slavery is slavery no matter how much you are secured. That what the plight of many women in South Asia and of course in the Euro zone a century or a couple ago. Today they are not secured financially the way the Doll House sort women were. Today's women do not want to buy that kind of so called social, familial and financial security. They want to imperil their lives and stake their future for the freedom they very desperately crave. Do you still take a liking to that dark past?

I'm afraid that "freedom," as can be easily demonstrated, is not consistently better. To give an example, there are reasons why there are laws against the freedom to take someone's life, to steal from stores, and to violate contractual obligations. Why? Because, unfortunately, freedom isn't always free.

Sometimes it's worth the price, as we buy one freedom by letting another esteemed less valuable go, and sometimes it isn't. I think I've sufficiently outlined one of the prices our (ab)use of sexual (and matrimonial) license. To name a few, we have "lookism" and objectification, and in that tract, relationships being formed on the basis of physical and bodily appearances; furthermore, the prevalence of eating disorders has increased.

I'm not suggesting we eliminate equal opportunity and go back to oppressing women (that would be retarded), or get rid of dildos and birth control, or that we become borderline sexually abstinent, but that we think about the consequences and contracted significances of our actions, that we assess our values as a community and as a species, and that we behave a bit more responsibly as individuals.

To boot, I have never said that I take a liking to the "dark past," only that we now lack symbols that are supposed to signify the deepest form of committal, and that this limitation ought to be seen as a problem because it, in fact, restricts freedom.

[Scheherazade]

This is about moral responsibility when we are in love towards the person. Moral does not here has anything to do with Judeo-Christian morality at all. Something we feel innately, a human attribute that has integrated us into one organic unity. Moral values do not exist in us innately... They are all learnt, which is why there are differences between moralities of various societies or within the same society at different times. If they were innate, the same values would be observed everywhere.

[cl154576]

My question is how can we live if we are skeptical about our love –relation.

Man has a void and he wants to replenish it with romance and love and today the loss of faith is more vivid and manifest as we read in post modern fictions.
My question is man has a pretext that he is loved to assert his existence and pronouncement in society and in reality he lives in a void. How does he reconcile his realities with his dreams in this world?

It seems to me that you are asking how people can live without love. People have a strong desire to love and be loved, that is for sure. But is it necessary to life? – That is quite debatable.

[stlukesguild]

There are always people who except and transgress – how they are or would be looked at is what counts here, I'd think. That is, we're chiefly concerned with moral attitudes.

Intriguingly, it seems it was the bourgeois... the aspiring middle class more than anyone else who were ruled by the established moral attitudes. Those with power... the church and the aristocracy were always above such concerns... unless they undermined one's reputation among one's peers. The poor masses were irrelevant and could be left to live and love like animals. The artists, and musicians, and actors (the bohemians) and such were long seen as existing outside the norms. The middle class, however, in aspiring to maintain an illusion of being something more has long held on to maintaining appearances. Blake would have argued that while they may do the right thing, they do it for the wrong reasons. They give money to the poor and live chastely not because they believe in helping the poor and in chastity... but in order to maintain appearances at all costs.

Do not the masses principally determine the social values? What aristocrats do and have done is largely irrelavant to social values – on the other hand, what the masses do and have done bears a large degree of relevance.

I don't know what planet you are living on... Egalitarian fantasy World. The masses have almost never had the least influence upon society. Social values are established by those in power. Culture has been dictated by those in power. Only recently have we begun to see culture pander to the masses... but even then... the star-makers... the film and music industry, the actors and actresses are in no way part of the masses. It would be ideal to imagine the masses dictating great social upheavals... but ultimately these movements have historically been instigated by the "elites" of one sort or another... and commonly co-opted and manipulated by the same. Personally, considering the ignorance and lack of education of the masses, I somewhat agree with G.B. Shaw in questioning their fitness to rule in place of an aristocracy that in spite of the advantages of wealth and education, still couldn't consistently produce intelligent leaders.

I’m not saying that marriage was ever ideal, or that perpetual romantic love in a marriage should even be expected in a marriage (personally, I do not expect perpetual romantic love), but that an hundred years ago it was more stable (this is quite well supported by statistical evidence) due, in large part, to a generally different understanding of and attitude towards marriage and sex. I find this idea only shy of incontestable, provided that we as a society have not genetically evolved significantly in the past 100 years. I can’t fathom that anything other than a change in these understandings would be responsible for the increase in divorce rates.

Yes... but I'm not certain I would prefer the relationships of 100 years ago. Romantic love and sex were secondary consideration. many marriages were still arranged... and more consideration was given to political alliances of individuals of the same class, and the role of one's spouse as one's primary means of financial support (in the case of women) and as help-mate and childcare provider in the case of men. In other words, women married men for money... their source of food and shelter... and the means of attracting a spouse were primarily looks, reputation, and in the case of the wealthy, political alliances/money. Men, on the other hand, married women to act as help-mates. In the lower classes this would have involved working with the husband at his business or on the farm as well as raising the kids. Among the upper classes this would have meant raising the kids as well as putting forth the proper image as hostess, etc... This is not to say that love and sex did not exist among such pairings. But quite often these "needs" were fulfilled outside the marriage... especially when sex was portrayed as something dirty... something not to be mentioned... something virtuous women didn't participate in except for procreative purposes... and surely they didn't enjoy it. Yes, there were far fewer divorces... but in most cases this was not an option legally... nor was it an option for most women either in terms of appearances or their ability to survive without a husband. Undoubtedly our entire concept of the relationship between men and women has undergone drastic reevaluation.

Again, I probably should have qualified my original post a bit more with what “past” I was referring to. In short, I do not long for the “good ol’ days” as they call it, but I do see that some of our values have changed for (in my opinion) the worse, and some for the better. Certainly we are “freer” today in many regards, but I question some of the prices.

Of course all forms of freedom have a price.

We always hear that people need to work at relationships, but I don't think so. If the right people are together, it shouldn't be work. If it requires commitment and work, something is wrong with it.

Vonny... I hate to disagree with you here, but I think you are quite naive about the effort it takes to maintain any relationship. Visiting my in-laws can be absolute torture... but I endure this... frequently... because they are important to my wife. My wife loves Barry Manilow. I would rather have my teeth pulled than to listen to his music... but because I know she loves him I purchased tickets to see him in concert (at a hefty cost)... front row tickets. She loved every minute... and while I couldn't stand the music, I fully enjoyed the pleasure it brought her... jumping up and down like a teenager. In a similar manner, she has gone with me to the opera or the a Bach oratorio and tried her best to understand and enjoy herself (she actually quite loved the operas we attended) although she would never listen to such music on her own.
She often spends Saturday afternoon sitting in my studio watching me paint... which is undoubtedly as thrilling as watching the geriatric golf tournaments... but she does so because she wants to show that she supports what is important to me. Every relationship is full of such give-and-take unless you are to imagine some fantasy soul-mate that shares all the same likes and dislikes as yourself... whose family and friends you will take fully to heart as your own... whose taste in food, music, art, etc... you will fully share.

