The Third Mindfulness Training is about learning how to practice true love. We are taught to think that love is the feeling you have when you think you can’t survive without the other person.
Our original desire as a newborn was to survive. As a tender baby who was just born, you were helpless. You had arms and feet, but you couldn’t move, you couldn’t go anywhere or do anything for yourself. During your birth you experienced moments of danger. Then they cut the umbilical cord. You came from a very soft, dark, and comfortable place out into bright lights and onto a hard surface. You had to expel liquid from your lungs so you could breathe your first breath—it was a dangerous moment. You didn’t yet know the language of humans.
When you were just a few days old, every time you heard the sound of footsteps coming close, you were happy, because it meant that someone was bringing you milk, comfort, and warmth. You needed another person; you couldn’t survive without someone being there. That is the original need, the original love, and the original fear—the fear that no one will be there to take care of you. You’re completely helpless. You need another person. Hopefully, there was an adult who took care of you. Maybe it was a mother, a father, or another relative. Whoever it was, as an infant you probably fell in love with that person, their smell, the sound of their footsteps, and the shape of their face. That person is your original love, a love born from your need.
In Asia, when people kiss each other they use the nose more than the mouth. Using the nose, we can recognize the person; it’s so pleasant. When we are infants, the smell of the person taking care of us is the most wonderful smell in the world, because we need that person. So in Asia, when they kiss, they mostly use their nose in order to enjoy the smell of the other person. That is the continuation of the original desire, the desire to have that person close to us, the desire to hear those steps coming closer and closer. All day and night, as an infant, we hope to hear the sound of footsteps and to be able to smell that smell.
But from this original desire of the tender infant in us may come a lot of unhealthy craving. We may feel incomplete without a partner or feel lost without a romantic relationship. We think that we need someone to protect us and take care of us, and that it’s the role of the other person to do this. Perhaps being around the other person makes us feel relaxed and safe, as we did when we were taken care of as infants.
The Third Mindfulness Training is a reminder that we can love people from a place of understanding and compassion, not just out of need. When we love someone, we have to see that we are one with that person. Their suffering is our suffering and our suffering is theirs. We can’t exclude the other person from our own happiness and suffering. The safety and integrity of the other person is our own safety and integrity. The body and mind of our loved one is a sacred space that needs to be respected. Only then can there be true love.
If you look at the other person’s body as a tool to satisfy your desire then the relationship loses all its sacredness. Body and mind are not two separate things. If the body is polluted, the mind is also polluted, wounded, and weighed down. If the mind is whole, the body is also whole. If we don’t see the body as sacred, we won’t see the mind as sacred. We should look upon guarding our body as we look upon guarding our mind and vice versa. Generally, we only share the deepest secrets of our heart with someone in whom we have complete trust, our closest lifelong friend. The same is true of our body. It’s only when we have a deep and committed relationship with someone that we should entrust our body to them. In that way sexual love becomes something very sacred.
Love is a process of discovery. The Third Mindfulness Training reminds us that when we seek empty pleasure through sexual activity, we destroy happiness and we destroy love. Ill-considered sexual relations without true love make people feel they have lost something very precious in their lives. A boy or girl who is sexually abused suffers terribly, and the suffering can stay with them for the whole of their lives. Our body has certain sacred areas, which no one has the right to touch without our explicit permission, given as an adult. The wholeness of our body is linked to the wholeness of our soul. Someone who doesn’t respect your body cannot respect your mind. Your body isn’t a toy for someone to play with. When we guard our body, we do this also for the sake of our children, our grandchildren, and all our ancestors and descendants.
Everyone has sexual energy. Sexual energy in itself is not unwholesome. When sexual energy leads to activity that causes suffering, it is unwholesome. The Third Mindfulness Training reminds us to commit to learn ways of taking care of the sexual energy in ourselves. Of course the Buddha had sexual energy too. He became enlightened at thirty-five, a young age when sexual energy is still strong. But with his practice of mindfulness and concentration he could transform and focus this energy in other ways. He knew how to direct his energy into helping others and the world.
Eating in moderation, refraining from drinking alcohol, and ensuring that we do physical activity each day are things we can do to help ourselves take care of our sexual energy.
In my monastic tradition, we have a practice called the Second Body. We always have another monk or nun alongside us to protect us. We don’t go out alone or have clandestine conversations. People who live out in the world can be constantly exposed to messages, from advertising and media sources, encouraging the expression of sexual energy. There’s a great deal of sex to be found out in the world, but not much love. The focus on sexuality is so pervasive that reading the Third Mindfulness Training isn’t enough. We need to learn to take care of our bodies and minds and to treat our own and others’ bodies and minds with respect.
