The Stance of Love Illustrate in Tantra Sadhana

"Deep within the cave of your heart, is where all Buddhas unite." Milarepa

      The stance of loving life and making love is the whole approach of your life. Once you do that, happiness, bliss, or fulfillment is not far away. But it all depends on you yourself: whether you want to make life full of love or not. Sahajayana Tantra recommends the stance of love as the most accessible, wise, and direct means to mind-body-spirit well-being: the key to living human life to its true potential, the root (mula) principle for having empathy-insight-energy to overcome all life's challenges.

Love in Tantra

      Most of us are so caught up in dislikes of so many kinds that we never experience a very loving state of being. Religions encourage hatred towards one another. Politics encourages hatred towards people of different ideologies, classes, races, and so on. Through this whole process, we shrink in our ability to attain happiness. We lose energy through this non-loving attitude. The loving attitude leads to an increase of energy! It leads to an increase, an expansion of the parameters of our lives. Once that happens, you find real peace and happiness within yourself.

Uniqueness

      Tantra and Buddhism take the stance that each person is so unique in their make-up: there is none other like you, and your individual expression of love is also unique! It should be the firm foundation upon which you base your life. Out of that foundation, the roses will bloom; out of that foundation, the fruit will come in every manner: mind, body, and soul. Without that foundation of love, nothing meaningful is possible: no spirituality is possible, no real search for truth is possible. Nor is true religious attainment possible.

      Why is love important? It is because it is the most inexhaustible source within you! It is the power of the infinite manifested within you. You are simply to make use of it. You are simply to realize that you have a temple deep within your heart, and in that temple, in that shrine love is to be worshipped! There is no need to worship anything else. The attainment of God comes through love. The attainment of truth comes through love. The attainment of happiness comes through love.

Non-Division

      The basic misunderstanding of religion throughout the world is that they keep preaching love, but at the same time they keep preaching divisions between people, and that sense of division itself creates an unloving situation. That sense of division itself creates an absence of love. It splits our minds: it takes us away from our most inexhaustible sources. It takes us away from that which is most precious within ourselves. It keeps us in a situation where the mind is obsessed by race, religion, nation, caste, and so on. The basis of Buddhism and even Hinduism was never really in the caste system: that simply became an exploitation, a material manifestation of people's own desires in the material sphere. The basis of true spirituality is beyond caste, and that is what the deepest texts of Buddhism and Tantra preach. There is no question of being caught up in these limitations if at all we are to attain true happiness.

      The only real divine moment in life is the loving moment. The only real prayerful moment in life is the loving moment. It brings a quality of light and grace within ourselves, within our minds. Through it, the mind attains crystal clarity and at the same time becomes infused with a passion that takes you away from your ordinary patterns of thinking.

      Soulful consciousness of love brings about the transformation of our beings. It takes us away from the manias of day-to-day life. The meditative state is eventually the state of putting our thoughts aside and of becoming more aware of the loving state, because that is the only thing which brings true ecstasy! It's the only thing through which we can experience genuine spirituality, genuine mysticism. It is truly liberating. It brings its own freedom! In the state of love, you become a king or queen! And love shared, simply grows. It takes you out of yourself. It takes you out of your mental depressions, your mental state of closeness. It is a nourishing factor for you and your most basic need.

Our Conditioning

      The problem is that in our conditioning as human beings through our educational system, through our religious systems and so on - love is never taught as the primary value. In fact, it needs to be the primary value. All that is significant in life comes through it. It makes you relaxed within your inner being. It makes you meditative. It makes you intuitive. It empowers your finest energies of mind, body, and spirit. And through that empowering of energies comes about ecstasy-bliss. lt is an inward-looking phenomenon. If, within yourself, you create a state of love, you'll find your whole attitude, your entire thought process, your entire movement at the physical-material-spiritual levels undergo a transformation. For example, in the gentle loving state even your breathing becomes more harmonious! Your conversations become more absorbing, more intelligent, and full of light. Your interactions and relationships with people attain a great blissfulness. They don't feel like a burden. You pulsate with a childlike yet a divine energy within yourself! And that is the biggest gift of love: it makes you pulsate as a part of the cosmos, and gives you a feeling of being truly alive within it. The state of flow within, the state of feeling more alive within yourself: all this is attained through the state of lovingness.

Go Beyond the Mundane

      Don't be troubled by mundane things. Go beyond them: that is the first principle of happiness. Mundane events, mundane circumstances keep happening but you have to go beyond them in order to lead a fulfilling life. And to go beyond them, the most powerful tool you have as a human being is that of love. It opens you up from within. It opens the doors to the divine. It is simply an approach or attitude to life. If you make it your basic approach, you find that nothing looks like a barrier. You can transcend things. You can transcend limitations. You can go evolving within yourself at every level.

      Love is a very subtle energy, but it is the most powerful energy as well. It is in everybody's being: our job is to uncover it. Our job is to bring it to fruition and to light. It is the doorway to Super-consciousness!

      The state of super-consciousness cannot be devoid of love. It is always infused with it, because it creates a deep centredness within us. It creates a deep sense of positivity within us. It gives us a structure and the foundation upon which we can build many things. It takes away limitations, it creates a sanity within the thought processes. The most delicate part of our beings can be said to be the loving part. Yet it is also the most resilient, because it bridges heart and mind together. It bridges the material and the spiritual. It bridges, the human and the divine. It is the great bridge which connects you to the broader truth of your own life! And once that truth is revealed, you find your whole life filled with the consciousness of the divine: a consciousness of wonder and reverence. A consciousness of true prayerfulness and creativity. Creativity requires a deep intuitive ability. And intuition is always a product of the loving quality within yourself. Hence, make love your strength. Then you will find that it keeps growing. It is to become a conscious, an intrinsic part of all your actions, even in the material sphere. Then success too comes about as a result! Which is why you see when people get deeply passionate about the work they do, and enter into a loving relationship with their work, they become truly successful. This goes for all fields. It could be the field of science. It could be the field of technology or of art, of literature, or of commerce. People who are deeply involved and passionate about what they do are able to release a great deal of superhuman energy into their work and life, and hence make it vibrate with a certain vitality. So doing, they come upon success.

      Spiritually, all it means intrinsically is that to move towards the enlightenment state or the super-conscious state, we are simply to channelize our energies into a loving state of being. Then you'd find that within you is a great reservoir of love and you can draw on this reservoir anytime. No matter what situation you are in, you'll have this great pool of energy available to you! And this pool of energy fills you with zest, a sense of peace, a sense of pulsation of energy, a sense of great creative power.

      Creative power is a result of blissful energy. And blissful energy is a result of the love you can manifest through your life. It is the most meditative quality that a person can have, because it makes you pulsate with an integrated vision of life. You become far more grounded, you become far more capable. Your capacities multiply to a degree where the highest potential of your happiness can be attained.