[Vonny]

We always hear that people need to work at relationships, but I don't think so. If the right people are together, it shouldn't be work. If it requires commitment and work, something is wrong with it.

Vonny... I hate to disagree with you here, but I think you are quite naive about the effort it takes to maintain any relationship. Visiting my in-laws can be absolute torture... but I endure this... frequently... because they are important to my wife. My wife loves Barry Manilow. I would rather have my teeth pulled than to listen to his music... but because I know she loves him I purchased tickets to see him in concert (at a hefty cost)... front row tickets. She loved every minute... and while I couldn't stand the music, I fully enjoyed the pleasure it brought her... jumping up and down like a teenager. In a similar manner, she has gone with me to the opera or the a Bach oratorio and tried her best to understand and enjoy herself (she actually quite loved the operas we attended) although she would never listen to such music on her own.
She often spends Saturday afternoon sitting in my studio watching me paint... which is undoubtedly as thrilling as watching the geriatric golf tournaments... but she does so because she wants to show that she supports what is important to me. Every relationship is full of such give-and-take unless you are to imagine some fantasy soul-mate that shares all the same likes and dislikes as yourself... whose family and friends you will take fully to heart as your own... whose taste in food, music, art, etc... you will fully share.

Well, Luke, I still think I'm right. Of course there's give and take, and usually it turns out that one person does more accommodating than the other one. But still you're doing what you want to do. You went to the concert not to hear Barry Manilow but to see your wife enjoy herself. And I'm sure she enjoys watching you paint. And you must really want to be with her to put up with her family.

It's like having a pet. I don't have to struggle each day to resist hauling my cat to the animal shelter, or trading her in for another animal that sheds less. I wouldn't get rid of her because I wanted to move someplace where I couldn't take her. I wouldn't get rid of her if she got sick. It would be impossible for me to abandon her.

And people say couples must work at communication. If you care about someone you talk to them and listen to them, simple as that.

You do it because you want to do it, and it's kind of impossible for you not to do it.

[osho]

I want add a little to my original post with a few words.

Love is if we analyze it based not on the ideals we have read or heard but what we have undergone in life. Men when completely free are likely to flirt and everybody is capable of being deviant when it comes to love. You may sound loyal, trustful, unadulterated ( from our so called moral lens), it is when you are bound to behave typically demanded by your social system. You cannot break with that since being outside the herd is to imperil one's life.


Suppose you marry a beautiful girl or boy. Of course for a while you become overly romantic and it will fuel your sex life but after some time it is likely to deteriorate. Marriage is a form of legalized prostitution. Man or woman always want polimorous relations. For fear of the unknown,of some consequence he retreats from fulfilling his urges and behave like gentlemen by his social circumstances suppressing his inner desires.

The reason why we live unfulfilled in love, sex and relationships is we cannot understand love. No books have demystified love.

Love and sex as we read in prescribed books do not find their actual definitions or their purview. Every person is a brute if laid bare.

[MarkBastable]

The reason why we live unfulfilled in love, sex and relationships is...


Wait. Stop there.

'We'?

Speak for yourself, bub.

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=stlukesguild;1074282 My wife loves Barry Manilow. [/QUOTE]

:willy_nilly:

[Brett Cottrell]

It is difficult to give what you do not have.

When I was young my mother used to tell me, "Brett, you cannot love somebody unless you love yourself." At the time I didn't know what she meant. When I became an emotional adult, when I decided to look myself in the mirror, I found out. Love starts within and projects outwardly.

I say this as a lucky man. I love my wife so much and so joyfully that I do not know another man or woman who is happier in love.

[osho]

Wait. Stop there.

'We'?

Speak for yourself, bub.

I have generalized it and did not say about any particular ones at all. This is not necessarily you or I or any other individuals in particular who are in focus. On the other hand it could be anybody and could be you or I.


It is difficult to give what you do not have.

When I was young my mother used to tell me, "Brett, you cannot love somebody unless you love yourself." At the time I didn't know what she meant. When I became an emotional adult, when I decided to look myself in the mirror, I found out. Love starts within and projects outwardly.

I say this as a lucky man. I love my wife so much and so joyfully that I do not know another man or woman who is happier in love.

Everyone loves himself or herself unquestionably and if you do not do so you become suicidal.

And this is an assumption only and if you love yourself only and self-centeredly you are less likely to love others. In love it is said there is a bit of self sacrifice.

Love is one of the most misunderstood things. Where is love as we understand. There is only self gratification only and you want to fulfill only your desires. If you fall for a girl or boy all you want is sexual gratification or to have someone so that you do not have to be lonely; this is again a sense of security that drives you to have some one as your lover.

If you are a parent and want a child it is for your innate desire of keeping up your inner need to continue live through another generation.

There is everywhere self contentedness and nothing else.

[Brett Cottrell]

Everyone loves himself or herself unquestionably and if you do not do so you become suicidal.

And this is an assumption only and if you love yourself only and self-centeredly you are less likely to love others. In love it is said there is a bit of self sacrifice.

Kind of rooking the deck, don't you think? I don't agree that 1) if you don't love yourself unquestionably then 2) you become suicidal. There are many more options. Self destructive behavior, depression without suicial thoughts, ignorning your emotions...

I know plenty of people who do not unquestionably love themselves, and they go on every day. Living. In fact I would argue that most people not only do not love themselves unquestionably but do not even like themselves. For if they did, how could they do such terrible things to themselves and their world. Love is not the rule, love is the exception; love is not base animal instinct but aspiration.

I believe most people want to unquestionably love themselves, but few do.

And it's also rooking the deck to assume that if you love yourself you love yourself only. That doesn't follow from logic or from my experience. To love oneself is not at all necessarily to be self-centered, and I would argue is in fact the opposite! I know you said it's only an assumption, but I don't base my ideas of love on unfounded assumptions. Love begets love, and it starts from within.

Now I may be wrong, but I'll be dancing all the way to my grave! To quote Auntie Mame "Life is a banquet and most poor sons-of-b**ches are starving to death..."

[Zee.]

Everyone loves himself or herself unquestionably and if you do not do so you become suicidal.



Very misleading and I would argue untrue statement to make.

Judging by your posts Osho, I would question to whether you have actually ever been in love at all.

You are over complicating it completely.

[osho]

Kind of rooking the deck, don't you think? I don't agree that 1) if you don't love yourself unquestionably then 2) you become suicidal. There are many more options. Self destructive behavior, depression without suicial thoughts, ignorning your emotions...

I know plenty of people who do not unquestionably love themselves, and they go on every day. Living. In fact I would argue that most people not only do not love themselves unquestionably but do not even like themselves. For if they did, how could they do such terrible things to themselves and their world. Love is not the rule, love is the exception; love is not base animal instinct but aspiration.

