Letter # 60: "Mingle With Love"

A reader that I’ve never met in person enthused me by her e-mail. She reported that she experienced immense love on practicing the “neti-neti” meditation (a technique of the ancient discipline of Jnana Yoga that I spoke of in Letter # 58). The Jnani (practitioner of Jnana Yoga), Nisargadatta Maharaj says, “Life is love, and love is life.” [“I Am That” p 74].
Isn’t modern technology wonderful? We can talk about things new and ancient, happily and instantaneously, from afar, and with persons we’ve never met. Talk depends on words. Words can heal and hurt. Words can even lead to war from thousands of miles away. So watch out for how you speak, for despite our many “advances”, our human feelings remain basically the same. While struggling with life and pondering it over, we often ignore the conclusions of the past, but those noble truths are still relevant today. That’s why, in my view, we need to re-visit all the ancient spiritual texts. You see, love is ancient and forever fresh at the same time.
5,000 years ago, Lord Krishna said, “…he who is friendly to every living being – he certainly comes to Me.”
About 2,400 years ago, Sophocles, a dramatist of ancient Greece, wrote: “One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.”
Around the same time as Sophocles, the Buddha taught, “Cut out the self, like an autumn lotus, with thy hand! Cherish the road of peace ...” [Dhammapada 285]. “A man who has learnt little grows old like an ox; his flesh grows, but his knowledge does not grow.” [Dhammapada 152]. And what is that knowledge? The answer is: “SELF is the lord of the self, who else could be the lord? With self well subdued, a man finds a lord such as few can find.” [Dhammapada 160].
A few hundred years after the Buddha’s love, came Jesus’ love: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres … And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”1Corinthians 13:1-7; 13
About 500 years ago, Guru Nanak sang, “Man Har ke Nam ki prit sukhdai; Kar kirpa Nanak ap lae lai”, which is translated as: “O my mind, love for God’s name alone gives peace and comfort; Nanak says ‘God attaches to Himself those to whom He shows mercy.”
Now, let’s come to this present moment. My Google search on the word love, at this very moment, produced 1,650,000,000 links in 0.18 seconds. Surely that’s proof that there’s a lot of it out there. Mingle with it; spread it around.

Nanak Naam Chardi Kala Tere Bhane Sarbat Dha Bhalla, Radha-Swami, God Bless; Allah Hu Akbar; and Hare Krishna.

Please feel free to send this message on to someone that you might think would like to receive it. If you do send it on, my only request of you is that you send it as it is, in its entirety and to not alter or modify any of the text, references or authorship information. Thus you will help to give credit or liability to where they are properly due.
Jas BhopalCopyright© 2008
"Practicing goodwill makes for a good life."
Tel: 604 273 6641 (also for fax on request)
http://jasbhopal.com/

References:"The Holy Bible" Online version."The Koran" (As translated by SV Mir Ahmed Ali 2005 ISBN 0-9761870-0-0)"The Bhagavad Gita As it Is" by Srila Prabhupada (ISBN 0-89213-268-X)."I Am That" Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj ISBN 0-89386-022-0
The Dhammapada ISBN-10:1-84483-344-5
The Sacred Sukhmani ISBN 81-7205-098-4
Wikipedia.

My gratitude to everyone. Your comments inspire me to carry on. I ask for your forgiveness for my fallibilities in presenting this material.