Love - The golden middle path.!

Love - The golden middle path.

The word 'Love' is perhaps the most often used in our conversations on innumerable occasions.

We say we are in love with people, things, nature and almost all the creations  in this world.... We on a cnstant basis say that we love so many things.

Love has been said to be Devine.
Love is said to be blind and beyond proof.
Love is said to be an experience which can only be experienced and cannot be expressed in words.
Love is said to be a Devine experience.
The list is endless.......

I like this simple  definition of love, which says that the indication that two parties are in love is when both of the parties in love grow together.

We do find that one party said to be in love is growing and other party is not or none of the parties in love is growing or if both parties are shrinking, - then it is time to pause for contemplation and to think whether the parties are in fact really in love at all?!

Love is associated in all kinds of relationships of a human being, between people, between people and things, between people and nature and in a host of many aspects of life.

I would like to take a few simple examples of  relationships and see whether in fact the relationship is one of love or not in the perspective of the simple definition of love - that in love - both the parties in love grow.


When one party in a relationship is growing and other is not,  then perhaps it can be called a relationship of exploitation!

When two parties in love are not growing at all - I would prefer to call that as  one +one = two.  Each one has remained as only one..   In this case, the relation seems to be one of simply living together in status quo - neither of them have grown in the relationship. They remain at the same level at which they came into that relationship. This is a kind of bland relationship! No gain no fun!

When one party contributes the other party to grow and vice versa..then the relationship yield would be more than two!
When each party contributes to other party to grow more and more and vice versa, the relationship yield will grow more and more... In that case one plus one could be 3   or 4  or 10 or 100 or infinity!! This is the relationship  of true love - the Buddha's principle of the golden middle path!  I venture to think that  the golden middle path is the apex point of a triangle when two sides of the triangle move towards each other to meet and meet at a higher point than they started from!

Sometimes the reverse is happening in a relationship..... the relationship of compromise!!...... When one party is compromising 25% and other is also compromising 25% in order to be in that relationship - the relationship yield will only be one and a half.   This is the typical relationship of love of compromise (!)-- two of them have been reduced to just one and half,  each one having compromised 25%! Neither of them is growing but reducing - its the relationship of compromise.

But the horrifying relationship is the one where one is destroying the other person and vice versa !! The relationship yield is zero or even negative...one having destroyed the other! This is a relationship of co-dependence where one destroys the other and vice versa ! This is what is called the war of roses... !!

Isn't it a simple way of looking at relationships to find out whether one is in love with other or not?

My invitation is to look at your relationships in this perspective and you will realize that love is about contributing to the other's growth... Where  there is growth there is love!  Where there is love there is growth!