I believe most people want to unquestionably love themselves, but few do.

And it's also rooking the deck to assume that if you love yourself you love yourself only. That doesn't follow from logic or from my experience. To love oneself is not at all necessarily to be self-centered, and I would argue is in fact the opposite! I know you said it's only an assumption, but I don't base my ideas of love on unfounded assumptions. Love begets love, and it starts from within.

Now I may be wrong, but I'll be dancing all the way to my grave! To quote Auntie Mame "Life is a banquet and most poor sons-of-b**ches are starving to death..."

The issue I want to point up here is not whether or not one has to love himself. When one loves anybody it is always for self gratification. When you fall for a woman or man you have some urge and your love for that person is mainly to satisfy your craving, passions and biological and emotional needs and there is nothing beyond that. Your thought about love, relation which you have idealized come from what you have learned from a social environment and cultural heritage, and your mother telling you a certain ideology is a kind of indoctrination and you cannot easily overrule or dissipate it. This is how ideas are formed and unconsciously carried out down the generation.

Keep yourself beyond this circumstance for a while and think this over


Very misleading and I would argue untrue statement to make.

Judging by your posts Osho, I would question to whether you have actually ever been in love at all.

You are over complicating it completely.

I am not complicating it and what really I am trying to do is unearthing some truths inherent in some issues involving love and relationship. Most people in love get betrayed and the number of divorces and its increasing trend speaks up more. Even among those in a relationship are not happy in the relationship and for a variety of reasons they sustain their matrimonial tie. In many developing countries love seems strong and their family bonds unbroken. If you examine objectively what is going on their in the name of love and marriage you will come upon so many shocking cases as to what makes their family bond firm and unbroken. There is completer slavery in the name of love.

[YesNo]

The issue I want to point up here is not whether or not one has to love himself. When one loves anybody it is always for self gratification. When you fall for a woman or man you have some urge and your love for that person is mainly to satisfy your craving, passions and biological and emotional needs and there is nothing beyond that.

How do you know it is "always for self gratification" and that "there is nothing beyond that"?


Your thought about love, relation which you have idealized come from what you have learned from a social environment and cultural heritage, and your mother telling you a certain ideology is a kind of indoctrination and you cannot easily overrule or dissipate it. This is how ideas are formed and unconsciously carried out down the generation.

The fact that your mother told you something as a child and "you cannot easily overrule or dissipate it", does not mean that what your mother told you was false. Some people call this kind of argument the "genetic fallacy", but I don't really know if there is a formal logical fallacy like that or not. If there isn't, it sounds like there should be.

In any case, just because you grew up believing in something -- or not believing in something -- doesn't make your current view false.



I am not complicating it and what really I am trying to do is unearthing some truths inherent in some issues involving love and relationship. Most people in love get betrayed and the number of divorces and its increasing trend speaks up more. Even among those in a relationship are not happy in the relationship and for a variety of reasons they sustain their matrimonial tie. In many developing countries love seems strong and their family bonds unbroken. If you examine objectively what is going on their in the name of love and marriage you will come upon so many shocking cases as to what makes their family bond firm and unbroken. There is completer slavery in the name of love.
People either take care of those around them or they do not. They either love those around them or they do not. You have to decide what you want to do. I don't think you are guaranteed to be "happy" whatever you choose, but I don't consider unhappiness to be a sign of "slavery" either.

[MarkBastable]

Judging by your posts Osho, I would question to whether you have actually ever been in love at all.



There's a point here, Osho. You do talk about this as if you have no practical experience of it. It's like listening to a blind person describe what they think red might be - you've got admire the attempt, but it's impossible to explain why it's not really like that.

[blazeofglory]

In fact Osh's points of views speak up many realities we live with in this modern world and I agree to a great extent what he really wants to say so honestly, truing to unroll some realities we fail to understand

[osho]

Love is a very sweet word and all of us want it and at times at a great cost. The very word love is soothing but in reality it is not so. Love is much more literary, metaphorical than down-to-earth. It is fantasy and imagination. And it lulls you to daydream.
We read romantic movies and dream a life full of love since our books and the movies we have seen have programmed our minds into sweet thoughts but all we come upon is a trajectory of grotesque situations. We become attracted to beautiful objects whether it is an object or a human. We love the object but in a while we become fed up with that object. Even if have a beautiful human as a wife or husband we do not refrain from fantasizing a relationship with someone else.
Love puts us on shaky ground and it is not built on the rock foundation. That is why we have so many cases of divorces and even if we continue to be in a relationship we tend to be in conflict most of the time.

[Brett Cottrell]

Love is a very sweet word and all of us want it and at times at a great cost. The very word love is soothing but in reality it is not so...It is fantasy and imagination.

It sounds to me like you do not want to love, that love, to you, is not worth having. So I guess I don't understand your intial question of "How do you love if you feel you have no love in your life?" People told you how to get it, but you didn't respond that they were incorrect, but rather implied you don't want it. It seems to me that now you're asking (and asnwering in the negaitve) whether love's worth having.

And that's a different question altogether. Love is many things to many people (parental love, platonic love, relationship love, etc...), but describing it by reducing it to scientific analysis is as useful as stirring the ocean with a fork.

I love because I am, with all that comes with it. Joy, smiles, tears, closeness - all of it. I'll cry at my grandfather's funeral not just because a pheremonal signal demands it - my emotions are more than a sum of their parts - but because I loved him. My heart will swell in the quiet of the night as I watch my wife sleep, not simply because a pheremonal or biological signal demands it - my love is more than a sum of its parts- but because I love her.

If you don't get it, you don't get it.
If you want to get it, don't talk yourself out of it.

Somtimes I will cry. Sometimes I will smile. Sometimes I will swell with joy. Always, through it all, I will love.

[cl154576]

osho, please realize that you are not all of humanity.

[osho]

It sounds to me like you do not want to love, that love, to you, is not worth having. So I guess I don't understand your intial question of "How do you love if you feel you have no love in your life?" People told you how to get it, but you didn't respond that they were incorrect, but rather implied you don't want it. It seems to me that now you're asking (and asnwering in the negaitve) whether love's worth having.

And that's a different question altogether. Love is many things to many people (parental love, platonic love, relationship love, etc...), but describing it by reducing it to scientific analysis is as useful as stirring the ocean with a fork.

I love because I am, with all that comes with it. Joy, smiles, tears, closeness - all of it. I'll cry at my grandfather's funeral not just because a pheremonal signal demands it - my emotions are more than a sum of their parts - but because I loved him. My heart will swell in the quiet of the night as I watch my wife sleep, not simply because a pheremonal or biological signal demands it - my love is more than a sum of its parts- but because I love her.

If you don't get it, you don't get it.
If you want to get it, don't talk yourself out of it.

