Love is a four-splendoured thing

Tomorrow, February 14th, is a day I've been taught is about love. Commercials and cultural programming dictate that you buy someone wine, flowers, chocolate, jewelry, and a nice dinner. If you were from another planet, this is the definition of love the media would teach you- it's a product you can buy with money, a mix between rich indulgences and rare earth elements.

All it takes is thirty seconds watching how animals love each other to understand one of two things: humans did not evolve from animals, or that love doesn't have much to do with material goods.

The Buddha spoke of love in four forms:
1) metta - loving kindness, or friendliness
2) karuna - compassion
3) mudita - sympathetic joy
4) upeksha - equanimity

Metta is finding friendliness and peace toward all beings. It's speaking with and having genuine interest for everyone you meet- the barista at your coffee shop, your random friend from a past class, your life partner. The person who exudes metta wishes for the betterment of all beings.

Karuna is having compassion for those in suffering. That's all of us, bums to bodhisattvas. ("We're not humans having a spiritual experience, we're spirits having a human experience." - Teilhard de Chardin) Because we live in the land of duality, of opposites, we will always be on a journey to one side of the spectrum or the other. The person who recognizes this and still radiates love for everyone is expressing karuna.

Mudita means sympathetic joy. This is the love you feel for someone who experiences great success. It is love without envy or ego. When you can feel triumph, excitement, felicity for their victory and abstain from allowing your subjective mind to compare your experience to theirs, you know mudita. (I would start working with feeling mudita towards friends' accomplishments, then gradually move across the line toward people you find less likable.)

Upeksha is equanimity, finding peace with every moment. When you have learned to enjoy the ups as much as the downs, the lefts as much as the rights, or the up up down down left right B A select starts as much as the 007 373 5963s, you have touched on equanimity.

May you experience these four forms of love, or Brahma Vihara, this Valentine's Day.

Shantih.