von Khan
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Posted - 2013.02.14 17:16:00 -
[1] - Quote
In this good day I wish to share my thoughts on LOVE
GÇ£God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in himGÇ¥
Let us first of all bring to mind the vast semantic range of the word GÇ£loveGÇ¥: we speak of love of country, love of one's profession, love between friends, love of work, love between parents and children, love between family members, love of neighbour and love of God. Amid this multiplicity of meanings, however, one in particular stands out: love between man and woman, where body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness. This would seem to be the very epitome of love; all other kinds of love immediately seem to fade in comparison. So we need to ask: are all these forms of love basically one, so that love, in its many and varied manifestations, is ultimately a single reality, or are we merely using the same word to designate totally different realities?
That love between man and woman which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings, lets called eros as taught in my monastery. In the critique of Religion which began with the Rebellion and grew progressively more radical, this new element was seen as something thoroughly negative. According to critics, Religion had poisoned eros, while not completely succumbing, gradually degenerated into vice. Doesn't the Church, with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the most precious thing in life? Doesn't she blow the whistle just when the joy which is the Creator's gift offers us a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the Divine?
They ancient considered eros principally as a kind of intoxication, the overpowering of reason by a GÇ£divine madnessGÇ¥ which tears man away from his finite existence and enables him, in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine power, to experience supreme happiness. All other powers in heaven and on earth thus appear secondary: GÇ£Omnia vincit amorGÇ¥ GÇölove conquers allGÇö this attitude found expression in fertility cults, part of which was the GÇ£sacredGÇ¥ prostitution which flourished in many heretic rituals. Eros was thus celebrated as divine power, as fellowship with the Divine.
The Scriptures firmly opposed this form of cult, which represents a powerful temptation against faith, combating it as a perversion of religiosity. But in no way rejected eros as such; rather, it declared war on a warped and destructive form of it, because this counterfeit divinization of eros actually strips it of its dignity and dehumanizes it to mere lust. An intoxicated and undisciplined eros is not an ascent in GÇ£ecstasyGÇ¥ towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man.
Two things emerge clearly from this rapid overview of the concept of eros past and present. First, there is a certain relationship between love and the Divine: love promises infinity, eternityGÇöa reality far greater and totally other than our everyday existence. Yet we have also seen that the way to attain this goal is not simply by submitting to instinct. Purification and growth in maturity are called for; and these also pass through the path of renunciation. Religion far from rejecting or GÇ£poisoningGÇ¥ eros, they heal it and restore its true grandeur. Even if eros is at first mainly desire, in drawing near to the other person it becomes less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, bestows itself and wants to "be there for" the other revealing the ultimate act of love, the gift of self.
von Khan
Philosopher |