Somtimes I will cry. Sometimes I will smile. Sometimes I will swell with joy. Always, through it all, I will love.

This is called ridden-over by a passion. I in fact want to delineate some love related predetermined notions. I do not mean you do not feelings and you do and of course you have a feeling for your people when alive or dead and it is all there. You can love a person and in a while you can hate him or her in a different circumstance. I can understand your feelings you have expressed for your wife since I too have undergone the same experience, the same tinge, got overwhelmed by the same surge of love. However I do not rule out the fact, speaking realistically, this is skin deep. In a while you can break when your egos or your spouse’s ego will have its strong gripe.

Can you love despite everything? When the situation is favorable we will be in love intensely and passionately. I know a poet who loved his former wife deeply and wrote so many poems in praise of her. People envied their affair and intimacy. Later on she became sick and sexually weak. But the poet had a robust health and young. He loved her so much but his bodily chemistry required something she could not satiate and he fell in love with another woman for sexual gratification. This made me think love is just a myth and underneath the veneer of this love-story there is a brute. In a normal situation the brute inside us remains dormant and once the circumstance becomes reverse the suppressed beast inside us wakes up to gobble up all your preconceived notions of love and intimacy.
In normal circumstances you are all the truer

[JuniperWoolf]

It's like listening to a blind person describe what they think red might be - you've got admire the attempt, but it's impossible to explain why it's not really like that.

Wow, that is exactly what it's like. Weird. It'd be neat if it wasn't so annoying.

[Brett Cottrell]

Overriden by passion? If I cry at my grandfather's funeral or my heart swells when I see my wife? The passion that you use as an epithet is what many of us call life. You have a binary way of looking at the issue that severely oversimplifies it.

Overridden by passion? I'll refer to Iggy Pop - I've got a lust for life! Life and love are not always easy, and sometimes they will break my heart. But I'll embrace them not despite all that, but because of it!

An unexamined life may not be worth living, but niether is a life unlived.

[MarkBastable]

Overriden by passion? If I cry at my grandfather's funeral or my heart swells when I see my wife? The passion that you use as an epithet is what many of us call life. You have a binary way of looking at the issue that severely oversimplifies it.

Overridden by passion? I'll refer to Iggy Pop - I've got a lust for life! Life and love are not always easy, and sometimes they will break my heart. But I'll embrace them not despite all that, but because of it!

An unexamined life may not be worth living, but niether is a life unlived.

There was a great and contextually-perfect opportunity there to say that "an unlived life is not worth examining", though someone must surely have used that inversion somewhere before, so perhaps you were wise to resist.

[keilj]

There was a great and contextually-perfect opportunity there to say that "an unlived life is not worth examining", though someone must surely have used that inversion somewhere before, so perhaps you were wise to resist.

If I took issue with a poster's assertions, I would try to attack it with a logical argument of my own, instead of attacking the poster himself, attacking his tone or how he comes across, or generally trying to be clever while never actually offering anything to the conversation

[MarkBastable]

If I took issue with a poster's assertions, I would try to attack it with a logical argument of my own, instead of attacking the poster himself, attacking his tone or how he comes across, or generally trying to be clever while never actually offering anything to the conversation

What? I wasn't attacking him. I was just interjecting a little aside. As I think has been apparent further down the thread, I agree with him. But, as you seem to have taken offence on his behalf, I'll do that again. Ready?

Hey, Brett! I agree with you. And what's more I like the observation about an unlived life. Just as an aside though, there was a great and contextually-perfect opportunity there to say that "an unlived life is not worth examining", though someone must surely have used that inversion somewhere before, so perhaps you were wise to resist. Still, with or without that smartass allusion - which may indeed be more my speed than yours - I think you're right on the money with your take. What's more, you seem to conduct the conversation with a certain amount of humour, which is more than can be said for everyone around here.

[osho]

I am really thrilled to read so many comments though I do not second most of them. Anyway this thread has been something like icebreaking.
Many things got laid bare, the insides got out and that was what I wanted in my original post. I some of my contentious posts notwithstanding between them, wanted to ask how we would live in a world of no love. The question was obvious: How we will live in a world when we have no love. Regardless of all of my argued posts I just wanted to know what would be the plight of those when the love they craved is in crisis.
Today all around I see people in the name of love are beleaguering each other. Many asked me personally whether I am in love or not. I am intensely in love. I have a wonderful romance life and the affair is profound and we cannot betray each other even in our dream. However I see everyone has underneath a supposed love affair has some self fulfilling quotient. What we assume is not what it is. The one you take very deeply and emotionally likely to betray and enjoy with someone else. We do not want to imagine this since imagining this is painful and we try to bury the realities and forget the could-be.
I have read plenty of books about love, romance, human relationships and the like and mostly I find people are unfurling tragic tales, betrayal s, and the like. Sometimes I feel love affair or any relations built on physical attraction or sexual urges or some self-fulfilling motives are short-lived ( unfortunately most love affairs fall short of what we deeply desire).
I never mean to dishearten anybody but the kind of thoughts boiling inside me and are brimful want an expression. By sharing with you this critical topic like love I think the essence of it gets exposed.
To conclude: love is in crisis. Love is like a dew drop we come across early in the morning and in a while it vaporizes. One has compromise or else love becomes something hard to sustain.
Love needs maintenance and care or else it will turn you down . You can differ but this is true

[osho]

If I took issue with a poster's assertions, I would try to attack it with a logical argument of my own, instead of attacking the poster himself, attacking his tone or how he comes across, or generally trying to be clever while never actually offering anything to the conversation

I did not make a conclusion deliberately since this is not something that can be logically proved and is mostly unconvincing. I never say it is not contentious.

All I want is revelation. I maybe right or wrong. The issue I put forth is not extraneous. I never want you to second my opinion. After all it is an opinion.

You have the liberty to argue and attack. Nobody stops you.

[Vonny]

I find your posts very thought provoking, even if I don't agree with you.


Love needs maintenance and care or else it will turn you down . You can differ but this is true

Only I think "care and maintenance" is the definition of love. To me love is love. The essence doesn't really change, for instance, whether it's love for an animal or for a human. So it's like if you have a pet, if you love it you will automatically give it care and maintenance. You don't think, "Oh yeah, I love my dog so therefore I must remember to feed her today."

Of course there's romantic love, but to me the romance is separate and extra. If you have romantic love - for instance, your partner could become deathly ill with cancer, or some other crisis may come along, and the romance could fade, but the love would remain.

The problem is that in many relationships there's no love, it is all romance and/or lust.

I also believe the ability to love is more inborn than learned, more nature than nurture.

[cl154576]

I also believe the ability to love is more inborn than learned, more nature than nurture.

Bad nurturing can destroy it.

[osho]

The problem is that in many relationships there's no love, it is all romance and/or lust.

.

This is what I have been untiringly advocating. Only very very few turn up trusting each other.

