5 Compassionate Souls of India
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1. “Kama,” or sensory craving
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2. “Shringara,” or rapturous intimacy
3. “Maitri,” or generous compassion
To the millions of OK Cupid subscribers, India’s philosophers of love would probably say, “Stop waiting for love—it is within your power right now to make it happen!”
The way one does that, they would say, is by giving out love in little ways whenever you can. That could mean a smile at the checkout counter, a gift of food to the hungry, a soulful hug.…
“The simplest acts of kindness,” said Mahatma Gandhi, “are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”
Compassion resembles the uncomplicated love that we naturally feel toward children and pets. It is also associated with “matru-prema,” the Sanskrit term for motherly love, which is said to be love’s most giving and least selfish form. Maitri is like a mother’s tender love but expressed toward all living beings not just for one’s own biological child.
Compassion for strangers, however, does not always come naturally. So in Hindu and Buddhist practice, there are loving-kindness meditations in which practitioners develop the ability to wish others well. The idea is that compassion is like a muscle that can become stronger if we use it regularly.
4. “Bhakti,” or impersonal devotion
While compassion is a wonderful quality, it is not quite the final word. Beyond interpersonal love, the Indian tradition envisioned an impersonal form in which our sympathies gradually expand to embrace the whole of creation.
As a bridge to this, the sages came up with a path called “bhakti yoga,” which can be translated as the cultivation of the self through the love of God. Luckily for those who aren’t conventionally religious, bhakti need not be focused on God in the usual sense. It can be directed toward whatever higher ideal speaks to us most powerfully, be that kindness, truth, or social justice.
Think of leaders like Nelson Mandela, Jane Goodall, the Dalai Lama, and countless others whose love for the world was as passionate and powerful as any romance.
Through bhakti one learns that one’s true family is the family of life itself.
5. “Atma-Prema,” or unconditional self-love
Up until this point, each stage of love has been directed outward into the world. But at its apex it comes full circle back to the self. Atma-prema can be translated as “self-love.” This is not the self as we usually think of it, but the essential self, the self that exists at the center of all of us.
What this means in practice is that we see ourselves in others and see others in ourselves. “The river that flows in you,” says the Indian mystical poet Kabir, “also flows in me.”
When we achieve atma-prema, we recognize that—when stripped of the accidents of our genetic heritage and upbringing—we are all expressions of the one life, the life that the Indian creation myth represented as Purusha. The great Sufi visionary Rumi gave voice to this paradoxical experience:
I, you, he, she, we—
in the garden of mystic lovers,
these are not true distinctions.
Atma-prema arises from the realization that beyond our personal faults and foibles—beyond even our name and personal history—we are all children of the most high. When we love ourselves and others in this profound yet impersonal way, our love loses its boundaries and becomes unconditional.
Love itself will teach us
We don’t live on the summit of universal love. We climb the mountain, and then we descend it in order to share what we’ve found with others.
The sages of ancient India did not view the five stages on love’s journey as mutually exclusive. You do not need to renounce sex and romance in pursuit of a “higher” love. All the forms coexist in the heart that is mature.
By fully developing each of the five stages in turn, we can free ourselves of the addiction to romance as well as our narrow attachment to kith and kin, and become transformed into genuinely full-hearted people.
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