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Hinduism /Saivaism
The Hope of the World Is Love
Your Saiva Siddhanta religion can be lived every minute of the day and all through the night. All you have to do is decide whether you are going to expect anything back from anyone. All you have to decide is what part of the person you love. If you love the soul, you love the whole person, no matter who the person is, no matter what he does, what he says, whether you know him or whether you don't know him, because he is the light of Siva, the energy of Siva, the love of Siva walking around in human form. This is the kind of love that keeps you in harmony with everyone.
Love is expressed in so many different ways. It is a force, a vibration that you have to work at to keep it flowing. Everyone has human emotions, instinctive emotions. Love controls those emotions. Love is appreciation, which can be expressed through gratitude, kind words, and especially through kind thoughts, because unkind thoughts create unkind words which create unkind actions, and everything begins with a thought. Love is an inner happiness which you want to cultivate in someone else, and if you begin to work at cultivating an inner happiness in someone else, you will have it yourself.
If you work to cultivate an inner happiness in yourself, it doesn't work so well. That's a selfish approach, and you are likely to bring up instinctive emotions and memories of the past, especially of the bad things that happened in the past. In expressing love, one has to be very careful to know that it is a building situation, and be very careful not to indulge in unkind words, unkind thoughts and sarcasm.
Sarcasm is the first breakdown in relationships. Trying to change another person's character is also disastrous to a relationship. You have to accept everybody as they are. People change by the example of other people.
Children learn first by the example people set for them. They follow that example–they don't learn by mere words in the beginning–and that carries out all through life. Everyone admires a hero; everyone needs a role model. So if you want to change someone else, be a role model for him. Then he will become like you eventually, but it takes time. Be forgiving, because love is also forgiving. And be compassionate, for love is also compassionate, along with showing gratitude and expressing appreciation. Love says, “I'm sorry.” Love says, “Thank you.”
Love is also generosity, because whomever you love you are generous
toward. You have generosity; you give and you give and you give and you give.
And according to the great law of karma, you can't give anything away but that
it will come back to you. If you give love, it comes back to you double, and
then you don't know what to do with that, so you give that away, and that comes
back double, and again you don't know what to do with that, so you give that
and it comes back double, and your whole family begins to flourish. The
community begins to flourish.
Out of all the philosophies, out of all the psychological maneuverings and the psychiatric analyses, the hope of the world is love. It will be a wonderful day when all of us see that the hope of the world is love.
You will discover ways yourself to express love. Love is decorating the home,
bringing flowers into the home, arranging flowers in the home. It is cooking a
wonderful meal and serving it properly.
Love is cleaning and tidying up the home, bringing fresh air into the home so that those who come into the home are uplifted simply by being in the home. Love is taking care of the shrine room, bringing fresh water, fresh flowers and lighting incense, polishing the Deities, keeping them bright and shiny and dressing them in new clothing so that those who see and receive the darshana are uplifted. There are many physical ways we can express love.
Love is bringing the whole family to the temple at auspicious times. Love is meeting with the family daily, solving all the little problems, sharing and talking and understanding each other's minds and where they are in their consciousness. Love is being patient with people who have problems until the problems go away by talking them through.
Love is respecting the elders. Love is also respecting yourself, because unless you
have self-respect, unless you respect yourself, which means having a good self
image, you will find it difficult to respect others. And unless you love and
respect others, you will definitely have a hard time living in harmony with the
world around you.
- Lesson 301 from Living with Siva, from Satguru Sivaya
Subramuniyaswami's trilogy: Dancing with Siva, Living with Siva and Merging with Siva; 3,000 page trilogy on Hindu philosophy, culture and metaphysics, available in the full-color volumes of Dancing, Living and Merging with Siva at our Minimela online store.Kauai's Hindu Monastery; Himalayan Academy.com
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