You have been witnessing almost everyday whether in the newspapers or in the cinema or in most novels, ancient or modern failed, betrayed love affairs.

It could be anybody falling victim

[Vonny]

Bad nurturing can destroy it.

I disagree. I love people who should have nurtured me and didn't.

I no longer love the person who abandoned me as a child. I let that go.

But poor nurturing does not alter a person's ability to love. Nope. Nope.

And on the other side of the coin - sociopaths - that trait is inborn.

Edit: I said I no longer love my father. Maybe I do on some level, but he's gone so I don't think of him too much. I don't have a desire to see him suffer or burn in hell because he caused a lot of suffering.

[MarkBastable]

I disagree. I love people who should have nurtured me and didn't.


CL didn't say it will or it must - the suggestion was that it can.

It didn't in you - but it can.

[Vonny]

CL didn't say it will or it must - the suggestion was that it can.

It didn't in you - but it can.

You're right. I was just coming back to this thread because I had thought about it more. If a baby isn't picked up and held, yes. And this actually happened to my brothers. My father wouldn't allow my mother to pick them up much of the time when they cried because they were boys and he didn't want them spoiled. She said she'd go outside to escape the crying. (However, in the case of my brothers, none of them are sociopaths - at least I don't think so.)

In my case both my father and mom gave me all of that because I was a girl. My father had wanted a girl. I was also never hit or even really scolded by my dad. He would pinch my nose for some reason, it seemed in play - that was all.

[Brett Cottrell]

What? I wasn't attacking him. I was just interjecting a little aside. As I think has been apparent further down the thread, I agree with him. But, as you seem to have taken offence on his behalf, I'll do that again. Ready?

Hey, Brett! I agree with you. And what's more I like the observation about an unlived life. Just as an aside though, there was a great and contextually-perfect opportunity there to say that "an unlived life is not worth examining", though someone must surely have used that inversion somewhere before, so perhaps you were wise to resist. Still, with or without that smartass allusion - which may indeed be more my speed than yours - I think you're right on the money with your take. What's more, you seem to conduct the conversation with a certain amount of humour, which is more than can be said for everyone around here.

I know. I thought your responnse was funny!

[MarkBastable]

I know. I thought your responnse was funny!

I thought you might. Cheers, and thank you.

[Vonny]

I thought you might. Cheers, and thank you.

It took me a long time to figure out that you are being funny a lot of the time. You have a strange humor that I didn't get in print for a long time. That time when you said you get rid of all your friends every few years - I thought you were a sociopath - but I'm thinking lately that it must have been humor. There must be humor in your avatar. I didn't get it for a long time.

[MarkBastable]

It took me a long time to figure out that you are being funny a lot of the time. You have a strange humor that I didn't get in print for a long time. That time when you said you get rid of all your friends every few years - I thought you were a sociopath - but I'm thinking lately that it must have been humor. There must be humor in your avatar. I didn't get it for a long time.

Ah, the world is full of people who think that 'serious' and 'funny' are mutually-exclusive. For me, they tend to be mutually-proportional.

And it's not that I 'get rid of' my friends every few years - it's more that I don't go out go my way to sustain friendships, which means, in effect, that I have a high throughput of friends. I don't think it's because I'm a sociopath, though I suppose that even if it were, I wouldn't know. I think it's more likely because I come from a big and close family, and that's where the consistency and sustenance in my life is found.

[Vonny]

Ah, the world is full of people who think that 'serious' and 'funny' are mutually-exclusive. For me, they tend to be mutually-proportional.

And it's not that I 'get rid of' my friends every few years - it's more that I don't go out go my way to sustain friendships, which means, in effect, that I have a high throughput of friends. I don't think it's because I'm a sociopath, though I suppose that even if it were, I wouldn't know. I think it's more likely because I come from a big and close family, and that's where the consistency and sustenance in my life is found.

I meant to use that word "sociopath" lightly in describing you, but it was a wrong choice of word. Of course I don't know you or what you're saying exactly.

It seems your family members are your friends then.

If you don't go out of your way to sustain friendships with others, then you aren't really a friend to them, but more of an acquaintance. I mean, they may or may not be your friends, but it seems you aren't really a friend to them if you do nothing to sustain the relationships, and are only in it for what they do for you for a period of time.

[MarkBastable]

I meant to use that word "sociopath" lightly in describing you, but it was a wrong choice of word. Of course I don't know you or what you're saying exactly.

It seems your family members are your friends then.

If you don't go out of your way to sustain friendships with others, then you aren't really a friend to them, but more of an acquaintance. I mean, they may or may not be your friends, but it seems you aren't really a friend to them if you do nothing to sustain the relationships, and are only in it for what they do for you for a period of time.

That kind of implies that a friendship, once started, must last until one or other party dies - otherwise it's not really a friendship. I think that's wrong.

I think that the relationships I'm talking about here were friendships rather than acquaintanceships - they were deep, mutually fond, emotionally intimate, inter-reliant and trusting. And, before you ask, not necessarily sexual.

Do you say that that isn't really friendship? And if not, why not?

[Vonny]

That kind of implies that a friendship, once started, must last until one or other party dies - otherwise it's not really a friendship. I think that's wrong.

I think that the relationships I'm talking about here were friendships rather than acquaintanceships - they were deep, mutually fond, emotionally intimate, inter-reliant and trusting. And, before you ask, not necessarily sexual.

Do you say that that isn't really friendship? And if not, why not?


I went and found your statement:



Originally posted by MarkBastable:
I tend not to sustain friendships much beyond the circumstances that gave rise to them, which means, in effect, that I shuck most of my friends every eight or nine years.

It sounds as though the friendships benefited your circumstances, rather than being based on the value of the person himself or herself.

Why "shuck" someone who has value to you?

[MarkBastable]

I went and found your statement:

It sounds as though the friendships benefited your circumstances, rather than being based on the value of the person himself or herself.

Why "shuck" someone who has value to you?

I did make it sound a more considered process than it is, perhaps. On the other hand, you're sort of taking for granted that no one would let go of anything valuable. I do.

[NikolaiI]

I remember once when I was younger my father warned me about how people change and drift apart over the years. I thought I knew better and, being the optimist I was, told him I thought I'd remain close with all my best friends. But people change, their values change. They really do drift apart and, I learned, you really do outgrow friends. When I learned this finally I saved myself some aggravation trying to keep up friendships with people I didn't connect with anymore. Some of my old friends I just don't respect all that much anymore. But I shouldn't judge them or blame them, or feel bad about it, I just chalk it up to the fact that people change.

Of course there are some whom I didn't lose, and they're all the more valuable for those I probably won't have any meaningful contact with in the future. All in all I'd say I'm with Mark on this one, or at least I can definitely see where he's coming from.