We can practice to increase our loving kindness (maitri), compassion (karuna), joy (mudita), and inclusiveness (upeksha). These are the four elements of true love that can help our own happiness and the happiness of others to grow.
Maitri, loving kindness, is the first element of true love. Maitri has the same Sanskrit root as mitra, which means friend. Love, at its base, is deep friendship. A friendship needs to bring about happiness. Otherwise, what’s the use of having a friendship? To be a friend means to offer happiness. So if love isn’t creating more happiness, if it’s making you cry all the time, that’s not maitri; it’s the opposite.
You also need to treat yourself with loving kindness and learn to love yourself. Self-love is the foundation for loving another person If you aren’t able to love yourself and offer yourself happiness, how can you love and offer happiness to another person? When you can live in a way that brings you joy and happiness, then you’ll be able to offer joy and happiness to others.
Karuna, compassion, is the second element of true love. But the word “compassion” doesn’t perfectly reflect karuna. The prefix “com” means together and “passion” means to suffer. Therefore to be compassionate literally means to suffer together with the other person. But practicing karuna doesn’t mean that you have to suffer. Karuna is the capacity to relieve suffering, whether that is the suffering in yourself or in the other person. You have that capacity.
When you love someone and you see them suffering, you’re motivated to try to alleviate that suffering. But if you don’t know how to handle the suffering in yourself, you won’t be able to help the other person handle their suffering. Whenever you have a painful feeling, mindfulness of compassion (maintaining your compassion alive) can help you learn to be there for that feeling without fighting it. Then you can embrace and accept it. If you continue to practice mindful breathing, and tenderly hold your pain and sorrow, you’ll be able to look deeply into your suffering and begin to understand its nature and causes. With that understanding, you can get some relief and finally you can liberate yourself from your pain and sorrow. Compassion is born from understanding. When you feel compassion for yourself, you’ll be able to understand and feel compassion for others and help ease their suffering.
Suppose you’re a doctor. A doctor should have compassion—hopefully! If you were a doctor and a patient would come to you full of fear and complaining of pain, even if you’re a good doctor, you don’t have to suffer with your patient in order to be kind and to help them. Practicing true love, you don’t have to suffer with your beloved. Instead, you help both yourself and the other person to suffer less.
Mudita, joy, is the third element of true love. Mindful awareness means you have access to feelings of joy and happiness at any moment. You don’t need money. You don’t need to go to the shopping center. If you know the art of releasing, the art of mindfulness the art of concentration, the art of insight, then you can bring a feeling of joy and happiness at any time.
There are ways you can bring joy to yourself. If you know how to bring joy to yourself, then you’ll know how to bring joy to others. If you’re truly joyful and your joy has wholesome roots, then it benefits other people. Although you haven’t done anything, just because you are inhabited by joy, we gain happiness from being around you.
Just letting go can bring joy and happiness. There are attachments and ideas we can release. We can let go of stories from the past, which we keep telling ourselves, and of old habitual ways of thinking. Releasing, letting go, can sound simple, but it’s an art. Sitting and breathing, we can focus on releasing our stories so we can cultivate our own happiness. When we practice correctly we experience joy straightaway.
The fourth element of true love is upeksha, inclusiveness. Upeksha is often translated as equanimity, but I prefer to think of it as inclusiveness. In true love, you don’t exclude anyone. This is the foundation of true love. In true love there’s no longer any discrimination. Happiness is no longer an individual matter. Suffering, too, is no longer an individual matter. You and the other person are the same person. His suffering is your own suffering; his happiness is your own happiness; your joy is his joy. There’s no longer any barrier, any frontier, between the lover and the one who is loved. In that sense there’s no longer any separate self.
If you’re caught by your attachment to your beloved one and cut off from all other people and species, then that’s not true love. If your love is true love, it will benefit everyone, not only humans, but also animals, plants, and minerals. To love one person is an opportunity for you to love everyone and all species. If you’re going in a good direction with your love, it will grow more inclusive all the time. True love is generated from within. With true love you feel complete in yourself; you don’t need something from outside to make you feel whole. True love is like the shining sun. The sun is sufficient in itself. It offers light to everyone. It doesn’t say, “I only want to offer light to this one person.” It doesn’t exclude anyone.
It’s possible for us to cultivate the four elements of true love through the practices of releasing, being mindful, being concentrated, and looking deeply to get the insight we need. Spending time each day with each of these practices can help us handle the suffering inside and transform it into peace and joy. That is already love. You don’t need another person in order to practice love. You practice love on yourself first. And when you succeed, loving another person becomes something very natural. It’s like a lamp that shines and makes many people happy. Your presence in the world becomes very important, because your presence is the presence of love.
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