[author1500less]

This is a weird question, isn’t it? I suddenly thought that we live in a world in which some people think that they can buy love, happiness and peace with their money. But I see every day growing numbers of divorces and people incapable of loving and being loved. People can hardly believe each other and there is little ground for them to make sure that they are loved.

This is a bitter reality and this bitter reality should not be ignored.

I just put forth it for discussion

This is similar to one of Plato's dilemmas. Can a person teach someone to be virtuous if they are not? The point I remember is a person can give you directions to the city, but never have been there. A person can tell you how to get somewhere without ever having been there.

The answer to your question is you have to ask someone that can explain how to love. Defining love would help specify the type of solution your interested in.

If love were defined as a location then you can love someone if someone tells you how. But who knows how to love the way you can?

[blazeofglory]

This is similar to one of Plato's dilemmas. Can a person teach someone to be virtuous if they are not? The point I remember is a person can give you directions to the city, but never have been there. A person can tell you how to get somewhere without ever having been there.

The answer to your question is you have to ask someone that can explain how to love. Defining love would help specify the type of solution your interested in.

If love were defined as a location then you can love someone if someone tells you how. But who knows how to love the way you can?


Osho never said the way you thought he did in fact. Osho's ideas are liberating us from our preconditions in a world of make-believe.

We of course are living in a world of crisis and particularly in human behaviors. Love is not as you think it is and if you understand the truth of it or get at the bottom of it you can solve a great part of the problem it is created. People trust too much and this trust and reliance at times become a chain to himself. That is why the Buddha's teaching of detachment bears a great relevance to address human predicaments.

[MarkBastable]

We of course are living in a world of crisis and particularly in human behaviors. Love is not as you think it is and if you understand the truth of it or get at the bottom of it you can solve a great part of the problem it is created.

I do wish you'd stop telling me what I think. It's an ineffective way of stating your own position, and it just puts people's back up.

[blazeofglory]

[QUOTE=MarkBastable;1076170]I do wish you'd stop telling me what I think. It's an ineffective way of stating your own position, and it just puts people's back up.[/QUO
Why you are bumping into my post. I am not telling what you are thinking. It is Osho's ideas I am supporting or opposing and there is no reason for you to express your furor. This is trash

[osho]

There are no issues that should evoke any misunderstanding.I do not think Blaze or anybody else is trying to hammer on anybody's personal issues. This is totally a general issue and open discussion and anybody taking it personally and minding anything personally is really saddening.

Love is such an issue and even if you write a treatise of a thousand pages it will still be too little and cannot address any complexities inherent in this. It is really interesting to share with and learn from each other and I think it is sheer stupidity to look at it personally and narrow-mindedly.

Love is really a vast domain of study and contemplation and we have before us a thousand books written over this issue and most poems, novels, epics or playwrights are centered around this topic.

I never expected it would raise any furor while I started this thread. This is a forum of liberally minded people and here people will not clash over petty issues and reply objectively.

I am a bit sad about the fact that a few persons got infuriated over the issue.

[MarkBastable]

Love is not as you think it is and if you understand the truth of it or get at the bottom of it you can solve a great part of the problem it is created.


I took this 'you' to mean 'the reader'. If it meant Osho, I apologise.

[billl]

Of course, osho and Osho are two different people, if that clears things up at all...

[osho]

This is an objective view and there are opinions and no inferences at all. Our mind is full of ideas and we have so many opinions born of what we hear around.

Nobody can say what love is though most have undergone ranges of experiences What we do by writing about is the impression we have about it based on what we hear from somebody or from some books, stale ideas indeed. We never can translate the feelings that really surge within us.

I have just put forth my ideas and argued with some based on what I have learned or got convinced about only. My own realm of understanding is barred by my circumstances and you might have different circumstances to have learned from and therefore there are likelihoods of misunderstanding but not of getting infuriated.


Of course, osho and Osho are two different people, if that clears things up at all...

Osho is my Avatar and Osho is another thinker, mystic India. What I have said has little to do with the name. I hope this makes my message clear.


Love is not as you think it is and if you understand the truth of it or get at the bottom of it you can solve a great part of the problem it is created.


I took this 'you' to mean 'the reader'. If it meant Osho, I apologise.

Even if it means the reader it is not necessarily you Blazed has pointed at

[MarkBastable]

Even if it means the reader it is not necessarily you Blazed has pointed at

It is if I'm reading it.

[osho]

It is if I'm reading it.

Is there anything to shock and surprise you, Mark and this happens in writing and you must understand one cannot writing plainly and it is likely to kind of arouse emotions but the central theme or object is impersonal. After all there is no reason to have it aimed at you. I may criticize you with severe words but the criticism is limited to a few words and the words not necessarily pierce you into pieces. If you understand this simple truth you would not get angry.

[Vonny]

I do wish you'd stop telling me what I think. It's an ineffective way of stating your own position, and it just puts people's back up.


Why you are bumping into my post. I am not telling what you are thinking. It is Osho's ideas I am supporting or opposing and there is no reason for you to express your furor. This is trash

This exchange strikes me as Hilarious, especially with Blaze's dog avatar saying the second response!

Mark, do you really get your back up over a topic like this, or is there humor implied here?

[billl]

Blaze's previous avatar was actually a photo of Osho enjoying a pipe, and I thought it really went well with the language, too.

[NikolaiI]

Why you are bumping into my post. I am not telling what you are thinking. It is Osho's ideas I am supporting or opposing and there is no reason for you to express your furor. This is trash

Blaze, you fool. Listen to what he has to say. Mark's a very smart guy. He certainly didn't say anything in anger or ill-intent at all that I can tell. I don't see he said anything out of line or disrespectful. Even if he did, your reaction is still defensive and reactive, but again I just don't see it.

[Vonny]

Blaze, you fool. Listen to what he has to say. Mark's a very smart guy. He certainly didn't say anything in anger or ill-intent at all that I can tell. I don't see he said anything out of line or disrespectful. Even if he did, your reaction is still defensive and reactive, but again I just don't see it.

I can never figure out who's being rude and who's being funny. :lol:

[NikolaiI]

Is there anything to shock and surprise you, Mark and this happens in writing and you must understand one cannot writing plainly and it is likely to kind of arouse emotions but the central theme or object is impersonal. After all there is no reason to have it aimed at you. I may criticize you with severe words but the criticism is limited to a few words and the words not necessarily pierce you into pieces. If you understand this simple truth you would not get angry.

Osho I haven't interracted with you before, so this is the first. Blaze and I go way, way back and I know you two discuss a lot, and you both contribute a good deal of original thought around here. But trust me Blaze is waay off the nail here. Barring all else - past history and such, although I trust there is little of it - in this discussion I have seen absolutely no anger whatsoever in Mark's words. Nothing emotional at all, even, just normal rational discourse.

Just thought I would butt in to add my two cents. Btw everyone does that around here, like it or not. Also everyone has the right to. And indeed Mark is right. When you write on an open forum, if you don't specifically say otherwise, you really are writing to everyone. So if you use a lot of "You see this, you know this, you have to understand this," it's quite fine for someone to point out if someone is using an effective way of arguing; one that won't help convince others, but merely put their backs up.

So anyway just wanted to point out, the only one seemingly acting a bit unreasonably and over-reacting, is my dear old friend Blazeofglory. And honestly it is just a bit rude or the very least provocative, although I'm sure Mark wouldn't take that personally either.. So I just wanted to point out I really feel you're "barking up the wrong tree," in a manner of speaking.


I can never figure out who's being rude and who's being funny. :lol:

Rofl :] Well I could run it down for you; Paul is not the gentlest, kindest, most understanding Buddha if you discuss Buddhism with him from the platform of the Avatamsaka Sutra or Infinite Life Sutra, or Amitabha Sutra. But he's a Buddha none-the-less, and, of course, he's trying :)

Virgil seems like a gentle fellow and a easy going guy, and he is; but he also satnds up fiercely for his friends and what he believes in.

I don't know anyone else really, or rather the ones I do talk to would probably rather I didn't say anything about them. I guess I've run out of things to say about other people.

Oh - and 'billl's a great guy, by all appearances, as far as I can tell. :)

[Vonny]

"You see this, you know this, you have to understand this,"

To me it just seems like a writing style, a way a person has of prefacing a statement, more than the intention to force a point. There are people who begin every statement with "You know,"... If someone said to me, "You know, it looks like it will rain today," and I thought it it would be sunny all day, I'd just say, "I think it looks like sunshine."

But I confuse a lot of things I see in type.

Edit: We cross posted Nicholai

MarkB is the one I'm trying to figure out right now!

[osho]

Osho I haven't interracted with you before, so this is the first. Blaze and I go way, way back and I know you two discuss a lot, and you both contribute a good deal of original thought around here. But trust me Blaze is waay off the nail here. Barring all else - past history and such, although I trust there is little of it - in this discussion I have seen absolutely no anger whatsoever in Mark's words. Nothing emotional at all, even, just normal rational discourse.

Just thought I would butt in to add my two cents. Btw everyone does that around here, like it or not. Also everyone has the right to. And indeed Mark is right. When you write on an open forum, if you don't specifically say otherwise, you really are writing to everyone. So if you use a lot of "You see this, you know this, you have to understand this," it's quite fine for someone to point out if someone is using an effective way of arguing; one that won't help convince others, but merely put their backs up.

So anyway just wanted to point out, the only one seemingly acting a bit unreasonably and over-reacting, is my dear old friend Blazeofglory. And honestly it is just a bit rude or the very least provocative, although I'm sure Mark wouldn't take that personally either.. So I just wanted to point out I really feel you're "barking up the wrong tree," in a manner of speaking.



R. :)


Nicolai, you are a wise man and I have read several of your posts and you seem to have leaf through many theological books and Buddhism in particular and I am happy that you have interacted with me notwithstanding anything you commented upon my statement and I second your opinion since you are too illustrious or awakened to spare your words hollowly. Blazeofglory has propped up my statement though critically and yet I do not feel cosseted. This does happen since I never expected I would go unscathed. This is a literary forum and differences are likely to surface and yet the relation we maintain, must maintain, will go impervious. We are not always what we say and little of what we are go written and much of what we are never get articulated. I know from a few posts of yours you are a sensible man and might have looked thru many vistas at life since you have crammed many Sastras few have done.

Anyway it is a pride that you chose to respond to my posts

In fact Blaze has something to share with me and that is sometimes reflective of what I want say. He is an old poster on this forum and has lots of wisdom and if he supported my ideas and at times saved me from wandering off. ideas crop and we need to rather than putting in the ground let them flower. The intent and purpose must be clear above all and once it is clear the proceedings become unflawed

We seem to have strayed from the original theme and we meant to discuss love, relationship and the like and drifted and disputed a lot and yet I appeal to all to trigger off topic or discussion we carried so far.

To start with, love is IMO is a lost horizon and we take it seriously based on what we have read about or heard from others but we barely listen to those who have experienced it and have to some hard realties they have undergone.

Your eyes fall on a beautiful object and you weave a wonderful and romantic dream and an urge surges within you and you fall in love, hug and kiss and have sex in a while and suddenly another urges boils within you and that releases the toxics of hate and both of you scheme to oust the other from your life. This is the story of love, though it sounds a formulaic one, the commonplace we abhor to hear.

Love is often fixed together with sacrifice that has more to give than take and a state in which one is ready to cannibalize his or her desire when ones' spirit in love leaps up in a certain situation. Love has mainly to do with physicality and it is our bodily need and once our bodily or emotional needs get fulfilled the rest will matter.

But love has been the subject matter of poets, authors, singers and many and they simply idealize or immortalize it giving it an altitude too high for us to observe.

[NikolaiI]

Well, Osho, in reply to you I'd use a statement you used in another thread, talking about philosophy. You basically said "you never understand an absolute truth," as I took it to mean, there's never a final truth to be attained, because the universe is always changing, or something like that. In the same way, if you want to know about love, you can't be too rigid, too inflexbile, in your thoughts and ideas.

I understand where you are coming from, how you say the state of society is declining, and divorce and depression are pushing lasting love and happiness out of the picture. But it's no use to focus on the negatives only. My advice would be to forget about society and just focus on the people in your life. Anyway - those things you said, the unhappiness, depression; people feel those things in their lives because of the pain and abuse they have experienced. I don't think there's any other reason people lose their optimism and innocence.

To answer your question in the Opening Post, "How do you love if you feel you have no love in your life?" I would say, first, there's no substitute to knowing yourself. You have to know who you are, from your childhood to the present. There are so many reasons someone might not feel love in their lives. So there's no blanket answer. But in my opinion knowing yourself woud be a requisite in any or every case. The better you know yourself, the better able you are to adjust, to learn, to grow or succeed. After knowing yourself there's almost nothing more important than trusting yourself. I've come to believe that almost nothing is of greater importance than trusting yourself.

If someone actually feels like they have no love in their life; maybe a good first step would be to try to recognize where there is love. I think it's a natural reaction to feeling blue or depressed for some reason to search for love outside our direct personal life.

I know I'm jumping around a little bit; but what I really wanted to say was. . . the people who really become depressed and pessimistic about love - and I suppose that is who you are addressing - I feel I understand this progression, for I've had some of it in my own life and seen more of it in people in my life. I think it's a rather central issue of human life. I can only reply to you based on my personal examinations and conclusions. Well as I said before, keep in mind that there's not an absolute truth to be reached - and further, I'd say refrain from all rigidity in thinking. My reasons are like this; optimists and idealists in love are usually young, and as time goes by some of them become "disillusioned." As you say - the bitter reality. But that bitter reality is just another illusion. It's an illusion for the same reason the previous one was; it's a framework of human thought, a passing fiction, not a permanent reality.

Is perfect love possible, is there any reason to aspire to it? It must be harder to have two people think each other is perfect than for one to think he or she is perfect. For the one alone, all that's required is for him or her to believe "I'm perfect." With no one to contradict, the statement stands uncontested. And there's a philosophical line of thinking that's fairly foreign to the West, which states that everyone is perfect, that is, whole, even with flaws included.

A tangent - but about love; a certain innocence is necessary. A childlike quality of innocence or purity. For where that's gone - then you cannot have love. Without hope and trust, you can't have love; for love is predicated on these things. In fact the game of love is really a game of hope and trust.

As I said, I can only answer you based on my personal explorations and conclusions; and it's been my experience that happiness and bitterness clash against each other. If I am ever bitter, then my thoughts can really do no good, no constructive or creative purpose. And love is a very creative thing. Painful experiences in life, and abuse - be it self-inflicted or by others, it makes no difference - can destroy a person. I mean - some is necessary, for never having hardship distorts the personality in another direction - but too much pain can devastate, I've seen it happen.

And I've rallied against it in my own life. I've realized I can never give in or let it change who I am. And I've realized that simplicity is very important to me. You are right about me; I've pursued spiritual practice, and that made the greatest difference in my life. I had to go through more painful experiences to realize how much value it truly was.

Anyway, that is my feeling. . . a certain childlike innocence is necessary to love - at least my definition of love. Besides this quality, an absolute independence is required, and a deep self-trust.

To quote Swami Vivekananda, "Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success and, above all, love."

[osho]

I did not respond to you early. I take you as a positive, well learned person. You are flexible and sensitive and you might have got this nature through lots of Swadhyaya ( study) of different Sastra – Vedanta, the Upanishads, the Bible and all the rest. Or else I could not see anybody could be so humble.
I have however different ways of looking at the world. I believe in evolution but not necessarily Darwinian. I feel the world is not happy though our life span has lengthened, and we are able to cure ourselves from a variety of diseases. I see everywhere dilapidated lifestyles, broken families, abandoned homes. I see burgeoning conflicts and violence and separation.
I cannot see Nikolai the world is getting better though we have made our life much more comfortable with technical gadgets.
I like to think positively, however I cannot ignore the realities abounding everywhere
That is why I think the world is getting worse and worse for love

[NikolaiI]

I did not respond to you early. I take you as a positive, well learned person. You are flexible and sensitive and you might have got this nature through lots of Swadhyaya ( study) of different Sastra – Vedanta, the Upanishads, the Bible and all the rest. Or else I could not see anybody could be so humble.
I have however different ways of looking at the world. I believe in evolution but not necessarily Darwinian. I feel the world is not happy though our life span has lengthened, and we are able to cure ourselves from a variety of diseases. I see everywhere dilapidated lifestyles, broken families, abandoned homes. I see burgeoning conflicts and violence and separation.
I cannot see Nikolai the world is getting better though we have made our life much more comfortable with technical gadgets.
I like to think positively, however I cannot ignore the realities abounding everywhere
That is why I think the world is getting worse and worse for love

Think of an example; a baby, a robber and a pot of gold are all three in a room. But to the baby, there is no pot of gold, and there is no robber, because these things are not inside the baby. Use what's inside you to help you understand the world, because the more you understand what's inside you, the more you'll understand the world, because the two are connected. If you can help others; do so. If you are happy helping only your family, or even living helping no one, living by yourself, then do so. Every action you take no matter where you are will have effects on more than you can see. So focus on your actions, and your own motives; if you act from a pure heart, for the benefit of others, your action will eventually affect everyone in the world.

That's my advice to you - and yes, in principle I agree with you. The more dependent upon technology, the more we divorce ourselves from tilling the soil, we divorce ourselves from the earth, and it could be a grave danger to do so. Certainly I find madness in the cities, and sanity in the country. But what can you do in the city? Make your home in a smaller town, or in the country; invite city people out and let them see the beauty of your property and garden. Cities breed discontentment and being close to the earth is simply rejuvenating to the soul. Everyone needs that, they really do.

But always be encouraging, never disheartening. If you always show kindness to others, that's all you can do, and it's enough.

There's a saying in Hinduism, which is a concept from the Gita, which is one of the best hints at living happily: which is; "Karam karo, fal qui chinta mat karo" (I'm not certain of the spelling at all), meaning "Work without attachment to the fruits (results) (of your labor)." It's roughly based on the idea that you can't work in complete equanimity if you're worried about results. It may seem simple, or unimportant, but I've seen its effect in my life to be rather profound in my own life. You could roughly and simply put it - if you're doing something for someone, you have the right to do such and so, but once you've done it you have no control or responsibility over how they take it. If I'm putting up a proposal for my boss, I have the right / or responsibility to the work involved in getting it prepared and presenting it, but I don't have any say as to whether it's implemented - the results of my work - because that decision is completely up to my boss. In a similar way, you have the right to try to help and make the world a better, more loving, perhaps more connected to the earth, type of place, but you don't have control over how much good it does, or how much people appreciate you for it.

As much as you do, you should do in a spirit of equanimity, which comes naturally being unattached to the results. And what kind of work can you do to improve the situation? From what you stated the problems to be, "dilapidated lifestyles, broken families, abandoned homes. . . . burgeoning conflicts and violence and separation," I presume you'd like all of these things to be better. Well, as far as I can tell - and this is honestly just my opinion - all you can really do is work to help people, wherever possible. You can't over extend yourself, though, and be much useful.

Whenever and whatever you do, be mindful of what you are doing and what you are saying. Remember, if you care about these problems, you will help people only if you are cheerful and encouraging, but you won't if for some reason you dishearten them. In fact, I believe one of the key elements to resolving conflict is to raise the spirits of people involved; as well as of course improving the concretes of the situation, if possible. You can't really give what you don't have. It's honestly sometimes very hard to give happiness if you don't have it. And, I would say, nearly impossible to bring peace to others if you don't have peace within yourself.

So this is why all of the spiritual masters embodied certain qualities of cheerfulness, lightheartedness, and vigor. They knew that happiness is very powerful. To ignite someone's soul is bring them all of a sudden out of the darkness, and into a very different place - of joy and relief, and determination in the face of adversities. You could very easily say, "What is the goal of life? Happiness." And all you could quibble over is the choice of words. Happiness is immensely beneficial, and it is both a result and a cause.

You don't have to enlighten people, or prove your views to them; quite the contrary, people love a listener, someone who is receptive to them. All you must do is be there for them. Keep your own mind strong and cheerful, your own conscience clean, and they will be affected by it, as is everything and everyone in your life always affected by it (your life). And I don't just mean cheerfulness; you know where love is appropriate, and you should love, but just being sincerely kind can have ricochet effects.